Thanks for that book recommendation, Wanderer2.

I went to Abe.com to see if I could get a copy for my granddaughter and found out that you have a real collectible! Four copies ranged from $160 to $1500. Hang onto that one!

Marshall

This shot is pushing the envelope in all kinds of ways but I love these moments between birds and thought it worth posting. Wish I'd been closer...had a longer lens...better at post-processing...etc. Maybe it will give someone encouragement to go for something that looks impossible.

There is a field in town, next to a Planet Fitness, and surrounded by commercial and residential developments, that is the territory of a pair of kestrels that hunt over the field. No luck with them them but off in the distance this Red-tailed Hawk flew by, pursued by several other birds.

I got off a sequence of shots, this being the one I thought best summed up the action. Don't think the blackbird actually landed on the hawk but he came very close.

Back at the computer opened in Photoshop, used Topaz Sharpen AI, made that huge crop, and ended up with this.



RTHA_RWBB_11Jun2022 by Marshall Smith, on Flickr


Here is a screenshot of the original image. Didn't think I had a prayer, lol!


Screen Shot 2022-06-12 at 8.11.01 AM by Marshall Smith, on Flickr


Marshall

Thanks, glad you liked them!

We have an excess of "normal" squirrels around the yard, so when I first saw a head poking out of that hole a month or so ago I didn't really know what I was seeing. Some internet research and I found they were "flying squirrels," native to our area and not too uncommon, but rarely seen.

Those two are full-size adults, and can be quite fierce when defending their spot. I was clearing some blow-down away from that tree and they decided to temporarily bail out. About the size, shape, and color of a piece of toast, when they are flattened out and airborne from one place to another. Their glide path seems to defy the laws of physics!

That spot is about 75 feet from our front door, and I've set up a patio chair under a young oak tree that is closer than that. I'm well set up for some future photos, whether it be woodpeckers or squirrels.


Marshall

This is the dead ash tree in our front yard that has been the site of so much drama this summer. A Red-Bellied Woodpecker pair started excavating the nest hole at the very top of the tree around the end of March.

A pair of European Starlings took it over for a few days, followed by a family of flying squirrels who moved in next. It was the middle of April when the woodpeckers started seriously trying to reclaim it.

https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-735706-1.html

https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-739103-1.html


RBWPsNestTree05Jun2022A by Marshall Smith, on Flickr



This is the female RBWP on her way up to her newly reclaimed nest.

FemaleRBWP_CheckingTheNest_30May2022A by Marshall Smith, on Flickr



I've read that the female will lay one egg a day until she has a full clutch of usually four eggs, and they don't begin to incubate them until all are laid. Both parents sit on the nest, with the male usually taking the night shift.

MaleRBWP_Calling_01Jun2022_096 by Marshall Smith, on Flickr

So for the last week or so I've only seen the male, coming to the nest several times a day, looking, then flying off somewhere.

I had it in my head that they had a full clutch by now and were incubating their eggs, taking turns sitting them.
I was expecting the grey forehead of a female Red-Bellied to peek out for a break. Instead I got this...



Birds05Jun2022_271 by Marshall Smith, on Flickr

THEY'RE BACK!
And to add insult to injury, a few moments later, this:

PairOfFlyingSquirrels_05Jun2022_310 by Marshall Smith, on Flickr


The day after this bombshell the male woodpecker came by for a cursory check. He looked into the nest but stayed less than 30 seconds then flew off.


MaleRBWP_LeavingTree06Jun2022 by Marshall Smith, on Flickr


The future of these two animal families is literally "up in the air." I'll keep everyone posted on further developments.


Marshall

Thanks, Walkabout08. I posted another shot, same bird, same sighting, back to the KY facebook group. Admin:

"this one looks completely different. Now I’m not sure. It’s funny how light and angle can make a bird look completely different. If I saw this first I’d saw Eastern Phoebe was the correct call. The bill isn’t big enough."


Marshall

I posted this photo on our KY facebook birder site tonight, and an admin there said he thought it was a fledgling Great Crested Flycatcher.

I don't think he is correct, but would any of you all care to wade in on it, too?

Marshall

Eastern Phoebe flipping a bug.

I've seen big birds, like herons, do this to reposition a catch in the way they want it before swallowing, so I guess small birds do the same thing on a much smaller scale.

EasternPhoebe_01Jun2022 by Marshall Smith, on Flickr

Lots of phoebe activity around here today. Found a partial eggshell on our front porch, so there must be hatchlings in the nest right above the front door. They've been nesting in the same place there for years now.


