I’ve been enjoying the constant stream of birds who’ve visited the makeshift birdbath on our back porch. Usually squirrels are its main visitors. I suppose the drought conditions have made the birds a little thirstier than usual.
My favorite guests have been the Carolina Wrens. These birds are so frenetic! Watching one take a bath was like watching a blender! I was cracking up.
On a related note, why is the state bird of North Carolina the Northern Cardinal? Why not the Carolina Wren? Cardinals are fine birds and all, but they’re found all over, while Carolina Wrens stay close to NC. They’re also more fun to watch.
The Northern Cardinal is also the state bird of VA. Odd that bordering states would be so unoriginal.
There is also a carolina chickadee, smaller that the black capped version. Lately, I’ve been seeing summer tanangers in the back yard of the lake house very bright red, even more red than the cardnal. A couple of days ago taking my noon walk around the Qimonda site, I spied a gold finch taking a bath in one of the mud puddles (Richmond got some rain). There are lots of good choices.
I suppose that the Cardinal is a good choice because it isn’t in danger of having its habitat destroyed. That way it can’t be used as an excuse to slow unbridled development. 🙂
Got an adapter cable for my phone, and I’ve been using sites like the cornell bird site to build a set of ringtones. Then I use bitpim (http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitpim/).
I’ve gotten some on as a preliminary goof-off maneuver. They’re tons less disruptive and annoying than the stock ones, or those song ones people use. Once Gabe gets settled into a sleep pattern, I’ll goof some more and maybe build a list. I’m willing (unembarrassed) to share my current list. I want to see if I can get these websites to CC license the audio, so I can put them up and link back to them in id3 tags and on a little website.
J
Why not compromise with the black bird from the beatles song… 🙂