I am tired as hell, but I need to ask before it;s too late, and to be polite, in exchange, I will bribe you with some nice pics.. So first comes the bribe:( huge picspam under the cut )

I am shutting down this livejournal. I know there will be no tears. I realize this isn't like the retirement of your favorite syndicated columnist with whom you have your cup of coffee. This livejournal died a long time ago. This is simply the official announcement. It is like the obituary of the tv star whose career died in the 70's but whose life continued because of residual checks. It's like Paul McCartney announcing the break-up of The Beatles: people hoped he wasn't the last to figure this out. I will still be on Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace (the last one is because of a ghoulish morbidity). So, check me out there, look for a new improved Shakespeare website and an actual blog to follow.

New Dirt.

All of my daylilies are done blooming now. We just moved in this winter so I had no clue what they were until they bloomed :-P
Unfortunately, the location of these daylilies is horrible. My dogs run through them and pee on them so I'd like to move them. Do I need to wait until fall or can I move them now since they're done blooming?

Jeff VanderMeer over at Omnivoracious: apparently he likes them. Now if they'd just sell.

http://www.juliezickefoose.com/blog/2009/07/wren-daily-life.html

Sick Computer Update: The nice Fed-ex man came and picked up my computer with its Black Curtain of Doom and its melted cord to ship them off to Apple, and let them become Apple's problem. The Apple Care Protection Plan should be mandatory. Three years of free service. Well, not exactly free, because the plan is expensive, but not as expensive as a new logic board and video card. Get the Plan. If you put your laptop through what I do, you're going to need it. The nice man gave Bacon four bikkits. Dog etiquette has not progressed as far as child etiquette. He didn't ask if it was OK to load Baker up with carbs; he just did it. Four big Milk Bones is pretty much a day's ration for a 24-lb. doggeh. I was so happy to see that laptop drive away I didn't chide him.

Input: daddy longlegs. Output: copious fecal sacs. I love the awkward leg position Mr. Wren assumes in order to dive in and get a fecal sac as it's being produced.


Away with it!


Songbirds remove the neat, membrane enclosed fecal sacs and fly a good distance from the nest before dropping them. Grackles like to drop them over water, and since grackles generally nest near water, that usually means a pond or stream. When there's no pond or stream, grackles will cheerfully fill up your bird bath with them. Instinct is a funny thing.

My bluebirds like to put their babies' fecal sacs on our phone wire, or on our heron weathervane, or to line them up neatly on the railing at the top of our tower. Oh, thank you.

As the wren nestlings got bigger, so did the food items the parents brought. There are very few insects that can evoke a physical shudder from me, but they are: daddy longlegs, cockroaches, and camel crickets. I think that's because all three of those tend to be in basements, and when I was a kid I have memories of cold, clammy camel crickets leaping everywhere and occasionally bouncing off my bare legs as I walked through our basement in Virginia. Ecch.

I don't know where they were getting them, but the wrens brought in camel crickets by the dozen.


There were a couple of reliable perches each wren would fetch up on while pausing to see that the coast was clear near the nest. Usually, it was the bail of a hanging basket.


Which offered nice color opportunities. This is a little variegated ivy geranium that might be called Sugar Baby Red. Teeny tiny leaves edged in cream, dark salmon flowers, and I've had it for years and years, ever since I pinched a cutting off a huge hanging basket at a garden center because I didn't want to spend $30 for one somebody else had had the fun of growing. Plant propagation and cutting theft: It's one of my only vices.

Sorry I fogot to add this in my last post so forgive the double posting!
I was going to add that my hair is a bit frizzy by nature, and my hair is healthy so I don't think my hair's damaged...its just seems to go that way on its own.

I have been noticing A HUGE amount of frizz decrease since I have switch to Giovanni but I still have alittle troulbe with my frizz and I was wondering if anyone knows of any hair serum/product that eliminates frizz without containing any -cones or harmful ingredients.

