Smartie's Bar & Grill #74

Blue bonnet season is coming up. Hope nature puts on a great show for the Texans after what they endured with the ice and snow

 

We don't have burrowing owls here in the UK.
There are only 6 owls native to the British Isles.
Tawny
Barn
Little
Short eared
Long eared
European eagle owl.
We have the first three living on the farm.

 

Owls that call our state home Great Horned Owl, Barrred Owl, Eastern Screech Owl, Burrowing Owl, Barn Owl, and Short Eared Owl.

 

Big hawks and owls aparently do occasionally hunt cats and smaller dogs.

 

I think those who partake of certain reality altering substances would disagree...

 

Some good points. If we get multiple formations in daylight I’ll check it out. The formations would all have to be at the same height as well because wind velocity and direction vary a great deal by elevation. Sometimes our formations here vary in height a lot. I think it’s because we are close to the river where they have taken off from. Further from the river all formations would have found the altitude with the path of least resistance.

 

Cant wait till the cancel culture cancels robo calls.

 

$7.02 here today.
Cry me a river...

 

Looks like a great place to fish especially when you are there.

 

They flunked geometry class.

 

But seriously, if they're flying in a particular direction, with the wind coming from a different direction, like a crosswind, it would be more efficient to form up like that.


(My story and I'm sticking to it.)

 

Thanks Daisy, that was interesting and educational.

All this crane talk reminds me of a guy my dad worked with for a while when I was a kid. His name was Sam, and he was from Alabama. That was a different world to a kid from Colorado, it must be an exotic place, for Sam could hardly speak English! For some reason the subject of food came up—what people liked or didn’t like to eat. Sam said his family “was always hungry, everything went in the stew pot”. “Squirrels, possums, coons, as long as it hadn’t been dead too long it went in the pot.” He said, “there’s only one critter I recollect we didn’t eat. One day a crane flew real low over the house making that terrible screech. My ma put her hand over on the old single shot 12 gauge and said “if that noisy varmint flies over again it’s going in the stew pot”.

Sam continued, “well the next day it did... and it did. We picked around the pieces of that bird in the stew pot for nigh onto two weeks—never did get tender enough to chew. At some point someone fished all that crane out of the pot and threw it out the back door. ‘‘Twas the only critter we couldn’t eat.

Now I heard a lot of stuff on job sites that came close to wrecking the BS meter, but for some reason I still believe old Sam on the subject of his ma and cranes.

 

We seem to be veering off into science by consensus! It’s all good in the bar!

 

Amazing what some people call sport. https://www.bookyourhunt.com/en/sandhill-crane-hunting

 

Hmmm. We don’t hunt them here so didn’t realize most other states do.

 

I don't think they should be hunted period and exclamation. They are one of natures treasures. Several years back before we sold our place in Central Florida we watched a sandhill crane family take care of a nest. The built their nest on a little point of land jutting out into the marshland very private.

 

Is this in the continental USA?

 

Hardly.
It's in the UK where fuel is taxed heavily to encourage less consumption.

 

It's taxed relatively heavily here also, but not to dissuade consumption, but to jack revenues.

Currently at .26 p/gallon for gasoline, and .27 p/gallon for diesel. That's just the fuel tax. State sales tax is somewhere around .20 per gallon state, and Federal sales tax is .184per gallon....

 

Fuel excise duty is around $4.40 per gallon and Value Added Tax is around $1.30 on top of that.
You don't know what heavily taxed means...

 

That has to have a profound effect on lifestyle and quality of life for low income folks compared to the wealthy. Necessary travel would be expensive, unnecessary travel plain out of the question for many.

 

That's the point.
By definition, unnecessary travel is unnecessary.
Those needing to travel to work etc are encouraged to car pool or drive fuel efficient cars to reduce costs and therefore emissions.
Next we need to apply the same principle to flights.
I can fly to my house in France for a fraction of the price of driving or taking a train. That's why I only go there when absolutely necessary, for maintenance etc, and stay for an expended period of time. My sister on the other hand thinks nothing of flying there for a weekend to drink wine and bask in the sun.

 

You're never going to change the habits of the wealthy if they don't care about the cause. They're only a very small proportion of the population though. Much better to influence the vast majority who have an average income or less.
Perfect must not be the enemy of the good.

 

I’m not trying to be snarky, but is a house in France “necessary”? I drive places that aren’t “necessary”, so I’m being critical of myself as well, but “necessary” is very subjective. I know there are a lot of blue collar workers in the US that feel towing the boat 20 miles to the lake Friday night and spending the weekend attending to their mental health is just as necessary as the CEO of their company flying to the Caribbean or the Riviera twice a year to attend to their mental health. I’m sure there are single mothers inland in the U.K. who would love to drive her two kids to the coast for a weekend but can’t afford to with that tax.

I think there are games afoot. It would be very easy to just ration fuel with individual limits for rich and poor alike.

It’s easily remedied but unaddressed inequalities like this that makes me think if the proletariat ever take up pitchforks and scythes this landowner’s only decision will be whether to grab the wooden handled or the fiberglass handled pitchfork in support.

 

I didn't realize it was a competition.

You have yourself a lovely day.