Dirt bath party

Yesterday the little birds had a huge dirt bath party in the bird park. Nevada has excellent dirt for such things, powdery and light. There must have been 25 or 30 of them rolling around, doing flips, cartwheels and dirt angels. They had a great time. This morning again, it's business as usual. The first bird to arrive for breakfast is one, lone, very quiet magpie. She generally gets the first swoop at the goodies and today was no exception. Unfortunately, she even beat me to the park. I was in my office splitting open a few peanuts when she arrived. She came in low and fast, landed for about 2 seconds, looked around ...no peanuts... and took off. The peanuts are out there now, of course. Maybe she'll do a second pass.

Predictably, the next bird to arrive (he just left) is a single crow. He does the same thing every day. There are the peanuts, cracked open and spilled temptingly on to the ground. He hops along the fence, makes dive toward the ground , panics, pulls up and goes back to the fence, looks at the peanuts for a couple more moments, does another dive or two, then flies away, cawing like crazy. Too bad.

The next to arrive are the pigeons. Today, I put a little seed out for them. I generally just leave them to find the sunflower seeds the finches spill from the feeders but I suppose this morning I was making up for missing the magpie. Anyway, the finches and the black birds also also arrive at this point. The show is fully underway now, a little black guy is nibbling the nuts. For some reason, the pigeons never never touch them.

So, off to the gym. I seem to have hurt my knee overworking it a few days ago. It was pretty stiff after the drive to Oregon last week that when I got back on the recumbant it felt so much better, they call it motion lotion at the PT, that after the first half an hour, I did another and 45 minutes the next day. It's been popping ever since. I always over do things. Damn. I hope I didn't set myself back. They keep telling me that after this kind of surgery it takes up to a year for the knee to heal. No skiing this winter.