Month: May 2021

Saturday: Hili dialogue

May 29, 2021 • 6:30 am

It’s Cat Sabbath again: Saturday, May 29, 2021, and it’s National Biscuit Day, a celebration of one of America’s finest indigenous foodstuffs (I’m talking about Southern fluffy biscuits here, not the British equivalent of our “cookies”). It’s also International Coq au Vin Day, International Jazz Day, Paper Clip Day (they were patented in 1867 but not widely used until the 1890s), and World Digestive Health Day.  It’s Oak Apple Day (or “Restoration Day”) in England, celebrating (?) the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660.

News of the Day:

The damn Republicans used the veto option to block an independent investigation of the Capitol invasion on January 6. What do they have to lose? It’s obvious: an objective evaluation of the President’s role in the issue, and of the GOP’s role in supporting Trump’s claim that the election was stolen. The Senate needed 60 votes to overcome the filibuster rule and launch the investigation, but only 6 Republicans defected from their party, making the vote on the investigation 54-35 (11 Senators, clearly including some Democrats, did not vote). From the NYT:

The six Republican senators who voted to advance debate on the commission included Ms. Collins, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Ms. Murkowski, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska. All but Mr. Portman had voted at an impeachment trial in February to find Mr. Trump guilty of inciting the insurrection.

A seventh Republican, Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, missed the vote — one of 11 senators to do so — but said he would have voted to advance debate on the commission.

An unworkable Middle East peace proposal is offered by former Israeli Vice Prime Minister (and past peace negotiator) Tzipi Livni in her NYT op-ed, “There is a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” I wish! Livni at least says that we’ll get nowhere by trying to deal with Hamas, but good luck with that! Her solution is anodyne:

The cease-fire in Gaza provides a window of time we must use to change the long-term reality. An essential decision is to return to the vision of two states for two people, to strengthen the pragmatic forces and weaken the extremists and end the terror.

Well, yes, two states are the goal, but who gets East Jerusalem, or Area C of the West Bank? If we want any reasonable chance of peace, Hamas, whose goal is to eliminate Israel, cannot be part of the process. Well, that ain’t gonna happen. And that means that there’s no viable two-state solution, a conclusion that, when I came to it yesterday, broke my heart.

This is unbelievable but, if you believe the Guardian, true. I’ll give the report verbatim (h/t Jez):

In what can only be described as a comedy of errors, an Argentinian TV news channel delivered a stunning, if slightly flawed, scoop on Thursday night when it reported that William Shakespeare, “one of the most important writers in the English language” had died five months after receiving the Covid vaccine.

The gaffe of, well, Shakespearean proportions happened after Noelia Novillo, a newsreader on Canal 26, mixed up the Bard with William “Bill” Shakespeare, an 81-year-old Warwickshire man who became the second person in the world to get the Pfizer vaccine.

Here’s the messed-up t.v. report. No wonder he died: he was 400 years old!

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 593,583, an increase of 486 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,538,764, an increase of about 12,400 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 29 include:

  • 1660 – English Restoration: Charles II is restored to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland.
  • 1886 – The pharmacist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in The Atlanta Journal.

Here’s that ad:

The kola nut, from an evergreen tree (below) is no longer used in making any cola beverages:

(From Wikiipedia) Kola nut – pod with half shell removed to reveal prismatic seeds inside their white testa), and fresh seeds (whole without testa on the left and, on the right, split into cotyledons).
  • 1913 – Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score The Rite of Spring receives its premiere performance in Paris, France, provoking a riot.
  • 1919 – Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington and Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin
  • 1931 – Michele Schirru, a citizen of the United States, is executed by Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini.

A tweet showing Schiurru, looking as if he was beat up during interrogation:

Matthew sent this tweet appropriate to the day. Translated, it says, “79 years ago, on May 29, 1942, the 8th German ordinance required Jews in the occupied zone to wear the yellow star. Compulsory from June 7, the stars were distributed to the police station by the French police against a textile point on the ration card.”

The men!

  • 1985 – Amputee Steve Fonyo completes cross-Canada marathon at Victoria, British Columbia, after 14 months.
  • 1990 – The Russian parliament elects Boris Yeltsin as president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
  • 1999 – Space Shuttle Discovery completes the first docking with the International Space Station.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1736 – Patrick Henry, American lawyer and politician, 1st Governor of Virginia (d. 1799)
  • 1874 – G. K. Chesterton, English essayist, poet, and playwright (d. 1936)

Here’s Chesterton, looking pretty much like I thought he would:

  • 1903 – Bob Hope, English-American actor, singer, and producer (d. 2003)
  • 1914 – Tenzing Norgay, Nepalese-Indian mountaineer (d. 1986)
  • 1917 – John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States (d. 1963)
  • 1932 – Paul R. Ehrlich, American biologist and author

Ehrlich is 89 today. Remember his prediction in The Population Bomb (1968) that overpopulation would lead to mass famine in the 1970s?