Marshall

Lots of chasing and being chased today at the park pond as the great Blue Herons try to maintain their territory for this season.

GBHE_Chaser_31May2022 by Marshall Smith, on Flickr


Marshall

Thanks!

I'm a sucker for backlit feathers. LOL!

This Great Crested Flycatcher has been hanging around for several days now. It was way up in the top of a white oak tree in our front yard having an early morning stretch.

I had recently mowed the grass, and later I saw it searching for insects. It landed briefly on our front porch railing. Really an impressive bird seen up close like that. Of course my readiness and reaction time was not enough to get that shot...

GreatCrestedFlycatcher_25May2022 by Marshall Smith, on Flickr


Marshall

I'm sure this will be covered in all reputable media sources, but here is the first one I saw:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/boris-bondarev-ashamed-russian-diplomat-quits-chief-united-nations-role-over-putins-warmongering?ref=home

Hope he has a food taster!


Marshall

Thanks all!

Here is one from a couple of days ago:

RBWPsReclaimNest_17May2022 by Marshall Smith, on Flickr



Marshall

"A time traveler from the 1930s would have no difficulty identifying the Putin regime as f*****t."

Essay by Timothy Snyder in the NY Times:


We Should Say It. Russia Is F*****t.
May 19, 2022, 1:00 a.m. ET

F*****m was never defeated as an idea.

As a cult of irrationality and violence, it could not be vanquished as an argument: So long as N**i Germany seemed strong, Europeans and others were tempted. It was only on the battlefields of World War II that f*****m was defeated. Now it’s back — and this time, the country fighting a f*****t war of destruction is Russia. Should Russia win, f*****ts around the world will be comforted.

We err in limiting our fears of f*****m to a certain image of Hitler and the Holocaust. F*****m was Italian in origin, popular in Romania — where f*****ts were Orthodox Christians who dreamed of cleansing violence — and had adherents throughout Europe (and America). In all its varieties, it was about the triumph of will over reason.

Because of that, it’s impossible to define satisfactorily. People disagree, often vehemently, over what constitutes f*****m. But today’s Russia meets most of the criteria that scholars tend to apply. It has a cult around a single leader, Vladimir Putin. It has a cult of the dead, organized around World War II. It has a myth of a past golden age of imperial greatness, to be restored by a war of healing violence — the murderous war on Ukraine.

It’s not the first time Ukraine has been the object of f*****t war. The conquest of the country was Hitler’s main war aim in 1941. Hitler thought that the Soviet Union, which then ruled Ukraine, was a Jewish state: He planned to replace Soviet rule with his own and claim Ukraine’s fertile agricultural soil. The Soviet Union would be starved, and Germany would become an empire. He imagined that this would be easy because the Soviet Union, to his mind, was an artificial creation and the Ukrainians a colonial people.
The similarities to Mr. Putin’s war are striking. The Kremlin defines Ukraine as an artificial state, whose Jewish president proves it cannot be real. After the elimination of a small elite, the thinking goes, the inchoate masses would happily accept Russian d******n. Today it is Russia that is denying Ukrainian food to the world, threatening famine in the global south.

Many hesitate to see today’s Russia as f*****t because Stalin’s Soviet Union defined itself as a****ascist. But that usage did not help to define what f*****m is — and is worse than confusing today. With the help of American, British and other allies, the Soviet Union defeated N**i Germany and its allies in 1945. Its opposition to f*****m, however, was inconsistent.

Before Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the Soviets treated f*****ts as just one more form of capitalist enemy. C*******t parties in Europe were to treat all other parties as the enemy. This policy actually contributed to Hitler’s ascent: Though they outnumbered the N**is, German c*******ts and socialists could not cooperate. After that fiasco, Stalin adjusted his policy, demanding that European c*******t parties form coalitions to block f*****ts.

That didn’t last long. In 1939, the Soviet Union joined N**i Germany as a de facto ally, and the two powers invaded Poland together. N**i speeches were reprinted in the Soviet press and N**i officers admired Soviet efficiency in mass deportations. But Russians today do not speak of this fact, since memory laws make it a crime to do so. World War II is an element of Mr. Putin’s historical myth of Russian innocence and lost greatness — Russia must enjoy a monopoly on victimhood and on victory. The basic fact that Stalin enabled World War II by allying with Hitler must be unsayable and unthinkable.

