There is a bush just outside my bedroom window at the river. There is a sparrow that sits in the bush and starts singing before daybreak all spring. And sings and sings and sings. I swear every spring that I'm going to take my BB gun down there and shoot him.
A few years ago, when we were in North Carolina for the summer, we had an "unmated male mockingbird" who would sing from midnight to 4 a.m. every damn night right outside our bedroom window. Nothing would distract him from his nightly wooing. I would have hired him a hooker or got him a membership to MockingbirdMatch.Com if it would have just got him to stop that infernal racket. Finally he got lucky, I guess, and found his fair ladybird and we were able to sleep.
Strange. I've never heard a mockingbird singing at night here, yet. But I've seen videos of them doing it. A Carolina wren got stuck inside the screened front porch a month or so ago. Friday there were two of them inside. I think they came in through a small hole the squirrels chewed in the screen. They don't seem to ever be able to remember how they got in. You can't chase them out. They head for the corners. Just have to leave the door open and go away. The Carolina wrens usually try to nest in the mailbox. The mailman says they do that all the time. They are the loudest ones here.
The only time I've heard a mockingbird (to my knowledge) was when I was outside at 2AM last year(?) to watch a lunar eclipse. It was the only sound in the eerie silence of the eclipse. I had no idea what species of bird it was, so I pulled out my cell phone and recorded it. A friend later told me what it was. Unlike the whippoorwill, it had the good graces to stay out in the woods and not roost by my house.
DOGE cancelled him. Actually the mainstream media probably thinks no one is interested. But I know hubby asked me if he'd seen his shadow.
We had a woodpecker who would peck on our metal roof vent during mating season. The sound would reverberate through the house like someone was using a jackhammer. Woodpeckers are territorial and use pecking both to attract the ladies (hey, ladies, I have a BIG beak) and to warn off encroaching males (hey, guys, I have a BIG beak). He had realized that "heavy metal" music beat the hell out of "wooden acoustic" during the performance season.
Not really a rant; just another "sigh." I was out running errands and got hungry so I drove through a McDonalds to get a small cheeseburger and a small coke. I told the girl "small cheeseburger" and she said, "One small cheeseburger. Do you want cheese on that?" I said, "well... it is a CHEESEburger. So yeah."
They are sending all the DEI hires to work at McDonalds now that President Trump is not working there anymore, and they needed more help.
It's troubling how dumb kids are now; schools are really failing our children. Luckily I had the correct change.
For me recognizing Groundhog Day died when "Punxsutawney Phil" died. I still struggle trying to remember his name.
The groundhog saw his shadow, so we'll have 6 more weeks of winter. But I just read an article where NOAA looked at the accuracy of some of the predicting groundhogs there have been around the nation over the years (there's a lot of them.) Punxsutawney Phil came in 17th, with an accuracy rate of 35%. [Insert sarcastic comment regarding envious human weathermen here.] Regarding "Phil" dying...the folks in Pennsylvania have purportedly been pulling the same groundhog out of their "hat" since 1886. There are no records of how many Phils there have been because the Punxsutawney-ites claim there has always been just one Phil, kept alive by The Elixir of Life. Since non-magical groundhogs live 8-9 years in captivity, and assuming a given Phil would not start working until he was one year old, there have been about 19 less-accurate-than-a-coin-toss Phils over the years...unless you drink The Elixir of Life.