notes from past week
Dec. 20th, 2008 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eubIn the Arboretum we noticed lots of these things on posts, upright black cylinder with four perhaps-nozzles, or sensors, or cameras. On posts of varying height, some a good twelve feet tall and sturdy six-inch wood, others just on a pipe out of the ground, some right at ground level. What are they?
"Chassis" is cognate with "capsicum".
Urinal usage quiz.
Winter-squash latkes work well.
My Cheese of Many Colors, even after cutting all the *visible* infestation off, was also of many tastes -- some parts sharp Cheddar, some parts nutty, some buttery.
Chickadees can get through the squirrel barrier to the feeder. They have an easier time getting out than in: going out they hop from the feed and land sitting half-through a hole, with their center of mass over a wire; then they fall forwards and fly from there. Going in they land on the outside of the cage, dangling from a wire, and then the difficult step is kipping themselves up over their feet, from which point they can hop onto the feeder. Why don't they land on the outside body-over-feet? They can do it from flight onto a twig. Well, here they have to get their head and forebody through the hole, which is a very tight target to hit (a couple of mm radius, given that when they try to fit through a slightly-squashed hole they barely do), and maybe they can't hit that at speed, or flinch from the onrushing cage.
"Chassis" is cognate with "capsicum".
Urinal usage quiz.
Winter-squash latkes work well.
My Cheese of Many Colors, even after cutting all the *visible* infestation off, was also of many tastes -- some parts sharp Cheddar, some parts nutty, some buttery.
Chickadees can get through the squirrel barrier to the feeder. They have an easier time getting out than in: going out they hop from the feed and land sitting half-through a hole, with their center of mass over a wire; then they fall forwards and fly from there. Going in they land on the outside of the cage, dangling from a wire, and then the difficult step is kipping themselves up over their feet, from which point they can hop onto the feeder. Why don't they land on the outside body-over-feet? They can do it from flight onto a twig. Well, here they have to get their head and forebody through the hole, which is a very tight target to hit (a couple of mm radius, given that when they try to fit through a slightly-squashed hole they barely do), and maybe they can't hit that at speed, or flinch from the onrushing cage.
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no subject
Date: 2008-12-21 06:19 am (UTC)My ex-gf had a finch that *enjoyed* doing a Millenium Falcon impression: diving towards a closing door and going through sideways just as the door closed. It would wait for that moment. It got old and slow and died that way, but in the meantime it was spectacularly good at hitting a moving, closing, very narrow target at full flight speed. Its reflexes were markedly faster than a human's. It would fly up, when I was sitting there reading a book, land on my cheekbone, peck me in the eyeball to get a little bit of water from the corner of my eye where tears build up, and fly off again, all before I could even blink reflexively.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-21 11:22 pm (UTC)That's, uh, very impressive if perhaps annoying to the water-source.
Konrad Lorenz had a magpie(?) who was similarly quick, would sit on his shoulder I think, and if he opened his mouth for an instant it would succeed in feeding him a worm. (If he was careful not to open his mouth, it would decide his earhole would do as well.)
no subject
Date: 2008-12-21 11:24 pm (UTC)