Stalin’s flexibility about f*****m is the key to understanding Russia today. Under Stalin, f*****m was first indifferent, then it was bad, then it was fine until — when Hitler betrayed Stalin and Germany invaded the Soviet Union — it was bad again. But no one ever defined what it meant. It was a box into which anything could be put. C*******ts were purged as f*****ts in show trials. During the Cold War, the Americans and the British became the f*****ts. And “anti-f*****m” did not prevent Stalin from targeting Jews in his last purge, nor his successors from conflating Israel with N**i Germany.

Soviet anti-f*****m, in other words, was a politics of us and them. That is no answer to f*****m. After all, f*****t politics begins, as the N**i thinker Carl Schmitt said, from the definition of an enemy. Because Soviet anti-f*****m just meant defining an enemy, it offered f*****m a backdoor through which to return to Russia.

In the Russia of the 21st century, “anti-f*****m” simply became the right of a Russian leader to define national enemies. Actual Russian f*****ts, such as Aleksandr Dugin and Aleksandr Prokhanov, were given time in mass media. And Mr. Putin himself has drawn on the work of the interwar Russian f*****t Ivan Ilyin. For the president, a “f*****t” or a “N**i” is simply someone who opposes him or his plan to destroy Ukraine. Ukrainians are “N**is” because they do not accept that they are Russians and resist.

A time traveler from the 1930s would have no difficulty identifying the Putin regime as f*****t. The symbol Z, the rallies, the propaganda, the war as a cleansing act of violence and the death pits around Ukrainian towns make it all very plain. The war against Ukraine is not only a return to the traditional f*****t battleground, but also a return to traditional f*****t language and practice. Other people are there to be colonized. Russia is innocent because of its ancient past. The existence of Ukraine is an international conspiracy. War is the answer.

Because Mr. Putin speaks of f*****ts as the enemy, we might find it hard to grasp that he could in fact be f*****t. But in Russia’s war on Ukraine, “N**i” just means “subhuman enemy”— someone Russians can k**l. H**e speech directed at Ukrainians makes it easier to murder them, as we see in Bucha, Mariupol and every part of Ukraine that has been under Russian occupation. Mass graves are not some accident of war, but an expected consequence of a f*****t war of destruction.

F*****ts calling other people “f*****ts” is f*****m taken to its illogical extreme as a cult of unreason. It is a final point where h**e speech inverts reality and propaganda is pure insistence. It is the apogee of will over thought. Calling others f*****ts while being a f*****t is the essential Putinist practice. Jason Stanley, an American philosopher, calls it “undermining propaganda.” I have called it “schizof*****m.” The Ukrainians have the most elegant formulation. They call it “ruscism.”

We understand more about f*****m than we did in the 1930s. We now know where it led. We should recognize f*****m, because then we know what we are dealing with. But to recognize it is not to undo it. F*****m is not a debating position, but a cult of will that emanates fiction. It is about the mystique of a man who heals the world with violence, and it will be sustained by propaganda right to the end. It can be undone only by demonstrations of the leader’s weakness. The f*****t leader has to be defeated, which means that those who oppose f*****m have to do what is necessary to defeat him. Only then do the myths come crashing down.

As in the 1930s, democracy is in retreat around the world and f*****ts have moved to make war on their neighbors. If Russia wins in Ukraine, it won’t be just the destruction of a democracy by force, though that is bad enough. It will be a demoralization for democracies everywhere. Even before the war, Russia’s friends — Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orban, Tucker Carlson — were the enemies of democracy. F*****t battlefield victories would confirm that might makes right, that reason is for the losers, that democracies must fail.

Had Ukraine not resisted, this would have been a dark spring for democrats around the world. If Ukraine does not win, we can expect decades of darkness.

I don't know if it was a final battle royale or a strategic nocturnal retreat by the family of flying squirrels, but the Red-Bellied Woodpeckers have reclaimed their nest after a struggle that began back the middle of April.

Went out to check a couple of mornings ago and all of the squirrel nesting material was thrown out and on the ground at the base of the dead ash tree.

The woodpecker pair have been getting re-accustomed to each other the last couple of days, with a lot of calling and drumming going on, and lots of flights into and out of the nest.

From what I've read, the female lays her clutch one egg a day, and the pair only start to incubate them after all are laid.


Here is a celebratory moment from this morning:


RBWPs19May2022_081A by Marshall Smith, on Flickr

Don't know where the flying squirrels went. I was torn; would have liked to document that family story, too.


Marshall