Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips is a short educational film about woodpeckers. Did you know that when a woodpecker is foraging for bugs it pecks just once or twice, but when it hammers loudly in rhythmic bursts, it’s not looking for food?
“By far the most often-heard drumming and pecking by woodpeckers has to do with communication, not feeding. Each species has a distinctive rhythmic pattern that it hammers out, often choosing hollow spaces that act as amplification chambers, broadcasting territorial claims far and wide. If a woodpecker drums repeatedly on your house, it’s likely using your dwelling as an amplifier, not as a grocery store.”
That explains a lot. Incidentally, anyone who has ever been awoken early in the morning by what sounds like either a brass door-knocker or an old-fashioned typewriter might be interested to hear the territory-claiming sound made by the yellow-bellied Sapsucker at 3:07.
From the people behind Peterson Field Guides, here’s a brief introduction to our feathered friends, the Woodpeckers.
You are invited to provide your Reader Tips in the comments.
From the “knock me over with a feather” files:
Alvin ‘Chauncey Gardiner’ Greene is “trailing his Republican challenger by more than 40 points in a new Rasmussen Reports poll. The poll released on Tuesday shows only 20 percent of South Carolina voters backing the unemployed candidate, while 62 percent put their faith in incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint.”
to any and all fans of sheriff arpaio:
azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2010/08/03/20100803joe-arpaio-gets-deadline-civil-rights-case.html
Holy smokes. From beagle’s 9:59 link:
“The U.S. Justice Department will sue Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio if he continues to refuse to cooperate with a civil rights investigation, according to a letter obtained by The Arizona Republic.”
Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez says:
“The Marioposa County Sheriff’s Office’s) refusal to cooperate fully with the Division’s investigation makes it an extreme outlier when compared with other recipients of federal financial assistance, which have uniformly recognized their obligation to cooperate with the Division’s investigations of alleged discrimination.” (emph. mine)
Yeszz…using federal taxpayers’ money to blackmail states into not enforcing federal law…
Shirley Sherrod:
Bernard Chapin:
“No, madam, we resist government takeover of the financial industry, health care, the auto industry, and free speech due to a sincere aversion to socialism. Conservatives ardently believe in the rights of the individual. Leftists do not.
“We clash resoundingly with President Obama on most issues. We especially reject the notion that ‘our individual salvation depends on collective salvation.’ In fact, the opposite is true.
“While it is helpful for Mrs. Sherrod to articulate her dysfunction and irrational resentment towards 42 percent of the electorate, justifications for conservative positions are not actually necessary on this occasion.
“Mrs. Sherrod’s claims are risible at the prima facie level. Race is irrelevant in regards to health care, and we know this due to the two-year donnybrook waged against the Clinton administration’s attempt to initiate universal health care during the early nineties.
“Yet race, race, race is what the left must focus on…”
EBD – I thought I’d finally lost it and Maureen Dowd was making sense. No, much to my relief, it’s someone named Bernard Chapin who’s making sense. He merely mentions Dowd.
Ken Masse found out yesterday that Canadians don’t actually have any property rights.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100804/national/gold_mine_holdout
Inside the Winnipeg Hells Angels clubhouse:
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/SLIDESHOW-Inside-the-Hells-Angels-clubhouse-100073554.html
Doh!
Thanks, Black Mamba, I appreciate it. It’s corrected now.
Erm, doh … LOL. You say ’em different than me, EBD. (me: Um, duh). Obviously you’re a more cultured cat!
Had my wife watch the woodpecker film with me just now. We have a special interest in this topic as we have what we thought was an insane woodpecker in our neighbourhood. The critter (we think it’s the same one) has been in our area for a few years, and the only time we hear him is when he pecks on the aluminum cap on the utility pole in the lane behind our backyard. It makes me laugh, every single time. Clearly, he’s not looking for food in that metal cap and we can now relax in the knowledge that he’s into percussion, and that he may not suffer from migrains!
Me No Dhimmi, I saw the same thing once – only it was hammering on a metal post in a frost fence – and I thought it was bipolar, or that it had been poisoned, or something.
