shinycowbird.bsky.social
88 posts
154 followers
420 following
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Saw one of these on a hike in Spain almost 20 years ago and was deeply confused by it for at least a decade.
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SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! IN THE RUINS OF THE SILVERDOME!
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This is why when I talk about the museum (or any of the many other things here in Southeast Michigan named for that dude) I like to refer to him as "noted anti-semite Henry Ford."
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They are so small and cute! There's a pair at the Detroit Zoo Aviary.
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I can hear this picture.
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Wants to team up for trivia night with Gaston
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I know what you mean. When my wife and I were dating and first talked about having kids I even casually floated the idea of naming a kid Coraline. Fortunately my girls both dodged that particular bullet. But now I don't know if I'm going to share his work with them.
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A detailed and well researched story in NY Mag about the stuff that surfaced last year. Very good article, but a harrowing read.
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I thankfully have two healthy kids. In between them my wife has a miscarriage that required a D and C. It wasn't all that big a deal at the time, but I was keenly aware that a century or two ago I'd be a single father (and neither rich nor brooding enough to be the love interest in a period novel).
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I think if I could smash any one thing into other parents' heads it would be this. We thought my older girl might have whooping cough last month and it was scary and infuriating.
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A single orangutan, who just placidly puts one lanky hand over his mouth any time he starts speaking.
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This is a deeply stupid thing to be focused on right now.
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I just guessed the sign was from the UP since it's the nearest center of sauna culture I know of to Pontiac.
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My best guess is that a yooper had a serious problem with some visiting trolls.
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Oh I was just pretty sure from the vibes of the background.
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It's nice that they took it out of the foil tray after it got out of the microwave. That's some real high class service.
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Yes please.
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YES
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Yes
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Eyebrow Wren should be the new name. Maybe rename the Carolina while we're at it so we can have Eastern Eyebrow Wren and Western Eyebrow Wren.
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Modern healthcare is amazing and also thoroughly captured by a whole industry of scams and middlemen. It infuriates me every time I have to interact with it.
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Ok but actually the wizard I'm playing right now might need FIREBALL tattooed on her knuckles.
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Savage
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One of my all time favorites.
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I'm trying to hang tightly onto the anger, in a "Granny Weatherwax powering the turbine of revenge" sort of way.
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We got a different beautiful over here. Just a warm, sunny fall day in Michigan. Fuck.
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Literally the only context I have seen them in.
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Only the singular decade, so far. I'm real optimistic about it, though.
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Piling on for Coop.
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You're welcome! I normally try to tone down the pedantry on social media, but I thought you might like to know that you'd seen the rarer bird.
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Yup. In particular, the very red neck and the two tone bill with the pink base are pretty definitive field marks for this species. To be fair to your sources, this is AFAIK the rarest heron in the US, with the most limited range. It's understandable to mistake it for the most common.
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I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that's not a Great Blue Heron. The good news is that you got a lovely shot of the significantly rarer Reddish Egret.
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Ooh ooh! Do me! Do me!
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Yeah, for New Hampshire I stand by my previous skeet. If you were in Europe or something none of that would be relevant. Love that you got a wave.
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If you're in North America, I think this is a juvenile Sharp-Shinned Hawk. Could also be a juvenile Cooper's Hawk, but all the field marks I can make out in this photo look good for sharpie. Also, you said it's small. Cooper's is roughly crow sized, sharpie more like a blue jay.
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Yes, please. I've got a two and a half year old and a five month old right now, and could do with more words and less incoherent-screaming-until-I-guess-what's-wrong.
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Good point! Now as to which of the "kingbirds I would not expect to see in Massachusetts" you've got there, I haven't got a clue.
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I'm definitely getting more kingbird vibes especially with the head, but it took looking at pictures on merlin to figure out what field marks were giving me that impression (grey head with dark line through the eye, as opposed to grey face and browner cap for GCFL).
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One of my wife's more eccentric relatives gave us a set of three shakers for our wedding and I always thought it was them being them.
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Hey, you're one of today's lucky 10000! Yeah, the fact that these guys are speciating right in front of our eyes is fascinating.
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Oooh, another favorite I just thought about: the Udvar-Hazy extension to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
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I love my state.
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YUP. Although, admittedly, I thought the same thing when I read a field guide, and the first one I saw breeding male in good light, and it was indeed the shiniest blackbird I had ever seen. It has not been a good field mark for me since.
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Reading Something Wicked This Way Comes for the first time on a warm October evening, by candlelight (the power was out), on the ratty couch we had dragged onto the front balcony of our student apartment, accompanied by Luksusowa straight from the bottle and a jar of good pickles.
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Oh this is fun.