I've also been trying to research up on frizz and how to prevent it but it seems like no one has the answer... the only answer I find is "PROCESS YOUR HAIR" which is a BIG NO WAY! So if anyone has information or personal exprience regarding frizz and how to control it please do share! I'm alittle desparate! D:

http://billofthebirds.blogspot.com/2009/07/leaving-town-for-mr-mccown.html

The second half of my family's recent trip out West was spent in Montana, a lifer state for me. Julie spent a summer in northernmost Montana when she was a teenager, living with her sister Barb and family. The other three of us only knew about Montana what we'd heard from friends and absorbed from books and pop culture. We spent three amazing days canoeing down the Missouri river and camping—and there are sure to be more posts about that in the future. Today's post is about a few hours devoted to our attempt at finding a target species in a very specialized habitat.

Julie and I had been invited by Bob Niebuhr to speak at the Mountain Bluebird Trails 35th anniversary meeting in Great Falls, Montana. For more than three decades this organization has been putting up houses for mountain bluebirds all across Montana, and their success is evident by the widespread presence of this lovely all-blue thrush.

Our first night (Friday) at the MBT event we played music as the opening act to birding funny man Al Batt, the world's tallest Lutheran with a sense of humor. If you've never heard Al Batt speak, you really should. You'll have an excellent chance to hear Al at the Midwest Birding Symposium where he is one of the evening keynote speakers. But back to our story...

The following morning I was slated to co-lead a bird walk along the Missouri River in Great Falls. Though it was only a few hours in duration, the birding at Giant Springs Park was very good, with wonderful looks at cliff swallow, common merganser, black-headed grosbeak, and a nesting pair of Bullock's orioles.

The rest of the morning and early afternoon were filled with a series of talks and presentations, which covered some interesting topics. But there was a problem. We'd met Liz Larcom on the field trip and she mentioned in the course of our conversation, a place about an hour away that was a reliable location for a very special bird—one that would be a lifer for Julie: The McCown's longspur.

In North Dakota each year we try to get our fill of the stunningly beautiful chestnut-collared longspur, which prefers dense grass—especially native prairie. To see the McCown's you have to go farther west, to the more barren and dry grasslands of the western Great Plains. I'd seen this species once, years before, in the Pawnee Grasslands of Colorado, but never since. So I was eager to go and Julie was eager at the chance for a life bird. So we swallowed our sense of guilt at missing some of the day's speakers, and we loaded up the truck and headed north. Liz and another Montana birder came along voluntarily as our guides. Phoebe and Liam came along less willingly, but got more into it as the snow-capped mountains hove into view.

After passing through a small town, we turned off the main road onto a gravel road that pointed us west. The mountains, perhaps 20 or more miles away, seemed close enough to reach in an hour's walk or so, the clear, thin air and sunlight reducing the distance in what was literally a trick of the light. Less than a mile along the road we saw chestnut-collared longspurs doing their song flights above the grass. Vesper sparrows and horned larks eyeballed our vehicle from the barbed wire fence.

Then we was a paler gray bird hovering in the sky, singing. It swooped to the ground and was lost, but not before we knew what it was. We'd found a small set of McCown's longspurs—probably pairs with adjoining territories. So we got out and waited for the song flight to begin again.


Here is what we saw.


The male McCown's flew to perch on a fencepost along the road and sang several times. Then he took to the air once more. Of the 200+ images I took of him in flight, only a couple are worth saving and here is perhaps the best of those:

Each time he finished his display flights he flew to a different spot in the grass, and then walked to what we imagine was the nest site, near this large rock (below). Once or twice he flew directly to the rock, sang, preened, and then disappeared into the grass.

The meadow where he was nesting was loosely covered in dry grass. There we cattle grazing in part of it, near to some ranch buildings. The setting was not remote but it did feel a bit lonely.

We moved farther down the road to be in a better position to take pictures when the longspur returned to his favorite fencepost. He obliged us just twice.
He gave us a striking side view, then turned to show us his chest and his cap.




The female McCown's was less striking, but still showed the species' obvious chestnut shoulder patches and obvious white outer tail feathers. If you get a good look at the tail on a flying McCown's longspur, you can see the tail is bisected by a dark line and tipped in black, forming a T.