I wonder what a woodpecker would do if someone nailed a djembe or an old snare drum – or better yet, a wooden tongue drum – to a tree…
Hmmmm…
EBD- Informative feature on woodpeckers. Northern flickers abound here, and are interesting to watch.
Also common are Downeys, but I swear they, (or maybe just him, are nuts! This dude gets his jollies from continuously drumming on my steel machine shed. My head hurts just thinkin’ about doing that. Of course, he probably isn’t hung over at 6 AM either. ;~D
It occurs to me that if the MSM just explained what a ‘narrative’ is…
But then (given the opportunity to talk shop) there’d be an argument about ‘lead’ vs ‘lede’.
One cool technical term I discovered while writing my book is gallery proof.
Today’s writers probably don’t have to bother with such archaic, silly notions and concepts.
A massive pileated woodpecker claims my yard, uses the pole transformer to let everyone know it. Impressive bird but unfortunatly he also enjoys taking out 6″ dia chunks of the polyurethane insulation on my shop.
John Candy had more knowledge and dignity.
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Will she take over command of our forces in Afghanistan or Iraq?
“Just had a visit from my Liberal MP and it was an interesting conversation. Got talking about muslims and the danger to Canada but in his and his assistants view the real danger to Canada is the Christian far right. I had never heard of these people and I asked who were they, no response except they are out there. He mentioned the 56B deficit and I responded who forced this on us?
I asked where are the Liberal policies and plans rather than just attack Harper with the attempted scandal of the day. We have lots he said, I will send them to you. Looking forward to that pipe dream.
When he was leaving I asked him could he imagine Dion as Canada’s PM on the world stage and he replied yes as Dion was a man of integrity.
Don’t think my MP will be back.”
Posted this last night but the more I went over my Liberal MP, Rob Oliphant, comments the more I was amazed how he fits exactly into our criteria of the brain dead left. He repeated all the cliches on Harper, multiculturism etc. and obviously happily believed them all. When we discussed the tremendous growth of government and its economic disasterous impact on our Western world with Ontario under the Liberals as a homegrown example it made almost no impact on him.
After he left I just said to my wife, wow, how can anyone support people like him and his party! Toronto is filled with his type.
ET, Charles Krauthammer’s column reaffirms exactly what your fears are on how Obama will circumvent congress to get his agenda done outside of legislative mandate.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/08/06/charles-krauthammer-whatever-happened-to-separation-of-powers/
EBD, have you seen Greene’s first campaign ad? Calls DeMint a liar and, wait for it, a bigot. Nothing less to be expected of course.
What really strikes me is that 20% say they are going to vote for him. I am beginning to think that Robert A. Heinlein had it right in Starship Troopers and voting should be an earned privilege.
SPEAKING OF ‘WOODPECKERS” WITH APOLOGIES to EBD and this thread in advance, I offer this TOAD STORY!
So, there’s this yellow toad wandering around in the forest kinda ticked off because he doesn’t want to be yellow. Life would be easier if he were green like the other toads..
He’d sure be less visible to predators for one thing. Anyway… this yellow toad bumps into a fairy godmother.
He begs her: “Fairy godmother, please make me green like the other toads. I am tired of being so visible to predators and suchlike.”
The fairy godmother whips out her magic wand and says, “Toadra-capokus! You’re green!”
The toad looks down and sees that he is green except for his package, which is still yellow.
He says to the fairy godmother: “Wait a minute! My pecker’s still yellow!”
To this the fairy godmother replies: “I don’t do johnsons. You will have to go see The Wizard of Oz for that.” The toad thanks her and hops off on his way.
There is a purple bear wandering about the very same woods. As luck would have it, he also encounters the very same fairy godmother.
He implores her: “Fairy godmother, please make me brown like all the other bears. None of the lady bears want to be seen with me on account that the hunters can spot me from a mile off.”
She, being a nice fairy godmother, takes out her magic wand and says:”Bearus-cadabra! You’re brown!”
