Been a hoot-owl howling outside my window now
‘Bout six nights in a row
We have one nesting in a tree about 30 yards from our backdoor.
Love it!
Snow, again. Looks like several inches but a lot melted as it hit the ground. Going to snow for a few more hours it seems. Good for ground water, and the trees and shrubs getting a good deep root watering that will last awhile. Plenty of water in the mountain snows.
SHIREHOME, I’m wondering what this extensive snowpack will do for the Colorado River reservoirs.
Kate, good projections and runoff hasn’t even started.
SH– We got some over here in St George, too. It did not survive contact with the ground, however. Up north– Cedar City and on up — it is snowing pretty good. The SLC news feeds are all about the roads and the commute… all good news on the water supply projections.
Melting snow pack? Reminds of when the lefties caused the massive flooding of the Missouri River by refusing to lower the water levels in early spring. How many states got flooded? How many businesses and homes wrecked? And how did the news media stonewall the story?
Cheesy and scripted as it is, with lots of drama—and keeping this in mind–we still somehow enjoy watching American Idol, even though it seems that –more and more of the emphasis is on the “backstory” of each contestant—dead end job, no future in a small town, homelessness, broken family, suicides, alcohol, drugs, illness, parent, close friend, bother or sister died, or was addicted, major accidents, etc., etc.–rather than strictly on their singing ability, even though every once in a while one of the judges will solemnly intone that “this is a singing contest.”
Moreover, while each year the judges declaim about how good this year’s group of contestants is, this year it does seem like that they actually do have a particularly good crop of contestants.
However, last night judge Katy Perry said something that bothered me.
A young contestant, Sarah Beth Liebe, who we were told has three young children at home, sang and, then, announced that–apparently after looking over what it would be like to be an “entertainer,” a star–decided it wasn’t for her, and she was leaving the contest to go back to her children (“my heart’s at home”), to which there was much head shaking by the judges.
Well, here was an opportunity for more drama, so they passed her on to the next round and, then, had her come back on stage, where they tried to persuade her to continue on in the contest.
The tack that resident philosopher Katy Perry took was to tell Liebe that “self-love is just as big as motherly love.”
Nonetheless, Liebe withdrew and went home.
But just to make sure we knew that Perry also cared about her child, they inserted a little vignette where Perry called her small child on the phone and told her that she loved her.
This emphasis on “me, me, me” is one of the major things that is wrong with our culture today.
Subsequently, it was reported that Perry had also made some disparaging/mocking remarks about how Liebe “had spent too much time on the table” i.e. had too many kids.
Gee, I wonder if Perry made the same type of disparaging remarks about other contestants who had more than one kid? *
Wife’s ex has a farm about 5 miles west of us in NW MT. They had it partially to get their 4 kids out of PHX in the summers. Most of the time, they also had a dog (invariably a German Shepherd) and a cat (Siamese). One pair grew up together from. Kittenhood/puppyhood onward. Cat would sleep on the dog, and in MT, often on the front porch. Until one fated night, when an owl attempted to poach the cat. He didn’t succeed, but instead left the cat shredded. The dog made a ruckus, but that wasn’t that novel, since, at a minimum, they had coyotes, black bear, and fox on the property, so they didn’t check it out until the next morning. The dog was found wrapped around the cat to keep it warm. Her ex wrapped the cat tightly in a towel, and raced to the vet 20 miles away (our vet is now across the road from him), where that vet sewed the cat back together. It was a major vet bill (maybe $2k), but with two young daughters, it was necessary. The cat survived, well traumatized. So traumatized that when they got back to PHX, and it got out, it promptly ran off, never to be seen again, except a couple years later in a neighbor’s window. I call what happened to the poor cat getting “owled”.
We don’t seem to have many owls where we live 5 miles east of there, but we don’t have the rodents that a farm has, and we have an eagle’s nest close by. Hawks too. We have a hydro dam instead, and they must find good fishing there. And according to the video, both prey on owls. We had a pair of outdoor cats from a couple houses down who kept the rodents down, without any apparent owl problems, but they moved to N Carolina last summer.
Yep, and Fox reporting physical confrontations occurring in NYC. Add in what happened last night in the Tennessee legislature, and I think we’re seeing the fuse lite and heading towards the powder keg. I still think “biden” et al are salivating over the prospect of political violence so they can have their marital law crackdown.
Bruce Hayden’s comment reminded me of the time our golden retriever had had a litter of pups, which we would put in a large pen in the backyard during the day.
My wife noticed a large owl on a power pole just outside the fence. Needless to say, I put a screen over the pen, just in case it wasn’t a coincidence the owl had decided to perch on that particular pole.