We spent about 45 minutes with the longspurs, drinking in the sights, listening to their thin, tinkling songs, and marveling at how alive with birdsong this place was so late in the morning. Then we hot-footed it back to Great Falls in time to catch some lunch and to reconnect with the event.

Tomorrow I'll share a video clip of the longspurs.

http://billofthebirds.blogspot.com/2009/07/mystery-bird.html

OK Bird IDheads, here's another mystery bird for you. This photo was taken in early June in Great Falls, Montana. Not that there's anything wrong with that....

Some help: No the bird is not eyeless and headless. It's preening.

Sorry no prize this time (it's an easy one after all). Just the glory of knowing that you know what this mystery bird is and that we know that you know. You know?

Party on. More meat on the sandwich tomorrow, I promise.

http://billofthebirds.blogspot.com/2009/06/caspian-tern-good-omen.html

Yesterday about 15 of us were sitting around a set of tables in the Hotel Lakeside, discussing details for the upcoming Midwest Birding Symposium, when a Caspian tern flew past the windows along the Lake Eire shore. Of course I couldn't help myself. I grabbed my friend Judy's binoculars and checked out this big, beautiful tern. And I shouted out the ID of the bird, completely stopping the meeting in its tracks.

The bird watchers in the meeting with me swiveled in their chairs for a look. The non-birders sort of sat there smiling in a mixture of amazement and amusement.

No matter, I took this sighting as a good omen. The Caspian tern is the bird we chose for the event's logo, designed by Claire Mullen, production director at Bird Watcher's Digest. The fact that this "awesome beast" (if I may quote Jim McCormac) chose to fly past to say hello bodes well for this birding event, which will be held at Lakeside, Ohio from September 17 to 20, 2009.

I hope you'll consider joining us at the MBS. We've got fabulous speakers, awesome birds, a sold-out Birder's Marketplace full of everything for birders, and a weekend full of mucho, mucho fun. Details are available here.

Among our speakers is the man who took the Caspian tern photo above, Arthur Morris. Artie will be speaking and leading a workshop on digital bird photography.

http://billofthebirds.blogspot.com/2009/06/giant-things-of-north-dakota.html

She's called Salem Sue and she lives in—towers over, really—the town of New Salem, North Dakota on the south side of I-94, west of Bismarck. We saw a sign for her shortly before we saw her looming presence, standing tall on top of a hill. She is the world's largest Holstein cow statue. There was no way we were simply going to drive past her without stopping for a hi-dee-ho and a closer gander.


She did not disappoint. We stopped at the small entrance kiosk and happily donated our $3 per car full. Then we fish-tailed our way up the muddy road to Sue.



Three things struck us as we stepped out of our vehicle.

One, it was cold—probably about 45 degrees, not bad for a June afternoon.

Two, the wind hit us like a freight train. We needed to hold onto each other to keep from being blown off Sue's hill. Wind chill estimate: -73 degrees F. I could feel my skin turning blue, under my three coats. My exposed skin had lost all sensation.



Three: Sue was not only huge, she was anatomically correct. And she was in desperate need of a robust milking. It occurred to me that, had Sue's udders been leaking milk, the entire southeastern quarter of Morton County would have been covered in frothy dairy goodness.



We stood there, shivering in our amazement. Took some photos. Then each of us tracked a pound of mud into our Toyota Sasquatch (or whatever it was we were driving) and we headed west, toward the Montana border, our giant holstein jones having been satisfied.

http://billofthebirds.blogspot.com/2009/06/mystery-duck-in-nd-final-chapter.html

We finally re-found the weird-looking scaup on an adjoining part of the lake where we'd originally spotted it. And this time the light was a bit better, so we took good long looks in between getting more still and video images. Blowing up one of the digiscoped stills on my camera screen, I noticed something odd. The scaup was preening and this gave me a unique angle on the bill and the bight orange-red color patch.

So I blew it up more...


and more still.


From a normal angle, with the scaup swimming in profile, the colored patch looked more like a part of the bill.
But there were still things that bothered us about this bird. It looked and acted differently than its fellow male lesser scaup nearby. This made us wonder if the bill marker/tag was affecting the bird in some way. Was it affecting his social status among the other scaup? I've seen albino birds attacked and driven off by members of their own species. Was it physically painful or did it affect the bird in some physical way? He certainly looked duller and less round-headed and acted shyer than his peers most of the time we watched him.

