Over the weekend I had to run down to Wasilla to take care of a few errands, so while I was there I bought a couple of bird feeders, including a small one to hang just outside our office building door. That feeder almost immediately attracted the attention of a local nesting pair of one of my favorite birds – chickadees.
The Black-Capped Chickadee is ubiquitous across the northern part of North America. We have the Boreal Chickadee in these parts, too, although we haven’t seen any at the feeder yet. We’ve also been visited by a pair of Red-Breasted Nuthatches, and we have Cliff Swallows buzzing around, eating up the early bugs.
Everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve generally run a bird feeder. In our old Colorado home where we lived for so long, we had mostly house finches and chickadees. As a kid back at Bear Creek, we had chickadees, goldfinches, cardinals, and what I’ve long considered the most beautiful of North America’s songbirds, the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, which sadly doesn’t range this far north.
Rose-Breasted Grosbeak
I like chickadees. I know I’m anthropomorphizing their behavior some, but to me they always seem so indefatigably cheerful. Even in temps of fifteen or twenty below, these tiny bundles of feathers are out and about with the sunrise, calling, exploring, looking for food. They are frequently first at the feeder in the morning and last to leave at night. It’s fun to have them around, and we’re looking forward to having more of their cousins visit as well.
There are some benefits to growing older and grayer, and since we’re all bound to grow older and grayer anyway, there is certainly no reason to not avail one’s self of those benefits. Case in point:
For hunting and fishing purposes, Mrs. Animal and yr. obdt. don’t become full-fledged residents of the Great Land until one year has passed since our assuming residency. That’s as it is in most states, and it’s not unreasonable; it precludes folks from swooping in, renting an AirBnB for a few days, claiming residency and harvesting a bunch of game or fish.
However: By the time I reach that one-year residency requirement, I will have reached another milestone: My sixtieth birthday. That entitles me to a free lifetime general hunting permit, which, in the Game Management Unit where we live, enables me to take small game, fish, one bull moose, one caribou, three black bears and one grizzly per year, and exempts me from the state waterfowl stamp and king salmon stamp requirements. Mrs. Animal will enjoy a similar free lifetime permit not because of age (I’m an awful cradle-robber, and Mrs. A will not see six decades for some time yet) but by virtue of being a 100% disabled veteran.
Every day reveals another reason we made the right choice with this move.
Bill de Blasio is an idiot. In a just world the people of New York would have fitted this asshole out with a new suit of tar and feathers by now. Add that idiot Cuomo to that tar and feather party, as well.
Tom Petty was a rare talent, and on the list of folks taken from us (stupidly and by his own hand, candidly) too soon. He formed temporary partnerships with such other notables in music as Stevie Nicks and, as one of the Traveling Wilburys, with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison.
But much of his best work was done with his own band, The Heartbreakers, including this one from his 1984 album Southern Accents – this is Don’t Come Around Here No More, in which video Tom Petty proves that he would have made a far, far better Mad Hatter than that cheap hack Johnny Depp. And the story behind the song is kind of interesting, as it involves the aforementioned Stevie Nicks, former Eagle Joe Walsh, and the Eurythmic’s David A. Stewart. Enjoy.
