Plants That Are for the Birds

Gonna just say no to guns today. Been avoiding Trump mostly anyway. Besides, Shaw has that covered pretty well. Happy Trump Hump Day? Bring on the plants.

Once insects and other summer foods are gone, birds begin eating more fruit. That explains the flocks of robins now gorging on the small fruits still hanging from my flowering crab apple and mountain ash trees. Both have persistent fruits, fruits that last into fall and winter. They will lure a horde of varied birds, including marauding bands of cedar waxwings, with their Zorro-like black masks and wings tipped with red. 

Depending on your location and the availability of berries – by “berry” I mean any small, fleshy fruit – you may entice dozens of bird species. Bluebirds, blue jays, catbirds, chickadees, finches, grosbeaks, mockingbirds, northern cardinals, orioles, phoebes, tanagers, vireos, warblers, and woodpeckers are just a few of the birds that turn to eating fruit when the mercury drops. 

I have my own fruit trees and shrubs: 3 apple, 2 pear, 2 blueberry, 2 raspberry, 3 aronia and 2 cherry. No partridge in any of them. Yet. For the birds I have a crab apple and june berry that they are welcome to. There are also many varied perennials. I had planned to add some Lonicera this year to attract hummingbirds. I have a Trumpet vine that is still a year or so away from producing, hopefully, copious trumpets. Reading this article, I've decided, at least, to also add an arrowwood viburnum. 

 

Most birds eat an array of berries, and most plants attract an array of birds. Dogwoods alone attract nearly 100 bird species, as do sumacs.

Yes, probably another dogwood or two as well. Have a small one now. 

The experts at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in New York (www.birds.cornell.edu) recommend choosing native plants, which have coevolved with native wildlife. They are the most appealing to the birds living in and migrating through your neighborhood.

Shout out to Fiddlehead Creek Nursery if anyone local stumbles in here. 

Cornell link.

Better look for some Mountain Ash, too.

You can’t add too many fruiting plants to your garden, but birds can eat too much fruit, it seems. Drunken birds are an oft-reported sight in winter when fruits may ferment. It’s common enough that in 2014 officials in Canada’s Yukon had to set up “drunk tanks” for waxwings that overindulged on the red berries of mountain ashes.

Should Have Gone to the US, Bruv

So, if this guy had been here he could have done some real damage.

The stabbing of a man in the London metro in what police described as a terrorist attack provoked a defiant riposte from a bystander that has struck a chord in Britain: "You ain't no Muslim, bruv".

The 29 year old assailant shouted "This is for Syria" as he attacked a 56 year old man and threatened others before being detained by police who used a stun gun, witnesses said.

I realize the people who were wounded likely consider it to have been serious and I am concerned for them. England has annual gun deaths in the hundreds, though. I'm sure the NRA would love to propagandize them into arming up to combat incidents like this. 

BTW, if the bruv had been in our fair land, the majority party in Congress would have been more than glad to allow him to have been armed. 

Senate Republicans voted against barring suspected terrorists, felons and the mentally ill from getting guns on Thursday afternoon, parroting National Rifle Association arguments that doing so would strip some innocent people of their constitutional rights to gun access just a day after yet another massacre on U.S. soil.

Yeeha! Land of the free and the home of the armed. 

Some Ideas for Stopping the Insanity

Just want to put a link up to a piece at CSM.

While it often is left out of political rhetoric, America has seen dramatic successes in quelling violent crime in the past century – from the elimination of lynchings to decreases in domestic violence and child abuse, from declines in cop shootings and gun homicides, which have dropped 49 percent since a peak in 1993, according to Pew. Considering progress made in reducing other forms of violence, Americans and their institutions aren’t quite as powerless as it may sometimes seem to, if not eliminate, dramatically curb what’s become a numbing kind of new normal.

At the same time, it’s clear that any broad-based attempt to address mass shootings as a societal ill will have to involve several factors. Chief among them is compromise among political partisans and a greater willingness to accept advances in science, forensics, mental health screening, and gun safety features.

TU cartoons:

Hometown Gun Pushers

Partly putting this up because I have comments on it and don't want to go searching for it.

“Stronger gun laws WILL NOT prevent incidents like France and San Bernardino, but they WILL help create more victims, those who are not able to defend themselves,” Murphy wrote on Facebook, with the capital letters added by him. “That group apparently now includes law enforcement officers.”

A lot of his kvetching is about his not being allowed to carry a gun anywhere. I actually don't have a problem with police officers carrying most anywhere. My feelings are that they are an officer of the law on or off duty. Besides, he pushed my pick up back into the road once when I slid off during an ice storm. Belated thanks, Jeff. 