The bear looks down and sees that he is, in fact, brown with the exception of the ole twig and berries.
They remain purple.
He says: “My wang is still purple!”
She says: “I don’t do units, you will have to go see The Wizard of Oz for that.”
To this the bear replies: “Well that’s just dandy, but how the hell do I find The Wizard of Oz?”
The fairy godmother answers: “That’s easy… just follow the YELLOW PRICK TOAD!”
Remember Kate’s July post about a treatment for MS that Saskatchewan was looking at researching?
Look what showed up in today’s Herald.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1195430.html
Dave – yes, I saw Krauthammer’s column today. Exactly my point.
My feeling is that the Obama Gang will move Obama more and more to an isolate cocoon, where his fragile ego is protected from questions and criticism. So, he’ll be doing more carefully arranged adulatory meetings, campaign style; he’ll also do more golf, expensive vacations and parties.
Then, they’ll put through more and more of their statist agenda by having him do it by Executive Fiat – ignoring and sidestepping Congress.
Will they do the amnesty one BEFORE November? The Obama Gang want the hispanic vote. Or, will they fear a backlash from mainstream America if they do this?
That leaked memo about a possible amnesty was DELIBERATE…to ‘test the waters’…and see if there was a great backlash. There isn’t an uproar…but there’ve been a LOT of questions. Of course, they could use the memo as a signal to hispanics that they might do it..and so, try for their vote that way.
At the same time, they are going through the surface imagery of more troops to the borders – even though this is inadequate. But, they are playing a political game.
I think they want to retain some but not all control of Congress so that they can dispense with Congress and move to Executive Fiat.
They are relying, still, on race to prevent a public backlash against Obama. That is, Obama and the Gang operate within the perspective that it’s difficult for most Americans to criticize Obama because ‘he’s black’. Any hint of criticism, and some minion will bring this up..to divert and deflect.
Just imagine if it had been Bush with that pork stimulus, that health care-by-backroom deals, those lies about employment figures, that insulting remark that ‘at least unemployment isn’t 12 or 15%’; that suing Arizona, that indifference to the oil spill, those insults to western leaders, on and on and on. The Gang are very aware that Obama is protected by that ‘black cloak’ and they keep him away from questions and criticism to prevent his thin-skinned reactions.
I think they’ll divert criticism of Obama to Congress. They’ll let Congress take the fall, and use that..to actually INCREASE Obama’s powers by moving governance into Executive Fiat.
Dave @ 8:31. Your first paragraph exemplifies the sickness that is the Liberal Party of Canada today. The NDP, even with its Marxist ideology, at least knows what it stand for. The Liberals stand for nothing, have no values and haven’t had any for forty years except the pursuit of power.
This spring, the only way we could stop a persistent male woodpecker was with chicken wire !!
He thought the stucco pillars out front were nice trees. And yes, he could penetrate the stucco.
Suzuki will soon have a series on CBC – ‘unkind mankind cut down so many trees Woodpeckers have only stucco to peck’.
I’ve always loved this:
http://www.satirewire.com/news/feb02/warship.shtml
Nobody was more stunned than we were,” said Kali Omari, first mate of the seized vessel. “We saw this frigate steaming toward us, and we were worried, but then we saw the maple leaf on the flag, and we thought, ‘Oh, Canadians. What the hell do they want?'”
Ever since Woody, woodpeckers are one of my favorite kind of birds. We used to put an old tobacco tin over a fence post and listen to the woodpecker induced racket as the sun came up each morning. Last fall we had one in our mountain ash and this summer we had a couple of chickadees raising a brood in the hole the woodpecker left behind.
today in history:
Aug 6 1945
At 9:15am, Col. Paul Tibbets releases “Little Boy” over Hiroshima and executes a hard, 159-degree turn. 40 seconds later, the Atomic Bomb detonates, yielding a 12.5 kiloton explosion and a huge, black mushroom cloud. About 45,000 people are killed immediately, and another 200,000 are killed in later years by leukemia and other radiation illnesses.
ya there general hideki ‘toejam’ tojo. is that what you fcukin’ wanted?
let THAT be a lesson to the hotheads itching to swarm Israel, attack S Korea, or any other nation attempting to peacefully co-exist and may I add Japan to that list seeing as they did learn the lesson.
