We have a lot of these in Florida. Sometimes they will visit our street. There is a sandhill crane crossing on the intersecting street and they do cross there! The colts are too cute.
I live directly under the flyway of both sandhill cranes and Canada geese. I always look forward to seeing huge v-shaped echelons overhead in the fall and spring. I can always tell them apart, even at great heights, by their distinctive calls. I find them somewhat melancholy markers of he passage of time.
Lemme tell ya, sandhill cranes - which are about the same size as me - can be scary up close and personal. They're HUGE and they can get real "Jurassic Park" during mating and nesting season. A flock of them, passing overhead, looks like pterodactyls.
Each fall and spring, you can witness thousands of magnificent sandhill cranes hanginout out during a layover on their migration route, about 90 minutes southeast of Chicago. You should see it!
Before most of the Grand Kankakee Marsh was drained for farmland, people used to come down by the train load to hunt/picnic/gawk. Apparently large numbers of birds were shot for sport, helping to hasten the extinction of the passenger pigeon.
The sandhills certainly could have met that same fate. But better people made sure that didn't happen. Sometimes we as a species do good things. I may be naive (and I'm fine with that), but I like to think that when we celebrate the good things people have done, we're likelier to keep on doing more good things.
I saw a photo of a big group of them yesterday and was confused by a couple of white ones. Then I read the caption, which noted that a few whooping cranes had joined them. They did look very similar other than the color.
Good Morning Rebecca! You look marvelous, especially in your blue ankle length dress, which also looks marvelous. Unlike Joan Rivers did, you do know how to dress to capitalize on your assets and minimize your defects, and that makes you marvelous!
Some other time, maybe, we can talk about Any Warhol, The Factory, Lou Reed & John Cale & Nico & the Velvet Underground & John Sex & Keith Harring & Max’s Kansas City and the 1970s & being a teenager in the Midwest dreaming of New York and the avaunt garde. Let’s just leave it at: either you get Andy, (like you get Andy Kauffman), or you don’t (like Robert Hughes, Time Magazine’s art critic, didn’t). At least he was more important than Rauschenberg (who?), Jasper Johns (Flag), and Basquiat (see movie bio, skip art). Everyone who hates Warhol can go look at Andrew Wyeth, and I mean that in a good way.
But love your pictures, wish I could be at your parties, which look like more fun than Warhol’s (do read Andy Warhol’s Party book, even if you don’t like him, and enjoy all the photos of celebrities on every page; the New York avaunt garde (sigh)). ❤️💕♥️💙💙💙
Awwww!!!! That was a great slide show and report! Great stories! Wasn’t so long ago Montana had two, count’em, two Democratic senators, and it wasn’t just because of United Mine Workers who mined copper in Butte, which is supposed to be really, really ugly (John Guenther, Inside USA). Money buys a lot of right wing nut job commercials on right wing nut job talk radio stations, and that is why we need the equal time rule restored. Long story short: I believe there are lots of liberals in Montana, who aren’t really interested in God and who don’t care much about abortions and who believe in responsible gun ownership. (The RWNJ are in Idaho, which is a lost cause.) The trans bathroom bills and men playing women’s sports don’t matter when the bathroom is the woods and the high school has 15 guys in the senior class. The post office and health care deserts and lack of good jobs and Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk and proper land management so that Cliven Bundy has to graze his livestock on his own land, and leave federal land (the only properly managed land; sorry Montana, the private sector ruined public land with clear cutting and soil erosion and strip mining) to lie fallow, as God intended it. I don’t understand Tim Sheehy and his macho self-reliance. Montana shouldn’t care about machismo. Wasn’t it a female Congresswoman from Montana who voted against declaring WW1 and WW2? That is way more macha than any macho pretender with a bullet in his arm. Get a Montanan started on bear stories and scars, and be prepared to waste a day, especially in a bar.
Thank dog nobody was hurt as it happened in the middle of the night (property damage though, lots of cars in underground parking.) 110 year old water pipe, who would expect THAT
Interesting reading. I always am sending articles that I want people to read to them, or even reading them aloud to them (does anyone else do different voices for Charlie Brown and Lucy?), and being told to pipe down, they don’t want to hear or read it. Well, I do want to read the Tabs. Thank you for sharing them. Your work is important and useful!😄
Gotta say that John Oliver as a TV soap opera spymaster gives me Ace Rimmer vibes. I mean that in the best possible way, it's full commitment to the straight-faced goofiness of the material.
