I was sitting in the backyard with my Nikon artillery piece, watching the bird feeders when I caught this scene.
The camera focused on the sparrow in the foreground, but the drama was playing out in the couple behind him.
When male birds are courting, sometimes they will feed their girlfriends as a show of affection and support. I've seen this a couple of times lately where an adult female will go into the baby bird dance in front of her boyfriend, fluttering her wings so he will feed her. It's really charming. She was in the middle of the act when I shot this one.
I've been too busy lately to have time to sit out by the feeder with the camera for long and I haven't set up a video camera to capture the action, but at least I was able to get that one, even if it's a bit fuzzy. I had no idea the females did that. Way cool.
Someone got into my house last night -- I'm pretty sure I forgot to lock the front door when I came in Thursday (*) -- and stole a few things, including my wallet and all my ID and credit cards, which was only 3 feet from my sleeping self.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure it was a "neighbor". Pray that the police were able to get a good DNA swab from a hand-print one of them saw on the hood of the car.
He seems to have run off after realizing that I was there. But, he went around and unlocked some of the doors. This is another evidence that didn't make a duplicate key when he got in a year ago (through a door he had unlocked while his friend and I were carting some cabinets I'd bought from him around to the basement). But, I'm going to re-key all the doors, just in case.
Still, the things I know he stole were bulky and heavy (including an old microwave and many boxes of flooring tile). And since the chain was still up across the driveway, it's not as though he had a car just outside the front door. He'd have had to carry whatever he stole a minimum of 200 to get to the bottom of the drive, and a few hundred feet to get to his house.
I think there was about $50 in the wallet (besides all the cards and ID). Thank God he didn't find the $900 in cash that was not in the wallet. And, thank God he didn't attack me.
I was able to get all the credit cards cancelled, and get to the BMV in time (*) to get a new license/ID. The locksmith isn't open on Saturday, so I can't start the re-keying until Monday.
(*) It took two trips because they couldn't accept my expired license -- which they had issued, and which has my photo on it -- as a valid proof that I am who I am. Bureaucracy!
(*) I had left some potting soil on the sidewalk and meant to carry it around to the basement, but then I didn't.
Goodness! This afternoon I walked around the property and nearby allies to see if the thief had tossed my wallet on the ground ... and I found my still-boxed new electric water heater hidden behind the old garage. I hadn't even noticed that it was missing. After bringing the water heater back into the house, noticed that my steel fire-pit is gone.
ReplyDeleteKT: cool shot! I've never seen them doing that, probably because the females are waiting back in the black locust bushes about 100 feet from the feeders, where we can't see them.
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