Another bird, another dollar

We just adopted a lost cockatiel that was found along the American River; and I thought I was done with that stage of my life. Like getting rid of baby cribs, toys, etc., I had given away my cockatiel cage and other bird paraphernalia years ago. (We still have one foster budgerigar, but he is not going to share his cage with a noisy cockatiel).

So I found a decent cage at the Bird Shop and rather than pay to get a perch, we were going to find some manzanita to make a good perch. Well, manzanita doesn't grow in the Sacramento area, so fortunately I looked online before I cut off a branch of one of my fruit trees for a perch and killed the poor orphan bird. According to the Cockatiel Cottage, there are trees that can poison a cockatiel, many of them belonging to the prunus species, including apricot, peach and plum. Back to the Bird Shop for perches, food, etc. At least this time I didn't fall into the trap of buying bird toys. Cockatiels would rather play with humans and things than toys. Our long deceased cockatiel would always chew on the most expensive Magik trading card and the oak antique furniture. Birds have an uncanny sense of knowing how to get your attention when they want it (maybe birds were children in a former life).

It didn't take long for Louie, to adapt to(I should really say train) us. The first night in our home, he really started to talk and whistle and sing and peck on his cage when I put him into the cage for bed time. He still tries it every night at bedtime, but I am being firm and the talking ceases after 15 minutes (didn't we go through this with the kids, too?). Ah well, it's a new adventure, and at least it got me to post something for the birds instead of Facebook.

Mockingbirds can identify specific people and react to those they don't trust

Talk about bird intelligence: the mockingbird has come in to the limelight recently as a result of a study of how this species adapts to urbanization.
The focus of the study was 24 mockingbird nests in an urban area. Ten people with varying dress, hair, etc. would approach the nests and touch them; by the third such attempt, the birds would attack the researchers (one of the students had to park their car around the block because the bird even recognized the car and would sound the alarm). The birds could identify specific people and would ignore others. The conclusion of the study: mockingbirds are "naturally perceptive about their environment, especially threats to their nests." My conclusion: don't mess with a mother bird.

There have been many studies linking bird intelligence with ability of birds to mimic human speech. Mockingbirds mimic other birds, not humans, to attract females; that seems pretty intelligent to me. The big mystery is why mockingbirds imitate other birds rather than create their own songs.

More on bird intelligence: they will even use the crosswalk

Followers or not, here I come

The comic strip below shows a new problem I've had to deal with: finding followers (or not). I signed up for Facebook and lo and behold, I discovered there is a NatureNetwork of blogs which is part of Networked blogs which are all linked to Facebook. I signed up for it and passed the test of putting the NetworkedBlogs gadget on my blog. The problem is that was just the beginning...

To have RSS feeds of my blog pulled into their network, I have to have at least four followers also on Facebook! Here is this big NetworkedBlogs gadget on the right side of my blog that showed only one follower---me. Enough already!!! I deleted that gadget and concluded I can always post my blog to my Facebook wall manually.

I refuse to feel pressured into some popularity contest: how many people are following you? I don't need to add anything else to my insecurities! Oh well, it was worth a try; and it's amazing how much easier it was to post the comic below this time around!

What, I need followers?

Creating a Healthy Yard for Birds and You

The Sacramento Audubon Society has a wonderful and very detailed website about making your yard and garden more bird and human friendly based on excerpts from Bringing Nature Home by Tallamy. The premise is that you should introduce more native plants. The challenge has been issued: Take action! Minimize lawn.

The pictures show part of my flower/vegetable garden. But what about the rest of the yard? (Twenty square feet down and 200 to go). We have lived in our home for 25 years, and believe me, I have tried many things to make my yard bird and human friendly (some things have succeeded, some have failed):
1. remove grass: easier said than done when you're dealing with Bermuda grass. Even in my flower beds and garden, I have to continuously go back and dig out more of the pernicious roots. In the book Epitaph for a Peach, the author describes how his farming family for generations has been struggling with Bermuda grass.
2. less invasive plants: we moved in to a well-established suburb and got our quarter acre. The problem is that quarter acre was filled with very invasive plants: ivy (chop and hack, but make sure you dig out the roots) and bamboo (you would be amazed what the roots of bamboo can do to plumbing 15 feet away!).
3. replace with native plants appropriate to the site: this is where it gets tricky. The problem with an old suburban plot is that you don't know where the soil has been! These old suburbs had soil brought in originally from elsewhere. I swear there are parts of my front yard that are toxic to anything, even weeds. My daughter convinced me to do a soil test. In one spot, the alkalinity tested so high that it was off the chart! (No wonder my peppers never grew there).
I think I'm going to have to replace soil before I can replace any more plants.
I like the next suggestion that was made:
4. take it easy. "The transformation from lawn to wildlife habitat takes time. Tackle only as much as you can, remembering that removal must be paired with replacement."
To be continued...

You are what you Tweet (or blog, post, etc.)

American Goldfinches Feeding
Originally uploaded by mightyquinninwky©™

Having finished 27Things, I was investigating Facebook to decide whether or not to join, and my first thought was: "Does anyone want to know what I'm eating for dinner?" This was the initial question I had about Twitter. I am now an avid user of Twitter and have come to realize that blogs, Twitter, Facebook etc. are tools to use as you will. I am trying to use these tools to find connections and links to things I enjoy and for self-education.

There was a thought-provoking article posted by arstechnica (a tweeter) that concluded from a HubSpot study that the majority of Web users like to sit on the sideline, especially when it comes to user generated content . To be more specific: only 0.2% of Flickr users uploaded pictures; only 0.16% of YouTube traffic uploaded video. Of Twitter's 4.5 million accounts, 54.9% have never tweeted and 52.7% have no followers.
In a survey of Facebook users done by frogloop, the conclusion was that Facebook users don't pay much attention to most of their online friends. Only a small fraction of the 179,000 nonprofits that use Facebook Causes have brought in $1,000; and less than1% of Facebook members who have joined a Cause actually have donated money.
I don't know what statistics are out there for blogs, but I can't imagine that all 56 million of them are active and exciting.

The conclusion I have reached is that we are humans, and not all humans have the same interests or abilities or levels of involvement. These web tools enable us to find to find other humans with similar interests to form a community (that's a great part of Web 2.0). Wikipedia defines community as a "group of people with a complex net of overlapping commonalities". I'll tweet to that!