Happy ending. All the puppies went to good homes.
I saw on a nature documentary that there are eagles in Israel that will kill cows. Obviously the eagle cannot carry them off, but they can kill them with their talons and then eat on them.
I live in a rural area of central KY. At night during the warm weather months, it’s common to see mice, voles, chipmunks etc. run across the road in front of you. (I think it’s hilarious to see those tiny little legs going as fast as they do.) Anyway, I was coming home from work late one night, when a mouse took off across the road directly in front of me. About halfway across, the biggest owl I had ever seen swooped out of the darkness and snatched up that mouse right there in front of my headlights. It startled me because I had never seen anything like it while driving. I sure wish I had had a dash cam then.
Another time, I was standing on my back porch right at dusk. (The sun had gone down but it wasn’t full dark yet.) Suddenly, a shadow in my peripheral vision caught my attention. It was a barn owl gliding in to land in one of my trees. His flight was totally silent.
I thought that it might be fun to have a pet owl (Harry Potter has a lot to answer for), but then I happened to see a picture–I believe it was of a barn owl–roosting inside someone’s barn with a long trial of white owl shit trailing down a supporting post, and reality intruded.
I was returning from kayaking. It was a long drive back and had gotten dark. I saw something in my headlights fly up towards my windshield then swerve further upwards. And I heard a thud in the plastic of the kayak strapped to the roof of my car.
I stopped and almost immediately a large thing fell from the cockpit of the kayak to the road. I got out of the car and saw an immense owl standing in my headlight beam. It was upright but looking off to the side with a “what the heck just happened” expression. After what seemed like a few minutes of motionlessness it shook its head back and forth several times and then took off into the night.
This video says the biggest owls are 2′ tall. This owl was every bit of two 2′. When I got home I discovered quite a few feathers inside my kayak.
Athena’s bird, the Owl, has figured in all sorts of mythological contexts, and the images of these mysterious, fascinating birds are encountered fairly often.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that some researchers in the UFO field believe that there is some kind of connection between the appearance of owls and UFOs.*
The British (judging from the narrator’s accent) video left out burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia), who live in prairie dog and other animal burrows repurposed by the owls in the desert Southwest, Florida, and parts of South America. Burrowing owls have been described as looking like beer cans on stilts when they run along the ground. Here is a video of these owls from the Cornell Ornithology Lab:
Owl mascots evidently do battle with one another: here is Owlsley of Florida Atlantic University getting ready to take on Sammy when Rice comes to play:
College mascots, owls or otherwise, may seem silly, but we do need a little bit of humor these days.
I highly recommend the book “Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl”, by biologist Stacey O’Brien, about the 19-year relationship between a scientist and a rescued owl.
At bit of good political news on this terrible day: A Democrat in the North Carolina General Assembly [House] is switching to the GOP tomorrow. This gives us a veto-proof majority in both houses, so we can ignore our governor Roy Cooper. This Democrat ran in Charlotte on abortion rights, so while the legislature has not said what it intends to do about our current legacy twenty-week limit, I doubt that she will vote for a ban or a heartbeat bill, and perhaps we’ll end up with a European first-trimester limit, much easier to defend next year. But on a host of other issues, she’s been voting with the GOP already.
Back in the day, when my vision was very good, I said I had eyes like a Howlk. (A hawk and an owl.) How I miss that vision today.
But on to my owl story. When I was flying out of Denver many years ago, we lived in the foothills west of Denver. Our house was surrounded by ponderosa pines, and we had a small lake downhill from the house. One evening I was sitting out on the deck and was surprised to see a big grey owl suddenly swoop out of a pine tree and snitch up a rabbit that was nibbling grass near the lake. Wow! No sound at all. Just a mass of feathers suddenly appearing out of the tree and flapping silently away with its meal. I never saw the owl again, though we often heard it or others hooting at night. I suppose it just happened to be hungry early and did a bit of daytime hunting.
That was an impressive sight. A few years before I had been to the Wild Willow Farm & Education Center near San Diego where I attended their “Raptor Show.” There I saw a much smaller owl fly over our heads without making a sound. So, I knew how quiet they could be, but that big grey owl was something to see.
I thought that it might be fun to have a pet owl (Harry Potter has a lot to answer for).
–Snow on Pine
I’m reading the first book of Harry Potter in French. I’m particularly charmed by the messenger owls. What a great invention. I wouldn’t say J.K. Rowling is a great writer but she is a master storyteller.
