As longtime TM’ers know, here at HQ every Spring we watch and “egg on” our annual Dove families. The record isn’t good. These poor creatures are not often successful at procreation. This is our second attempt this season. Eggs just laid yesterday morning. Took these pictures after watching the latest shift change between mates (which appear to be at dawn and dusk), allowing a quick shot of the eggs. We’re buddies now, they’re finally letting me move in for close-ups without getting spooked. That has required some gentle conversation over the last few days. Let’s get some Dove vibe grooving for them …
Housekeeping: Many thanks to SJWNY for her generous donation helping me cover the cost of upgrading our site’s database memory to speed up our page builds.
sjwny, a big trail hug and and a hundred hearty huzzahs!
craig, what have you and david named the new tenants? she (assuming she’s a she in the pic) is quite stylish in feathers of elegant understatement and has that zen look of peaceful awareness… given their precarious situation, might I suggest ivanka and jared for names?
🙂
Bird watching is Mother Nature’s valium. Miniature flying dinosaurs.
However, politics watching is so damn exciting these days, almost existential! trump is beginning to look like Jabba the Hut in a suit. The decline in the billionaire is noticeable.
Meanwhile, skunk sessions and his war on drug users. In the middle of an opioid crisis, prison instead of rehab for most poorer Americans. Fill the private prisons owned by his buddies, the wealthier, white addicts? Get to go to anshutz’s rehab. The gop has this crisis covered.
trump looked very cozy with kislyak in the ruskie-only WH photos and when compared to the WH meeting with Merkel, whom he refused to touch? Pretty obvious Colbert was correct about trump and putin.
Meanwhile, the gop platform push continues as gop plays the 3 monkeys…neither seeing, speaking nor hearing the evil of trump and russia.
sessions and his drug war…a longer US war than Afghanistan.
bossert rolls-out cyber security cloud plan — somehow makes me feel more insecure.
bw, speaking of Colbert, here’s Colbert speaking last night
Published on May 12, 2017
Someone in Trump’s administration contradicted the White House’s account of why James Comey was fired. It was Trump.
and the sp-icing on the cake
Published on May 12, 2017
Press Secretary Sean Spicer will be away from his podium this week while answering the call of duty. But that hasn’t stopped him from writing home every day.
A blogger, Drudge I think, said he tried for eight years to get notice of a problem inside the Obama WH, and got none. Now the stuff comes out every hour from the floaters WH.
ko. not ranting this time, pleading… sadly pleading “We Need the Help of Intel Agencies Around the World”
Published on May 11, 2017
It’s time to lay bare what is known about Donald Trump.
The wild animals are behaving much better than the supposedly domesticated ones.
April with Tajiri with daddy Oliver looking on.
another step closer to firing the first amendment.
from the hill:
President Trump defended on Friday morning the slew of contradictions in the White House’s account of FBI Director James Comey’s firing, suggesting he might cancel “all future ‘press briefings'” in the name of accuracy.
“As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” Trump tweeted.
what the twit tweeted today:
As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!….
…Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future “press briefings” and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???
Mark Twain once divided them between Practicing and Professional. Now Christians face the conflict in their tribe.
The Passion of Southern Christians
Thanks SJWNY for keeping the Trail going. A very generous spirit indeed.
I think the punishment for Donald the Plutocrat is to stay for the entire four years as pariah hated by everyone. And unable to get anything done Big Giant Loser
a fitting commercial break considering the state of things.
[btw, is that our solar there on the dance floor?]
https://youtu.be/6oV0jwg20H4
Patd, open to suggestion on Dove naming, I just call them Sweetie Dove, whichever one is there. Haven’t figured out which one is the male.
I hope the lady dove gets to be a momma this year
The idea of Iger as the dem candidate is stupid beyond belief
Craig, I will trade you as many doves as you want for a water supply. I have to put out spikes and fake snakes to keep the hordes of doves away. They are really messy (and that is being kind). Enjoy your birds in the wilds of your window sill. ?
Trump said the russians tricked him into the photo op
one more good deal so tired of winning
Duane Pate
People who read his book or watched him in the 80’s never thought he was a smart businessman… He was a crooked con man from the start, he bilked investors in projects he couldn’t make profitable, bleed them of money and then filed bankruptcy.
Believing Trump was ever a ‘smart’ businessman is like saying Maddof was a caring, upstanding investment banker.
eProf, I’ve got pigeon crap that’ll probably match what you’ve got. Those are nasty creatures, fight them all the time. Anthony Bourdan was eating pigeon in Spain on his last show. Might give that a try.
pic above: Pigeon breast with cherries and walnuts
boss, from the guardian just for you
Nigel Slater’s pigeon recipes
Crisp-skinned and smoky, pigeon is best cooked on the grill or barbecue ….