“One trained person on that (California) campus could have ended that,” he said, in reference to the San Bernardino shooting.

We do have a problem with that kind of thinking, tho. 

Anyway, already left comments on the site. Blah, blah. You know the label.

Bunch o' Stats from the Atlantic. Many are refreshingly happy.

UPDATE: At the point at which I gave up on the thread, I had a guy defending the due process rights of terrorists. Because there may be a few people on the terror watch list that shouldn't be there, we should enable them to all have access to guns. 

Moron the Liberal Media

So, I'm beginning to think Mark Frost is just as loony as my bête noire, Matt Funiciello. In the December 3, 2015 Chronicle, he's on once again about how ultra-liberal the NYTimes is, but the Wash Post is really liberal, too, except not so much. He admits that the WashPo has lots of conservative opinion people.

"The Times' liberal slant shows through too often in the news coverage." What does that even mean? It's lucky for him he has the ability to pierce the veil and discern Truth from Propaganda. Later on he says, "Don't get me wrong; I read a lot of Times articles and still believe great work goes on there, but lately I feel that more so about The Post." Yeah, great work except for the liberal propaganda.

And he mentions a piece the Times did on Amazon pointing out sweatshop conditions. Then praises Jeff Bezos. Mark, do you think the WashPo would have run that piece. Jesus, don't get me ranting about evil corporations like Funiciello.

Because I Don't Want to Write About Shootings

Thanks Matt for giving me something entirely different. Haven't written about the Mattster in awhile anyway.

Matt Funiciello said Saturday he is still in the "laying the groundwork" phase of his repeat congressional campaign in the 21st District.

"We set 5,000 Facebook fans as a modest goal (before announcing)," he said at the Climate March in Glens Falls on Saturday.

Funiciello had 3,335 fans on his campaign Facebook page, as of Saturday afternoon, an increase of 32 since Nov. 9.

This piece was published at the Post Star on November 28. Some quick ciphering tells me Matt, at the rate given here, will only have about 3,442 FB fans by the end of January. In fact, at the rate he is picking up FB fans, it'll take almost 2800 days to reach 5000. 

Funiciello said he is working on a unique strategy to campaign in all 12 counties of the congressional district, and he doesn't want to formally announce until his strategy is fully thought out.

"Come late January, early February, I think I'll be able to," he said. 

Well, I hope that strategy goes better than the FB fans thing. 

Thanks Matt for giving me something besides guns to write about. But, not to leave it totally untouched here's MF's position on them. 

"If you don't feel we need guns to defend ourselves against tyranny, then you're not paying attention."

Yeah. That's not getting my vote.

UPDATE: Just checked and Matt is up to 3,345 fans. That's an average of 2 per day where he was previously averaging 1.68. That brings him down to 828 days to reach 5000 if he can maintain that pace.

UPDATE II: Since I ended up talking about the gun issue anyway, I might as well mention MF's show from Thursday 12/3/15. This is something I just need to mention. He had a show the day after the Charleston shooting in the church where he and his guests made no mention of the previous day's tragedy. Same thing yesterday, the day after the San Bernardino shooting. Does the Green Party have no position on guns or is it too embarrassing to talk about?

Instead of talking about that, he yammers on about being a vegan. Kudos for that, but patting yourself on the back for not eating meat really doesn't do any substantial good.

UPDATE III: Today is Dec 16, 2015. Matt is now up to 3,360 fans on his campaign FB page. I'm too lazy to figure when he'll hit 5,000 at this rate. I believe the sun my go supernova first. 

Can It Get Any Worse?

Gun TV. I can't believe this is actually true, but the Guardian is not the Onion.

Like established channels such as QVC and Home Shopping Network, Gun TV will feature personable experts explaining and demonstrating the channel’s wares. If viewers see a weapon at a price they like, they can just click online, or pick up the phone and dial a toll-free number.

The principal difference between Gun TV and other home shopping channels is that a Gun TV viewer’s order will not be shipped directly to their home.

Thank you once again, Andrew Cuomo, for providing a little slice of relative gun sanity in the midst of outright lunacy in this country.

Thanks Shaw for this image. And this one.

Good for the Daily News and Chris Murphy. 

“Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) posted on Twitter. “Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing — again.”

Some critics accused Murphy of religious insensitivity, but he didn’t waver in a statement later Wednesday.

“My heart aches for the people of San Bernardino,” he said. “I cannot express the profound sadness I feel each time a new community grieves and endures the same pain that brought Newtown to its knees three years ago this month.”

May as well link to Charles Pierce on this as well.