I reall feel that WOnkette should do a review of "communist" Norway this evening, as we prepare to face England in the World Cup. The sandinavian model is talked about way too little in US politics. (This was my one nationalist message, now back to the regular schedule.)
please. What does he contribute for his salary? Isn’t there another right winger who is more polite than Mr Jennings? (They always talk about civility, but never practice it themselves.) I don’t care that he regurgitates t ridiculous bilge, but can’t he not interrupt, and wait until it is his turn to talk? Maybe raise his hand and wait to be called on?
This the first year of many that my pair of SANDHILL CRANES failed to show near me! Previous years have brought their young to bedazzle me! Perhaps next year they might return. I miss them.
Your hed gif has a sandhill crane learning the finer points of flight: https://martiniambassador.substack.com/p/flying-lesson
And your meme chat: https://open.substack.com/chat/posts/8047704f-b7de-4775-a3f3-75bea8573597?utm_source=share
It's a good idea to start dance lessons at an early age.
The Stork will hork
a fish or two
so her babies can eat
their baby stork goo
♫ A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird's the word ♪
Ta, Martini. I love Tom the Dancing Bug.
That looks like more fun than anything I am doing today!
BIIIIIIIIIIIRIRIRIRIRBB!!! :) ::) :)
We got a nested pair who strut around the neighborhood as if they own the place.
We have a lot of these in Florida. Sometimes they will visit our street. There is a sandhill crane crossing on the intersecting street and they do cross there! The colts are too cute.
I live north of Tampa. We have *tons* of them here. :)
I do not remember them in Lutz, but I was pretty oblivious to anything going on outdoors.
I'm on the other coast but almost due east of Tampa.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
:) :)
I loved watching the adult finches male and female demonstrate wing spreading and flapping to their fledglings on the back porch nest this spring
I live directly under the flyway of both sandhill cranes and Canada geese. I always look forward to seeing huge v-shaped echelons overhead in the fall and spring. I can always tell them apart, even at great heights, by their distinctive calls. I find them somewhat melancholy markers of he passage of time.
I love watching their fall migration south to the wildlife refuge . One of my favorite things.
Lemme tell ya, sandhill cranes - which are about the same size as me - can be scary up close and personal. They're HUGE and they can get real "Jurassic Park" during mating and nesting season. A flock of them, passing overhead, looks like pterodactyls.
We once heard them on migration over NorCal. It was amazing and they were far up but they were loud! That was pretty much how we id'd them.
You should hear them trumpeting during their courtship dances. Like I said, "very 'Jurassic Park'."
Well, they are dinosaurs.
It's obvious when you seem them up close.
And hear them.
VERY true.
They mate for life!
Public service announcement/Nice Time:
Each fall and spring, you can witness thousands of magnificent sandhill cranes hanginout out during a layover on their migration route, about 90 minutes southeast of Chicago. You should see it!
Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Birding / Birdwatching Opportunities – Indiana Birding Trail https://share.google/DpO02OTpC9jI5bgmk
People do good things sometimes, such as preserving these birds' essential flyways.
Also Monte Vista refuge in SW Colorado in March-April. Loafing and preening (like my teenagers)
Before most of the Grand Kankakee Marsh was drained for farmland, people used to come down by the train load to hunt/picnic/gawk. Apparently large numbers of birds were shot for sport, helping to hasten the extinction of the passenger pigeon.
The sandhills certainly could have met that same fate. But better people made sure that didn't happen. Sometimes we as a species do good things. I may be naive (and I'm fine with that), but I like to think that when we celebrate the good things people have done, we're likelier to keep on doing more good things.
Adorable!
I have to admit, I was disappoint, I had “Whoop, there it is!” all ready to go.
"This is How We Do It" here (showing the fledgling how to wing it).
I saw a photo of a big group of them yesterday and was confused by a couple of white ones. Then I read the caption, which noted that a few whooping cranes had joined them. They did look very similar other than the color.
I saw some driving with my sisters from the St Pete area to St. Augustine! I was so excited, absolutely nerding out.
So why were your sisters driving with the cranes?
Take my Sandhill crane……please!
I’m still drinking coffee, yes that sentence does come off as unintentionally funny.