  • 1955 – John Hinckley Jr., American attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan

Those who checked out on May 29 include:

  • 1829 – Humphry Davy, English-Swiss chemist and academic (b. 1778)
  • 1911 – W. S. Gilbert, English playwright and poet (b. 1836)

Gilbert is on the left, Sullivan on the right:

Fanny Brice, the original Funny Girl,  in the 1910s or 1920s. She was Jewish and her real name was Fania Borach:

Fanny Brice – c. 1915-1925 – Ziegfeld by Alfred Cheney Johnston. Restored by Nick and jane for Dr. Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans Website: http://www.doctormacro.com/index.html. Enjoy!
  • 1972 – Moe Berg, American baseball player, coach, and spy (b. 1902)

Berg, a mediocre catcher at best, but one of the rare Jewish baseball players, was nevertheless a fascinating man. From Wikipedia:

Although he played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, Berg was never more than an average player and was better known for being “the brainiest guy in baseball.” Casey Stengel once described Berg as “the strangest man ever to play baseball”.

A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, Berg spoke several languages and regularly read ten newspapers a day. His reputation as an intellectual was fueled by his successful appearances as a contestant on the radio quiz show Information Please, in which he answered questions about the etymology of words and names from Greek and Latin, historical events in Europe and the Far East, and ongoing international conferences.

As a spy working for the government of the United States, Berg traveled to Yugoslavia to gather intelligence on resistance groups which the U.S. government was considering supporting. He was sent on a mission to Italy, where he interviewed various physicists concerning the Nazi German nuclear program. After the war, Berg was occasionally employed by the OSS’s successor, the Central Intelligence Agency. By the mid-1950s, he was unemployed. During the last two decades of his life, he had no work and lived with various siblings.

  • 1979 – Mary Pickford, Canadian-American actress, producer, and screenwriter, co-founder of United Artists (b. 1892)
  • 1998 – Barry Goldwater, American general, activist, and politician (b. 1909)
  • 2010 – Dennis Hopper, American actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1936)
  • 2012 – Doc Watson, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1923)

Here’s Doc singing one of his famous songs, “Tennessee Stud”:

  • 2017 – Manuel Noriega, Panamanian general and politician, Military Leader of Panama (b. 1934)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili gets asked if she wants a cat sausage. The answer is obvious.

Paulina: Do you want a sausage?
Hili: Mhm.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Paulina: Chcesz taką kiełbaskę?
Hili: Mhm.

From Bruce, a mockery of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “gold star” comparison of masking with the Holocaust:

 

This meme came from Divy, who found it on Facebook.

The “two ark solution,” from Diana MacPherson. But why where only dinosaurian reptiles on the doomed ark? Why were the turtles and gators with the mammals?

From Abigail Shrier, showing truckling to the anti-Israel Palestinians. You can’t just send out a letter condemning anti-Semitism any more (h/t: Orli):

Mushbrain Marjorie Taylor Greene puts on her “really bad Mexican accent” in an accusation that the Democratic party is in collusion with the Mexican drug cartels. It’s amazing that she was elected, but then again, this is America.

Tweets from Matthew. The first is an unconscionable waste of government money:

The gangland areas of Chicago in the old days. Click on this link to see an enlarged map.

The cat’s knee, with extra bones for lagniappe!

Cryptic octopus reveals itself:

Colorized century-old photos from Egypt:

Photos from my past

May 28, 2021 • 3:00 pm

It is the weekend, I’m busy with ducks, and all I can do is put up some photos from my past. Click photos to enlarge them.

Wine tasting with my best friend (now deceased), Kenny King. Denton, Englnad, August, 2008.  And what a lineup of wines: my favorite Rhones, Côte Rôties, all from 2001. Yes, they were drunk a bit young, but they were fantastic.

A tasting of Sauternes the next night.

Jane, Kenny’s wife, put together a great spread to go with the wine:

Sept., 2008, a seafood feast at the Littorina snail meetings (don’t ask how I got there!) in Galicia. The Spanish really know how to have a meeting. These are just the appetizers.