Here's a video I shot through my scope that shows the marked scaup's behavior while apparently trying to defend a female (his mate?) from other potential suitors. NOTE: You might want to turn down your speaker volume: the wind noise on this video is loud.




That evening at the social hour, I cornered Ron Martin, one of North Dakota's top birders, to ask about the bird.

"Oh yeah, we've seen a few scaup like that over the years. There's some guy doing research on them. You can probably find him on the Internet."

Well, Ron was right. Searching "ducks with bill tags" I got a posting from MOU-net. It gave a number for the Minnesota DNR where, back in 2005, birders and hunters were encouraged to report sightings of tagged birds. The kind souls at MN DNR were no longer collecting the sightings, but they pointed me to a professor at Louisiana State University who, apparently, had lead the research projects that were tagging scaup. I sent off an e-mail asking if he wanted my report but have heard nothing yet.

Scaup are experiencing a fairly rapid decline in population and waterfowl researchers are trying to discover why. Lesser scaup migrating up the Mississippi River were being bill tagged back in 2004 and 2005. If I hear anything from the researchers, I'll let you all know.

I was disappointed that this was not some weird vagrant duck, though I knew the chances of that were slimmer than a male pintail's tail. I was, however, glad to have solved the mystery. I feel a bit of pity for the poor duck, which has had to live with that crazy thing attached to its bill. If nothing else, I hope the researchers eventually discover what's behind the scaup population decline.

Thanks for bearing with me as I told this story. It was too much for a single post. Thanks to everyone who commented, especially Paul Roisen from Iowa, who sent me this photograph of a strikingly similar species from South America, the rosy-billed pochard:

http://billofthebirds.blogspot.com/2009/06/mystery-duck-in-nd-part-2.html

And now back to our mystery duck in North Dakota....

We watched the mystery red-billed duck for 20 minutes and during that time it became increasingly wary, it seemed—moving to the far end of the small lake and swimming into the thin vegetation there, as if to hide. We noticed that a female lesser scaup was with this apparently male bird, but we had no explanation for the weird color on his bill.




Through my spotting scope, despite the wind and distance, we could see that the red-orange on the bill did not appear to be blood from an injury. The color was wrong.

When you are in the field (and far from your reference library of field guides) looking at an odd bird, it can be difficult to remain calm and rational. Your heart starts pounding, your eyes get big, and your brain, which has been running on 1/3 power for most of the day, suddenly finds the energy and enough working synapses to leap to some spectacular (and usually wrong) conclusions. Surely this is something fantastic—a first North American record! Or at least a first for the continental U.S. You'd even settle for a first state record for North Dakota...it's GOT to be at least that good.

Soon the bird was too far away for reliable views, so we headed down highway 36, headed west into the coteau. But we kept debating our ideas and impressions about this bird. We felt reasonably sure that this bird was a scaup or a scaup relative. I had a feeling this was a regular lesser scaup with some sort of physical anomaly or, perhaps, some sort of bill marker placed there by a researcher. Julie was not giving up on the fact that this could be either an escaped bird from an exotic waterfowl facility or zoo, or a true vagrant that ended up far from its normal range. Secretly, I wanted her to be right because it would be so much cooler if the bird turned out to be something from far away.

A few things bothered us about my assumption that this was just an odd scaup. First of all the bird looked duller in color than the other male lesser scaup around it. Secondly, its head shape was flatter and less pointed than other males we could see. This made the head/bill shape look more canvasback-like than scaup-like. Thirdly, it behaved weirdly (swimming with its body and head low to the water, as if in a submissive pose) when several other male scaup approached it and what we assumed was its/his mate.


It was all too much to let go unresolved. We made a point to return to the same pond on our way back to Jamestown after our route-scouting trip was done. Five hours later, about 4 pm, we pulled over alongside the road to scan the pond that, earlier in the day, had held the weird duck. There were scaup there, but none with an orange-red bill. Where was it? Had we let the discovery of a lifetime slip away? Had we let a species new to science (Thompson's scaup or maybe Zickefoose's pochard) flap away on the cool prairie wind?

