{"id":158685,"date":"2024-05-13T06:09:57","date_gmt":"2024-05-13T12:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=158685"},"modified":"2024-05-13T06:48:04","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T12:48:04","slug":"bits-and-pieces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/13\/bits-and-pieces\/","title":{"rendered":"Bits And Pieces"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I saw that Whoopi Goldberg just published a family memoir titled Bits and Pieces.<\/p>\n

Which reminded me of my very best friend in high school, Vern Hendrickson, who used to sing the Dave Clark Five song, Bits and Pieces<\/a><\/span><\/span>, outside their bathroom door while he was waiting for his older brother Dean to vacate their only bathroom when they were both trying to get ready for school or work. Use your imagination to figure out why.<\/p>\n

Vern and Dean always reminded me of Jan and Dean<\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

I’m using the same title, Bits and Pieces, mostly because it seems to fit the scattergun approach of today’s post. But also because it brings back fond memories of Vern – a very good guy who died way too young of brain cancer.<\/p>\n

Which also reminds me of one of my favorite Billy Joel songs<\/a><\/span><\/span>. Because of the catchy tune, but mostly because of the lyrics, which Joel says “have something to offend everyone”.<\/p>\n

Which reminds me, Billy Joel and I share a birthday.<\/p>\n

I’m showing my age and my penchant for going off on bizarre semi-connected tangents, so let’s get on with my version of Bits and Pieces.<\/p>\n

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I’m still trying to get a decent flight shot of the leucistic Red-winged Blackbird but he always seems to know when I have a camera handy and those are the times when he turns skittish (this photo was taken through a window from inside my kitchen). But overall he’s becoming much more tolerant of me when I’m working in my garden so I’m hopeful.<\/p>\n

Yesterday he made about a half dozen appearances at my feeder and twice he came at the same time that an absolutely gorgeous adult male Bullock’s Oriole showed up. Exciting times in my back yard.<\/p>\n

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Around here, invasive Eurasian Collared Doves have largely replaced our native Mourning Doves so for the last few years I’ve seen far more of the former than the latter at my feeders and elsewhere. But that seems to be changing.<\/p>\n

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This spring the Mourning Doves seem to have made a comeback. I’d estimate that at least 80% of the doves I’m seeing at my feeders are Mourning Doves. I’ve seen as many as nine Mourning Doves scrounging seed below my feeder without a single Eurasian Collared Dove in sight.<\/p>\n

I’m curious if any of my readers have noticed something similar. If you have, please let me know in the comments.<\/p>\n

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The news regarding our native Yellow-bellied Marmots isn’t as good. I used to see them regularly this time of year but this is the only one I’ve seen so far this spring and I’ve been looking hard for them. I’m worried that their numbers may be declining in northern Utah.<\/p>\n

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My new bird feeder and my latest attempt to outfox Bandito the thieving squirrel. The feeder, called the Eliminator, is advertised as “squirrel proof” and so far mine is as advertised.<\/p>\n

It has six circular feeder ports surrounded by a circular perch ring. In this photo the ports are open, allowing access to the seed.<\/p>\n

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But the weight of a squirrel on the ring causes the entire outside of the apparatus to move down, which completely closes all six feeder ports. Even the weight of two starlings will mostly close the ports but they stay open with as many as seven smaller birds (finches, sparrows etc) jostling for position on the perch ring.<\/p>\n

So far, Bandito’s repeated efforts to get at seed in the feeder have been completely futile so he’s given up trying and contents himself with scrounging fallen seed. Part of me wishes that he’d continue to make attempts because it’s hilarious to watch him trying.<\/p>\n

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Here’s Bandito, seemingly unhappy and discouraged as he runs across my back fence after several more unsuccessful attempts to conquer the Eliminator.<\/p>\n

And by the way, in the feeder photos my garden looks pretty barren but those photos were taken last week. Since then I’ve planted about 90% of my garden with starts and seeds and six rows of hardy veggies and flowers were already sprouted, so now it looks very different and much better.<\/p>\n

Because of my back problems and surgeries it’s been almost four years since I’ve been able to garden effectively so for that long I’ve let large parts of my garden go fallow. It feels very very good to be able to use the entire thing again (1050 sq ft).<\/p>\n

I hope I’ll be able to keep it up. Some days it’s marginal but I’m sure doing better than I was last year.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: The Eliminator has a feature that I haven’t tried yet but I’m planning to. The weight sensitivity of the feeder can be adjusted from 0-6 oz. I’d like to get it adjusted so that it would close with the weight of a single starling but remain open with the weight of 4-6 smaller birds. It may or may not work but I’m going to try. While I’m working in the garden I have endless opportunities to watch for results.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I saw that Whoopi Goldberg just published a family memoir titled Bits and Pieces. My very best friend in high school, Vern Hendrickson, used to sing… (7 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,334,8,392,6936,3953],"tags":[6940,7450,2551,7448,4536,7449,7370,7451,7453,7452,7447,1512],"class_list":["post-158685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-ecology-and-environment","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-fox-squirrels","category-yellow-bellied-marmots","tag-bandito","tag-billy-joel-birthday","tag-bullocks-oriole","tag-dave-clark-five","tag-eurasian-collared-dove","tag-jan-and-dean","tag-leucistic-red-winged-blackbird","tag-mourning-doves-making-a-comeback","tag-squirrel-proof-bird-feeder","tag-the-eliminator-bird-feeder","tag-whoopi-goldberg-memoir","tag-yellow-bellied-marmot"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/yellow-bellied-marmot-5960-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-Fhr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158685"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158747,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158685\/revisions\/158747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}