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C C Writer's avatar

"Males actively fight as well as posturing and hooting at one another."

I see what you did there!

Regarding the feral American ones, they may be kind of pretty, but they make a mess when they hang around residential buildings. Their guano is considered a health hazard and can corrode surfaces. But the past few years we have had much less of a problem on the back stairs and patio. Don't know how that happened, but I'm not complaining.

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Jay Janney's avatar

I am mostly packed for my trip. Katie was stressed, I planned to pack tomorrow morning (flight leaves at 10:49am). Yesterday I washed everything I planned to take with me, I even bought new socks. We folded everything and.....I pack light. I didn't fill the suitcase. So I downsized to the next smaller one and...have plenty of room. But it is packed. Tomorrow morning I'll load the computer and electronics gear in the carry-on, and be ready to go.

I'm leaving the big suitcase for Katie. I'm gonna take a small one for carry-on, as I I'll be staying overnight in Florence for three nights. I'll take something small on the train.

I'm fortunate: there's a luggage storage facility 50 meters from my apartment. I land around 9am, and should be through baggage claim and customs prior to 11am, downtown about noon. I can check in at 4pm, so I'll drop my stuff, get my keys, and go walking about for four hours. I'll try to stay up until 10pm if I can, then I'll try to sleep through the night.

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Jay Janney's avatar

Here's a pretty good video on pigeons in flight and how they avoid larger predators.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj6-LG5VpGk

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LucyTrice's avatar

I didn't know that pigeons were imported from Europe. This made me curious about passenger pigeons.

According to Wikipedia they are native to North America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon

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Phil H's avatar

Passenger pigeons were endemic to North America, but they are not in the genus Columba. their scientific name is Ectopistes migratorius.

Mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) are not in the genus Columba either, but they are the most common pigeon like bird in this area.

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Kurt's avatar

There was a vast...maybe the largest... passenger pigeon population on the sand dunes near Muskegon, MI. It was even named after pigeons.

Via AI...."Pigeon Hill was named for the thousands of passenger pigeons that routinely used the dune as a resting stop during their migratory journeys in the late 1800s. The excavation of this dune, mined for its sand, played a role in the demise of these birds by contributing to the destruction of their habitat. However, it's important to note that the primary causes of the Passenger Pigeon's extinction were overhunting and widespread deforestation across North America, which eliminated their vast forest habitats.

The passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, was once the most abundant bird species in North America, with flocks numbering in the billions. These massive flocks darkened the sky and relied on large, dense forests for nesting and foraging. Their colonial lifestyle made them highly vulnerable to hunting, and the loss of their crucial forest habitat, including areas like Pigeon Hill, led to their swift extinction. The last known passenger pigeon, named Martha, died in captivity in 1914."

Large, dense forests. That was Michigan. Actually, it was everywhere East of the Mississippi River.

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LucyTrice's avatar

"When I can shoot my rifle clear

At pigeons in the sky

I bid farewell to pork and beans

And live on pigeon pie"

A song sung by Caddie Woodlawn's nearsighted uncle in the book Caddie Woodlawn, about frontier life contemporanious with The Little House books.

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BikerChick's avatar

In case you’re wondering, mourning doves are related to pigeons. They are in the same family. Speaking of birds, the loon pair that returns to the section of our lake every year had two chicks with them when I finally located them while kayaking last week. They are a very successful breeding pair. I did notice a lone loon in their territory. I saw the three adults gather one day and there was a lot of weird head bobbing going on. The other night I heard lots of yodeling so I suspect he’s trying to evict the male to establish territory in that section of the lake. Only male loons are able to yodel. It’s quite a contrast to their mournful wail we associate with loons. https://youtu.be/0WuaqcJWD_M?si=uKlq5ZhBrdRl0wp7

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Kurt's avatar

I love loons, there's nothing else like it on a summer evening.

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Rev Julia's avatar

Envious! I love loons, haven’t seen them in many years.

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Phil H's avatar

Good morning. Sunny and 74 with a high in the upper 80s. Yesterday afternoon thundershowers gave us a break from the high heat.

The mothership is covering the Democratic primary win (awaiting confirmation of ranked choice vote tallying) of the socialist Mahmoud Mamdami, who campaigned on giving out Free Stuff, beating out disgraced former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo. Is it me, or are the Democrats in NYC scraping the bottom of the barrel? In contrast, the FP is covering the current San Francisco mayor who wants to roll back the progressivism in SF.

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Kurt's avatar

I find it fascinating that he's advocating for all the stuff the Chinese Commies have been surgically excising from their society.

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Jay Janney's avatar

reruns are often very popular....Although we know how the show ends...

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Kurt's avatar

Hah! So true. Reruns. So popular, some shows never stop and are brought back in several different iterations and sequels.

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Phil H's avatar

The CCP/CPC (whichever acronym you prefer) has gradually been hollowing out everything from Marxism other than simply attaining and keeping power.

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Kurt's avatar

It's not so simple. The fundamental requirement of a political party is attaining and keeping power. How a political party does that while continuing to expand the economy, minimize dissent....dissent that is largely financed by our own National Endowment for Democracy, a slush fund for covert activities if there ever was one..., and provide services throughout China is complicated beyond the casual understanding of the punditocracy who read what every other clown is writing and repeats it. In Western media, China is never talked about as a nation, but only as an illegitimate political party....one that has credible >90% support of its citizenry.

If one studies China and its history, it's not hard to see how the current political system grew naturally out of Chinese society and the manner that China has always governed itself.

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Phil H's avatar

Perhaps China's history sheds light on the current CPC regime (not just a party, but a governing regime that not only minimizes but suppresses dissent). But the existence of the democratic government of the Republic of China on Taiwan, and the one-party semi-authoritarian government of the Chinese majority nation of Singapore, demonstrates that there was nothing inevitable in Chinese history about the CPC's "soft totalitarianism".

One might well posit that, had Mao been defeated in the mainland, China might have evolved from the warlordism of the pre-revolution Republic into a more or less stable, more or less democratic nation organized into federal subunits, not unlike India is today.

History is by no means destiny.

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Kurt's avatar

One might posit that. I think they'd have been wrong, but that's just my guess. I know a lot of Chinese historians. I'm married to one. I hang around with the history departments of several major universities. Lots of them were in the square in '89. None of them posit that. I'm sure several hold it in their hearts as something they'd love to see.

Singapore. China learned from Singapore. Learned a lot.

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Phil H's avatar

OK, I'll bite. What did PR China learn from Singapore?

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Kurt's avatar

It's not you.

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LucyTrice's avatar

Good morning. It is 72F here - and the humidity is down so it feels like 72F! We had storms come around us yesterday afternoon and it cooled down nicely, although we got only sprinkles.

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BikerChick's avatar

We’ve been hammered with rain, it rained so hard in Madison Tuesday night that the weight of the rain water caused a grocery store roof to partially collapse. Nobody was injured.

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Kurt's avatar

I sat on my roof watching the southern fringe of that storm. The sky was black.

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IncognitoG's avatar

Songbirds sing, but pigeons hum because they don’t know the words.

Gonna be hot again, almost as if the temperature were somehow attached to the seasons or something. The heat index today is probably suitable for casting iron ingots.

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Phil H's avatar

If rock pigeons have been domesticated, who raises them?

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