Tune in tomorrow for the rest of the story...

I now have a brand new batch of Texas Triffid Ranch buttons, and I'm not afraid to share them. All comments below are screened and all information received will only be used for mailing buttons, so give me a mailing address and you should have your own button within a week if you live in the US. Yes, I'm also willing to mail outside the US; if you already have one, but you'd like to send one to someone else, the same rules apply. This offer is valid until close of business on July 10, so ask and ye shall receive.

Does any member of this community grow quince fruit trees?
If you do, what kind of soil do you have?
I keep reading that they are one of the few fruits that actually prefer heavy wet soils and I am wondering if this is true?
:)

Video of Moby's "Shot in the Back of the Head", by David Lynch

Oy. The first thing you'll notice is that I'm in a lot of damn anthologies. So I'm in like every group reading in the place. Woo! All this is tremendously fun, and I'll also be at the Goblin Fruit part on Thursday, bringing homemade champagne mango chutney.

Second thing: what would y'all like to talk about or possibly even do at my kaffeeklatsch? We could all bring Art Things to trade around or discuss how The Smiths suck, even though everyone insists on imitating them, and the connection between prog rock and zombies and how if one never heard another word about either of them it would be awesome.

Other suggestions? (And if there is anything specific you want me to address in my How I Wrote The Orphan's Tales talk, let me know)

Anyway, please come to these things what I am doing. I promise fun for all!

Friday 11:00 AM, Salon E: Panel

Egocentrism and Creativity.  Scott Edelman, Eileen Gunn, James Patrick
Kelly (L), John Shirley, Catherynne M. Valente, Gene Wolfe

[Greatest Hit from Readercon 13.]  "I'm Michael Swanwick, and with the
possible exception of Gene Wolfe, I'm the best writer present today." This
introduction at Readercon 1 (at the Wolfe appreciation panel!) drew big
laughs for its nerve (and apparent self-delusion), but in retrospect it
seems to be merely precognitive (Nabokov observes that "there is no more
pure love in the world than the love a young writer has for the old writer
he will someday become"). Swanwick now maintains that "modesty and a
reasonable awareness of [one's] limitations have no place in a writing
career."

Friday 12:00 Noon, Salon E: Panel

The Catharsis of Myth, the Shock of Invention.  Ellen Asher, Theodora Goss
(L), Elaine Isaak, Laura Miller, Catherynne M. Valente

[Greatest Hit from Readercon 8.]  In writing or reading fiction, we place
a high value on the degree to which the plot unfolds in unexpected ways.
But much of the power of myth and fairy tale derives from the way it
fulfills our expectations.  How do the best works of fantasy reconcile
these seeming opposites?

Friday 2:00 PM, VT: Group Reading

_Mythic Delirium / Goblin Fruit_ Group Reading (60 min,.)  Mike Allen,
Amal-El Mohtar, and Jessica Paige Wick (co-hosts) with Leah Bobet, M. M.
Buckner, Greer Gilman, Sonya Taaffe, Catherynne M. Valente, Joselle
Vanderhooft et al

Joint reading from _Mythic Delirium_, the biannual magazine of speculative
poetry edited by Allen (which just published its tenth anniversary issue),
and _Goblin Fruit_, the quarterly online zine of fantastical poetry edited
by El-Mohtar and Wick (whose Summer 2009 issue is due out now).

Friday 3:00 PM, VT: Group Reading

Interfictions 2 Group Reading (60 min.)  Delia Sherman (host) with
Amelia Beamer, K. Tempest Bradford, Matthew Cheney, F. Brett Cox, Michael
DeLuca, Jeffrey Ford, Theodora Goss, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Shira Lipkin,
Rachel Pollack, Catherynne M. Valente, Genevieve Valentine

Readings from Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing_,
edited by host Sherman and Christopher Barzak and forthcoming in the fall
from Small Beer Press under the auspices of the Interstitial Arts
Foundation.

