Throwing Rocks...Again

Brain cancer is..

...getting ready to throw more rocks.

We hope it's been long enough since we've posted about birds that a bird posting is acceptable today.

The park was just aflutter this morning.  Geoff, you know we love you, but it was not our love that kept us from posting about coots.  There have been no coots...

...until now!  Clearly this is a Coot Scout, the advance party.

Most importantly, we saw this bird for the first time all season:

It's a pin-tailed whydah, native to sub Saharan Africa. If you have never met a pin-tailed whydah, click here, and you'll see that they are striking little birds.

But that's not what's important.  What's important is that pin-tailed whydahs draw serious photographers with bulky, expensive cameras.

Readers from October 2, 2016 (click here) might recall that my husband is a hoodlum. Back then he envisioned a whole scene with the two of us running screaming toward the photographers, throwing rocks at them.  In Darrell's vision, the terrified photographers dropped their cameras and scrambled away.

Ah.  Some things never get old. 

Maybe this time we'll actually hit one.  (Just kidding.)

Science Side Note

We just learned that pin-tailed whydahs are problematic for California's native birds. (Click here for the article if you like.)  Whydahs are "brood parasites," which means they lay their eggs in the nests of native birds, and then go clubbing (probably).  The foster parents raise the little whydahs at the expense of their own babies.  Fortunately, the whydahs aren't great flyers, so their spread is likely to be contained.  Maybe we should throw rocks at the whydahs instead of at the photographers.  Kidding!!