Virtue is its own reward

[jhetley]

Decided to do the bike ride this evening rather than tomorrow, due to a chancy forecast. (Yes, I _do_ remember cursing the false weather prophets and their goat entrails, but even a broke clock is right twice a day. A metaphor that will soon lose all meaning, with digital timepieces everywhere....)

Anyway, out by the airport in the same place I saw that melanistic woodchuck a few days back, I came upon a crow poking at something on the pavement. Except that, when I got closer, that shadow against the evening sun turned into a Cooper's Hawk that got into a huff and flew off with his dinner. _Then_ I realized that what I had taken for poplar fuzz blowing across the pavement was actually down plucked from the mourning dove corpse.

My wife pronounced the death of one mourning dove to be a good start. They coo a _lot_, early in the morning, right outside our windows.

And the spellcheck doesn't believe in "melanistic."

14.9 miles, 59:10

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

My wife pronounced the death of one mourning dove to be a good start. They coo a _lot_, early in the morning, right outside our windows.

Heh. Reminds me of an SCA event, more years ago than I want to think about, where my cabin-mates and I were threatening (only partly in jest!) to make whippoorwill stew for dinner. Apparently there was a thriving colony near the cabin, and they went on ALL. NIGHT. LONG.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Yeah, whippoorwill stew would sound attractive. They're small, so you'd need several....

Another candidate would be sapsuckers. They purely _love_ to drum on hard surfaces, metal flashing and the like. One place we were camping, the little beast had found an outhouse vent that resonated perfectly. Sounded like a machine gun, at 4:00 AM. Then there was the one who liked the aluminum gutter of my mother's house, and had a similar performance schedule.

[persimmon.livejournal.com]

Mourning doves have to be among the world's stupidest creatures. Last year, there were a pair of them trying to make a nest on a light-coloured repair patch to the road. They got quite confused and indignant every time a car drove over it ...

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a mourning dove, all right. One time I built a fence around one with hunting arrows.

(That was back when I was a mass-murderer.)

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

What sort of bike are you riding? I seem to have dented a wheel rim so I'm not riding these days. I need to see if any of the myriad of bikes laying around outside have good tires on them. I think the old bike without gears is in good enough shape to ride.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly riding a Trek touring bike, aluminum frame, 24 gears. The touring bikes are a little more durable than sport bikes, wider tires and such, more suitable for the kind of road that Maine DOT sees fit to provide. And I need that "Granny gear" third chainring on the hills. Gray hair and ancient legs, you understand.

Also have a much older Raleigh mountain bike, also aluminum frame, that I use in the spring when the roads are at their annual finest, and on the carriage trails down at the national park.

If you aren't careful, you'll get my lecture about leaving bikes outside in the rain....

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Just got this comment...

Goose has been hearing quite a bit about leaving her bicycle out in the rain. :-p I put my bicycle in the shed next to unixronin's motorcycle.