Friday 5:30 PM, RI: Talk (30 min.)

How I Wrote The Orphan's Tales.  Catherynne M. Valente

Friday 8:00 PM, ME/ CT: Talk / Discussion (60 min.)

Annual Interstitial Arts (IAF) Town Meeting.  Ellen Kushner with
discussion by Liz Gorinsky, Theodora Goss, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Shira
Lipkin, Delia Sherman, John Shirley, Sarah Smith, Catherynne M. Valente
 

Interstitial Art falls in the interstices of recognized genres.  The
Interstitial Arts Foundation is a group of "Artists Without Borders"
fighting the Balkanization of art. They celebrate work that crosses or
straddles the borders between media, the borders between genres, the
borders between "high art" and popular culture. They are not opposed to
mainstream fiction or genre fiction, nor are they seeking to create a new
category. They are just particularly excited by border-crossing fiction
(and music and art), and want to support the creation of such works and to
establish better ways of engaging with them. The IAF has had a presence at
Readercon from its beginning. In 2007, in cooperation with Small Beer
Press, the IAF published Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial
Writing edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss, and in fall 2009 they
will present Interfictions 2, edited by Delia Sherman and Christopher
Barzak. They are also doing a lot with visual arts.  Interstitial Arts is
an idea, a conversation, not a hard-and-fast definition-and it's a
conversation you are invited to join.

Saturday 12:00 Noon, VT: Group Reading

Federations Group Reading (60 min.)  John Joseph Adams (host) with K.
Tempest Bradford, Robert J. Sawyer, Allen Steele, Catherynne M. Valente,
Genevieve Valentine

Readings from the original and reprint anthology (cover blurb: "Vast.
Epic.  Interstellar.") edited by Adams and published by Prime Books in
January.

Saturday 2:00 PM, VT: Group Reading

Clockwork Phoenix 2 Group Reading (60 min.)  Mike Allen (host) with
Saladin Ahmed, Leah Bobet, Mary Robinette Kowal, Barbara Krasnoff,
Catherynne M. Valente.

Readings from the second volume of the annual non-theme anthology
(subtitled _More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness_) edited by Allen and
just published by Norilana Books.

Saturday 3:00 PM, Salon A: Event

The Rhysling Award Poetry Slan.  Mike Allen (MC) with Michael Bishop, Leah
Bobet, Lila Garrott, Greer Gilman, Ernest Lilley, Darrell Schweitzer,
Sonya Taaffe, Catherynne M. Valente

(A "poetry slan," to be confused with "poetry slam," is a poetry reading
by sf folks, of course.)  Climaxed by the presentation of this year's
Rhysling Awards.

Sunday 11:30 AM, NH / MA: Reading (30 min.)

Catherynne reads from her novel forthcoming in 2011 (not yet titled--much to my chagrin. But I promise Communist goblins!), based on Russian
folk tales and Stalinist history.

Sunday 1:00 PM, Salon F: Autographing

Sunday 2:00 PM, Vineyard: Kaffeeklatsch

I'm slipping. I've known for years that both Sarracenia and Heliamphora pitcher plants worked as impromptu toilets for various species of frogs, but that was because the frogs were feeding upon prey attracted to the pitcher. However, I completely missed the story of Nepenthes lowii, which is regularly described as having upper pitchers that resemble a commode. As far as Borneo tree shrews are concerned, the resemblance doesn't stop there. And yes, the article includes both photos and video, you pervs.

So I'mgoing to begin lifegaurd training and had a quick question....
I'm I better off wearing a swim cap than dealing with the overall pool water?
Which one in the end will cause most damage? And any advice for being around pools as far as protecting hair goes?
I just don't want this to ruin my beautiful hair !

My newest pet peeve: people who see an entry referencing some ongoing crisis and are too damned lazy to take a moment to check if it's been referenced in previous entries. "OMG, what's going on?!" = "I am not actually interested enough to expend two mouse clicks on you."

Is there a word that is the opposite of schadenfreude? Something that means "irritation at the discomfort inflicted on others by thoughtless oafs"? I need that word.