November, 2008; back to Denton for a tasting of white Burgundies. Kenny and Jane were fantastic hosts, and he always pulled out his best bottles for me. He taught me to love wine, and I miss him.

I visited Matthew Cobb in Manchester right after this; here he is looking at a cat I presume to be Ollie, who laid open my nose that night with a deft swipe of his paw.

My last Ph.D. student, the indefatigable Daniel Matute, now a professor at UNC Chapel Hill. January, 2009. He likes to work hard and play hard.

Dick Lewontin, my Ph.D. advisor, lecturing in front of the coelacanth at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. It was “DickFest”, in which 200 of his students, postdocs, and associates showed up to celebrate his unwillingness to retire.  His talk was about not putting your name on your students’ papers. And he didn’t miss the metaphor of lecturing in front of a living fossil (preserved in this case in formalin).

A picnic overlooking Panamint Valley on my way to Death Valley for fly work, September, 2009. Over the mountains lies Death Valley—and flies!

Me at Artist’s Drive, Death Valley. And yes, if you put out banana baits, you’ll attract flies at a vegetation-free place like this:

At this viewpoint, the entire length of Death Valley is laid out before you. Note the white salt pans; there are also flies in those godforsaken spots.

And on to the mist forest, Guatemala, October, 2009. I saw a quetzal in this forest. More to come. . . .

 

Riddle me this: a grammar mystery

May 28, 2021 • 2:45 pm

You may know that Americans say “a hypothesis” but Brits say “an hypothesis”. And, as far as I know, both forms of the article are correct.

But why does nobody say, “I gave her an hyacinth”, when referring to the flower? After all, both words begin with the “hi” sound with a long “i”. And both begin with the spelling “hy”. It’s always, I gave her a hyacinth.”

Likewise, no OB GYN says, “Here is an hymen,” when referring to the female tissue.  Yet it’s the same “hi” sound with a long “i.” I’m sure there are similar words that are preceded with the article “a”.

I’m also sure there are rule for why things are like this, and certain that some readers will know those rules, but I can’t imagine how they make sense.

One thing’s for sure: I’ll never be able to bring myself to say “an hypothesis.”

Branch of Rutgers Law School rescinds unconstitutional requirement mandating “viewpoint discrimination” with respect to CRT

May 28, 2021 • 9:15 am

The craziness that is engulfing American universities with respect to Critical Race Theory is exemplified by a recent ruing of the Student Bar Association of Rutgers Law School-Camden.  Fortunately, some timely intervention from the estimable Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), recounted in its article below (click on screenshot), forced the students to rescind their rule.

Click on the screenshot to read:

As FIRE reports in an earlier post:

The SBA of Rutgers’ Camden campus added a section to its constitution entitled “Student Organizations Fostering Diversity and Inclusion” on Nov. 20 [2020], mandating that any group that wishes to receive more than $250 in university funding must “plan at least one (1) event that addresses their chosen topics through the lens of Critical Race Theory, diversity and inclusion, or cultural competency.” Last fall, 19 of 22 student groups requested more than $250.

This puts student clubs in a bind: Should they request the funding they need, even though it would require planning an event — such as hosting a speaker, outing, or mixer — that may be at odds with or unrelated to the group’s own views?

As FIRE noted, Rutgers is a state university, and is therefore forbidden by Supreme Court rulings from “viewpoint discrimination,” which includes differential distribution of funds to student groups based on their politics or views. The requirement that student groups—many of which surely aren’t involved with CRT—hold specific events promoting CRT is therefore unconstitutional. This was pointed out to the President of Rutgers in a 5-page letter from FIRE on May 17.

After the letter arrived, the Student Bar Association (SBA) met with the Rutgers administration and rescinded their stipulation. The SBA Presidents, however, responded petulantly, saying in a May 23 email to the student body that they did this because of the issues involved and the time deadline, but that they were not giving up. This section of the letter implies that they’ll continue their unconstitutional—and ultimately futile—fight. Click to enlarge:

Of course “the other guys who say so” include the Supreme Court! It’s almost humorous that they think they can pass the amendment again or something like it. That would also be unconstitutional.

It’s manifestly obvious that no public school can force its constituent groups to present seminars pushing a particular ideology. It’s as if a conservative SBA voted that every funded student group would have to present a seminar favoring unrestricted access to guns by Americans, or blanket opposition to immigration. Be the issue on the liberal or conservative side, groups cannot be forced to adhere to or present a favored ideology.