Left-liberal Drug Pushers.
Pan-Canadian is none of the provinces’ business.
It’s another tax/spend grab. Guess whose taxes?
Our Enemy, The State.
…-
“Premiers to build drug bulk-buy program
CBC.ca – 47 minutes ago
Canada’s premiers and territorial leaders say they will work to establish a pan-Canadian purchasing alliance to bulk-buy prescription drugs, medical supplies and equipment.”
http://www.bluelikeyou.com/2010/08/06/days-im-glad-im-just-a-blogger/#comment-87387
“CBC exec leaving
National Post – 12 minutes ago
One of the CBC’s top executives is leaving the public broadcaster, it was announced this afternoon. Richard Stursberg, who spent the last six years in charge of the CBC’s English Services, left the network effective today, the CBC said in a statement.”
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“The_Iceman says:
August 6, 2010 at 3:28 pm
This is interesting. I did not realize that in June 2009 CBC host Carole MacNeil married the boss of CBC english program services. “Mr. Stursberg oversaw all aspects of CBC’s English-language programming services, including CBC Television, CBC News Network”. At the time Carole was doing the once per week Sunday night show with Evan Soloman, which ironically was cancelled in June of 2009. Then suddenly in the fall, Carole gets promoted to the weekday afternoon anchor’s chair and Evan gets the the big prime time Politics show. Evan replaces Don Newman, they change the show name from “Politics” to “Power and Politics” and give him an extra hour.
It does seem like an interesting confluence of events. Carole marries her boss and shortly afterwards her and her co-host get promoted. Now her husband is abruptly leaving the CBC, and Carole has not been sitting in the afternoon anchor chair this summer; but rather has been doing reports from Washington.”
http://www.bluelikeyou.com/2010/08/06/days-im-glad-im-just-a-blogger/#comment-87387
And sometimes woodpeckers hammer spacecraft, seemingly just for the hell of it. (With short video.)
Watch the MSM/AGW moonbats as they go apetihs on this.
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“Thirteen campers airlifted after melting glacier triggers avalanche in B.C.
RCMP in British Columbia say a melting glacier triggered a two-kilometre avalanche that came to rest atop the Meager Creek hot spring outside Pemberton, B.C., trapping about 13 campers who were in the area.
Police don’t believe anybody was hit by the sliding mass of muddy debris but say a group was camping on the wrong side of a service road that became blocked by debris.”
“The overnight incident was initially reported as a landslide but Sgt. Lemay confirmed it was actually the Capricorn glacier atop Capricorn Mountain that gave way.”
“The area has a long history of geological instability. A flood swept through the Meager Creek hot springs in 1985, damaging cars and bridges and forcing the rescue of visitors by helicopter. And in 1975, four consulting geologists doing geothermal studies for BC Hydro were buried in an avalanche at nearby Devastation Creek.
Three landslides were reported around Meager Creek in October 1990, triggered by heavy rains. The slides blocked access to the hot springs, a popular tourist spot, and stranded five tourists by knocking down a bridge.
The area is also home to B.C.’s largest, most recently active volcano — a series of peaks known as the Mount Meager complex, officially listed as dormant. It last erupted more than 2,360 years ago.”
http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/08/06/people-trapped-by-b-c-landslide-reports/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/06/oh-no-greenland-glacier-calves-island-4-times-the-size-of-manhattan/#comment-450143
Oh Oh Shirley Sherrod opened a can of worms. Apparantly the Co-op paid as little as .67 cents an hour, sprayed workers with pesticides etc. There was a strike against the Co-op.
http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2010/08/05/slave-labor-conditions-at-sherrods-farm/
I knew it would end up like this. Running our own cars has now officially gone crappy.
Bio-Bug: Car run on human waste is launched
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/7929191/Bio-Bug-Car-run-on-human-waste-is-launched.html