Black-capped Chickadee

 

 

 

Loving him some suet.

 

But then, who doesn’t?

 

 

Places

 

 

We travel all over the U.S. and we see all these places.  And each place has a name.  New England.  New York.  St. Louis.  Denver.  Longs Peak.  Pikes Peak.  San Francisco.  All these places were “discovered” and named by “explorers” in the last few hundred years.

 

So we, the people of European descent, “explore” our way across an entire continent, which is already populated.  (The pre-“discovery” population of the Americas is estimated to be about 50 million to 100 million.)  And when we roll into town and encounter a distinctive place or feature, what do we do?  Do we ask the people who have been here for ten thousand years, “Hey, what’s the name of this place?”  Not often.  We say “Wow, look what we discovered”, and make up a name for it.

 

Does that make any sense?

 

 

 

I was just thinking

 

 

About Tesla Full Self Driving.  With the latest update, we can put in a destination before the car has even moved, push “go”, and the car takes us there with no further input.  It even picks out a parking spot when we get there, parks, and stops.  Nothing else happens, it just sits there with the climate control running, until we get out of the car and walk away.  Then the car rolls up the windows (if they’re down), shuts off the heat or air conditioning, folds in the mirrors, and locks itself.  Very cool.

 

So, let’s do a what-if.  What if a person goes to a fiesta, gets hammered, gets back in their car and pushes the button for home.   That would be a lot like calling a cab, which is what drinking drivers are advised to do, but it’s not a cab it’s the driver’s own car.  What would the law say?  Should that person be cited for driving under the influence, because they are the presumed driver of their own car, or lauded for being responsible and getting behind the wheel, but not actually driving?

 

 

White-breasted Nuthatch

 

 

 

 

Like red-breasted nuthatches, white-breasted nuthatches can move in any direction up and down a tree.  This one spent more time right-side-up for us than the red-breasted one we sent pictures of a few weeks back though. 

 

 

Window covers

 

 

They work great when they’re up

 

But the attachment mechanism is a problem.  When the window covers aren’t up, all those metal bits stuck on the glass to line up with the magnets in the shades; visual clutter.  It’s distracting.

 

We have a solution in mind.  Replace the individual metal pieces with black metal strips that run along the top, bottom, and sides of the windows.  The strips would disappear into the black borders that are already there.  Being continuous strips, they would provide even more secure attachment points than the individual pieces do now.

 

To test the theory, we got some black electrical tape that’s the same width as the individual pieces we have already stuck on.  We ran the tape down over the metal pieces in (mostly) straight lines.  That worked!  The attachment points almost disappeared by comparison. 

 

A big improvement.  Next step is to source some thin metal strips of varying lengths, or get them cut to size, for each window.  Then I can stick them on with the same high temperature adhesive that came with our window cover kit, and we’ll call it good.

 

Pop Quiz

 

 

This little spot on our deck.

 

Is it a grasshopper, or something else?

 

 

 

Answer below.

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Answer:

 

Something else.

 

There are several other critters that look like grasshoppers but aren’t.  Katydids, Crickets, and Locusts.  The beauty pictured above is an adult Katydid.

 

Patterns in nature

 

 

 

Exposed weathered roots and fresh ground cover.