The fact that the Rutgers SBA could even try something like this tells us about the warped thinking that has infected America in the last year. There’s nothing wrong with fighting racism, but there’s everything wrong with fighting it by using unconstitutional means forcing others who may disagree with your methods to nevertheless mouth your approved ideology. It also tells us that a Student Bar Association that blatantly violates a Supreme Court decision needs to bone up on its law.

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 28, 2021 • 8:00 am

I am running dangerously low on photos, and worry that I will have to cancel this feature or make it more sporadic. If you have good wildlife (or “street”) photos, please send them in pronto. If you’re an American, you have a long weekend coming up to peruse your photos.

All photographers’ words and captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

We have a potpourri today, the first coming from reader Jonathan Storm.

I found this dead grasshopper on an eastern hemlock in the Blue Ridge Mountains of South Carolina. It was killed by an entomopathogenic fungus last summer or fall. These fungi are parasites that infect and eventually kill their insect host. Last summer, a fungal spore landed on this grasshopper and worked its way into the body cavity. The fungus then grew and spread until it killed the grasshopper. Several fruiting bodies of the fungus later grew out of the grasshopper and released their spores into the breeze. Some of these spores will then infect a new insect host and the cycle continues.

A gorgeous Cyclops moth (Antheraea polyphemus) from reader Smith Powell, photographed by Jennifer Lawson:

My granddaughter, Jennifer Lawson, photographed this moth on 02 May 2021 in the family yard in Arlington, Texas. I think this is the prettiest photograph that I have seen of Antheraea polyphemus.

As I’m not a biologist, I had no idea what it was, but I was quickly able to identify it as the Cyclops moth.  Indeed, several websites so identify it and note that it is named for the race of one-eyed Cyclops famously described in the Odyssey. The sites even say that Cyclops means one-eyed.

But, it doesn’t!  Besides, this moth has two eyespots.  Cyclops means “round eye”.  And this photograph shows the eyespots as very round or spherical.

Jennifer’s father, Clint, told me, “ We used to tell our baseball umpires ‘if you had another eye you’d be a cyclops ‘“.

And a pair of Great Tits from reader Pyers:

A Great Tit (Parus major) saying hello from the nest box in my garden:

And have a female Great Tit. the even more cute partner of the one I sent you the other day 🙂

Friday: Hili dialogue

May 28, 2021 • 6:30 am

The Memorial Day weekend officially kicks off today, May 28, 2021, with Monday being an official holiday in the U.S. And hooray—it’s National Brisket Day, which must be celebrated in Texas with a BBQ brisket. It’s also International Hamburger Day, Amnesty International Day (see below), Menstrual Hygiene Day, and National Heat Awareness Day. 

Wine of the Day (below): This puppy probably cost me a bit south of $20, and Vacqueyras is not a wine I often drink outside of France, where it’s relatively inexpensive in restaurants. (I don’t buy expensive wine in French restaurants.) As it was highly rated by my erstwhile go-to critic, Robert Parker and others, I was eager to try it, and had it with a chicken breast, steamed rice, and fresh tomatoes drizzled with olive oil.

It’ a blend of 80% Grenache with 20% Syrah, made from vines 80-100 years old, with the juice aged for two years in concrete tanks. The wine smelled strongly of cherries, and, as the reviews note, is redolent of ripe fruit. It’s not a particularly gutsy wine, so I wouldn’t have it with steak, but it’s a great accompaniment for anything that calls for a racy and elegant red. Verdict: worth the money.

News of the Day:

The New York Times reports that, slowly but surely, the Taliban is taking over Afghanistan as U.S. troops pull out. Rural outposts of the Afghan military are surrendering, and provincial capitals are surrounded. Afghanistan will not be a good place to live for a very long time.

The Detroit Metro Times reports the rectification of a very shoddy conviction: Gilbert Lee Poole, Jr.  spent 32 years in prison for murder based on a supposed match between tooth marks on the victim and Poole’s teeth. It turns out that tooth-mark matching is pretty lousy at identifying criminals. It was DNA evidence from blood at the crime scne that exonerated Poole. How do you give a man 32 years of his life back?  (h/t: Ken)

Yesterday’s HuffPost Personal section had an especially interesting article about stuff you really need to know. Click on the screenshot. (Note: TMI!)

Wanna buy a whole town? Nipton, California, population 25 and 80 acres in size, is for sale for $2,750,000. I don’t know who would want that ragtag collection of trailer parks, general stores and The Hotel California, all in the middle of nowhere, sitting right on the border with Nevada. What would you do with such a town? However, the Wikipedia entry for Nipton is interesting.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 592,938, an increase of about 496 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,526,317, an increase of about 12,700 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on May 28 includes:

  • 585 BC – A solar eclipse occurs, as predicted by the Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling Cyaxares in the Battle of Halys, leading to a truce. This is one of the cardinal dates from which other dates can be calculated.