You will be excited to know that “hibou” is French for “owl” and it is one of only seven French nouns ending in “-ou” which form their plurals with “-oux” instead of “-ous”:
Though not in spoken French where nouns ending in “-ou”, “-ous” and “-oux” are all pronounced the same. One can only tell from the preceding article.
An odd thing I’ve never seen written about before…
I now notice when I’m in public and overhear people speak, but not clearly enough I can understand what they say, it sounds to me like they are speaking in French.
Sometimes I could swear they are! (One time they actually were.)
I take it as a good sign that my brain is on the case, that the subconscious process of acquiring French is happening.
Snow on Pine: Wife and I know Mike from his ‘Unseen’ on Whitley’s site. A
‘woke’ soul — in the good sense!
Snow on Pine: Jennifer Stein runs our local Mufon, where we’ve heard many well-known presenters in person. Here she is with Clelland. Her interest was spawned by a vivid, up-close daytime encounter on the farm where she grew up. (Her daughter and ours were classmates.)
Interesting. They missed mentioning the fact that the Owl is the only one of the raptors (Hawks, Eagles, Falcons, and Owls) that has opposable digits/claws. Hence they are the only raptor that can actually pick up their prey. The others “hook” their prey, but Owls can actually grab it.
Then, of course, owls have their pace in native American mythology and creation stories.*
Been a hoot-owl howling outside my window now
‘Bout six nights in a row
We have one nesting in a tree about 30 yards from our backdoor.
Love it!
Snow, again. Looks like several inches but a lot melted as it hit the ground. Going to snow for a few more hours it seems. Good for ground water, and the trees and shrubs getting a good deep root watering that will last awhile. Plenty of water in the mountain snows.
SHIREHOME, I’m wondering what this extensive snowpack will do for the Colorado River reservoirs.
Kate, good projections and runoff hasn’t even started.
SH– We got some over here in St George, too. It did not survive contact with the ground, however. Up north– Cedar City and on up — it is snowing pretty good. The SLC news feeds are all about the roads and the commute… all good news on the water supply projections.
Nice song reference, Cornhead. Always loved Michael Murphy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU-qoSAATfA
Melting snow pack? Reminds of when the lefties caused the massive flooding of the Missouri River by refusing to lower the water levels in early spring. How many states got flooded? How many businesses and homes wrecked? And how did the news media stonewall the story?
Cheesy and scripted as it is, with lots of drama—and keeping this in mind–we still somehow enjoy watching American Idol, even though it seems that –more and more of the emphasis is on the “backstory” of each contestant—dead end job, no future in a small town, homelessness, broken family, suicides, alcohol, drugs, illness, parent, close friend, bother or sister died, or was addicted, major accidents, etc., etc.–rather than strictly on their singing ability, even though every once in a while one of the judges will solemnly intone that “this is a singing contest.”
Moreover, while each year the judges declaim about how good this year’s group of contestants is, this year it does seem like that they actually do have a particularly good crop of contestants.
However, last night judge Katy Perry said something that bothered me.
A young contestant, Sarah Beth Liebe, who we were told has three young children at home, sang and, then, announced that–apparently after looking over what it would be like to be an “entertainer,” a star–decided it wasn’t for her, and she was leaving the contest to go back to her children (“my heart’s at home”), to which there was much head shaking by the judges.
Well, here was an opportunity for more drama, so they passed her on to the next round and, then, had her come back on stage, where they tried to persuade her to continue on in the contest.
The tack that resident philosopher Katy Perry took was to tell Liebe that “self-love is just as big as motherly love.”
Nonetheless, Liebe withdrew and went home.
But just to make sure we knew that Perry also cared about her child, they inserted a little vignette where Perry called her small child on the phone and told her that she loved her.
This emphasis on “me, me, me” is one of the major things that is wrong with our culture today.
Subsequently, it was reported that Perry had also made some disparaging/mocking remarks about how Liebe “had spent too much time on the table” i.e. had too many kids.
Gee, I wonder if Perry made the same type of disparaging remarks about other contestants who had more than one kid? *
* See https://www.dailywire.com/news/american-idol-contestant-mocked-by-katy-perry-quits-mid-competition-my-hearts-at-home
A crowd has gathered outside the Manhatten Criminal Court in anticipation of todays big sideshow. It makes you wonder what percentage of the crowd are FBI agent provocateurs.
