The Terra-tory

I have obsessively watched Pasta Grannies so much that I actually tried to make my own pasta a few days ago. It turned out great and seems like it’s a bit more nutritious in some ways than dried pasta, especially factory-made.

Here’s what I’ve learned!

mice caught: 5
mice uncaught but spotted: 1

5 thousand thunderstorms and ants everywhere

let’s go

Grumpy about everything

Grumpy about everything

Deyani, red-tailed hawklet, from the cover photo of this video

Barn swallows are funny little guys. They’ve lived in human dwellings for forever and ever, sometimes to the annoyance of both species, and they know how to take advantage of our presence to get bugs. Speaking of bugs, they really like the flying kind and are specially evolved to be acrobats!

In the past few years here in the Denver, CO area, I’ve observed some interesting behavior that I don’t remember from other places I’ve lived. Here at the intersections, it’s surprisingly common for 5 or so little barn swallows to be swooping around above the cars, chasing insects. On rainy days they fly low, since that’s where the bugs are. Other days they fly a bit higher. Perhaps it’s safer and they observe traffic carefully to see which side is stopped or slow. I can’t say I see the bugs they’re after half as easily as the little birds themselves, but that’s because the birds come within feet of my windshield and distract me.

I find it remarkable and interesting. It’s true that cars hitting birds has resulted in a rapid burst of evolution, the shortening of wings and so on to aid in midair mobility to avoid collisions. This is just the only time I’ve seen birds clearly taking advantage of something inherent to traffic. Dust, bugs, air currents…barn swallows live dangerous lives on the edge but I can see why they do it.

On other topics, I finally witnessed chickadees flying away with the mealworms I’ve been putting out. The female Bullock’s Oriole who has been visiting came, rejected the soggy lemons and peanuts, and flew at the feeder cam to really let me know how displeased she was. Alas. A female hummingbird also visited today! I think she may have been a broad-tailed hummingbird. I’m very pleased Hummer Cam is working well now. Unfortunate that the previous version had to break down so suddenly.

Aha, my first official post on here! Well, in the year 2023, anyway. My other themes that I created were from 2011-2013, so you can imagine how long it’s been since I touched any sort of theme code. I do still like them, but they definitely need tweaking.

First of all, I still hate WordPress and I feel coding-wise that it’s really only gotten worse in the past decade. That said, I found a theme called Noto Simple that was actually organized, notated, and complied to current code formatting. The other blank ones definitely did not do…any of that. Currently I have created a theme that matches my current site design. At the moment, I still haven’t figured out how to mess with the div that I think is causing the ‘Other Blog Stuff’ menu to come out weird and tiny.

I’ll keep working on it. In the meantime, I’m very happy Font Awesome has its own plugin that works.

Bird Profile: Sunflower

Male blue jay, bird husband of Lapis

Traits and Personality

• Male traits: Slightly larger than Lapis, the frequent visitor during nesting season as Lapis is very busy. He will gather superworms but seems less keen on mealworms.

• LOVES sunflower seeds, loads up til his crop is maximum capacity before flying away.

• He does like the usual blue jay foods (peanuts, peanuts in the shell).

Identification Markers

• Faint and nonexistent eyeliner around his eyes and less substantial black around his brow/near the beak
• Steady visitor throughout the year