This story may be true, but nobody has any idea how Thales predicted the eclipse.

  • 1533 – The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declares the marriage of King Henry VIII of England to Anne Boleyn valid.
  • 1588 – The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, heading for the English Channel. (It will take until May 30 for all ships to leave port.)
  • 1830 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act which denies Native Americans their land rights and forcibly relocates them.
  • 1892 – In San Francisco, John Muir organizes the Sierra Club.

Here’s Muir with Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. The Scottish conservationist lived in Yosemite Valley for two years.

They were identical quintuplets, and two of them are still alive. Here’s a video from when they were young:

  • 1936 – Alan Turing submits On Computable Numbers for publication.
  • 1937 – Volkswagen, the German automobile manufacturer is founded.

A prototype from 1935. Comissioned by Adolf Hitler, this was the best-selling car in history:

  • 1948 – Daniel François Malan is elected as Prime Minister of South Africa. He later goes on to implement Apartheid.
  • 1987 – A West German pilot, Mathias Rust, who was 18 years old, evades Soviet Union air defences and lands a private plane in the Red Square in Moscow, Russia.

Here’s a tweet about that with video:

Here’s the restored version, and though I lived in Milan for over a month, the work was under restoration when I visited:

  • 2002 – The last steel girder is removed from the original World Trade Center site. Cleanup duties officially end with closing ceremonies at Ground Zero in Manhattan, New York City.

Notables born on this day include:

Agassiz, who worked at Harvard (ironically, its Museum of Comparative Zoology is named after him) was a staunch opponent of Darwin, a creationist who never gave in. Here’s a portrait:

  • 1888 – Jim Thorpe, American decathlete, football player, and coach (d. 1953)
  • 1908 – Ian Fleming, English journalist and author, created James Bond (d. 1964)

Here’s a short video interview and biography of Ian Fleming, who explains the origin of the name “James Bond”:

  • 1912 – Patrick White, Australian novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1990)
  • 1944 – Rudy Giuliani, American lawyer and politician, 107th mayor of New York City
  • 1945 – Patch Adams, American physician and author, founded the Gesundheit! Institute
  • 1947 – Leland Sklar, American singer-songwriter and bass player
  • 1968 – Kylie Minogue, Australian singer-songwriter, producer, and actress
  • 1985 – Carey Mulligan, English actress and singer

I first saw Carey Mulligan in the 2009 movie “An Education,” in which she was stunning. She went on to star in one of my favorite recent movies (2010), “Never Let Me Go,” based on the eponymous Ishiguro movie. I love both the movie and the book, though others don’t appreciate them as much as I do.  Here’s the trailer for the movie.

Those who ascended to their cloud on May 28 include:

  • 1843 – Noah Webster, American lexicographer (b. 1758)
  • 1849 – Anne Brontë, English novelist and poet (b. 1820)
  • 1971 – Audie Murphy, American soldier and actor, Medal of Honor recipient (b. 1925)
  • 2014 – Maya Angelou, American memoirist and poet (b. 1928)

Angelou getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama in 2011:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Malgorzata explains, “One often hears that the world is developing/moving forward. But Hili is happy for the moment so she decided to stand still where she is.”

Hili: The world goes forward.
Paulina: And you?
Hili: I’m standing still for the moment.
(Photo: Paulina R.)
In Polish:
Hili: Świat idzie do przodu.
Paulina: A ty?
Hili: A ja chwilowo stoję.
(Zdjęcie: Paulina R.)

From Bruce. I cannot guarantee this is a real screenshot of a t.v. report:

A meme from Nicole. I believe the emblem has something to do with the cars lighting.

From Fat Cat Art:

I get included in an anti-Semitic list of Jewish atheists trying to cash in on the Godless Book Market!

From Titania: The Spanish postal service goes woke, but in a curious way: making the darkest stamp the least valuable. Titania has a wry take on this, but there’s a real fracas going on in Spain about it, as described in The Washington Post.

From Simon: Rechavi’s usual academic take on nonacademic matters, in this case parkour. Simon asks, “I wonder how much blood we are not seeing?