P.S. Re Liebe, Perry and “mom shaming” See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11934333/Sara-Beth-Liebe-QUITS-American-Idol-Katy-Perry-mom-shamed-contestant.html
Wife’s ex has a farm about 5 miles west of us in NW MT. They had it partially to get their 4 kids out of PHX in the summers. Most of the time, they also had a dog (invariably a German Shepherd) and a cat (Siamese). One pair grew up together from. Kittenhood/puppyhood onward. Cat would sleep on the dog, and in MT, often on the front porch. Until one fated night, when an owl attempted to poach the cat. He didn’t succeed, but instead left the cat shredded. The dog made a ruckus, but that wasn’t that novel, since, at a minimum, they had coyotes, black bear, and fox on the property, so they didn’t check it out until the next morning. The dog was found wrapped around the cat to keep it warm. Her ex wrapped the cat tightly in a towel, and raced to the vet 20 miles away (our vet is now across the road from him), where that vet sewed the cat back together. It was a major vet bill (maybe $2k), but with two young daughters, it was necessary. The cat survived, well traumatized. So traumatized that when they got back to PHX, and it got out, it promptly ran off, never to be seen again, except a couple years later in a neighbor’s window. I call what happened to the poor cat getting “owled”.
We don’t seem to have many owls where we live 5 miles east of there, but we don’t have the rodents that a farm has, and we have an eagle’s nest close by. Hawks too. We have a hydro dam instead, and they must find good fishing there. And according to the video, both prey on owls. We had a pair of outdoor cats from a couple houses down who kept the rodents down, without any apparent owl problems, but they moved to N Carolina last summer.
Another horror:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/university-at-buffalo-medical-school-puts-antiracism-at-center-of-curriculum
==
The criminal most responsible:
https://medicine.buffalo.edu/about/leadership_and_administration/dean.html
Nonapod,
Yep, and Fox reporting physical confrontations occurring in NYC. Add in what happened last night in the Tennessee legislature, and I think we’re seeing the fuse lite and heading towards the powder keg. I still think “biden” et al are salivating over the prospect of political violence so they can have their marital law crackdown.
Ok, who lost an owl?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOo2rmpfMq8
Bruce Hayden’s comment reminded me of the time our golden retriever had had a litter of pups, which we would put in a large pen in the backyard during the day.
My wife noticed a large owl on a power pole just outside the fence. Needless to say, I put a screen over the pen, just in case it wasn’t a coincidence the owl had decided to perch on that particular pole.
Happy ending. All the puppies went to good homes.
I saw on a nature documentary that there are eagles in Israel that will kill cows. Obviously the eagle cannot carry them off, but they can kill them with their talons and then eat on them.
Supposedly the extinct Haast’s eagle of New Zealand would prey on humans, if Maori legends are to be believed anyway.
Not an owl but a Northern Harrier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKPdaApxa9Y
Nonapod,
The Maori certainly preyed on the Moa.
I live in a rural area of central KY. At night during the warm weather months, it’s common to see mice, voles, chipmunks etc. run across the road in front of you. (I think it’s hilarious to see those tiny little legs going as fast as they do.) Anyway, I was coming home from work late one night, when a mouse took off across the road directly in front of me. About halfway across, the biggest owl I had ever seen swooped out of the darkness and snatched up that mouse right there in front of my headlights. It startled me because I had never seen anything like it while driving. I sure wish I had had a dash cam then.
Another time, I was standing on my back porch right at dusk. (The sun had gone down but it wasn’t full dark yet.) Suddenly, a shadow in my peripheral vision caught my attention. It was a barn owl gliding in to land in one of my trees. His flight was totally silent.
I thought that it might be fun to have a pet owl (Harry Potter has a lot to answer for), but then I happened to see a picture–I believe it was of a barn owl–roosting inside someone’s barn with a long trial of white owl shit trailing down a supporting post, and reality intruded.
I was returning from kayaking. It was a long drive back and had gotten dark. I saw something in my headlights fly up towards my windshield then swerve further upwards. And I heard a thud in the plastic of the kayak strapped to the roof of my car.
I stopped and almost immediately a large thing fell from the cockpit of the kayak to the road. I got out of the car and saw an immense owl standing in my headlight beam. It was upright but looking off to the side with a “what the heck just happened” expression. After what seemed like a few minutes of motionlessness it shook its head back and forth several times and then took off into the night.
This video says the biggest owls are 2′ tall. This owl was every bit of two 2′. When I got home I discovered quite a few feathers inside my kayak.
Stretching is therapeutic, especially stretching a lead in the polls.
