Pride Parade and Some Words About Birds

Tammy and I took in our first Pride Parade event last Sunday. Rachel was in the parade, walking along with a friend of hers who is a candidate for Hennepin County Commissioner, Irene Fernando. We drove to the Mall of America where we picked up the light rail for a ride into the city. Storms to the west of us threatened to rain on the parade but they fizzled out. It was a fun time. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the recent retirement announcement of Justice Kennedy from the Supreme Court of the United States and the likelihood that another conservative pick by Trump* will risk rolling back many of the gains made through the court in recent years, and not so recent years. The protections for same-sex couples affirmed by the court not so long ago are now in jeopardy of being stripped away. But we've got the Citizens United decision that tells us corporations are people too, so you'll have to excuse me for being more than a little confused.

I finally got our cuckoo clock back from Blackstone Manor Clock Repair in Hopkins after having dropped it off 10 weeks ago for repair. They're a busy shop!

The clock is around 23 years old and was something my former stepson Joe picked up for me when he was visiting Germany while in the Army. The little cuckoo bird stopped functioning some time ago, and more recently the clock would simply stop altogether. $100 later and it appears to be as good as new. I was telling Tammy that someday we're gonna have little grandkids and they're going to want me to hold them up and wait for the little bird to come out at the top of the hour. I want to be ready! The clock probably doesn't really fit with our decor anymore but our home feels like it's missing something without it. We're both glad to have it back.

And speaking of little bids, our neighborhood is full of the sounds of little tweets coming from various nests everywhere you go. I was walking Charlie a couple nights ago and he stopped at a mailbox a few doors down from ours. He was intently staring at the mailbox. I backed up to see what he was focused on and I could hear the tweets from a nest inside where the paper is put. Alex told me it's a nest of Great Crested Flycatchers. He saw the mother fly out of it one day and recognized what kind of bird it was. Alex is our go-to guy in the neighborhood for so many of our nature-related questions.

In addition to baby birds, we've also got an abundance of tiny toads hopping all through our yard. I'm as careful as I can be to not mow over them. I'll stop the mower and take them to an area between ours and our neighbor's home where there's a lot of ground cover and where they'll not be in my way. I love those little guys! Is there anything cuter?

I took some time a few days ago to set up my video camera to capture the action at the birdhouse in our front garden where a family of wrens resides. I compressed 30 minutes of video down to just a few minutes of footage (video embedded below). Watch as the adult bird exits the birdhouse with something white in its mouth. That's actually the droppings of the babies in the nest.

Description from Wikipedia:

"A fecal sac (also spelled faecal sac) is a mucous membrane, generally white or clear with a dark end, that surrounds the feces of some species of nestling birds. It allows parent birds to more easily remove fecal material from the nest. The nestling usually produces a fecal sac within seconds of being fed; if not, a waiting adult may prod around the youngster's cloaca to stimulate excretion. Young birds of some species adopt specific postures or engage in specific behaviors to signal that they are producing fecal sacs. For example, nestling curve-billed thrashers raise their posteriors in the air, while young cactus wrens shake their bodies. Other species deposit the sacs on the rim of the nest, where they are likely to be seen (and removed) by parent birds.

Not all species generate fecal sacs. They are most prevalent in passerines and their near relatives, which have young that remain in the nest for longer periods. In some species, the fecal sacs of small nestlings are eaten by their parents. In other species, and when nestlings are older, sacs are typically taken some distance from the nest and discarded. Young birds generally stop producing fecal sacs shortly before they fledge.

Removal of fecal material helps to improve nest sanitation, which in turn helps to increase the likelihood that nestlings will remain healthy. It also helps to reduce the chance that predators will see it or smell it and thereby find the nest. There is evidence that parent birds of some species gain a nutritional benefit from eating the fecal sacs; studies have shown that females — which tend to be more nutritionally stressed than their mates — are far more likely to consume sacs than are males. Even brood parasites such as brown-headed cowbirds, which do not care for their own offspring, have been documented swallowing the fecal sacs of nestlings of their host species.

Scientists can use fecal sacs to learn a number of things about individual birds. Examination of the contents of the sac can reveal details of the nestling's diet, and can indicate what contaminants the young bird has been exposed to. The presence of an adult bird carrying a fecal sac is used in bird censuses as an indication of breeding."




And one last video before I close out this post. This is from my loop to the single track trails at Murphy Hanrehan, a little more than 6 miles from home. Always a fun time, unless I crash and injure myself!


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