I can't be the only one who egrets not heron their song.
groan
*** stork! ***
Good Morning Rebecca! You look marvelous, especially in your blue ankle length dress, which also looks marvelous. Unlike Joan Rivers did, you do know how to dress to capitalize on your assets and minimize your defects, and that makes you marvelous!
Some other time, maybe, we can talk about Any Warhol, The Factory, Lou Reed & John Cale & Nico & the Velvet Underground & John Sex & Keith Harring & Max’s Kansas City and the 1970s & being a teenager in the Midwest dreaming of New York and the avaunt garde. Let’s just leave it at: either you get Andy, (like you get Andy Kauffman), or you don’t (like Robert Hughes, Time Magazine’s art critic, didn’t). At least he was more important than Rauschenberg (who?), Jasper Johns (Flag), and Basquiat (see movie bio, skip art). Everyone who hates Warhol can go look at Andrew Wyeth, and I mean that in a good way.
But love your pictures, wish I could be at your parties, which look like more fun than Warhol’s (do read Andy Warhol’s Party book, even if you don’t like him, and enjoy all the photos of celebrities on every page; the New York avaunt garde (sigh)). ❤️💕♥️💙💙💙
I love "Faraway Eyes" and you get a gold star for mentioning it today!
Hi, also love them.
Oh Elon,
Will you still have a song to sing,
When the Razor Boy comes and takes your fancy things away?
Thanks Rebecca! We loved Missoula and now Noodle is famous!
Awwww!!!! That was a great slide show and report! Great stories! Wasn’t so long ago Montana had two, count’em, two Democratic senators, and it wasn’t just because of United Mine Workers who mined copper in Butte, which is supposed to be really, really ugly (John Guenther, Inside USA). Money buys a lot of right wing nut job commercials on right wing nut job talk radio stations, and that is why we need the equal time rule restored. Long story short: I believe there are lots of liberals in Montana, who aren’t really interested in God and who don’t care much about abortions and who believe in responsible gun ownership. (The RWNJ are in Idaho, which is a lost cause.) The trans bathroom bills and men playing women’s sports don’t matter when the bathroom is the woods and the high school has 15 guys in the senior class. The post office and health care deserts and lack of good jobs and Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk and proper land management so that Cliven Bundy has to graze his livestock on his own land, and leave federal land (the only properly managed land; sorry Montana, the private sector ruined public land with clear cutting and soil erosion and strip mining) to lie fallow, as God intended it. I don’t understand Tim Sheehy and his macho self-reliance. Montana shouldn’t care about machismo. Wasn’t it a female Congresswoman from Montana who voted against declaring WW1 and WW2? That is way more macha than any macho pretender with a bullet in his arm. Get a Montanan started on bear stories and scars, and be prepared to waste a day, especially in a bar.
Hi pals! This was literally 1/2 block from my work https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000011036581/west-hollywood-flooding-ruptured-water-line.html
Thank dog nobody was hurt as it happened in the middle of the night (property damage though, lots of cars in underground parking.) 110 year old water pipe, who would expect THAT
I like the colored texts. They are perky and we need some things to be perky about right now.
Interesting reading. I always am sending articles that I want people to read to them, or even reading them aloud to them (does anyone else do different voices for Charlie Brown and Lucy?), and being told to pipe down, they don’t want to hear or read it. Well, I do want to read the Tabs. Thank you for sharing them. Your work is important and useful!😄
Gotta say that John Oliver as a TV soap opera spymaster gives me Ace Rimmer vibes. I mean that in the best possible way, it's full commitment to the straight-faced goofiness of the material.
I reall feel that WOnkette should do a review of "communist" Norway this evening, as we prepare to face England in the World Cup. The sandinavian model is talked about way too little in US politics. (This was my one nationalist message, now back to the regular schedule.)
I made my living as a designer, but when asked "whaddya do?" I'd oft reply "Attractive arrangements of rectangles, mostly."
I will share about Wonkette next week, promise!
Scott Jennings should be fired from CNN.
please. What does he contribute for his salary? Isn’t there another right winger who is more polite than Mr Jennings? (They always talk about civility, but never practice it themselves.) I don’t care that he regurgitates t ridiculous bilge, but can’t he not interrupt, and wait until it is his turn to talk? Maybe raise his hand and wait to be called on?
This the first year of many that my pair of SANDHILL CRANES failed to show near me! Previous years have brought their young to bedazzle me! Perhaps next year they might return. I miss them.