The little pigeons I bought this week, chubby, perfect (with no dark red bruises or split skin) came from the butcher plucked, gutted and ready for the oven, but I wanted to grill them, so out came the kitchen scissors and my heaviest knife. It’s a strangely satisfying job, hacking a pigeon for the grill, cutting the birds through their backbone and bending them wide open like a book. This allows the heat to get right inside on (or under) the grill. It is worth taking the time to remove the odd remaining bit of feather as you go (plucking obviously ain’t what it used to be).
I was taught to impale birds the same way you spatchcock a poussin, on two metal skewers, which allows the heat to penetrate while keeping the birds flat, but I have never really found that necessary with small, fatless birds like pigeon. A good trickle of olive oil is needed to moisten their thin skin, then some crushed peppercorns, sea salt and juniper berries to scatter over.
The barbecue aside, I find the oven grill is the best way to cook birds such as these, placing the tray a good 20cm from the heat.
Fifteen minutes or so later they emerge toasted, crisp skinned, smelling smokily of salt, pepper and juniper berries. Good to tackle briefly with a knife and fork, but the real joy is tearing the birds apart and tugging the juicy meat from the bones.
[he goes on with ingredients and directions in detail…..]
btw, another reason I suggested twit’s spawn as names for your sweetie doves is that it might minimize somewhat the grief you suffer should bad things happen again in doveville.
oops, forgot to give you the guardian link for the rest of the recipe
thanks, PatD, that’s all pigeons are good for
from wapo’s hohmann at the daily 202:
THE BIG IDEA: The biggest news out of Donald Trump’s Thursday interview with NBC was his confession that the Russia investigation was on his mind when he fired FBI director James Comey. Undercutting 48 hours of denials by his aides, the president said: “In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.’”
But what may ultimately get Trump into bigger trouble is his story about Comey assuring him he was not under investigation during a one-on-one dinner at the White House. Lester Holt asked the president to elaborate on his claim, made in the letter firing Comey, that he’d been told three times he was not under federal investigation. “He wanted to stay at the FBI, and I said I’ll, you know, consider and see what happens,” Trump said. “But we had a very nice dinner, and at that time he told me, ‘You are not under investigation.’” (Watch a 13-minute video of Holt’s sit-down here.)
It would be a big dang deal if the FBI director was discussing an ongoing investigation with the president — generally prohibited by Justice Department policy — at the same time he was also asking to keep his job.
But on the front page of today’s New York Times, Michael Schmidt paints a very different picture of the Jan. 27 dinner: “The conversation that night, Mr. Comey now believes, was a harbinger of his downfall … according to two people who have heard his account of the dinner. … As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trump’s rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him. Mr. Comey declined to make that pledge. Instead, Mr. Comey has recounted to others, he told Mr. Trump that he would always be honest with him, but that he was not ‘reliable’ in the conventional political sense. … By Mr. Comey’s account, his answer to Mr. Trump’s initial question apparently did not satisfy the president … Later in the dinner, Mr. Trump again said to Mr. Comey that he needed his loyalty. Mr. Comey again replied that he would give him ‘honesty’ and did not pledge his loyalty … But Mr. Trump pressed him on whether it would be ‘honest loyalty.’ ‘You will have that,’ Mr. Comey told his associates he responded.”
— Apparently reacting to that account, Trump went on a tweetstorm this morning
[see twit’s tweet today threatening comey about possible tapes of conversation]
kudos to the fix pointing out why loyalty oaths are to constitution not to president
….on its website, the FBI says the bureau and its officials must only swear an oath to the Constitution — not even a president. The reason? Because the latter “too easily leads to tyranny”:
this not only gets people out of jail who haven’t been convicted of anything it brings attention to the financial unfairness of our bail system
if you have a few bucks this is a great place to put them
https://nomoremoneybail.org/
SF is working on making the bail system work better for low income folks and SR they are finally doing something about juvenile offender fees. Yes they were charging the parents for jailing their children and many of these folks are among the poorest in the county A system designed to promote failure.
pigeons = flying rats
some of the funniest and perhaps embarrassing stories I’ve heard are about people’s attempts to get rid of pigeons
you’d get a kick out of my pigeon wars, KGC. I chase them, yell at them, hose them down, shower them with pepper flakes (I even glued pepper flakes on the deck railings — poor man’s hot foot). I’ve at least stopped them from nesting on our property, but they haven’t gone away.
Thinking about getting a really powerful squirt gun, fill it with pepper spray, but they’re probably not legal in DC. BB gun would be better, but that surely would get me arrested.
Craig… out here in the land of many little ponds… the battle is with Canadian geese. Rick’s youngest brother inherited the family camp on a local pond. My father-in-law’s war with the geese shitting all over his lawn were legendary. Rick mentioned it in his eulogy and there were many laughs.
