A Carolina Locust trying to look like dirt and succeeding. It makes crackling sounds called crepitations in flight.

Rattles, trills and gurgles. It’s a Marsh Wren solo.

For the Birds: Amazing acrobatic chipmunks

By Al Batt

For the Birds from The Caledonia Argus

Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting

What’s wrong?

I called my eye doctor, but he can’t see me.

Sounds like he needs glasses.

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I live about 3688.12 smoots from the nearest post office. A smoot is a unit of measurement equal to 5 feet 7 inches.

In 1958, a fraternity at MIT used one of its pledges, the 5-foot-7 Oliver Smoot, Jr., as a unit of measure to mark off the Harvard Bridge in 10-smoot increments.

I used to mosey many smoots out yonder with remarkable regularity. I’d drive some roads over and over. Some had so much traffic it was obvious that someone had left the gate open. Others had so little traffic I had time to notice things.

I drove by one house in Nebraska so often through the years that I recognized changes. I paid attention when a different car lived in the drive or the garden’s size changed.

Last time I went by, the white house had been painted yellow. I had to circle back for a second look. I didn’t approve of that modification.

Nature notes

Count the number of cricket chirps in 15-seconds. Add 40 to that number to get an approximate temperature in Fahrenheit.

Five weeks after Canada geese hatch, the adults molt, which renders them flightless until the goslings can fly at 9 to 10 weeks of age. That’s typically during the second half of July.

Pam Martin of Great Bend, Kansas, said when she was a girl, her cousin had a pet crow that mimicked the sounds of human sneezes and ringing telephones. It was so good, it fooled the family’s telephone-hating dog into barking.

A temporary Texan

“The sun has riz, the sun has set, and here we is in Texas yet.” I could drive a long time without leaving Texas.

It seemed right to read some of Larry McMurtry books in Texas. I enjoyed “Lonesome Dove,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning, 843-page cattle-drive epic that was turned into a TV miniseries, “The Last Picture Show (made into a movie), and “Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen.”

In 2008, the American Film Institute voted “The Searchers” the greatest western of all time. It was filmed at Monument Valley, a wild and sparsely populated region on the Arizona-Utah border, of which John Wayne said, “Monument Valley is the place where God put the West.”

Despite claims, the role of Matt Dillon on “Gunsmoke” wasn’t offered to John Wayne. Wayne considered TV unworthy of his talents.

Wayne, born in Winterset, Iowa, was 6-foot-4. James Arness, born in Minneapolis, was 6-foot-7. Arness played the laconic marshal of Dodge City, Kansas.

According to “True West” magazine, Dillon was shot 56 times, knocked unconscious 29 times, stabbed three times and poisoned once in the 635 episodes of “Gunsmoke” that spanned 20 years.

Arness was shot in the leg at Anzio Beach during WWII. His brother, Peter Graves, starred in the TV show “Mission Impossible” and the movie “Airplane.”

Naturally

There’s more beauty in my ZIP code than I could see or hear in two lifetimes. Sweet sounds of goldfinches greeted me. What is yellow, weighs 4,000 pounds and sings? A two-ton American goldfinch.

The catbirds fed on suet more than I’d seen before. Smithsonian scientists reported 79% of fledged catbirds in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., were killed by predators before reaching adulthood, with 49% dispatched by domestic cats. Maybe the suet feeder is a “catbird seat,” a reference to a position of great prominence or advantage.

I was filling bird feeders when I frightened a chipmunk from a hanging feeder. It jumped from the feeder into the birdbath. I’m sure that wasn’t intentional. He splashed down, jumped from the water and scurried off after a dive that would have made Greg Louganis proud.

A blue jay grabbed a peanut shell holding two peanuts and swallowed. It snatched another hull covering two goobers in its bill and flew away. A jay can transport food in its throat and upper esophagus — an area called a gular pouch.

I tossed a small pizza crust on the lawn to see what would become of it. A crow found it quickly. Later, while mowing the lawn, I found a crow feather in the spot where the pizza had been. A coincidence or a quid pro crow?

Cicadas called. They declared it to be summer. I watched a great horned owl land twice in the yard not long before dusk. I didn’t see it catch anything. It might have attempted to find relief from being mobbed by jays, robins, chickadees, nuthatches, catbirds, woodpeckers and grackles. Mobbing is a loud expression of outrage and a behavior birds engage in to defend themselves or their offspring from predators. The smaller birds worked together like an indignant committee to annoy the owl from the yard. The night would prove generous with its stars.

Q&A

“Do deer really eat birds?” Yes, they will eat eggs and baby birds as trail cams and eyewitness reports have seen.

“Did storks ever deliver babies?” They did until they were required to provide child restraint systems.

Thanks for stopping by

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” — Bertrand Russell

Do good.

©Al Batt 2020