Tweets from Matthew. First, jumping spiders become Honorary Cats:

An earlier livestream of a cat giving birth; you can rewind the link to see the action:

Matthew doesn’t understand this, but then I don’t understand cricket. What crappy defense: the first baseman should have had his foot on the  bag for the throw from third, and then someone should have covered first base when the first baseman tried to chase down the runner.

Oy! They’re turning Down House (Darwin’s home), once a fantastic and understated place to visit, into a theme park. NO!

Vulgar slang from the 18th century. I like “dog booby”.

Thursday ducks

May 27, 2021 • 12:45 pm

Various factors, including overwork, malaise, and my forgetfulness about bringing my camera to the pond; these have all stemmed the flow of duck pictures, but I’ll try to bring you up to date today. Things are going tolerably well at the pond but we have had some drama and difficulties.

Here is Dorothy with her nine babies. Remember, she had ten, but for reasons unknown to us she expelled one from her brood. That lone duck, known as “The Peepster” for his erstwhile peeping for mom, is shunned by all other ducks. But we take special care of him and he is growing well: in fact, he’s more advanced in development than are the other ducklings. You can see below that Dorothy’s kids are starting to grow their adult plumage, with feathers on their tails and on their tiny, stubby wings.

Because of one duckling murder, two unknown deaths, and two ducklings I got rehabbed at a wildlife sanctuary, Honey is down to four ducklings. Here’s her remaining brood. She tries to be with them, but a nasty drake flies in several times a day and chases her away.

The result is that her babies are without a mother most of the time. The upside is that they know each other and remain together, sleeping in a pile and eating together. I am sure that they, like the Peepster, will grow well and fledge. They are doing well, but feeding two broods and a singleton is not an easy task!  Here’s a rare moment of Honey with her brood.

And here’s the sad, lonely Peepster. You can see that he’s entered the scruffy teenage phase, losing his down and getting feathers. But he’s also in excellent shape, though I do with I could find him a friend.

Another view of the Peepster by the pond ruler. At this point the pond is 2.2 feet deep (for some reason they measure feet in tenths rather than inches).

The Peepster wants to hang with Honey’s four, but they don’t like him much, so I often find him near them. They chase him away. Trying to feed them all when they’re like this is, well, trying. But I always succeed!

Here’s a video of Dorothy’s babies taken two days after they jumped down to the pond. You can see how eager they are to be with her! And see how fast they can swim! All videos by Jean Greenberg.

 

And a video of Dorothy’s brood from three days ago, foraging on the bank. How they’ve grown. I like the bit where one duckling flaps its tiny wings:

Dorothy on “duck plaza” napping with her brood:

Rarely, both hens would tolerate each other and their respective broods on the bank. Dorothy’s brood is in the foreground. The fence is essential to keep people from disturbing the babies, who are easily spooked.

Here are Honey’s brood practicing their diving skills by the duck ramp, which was put up to allow the ducks to march out of the pond. They do use it, but sometimes, as in this video, it’s occluded by basking turtles.

Part of my pleasure as Duckmeister is to lecture to and answer questions about Botany Pond and its ducks from children of Chicago’s famous Laboratory School, which teaches kids from nursery school through 12th grade. (The school, affiliated with the University of Chicago, was founded by John Dewey in 1896.)

We usually get younger classes visiting the pond. Here I am yesterday talking to a class of 5- and 6-year olds. Notice how well behaved they are!  They love to watch and draw the ducks, and I love to tell them about the ducks.

The usual procedure is a short talk about ducks by me, followed by the children helping me feed them (sometimes feeding is difficult when the ducks are skittish). Then there’s my favorite part, the Q&A session. These are smart and inquisitive children, and they have many questions, including some that I can’t answer. One I had yesterday was: “How do they know how to fly?” My response, which may have been too subtle, was to ask the student, “How did you know how to walk?” But really, it’s the same principle. Kids don’t know they’ll be able to walk, and ducks don’t know they’ll be able to fly. It’s inborn: the result of evolved genes with perhaps a bit of learning. One day, a child gets up and takes a few steps, and a duckling flaps their wings and flies a few feet.

One young man showing excellent form feeding Dorothy’s brood. I told the kids to throw hard, as the kids are small and the ducks are some distance away. This is optimal form for duck-feeding.

The ducks are now at the age when they celebrate the end of their afternoon meals by zooming around the pond and engaging in all sorts of aquatic antics: diving, racing, and, for Dorothy, flying a bit. Here are two videos showing those behaviors. Halfway through the video you can see Honey standing on the bank overlooking her brood of four.

More:

Thanks to the Lab School for giving me permission to post the two photos of the Duck Lecture.