Good luck with your pigeons!
Reflective tape made just to deter birds might help…since AOL stopped mass producing/distributing worthless CDs about 20 years ago. It’s called flash tape or scare tape.
Or, maybe a JAMIE can send you an owl.
I can envision MellisaMcCarthy morphing from PS Spicer into Deputy PS Huckabee tomorrow night.
SJ -Many thanks.
My day off from consuming Trump news going quite well. Highly recommend it.
Non consumption of Trump, except possibly in the cannibal sense, is necessary for ones mental health. I’m reading a mystery set in 1870’s San Francisco. Very restful.
We have doves. They are not bothersome because their numbers seem self limiting. Perhaps that is because we have myriad other birds and critters competing for space and food supply. It’s really not myriad, but 30-species of bird that regularly visit within sight of my breakfast room windows. Yes, I do write them down on the inside back cover of my Field Guide to the Birds of North America. Undoubtedly, the wing-count by an ornithologist would be significantly different.
I especially love our robins, tufted titmice, and the variety of woodpeckers and wrens.
Hemingway wrote about when broke in Paris he would walk in the park with his son in a stroller and lure then catch pigeons, stuff them under the kid after he’d yanked their little heads off, then back to the flat and Feast
a Moveable feast I think
My day off from consuming Trump news going quite well. Highly recommend it.
Welcome to the club! I highly recommend taking it into the rest of the weekend.
Fortunately favorite son just got me a new owl. Feel free to use the image on all avian marauders.
Speaking of loyalty oaths:
Note: . . . all enemies, foreign and domestic;. . . Also note: I will obey the orders. . . according to regulations and the UCMJ. . .
Those two are complementary. The regulations and UCMJ state that you will follow “legal” orders. If the floater gave an order to round up members of Congress you can safely refuse to do so. If he orders you to go to Russia and kill Putin, you can ignore that one too, it is not legal to assassinate the heads of friendly foreign countries (yes, Russia is a friendly country). If your commanding officer ordered you to round up the guy running around with an orange rat on his head, you might have to ask why. Why can’t the Marshals do it you could ask. Besides there is posse comitatus Act.
Melissa McCarthy As Sean Spicer Rode A Motorized Podium Through New York City – BuzzFeed News
https://apple.news/AHA0gvruBQbiPgINL_BzfRQ
Scroll down & read KO’s tweet! ROTFLMAO
It’s only 100 days until the sun disappears across America – CNN
https://apple.news/AJOWoKHuLSZa97IPw2seSQA
Page builds are still good – even on mobile device. Good work Poobah.
Stayed away from trumpshit for the most part today. Caught a bit driving home but NBA’s on, new guitar hit the stoop, so somehow I don’t feel the need to visit WaPo or MSNBC. It’s like a breath of fresh air.
So every now and then I sing to my old fat ass cat from Baton Rouge:
“oh-oh you goofy-ass cat,
you don’t know nothin and you like it like that”
he always nods and smiles……
You’ll just have to imagine the tune……..it’s kind of baroque
I’ve been busy but wanted to take a minute to share one of my latest with the class!
Craig: Some have mentioned owls and when I first moved into this apt bldg with lots of balconies many people hung fake owls from their balcony ceilings. One local city hung them from telephone wires near transformer boxes. This presumable helped to deter squirrels and other mischief makers as well. Flocks of pigeons have been part and parcel to my whole life in my home area. The odd thing is that a few years ago I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen any pigeons and damn few squirrels in a very long time. They have all but vanished from my area. I don’t know what the city did but they are gone. I know they can be a nuisance to some, but I did enjoy watching them. 🙁
One final distraction before I go to bed. This short video was shot at the local damn on the Connecticut River. I’ts a 5 min. walk from my building and I like to walk over to the bridge and just watch the river, the fishermen and the damn. If people ever wondered what happens to fish that are swimming up the river and run into a damn, you might enjoy watching them go through the fun fish shoot ride at the damn LOL! The fish are American Shad and they swim up the CT River every year to spawn. Our area has had a Shad Derby ever since I can remember. Aside from that, this part of the river also sees it’s share of other ocean dwelling fish. Last week local fishermen were catching tiger fish over two feet long. Here’s the video, goodnight all.
pogo, good to hear your mobile speed is adequate. my mobile platform is not very sophisticated, gives me fits now and then, especially for apple devices. Every new generation requires code tweaks apple won’t share without getting paid or until they show up on piracy forums where I get them. Hateful company.
Well, mine’s an iPhone so all must be good, eh?
There is another aspect to John Oliver’s recent fire alarm about net neutrality. I am finding that internet providers, server companies and device makers are making it increasingly difficult to deliver web sites like ours without nickel and dime charges to handle traffic and keep code up to date. I’m on top of it for now but fear it’s going to get worse.