RE: Owls and UFOs–
Athena’s bird, the Owl, has figured in all sorts of mythological contexts, and the images of these mysterious, fascinating birds are encountered fairly often.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that some researchers in the UFO field believe that there is some kind of connection between the appearance of owls and UFOs.*
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gbu9STsBc0
See also https://www.amazon.com/Messengers-Owls-Synchronicity-UFO-Abductee/dp/1733980814
and finally, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbwTdyCgIkM&t=40s
The British (judging from the narrator’s accent) video left out burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia), who live in prairie dog and other animal burrows repurposed by the owls in the desert Southwest, Florida, and parts of South America. Burrowing owls have been described as looking like beer cans on stilts when they run along the ground. Here is a video of these owls from the Cornell Ornithology Lab:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzcir4qhilg&ab_channel=CornellLabofOrnithology
Rice University is one of several schools with an owl mascot– Sammy in Rice’s case. Here is a short video of the several species of live owls that roost on the Rice campus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYl184VBTDk&ab_channel=RiceUniversity
Owl mascots evidently do battle with one another: here is Owlsley of Florida Atlantic University getting ready to take on Sammy when Rice comes to play:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmMtweztExo&ab_channel=FAUAthletics
College mascots, owls or otherwise, may seem silly, but we do need a little bit of humor these days.
I highly recommend the book “Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl”, by biologist Stacey O’Brien, about the 19-year relationship between a scientist and a rescued owl.
At bit of good political news on this terrible day: A Democrat in the North Carolina General Assembly [House] is switching to the GOP tomorrow. This gives us a veto-proof majority in both houses, so we can ignore our governor Roy Cooper. This Democrat ran in Charlotte on abortion rights, so while the legislature has not said what it intends to do about our current legacy twenty-week limit, I doubt that she will vote for a ban or a heartbeat bill, and perhaps we’ll end up with a European first-trimester limit, much easier to defend next year. But on a host of other issues, she’s been voting with the GOP already.
Back in the day, when my vision was very good, I said I had eyes like a Howlk. (A hawk and an owl.) How I miss that vision today.
But on to my owl story. When I was flying out of Denver many years ago, we lived in the foothills west of Denver. Our house was surrounded by ponderosa pines, and we had a small lake downhill from the house. One evening I was sitting out on the deck and was surprised to see a big grey owl suddenly swoop out of a pine tree and snitch up a rabbit that was nibbling grass near the lake. Wow! No sound at all. Just a mass of feathers suddenly appearing out of the tree and flapping silently away with its meal. I never saw the owl again, though we often heard it or others hooting at night. I suppose it just happened to be hungry early and did a bit of daytime hunting.
That was an impressive sight. A few years before I had been to the Wild Willow Farm & Education Center near San Diego where I attended their “Raptor Show.” There I saw a much smaller owl fly over our heads without making a sound. So, I knew how quiet they could be, but that big grey owl was something to see.
I thought that it might be fun to have a pet owl (Harry Potter has a lot to answer for).
–Snow on Pine
I’m reading the first book of Harry Potter in French. I’m particularly charmed by the messenger owls. What a great invention. I wouldn’t say J.K. Rowling is a great writer but she is a master storyteller.
You will be excited to know that “hibou” is French for “owl” and it is one of only seven French nouns ending in “-ou” which form their plurals with “-oux” instead of “-ous”:
bijoux, cailloux, choux, genoux, hiboux, joujoux, poux
As Jack Reacher says, “Details matter.”
Though not in spoken French where nouns ending in “-ou”, “-ous” and “-oux” are all pronounced the same. One can only tell from the preceding article.
An odd thing I’ve never seen written about before…
I now notice when I’m in public and overhear people speak, but not clearly enough I can understand what they say, it sounds to me like they are speaking in French.
Sometimes I could swear they are! (One time they actually were.)
I take it as a good sign that my brain is on the case, that the subconscious process of acquiring French is happening.
Snow on Pine: Wife and I know Mike from his ‘Unseen’ on Whitley’s site. A
‘woke’ soul — in the good sense!
Snow on Pine: Jennifer Stein runs our local Mufon, where we’ve heard many well-known presenters in person. Here she is with Clelland. Her interest was spawned by a vivid, up-close daytime encounter on the farm where she grew up. (Her daughter and ours were classmates.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJLVkrkweCM
Ze Frank (“Sad Dog Diary”/”Sad Cat Diary”) also made an interesting one about Owl Facts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeFxdkaFzRA
Interesting. They missed mentioning the fact that the Owl is the only one of the raptors (Hawks, Eagles, Falcons, and Owls) that has opposable digits/claws. Hence they are the only raptor that can actually pick up their prey. The others “hook” their prey, but Owls can actually grab it.
Then, of course, owls have their pace in native American mythology and creation stories.*
* See https://centerofthewest.org/2018/08/06/owls-native-american-culture/
Make that “place.”