I noticed a pair of common grackle in th tree next to my bedroom, so I googled for grackle calls and was playing them out the window and they were chatting back. I have noew reasonably successfully chatted with crows [we chat every morning] and grackles =)
The neighbors have also caught me playing the ‘meow mix’ song out the window, because we have more or less trained Tiny Apex Predator that gushitime is meowmix time, so she will come running when she hears it. If it isn’t actually gushitime, I will give her 2 tiny crunchie ‘greenies’ treats to reinforce good things come with meowmix time =)
I threw peanuts that were stale under my bird feeders so maybe the squirrels wouldn’t steal all the bird food.
I looked outside a squirrel was in the bird feeder and birds were on the ground eating peanuts.
It’s a topsy-turvey world!
Aru, I have been harboring a secret desire to have a pet Crow/Grackle/Raven for many years.
My Mother had a Myna bird named ‘Raven’, she regaled us with tales of his exploits.
I just love the idea of a bird living with me and learning to talk.
I have a pair of Lil’Pigeons that are raising a family in my barn. Yes, peeps I’ve seen baby pigeons. It’s true, they almost look grown up.
I have a yard full of song birds right now. So I get my feather fix from a distance.
Whenever I see or hear a grackle, it takes me back to camping in Death Valley, where they are fairly common. One morning as I was getting up and fixing coffee, a young girl from a nearby campsite wandered past, chanting “grackle, grackle, grackle, grackle…” – one of those little camping moments that I’ll always remember.
I had been thinking of a thread along similar lines - I hesitated because I wasn’t convinced that anyone else had been literally bored stupid by lockdown. No offence meant, and pleased to see I have company. As for me…
Project 1: Can you grow a crop of potatoes using only modestly sized plant pots? This is clearly not feasible because they would require a LOT of watering, so when you go away on vacat- ……. Ah. OK, so now it’s feasible. Worth a shot. We’re talking 5 liter pots here, filled with homemade compost. So far - well, they look like potato plants. For a good crop of, say, a kilo per pot, 20% of the volume of the pot would have to be potato. Ambitious. We’ll see.
Project 2: Can I teach myself to ride a bike in the time trial position – at age 60+? Oh man, I’m really getting bored with lockdown. This is the time trial position. Yes, excruciatingly uncomfortable if you’re 20; and absurdly delusional if you’re somewhat past 60. Those pointy things the rider is holding onto are aerobars* - I’m not using them (yet); I’m gripping the tops of the brakes and laying my forearms on the bars. BTW the reason for riding like this is that it is much more aerodynamic – even for me it’s amazing how much difference it makes.
After a couple of teensy tryouts, out on the bike last week I started including a series of brief (half-mile-ish) sections in the TT position, riding hard. Three sections on Wednesday. Went well – at least until I got off the bike and tried to stand upright. Perhaps three was excessive for a first attempt – we’re back down to one or (maybe) two per ride for now. Back, hips, knees, ankles, neck - the “at risk” list of joints is concerning. It’s very true – there’s no fool like and old fool.
j
The bars go by a variety of names – Tri-bars is common (they were first used by triathletes). My favourite is the splendidly descriptive “Prayer bars”.
Treppenwitz
The problem with that specific TT bike position is that it puts the rider directly above or maybe even slightly in front of the bottom bracket. This means that the quads will get all the work with less emphasis on the glutes - this is a real killer for endurance, and also it risks frontal knee problems.
In effect it is putting the rider ‘on the rivet’ sprinters position so you get lots of power. Riding like this would take a huge amount of readjustment of riding style and us older folk are probably not up to it anyway - especially with extra middle poundage - I certainly would not want to be riding much more than 30 or so miles in that position and it really isn’t a way to go out for an enjoyable ride.
At least for conditioning for that riding position I would consider sliding the saddle backwards somewhat and also doing some work with weights to reinforce the front thigh muscles.
Here’s one hit on “container potatoes”: How to Grow Potatoes in Containers . I don’t know if a 5-liter container is large enough–potatoes need layers of growing medium or straw added over time.
Quick reply (no-hijack version) - thanks for your comments and all noted. But I wasn’t intending 30 miles like that - more just interested to see if I could do it at all. Over a couple of miles say. I’ll be (more) careful.
Potatoes - sampled the first five liter pot today. 0.9 kilo of fabulous, blemish-free charlotte potatoes (vs my ambitious target of 1 kg/pot). Growing potatoes in small pots of compost works brilliantly (pending results for the next 4 pots).
(Perhaps we won’t talk about the cycling bit though. Just getting over the latest left foot injury…)
j
ETA (1) trying out the edit feature; and (2) strangely, 3 of the 4 pots, including the sampled pot, never flowered.
