CuriousGeorgina's Xanga

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain!

Tue, 27 May 2008 11:21:31 GMT

Stick with this short clip past your initial reaction of "omg teeny guitars!" -- your reward will be a really funny mélange of songs that proves All Songs Are One. Enjoy!

Cheerio! Cheerio!

Tue, 13 May 2008 18:17:23 GMT

I was away at a conference last week, and the song "Cheerio! Cheerio!" greeted me on my return, from all the surrounding bushes and trees. Why, you may ask? Because our robins had grown up in my absence, of course.

It only takes two weeks to go from tiny blue egg to frumpy-looking teenager, if you're an American Robin. My husband took some pics which I will share with you here, so that you will see how our nestlings fared while I was away.

The above photo may be slightly out of focus, but then again, these babies are pretty out of it themselves, aren't they. Well, they're on the ball when their mama arrives with a worm, of course, stretching their thin little necks up and opening their big yellow mouths wide. Below is another photo of the nest on that day.

Only a couple of days later, you can really see the change as the nest gets very crowded and the birds' feathers continue to develop. They start to open their eyes and take a personal interest in affairs around them.

My husband missed the actual moment when these messy creatures leapt from their safe platform into the surrounding landscape. Fuzzy new robins abandon their natal homes before they can actually fly, which seems quite inadvisable to me, but they have never consulted my wisdom on this or any matter. They take up stations under bushes, in window wells, in the shadows of rocks, and so forth, and continue to make loud demands for food from their parents.

Robin parents go along with this arrangement and continue to deliver food to their offspring for some days after the nest is empty. Our last view of a given family is often a crowd of them pestering a parent on a tree branch until they get firmly pecked away. Then they start to fend for themselves, and the parents get busy on brood number two. From what I've seen, robins will raise three broods each year if they can get away with it.

I also recently learned that robins flock and are very gregarious during their southern migration and while they are vacationing over the winter. The relatively solitary behaviour I've observed in them is natural to them when they are in their northern breeding grounds.

Nestling Developments

Thu, 01 May 2008 10:15:20 GMT

Here's a slightly clearer picture of our robin acquaintance. She's putting up with us a bit more now that her eggs have hatched.

Robins ignore their first egg or two for a day after they are laid. Then they lay another egg or two. This way, they can be sure that all the eggs will hatch at basically the same time, giving all the hatchlings the best chance of survival. So, a couple of days ago, this situation obtained in the nest:

And then, next time we peeked:

Four absurd hatchlings! Can you even sort them out? They have dark eye capsules and darkish stubs where their wings will be. Have you ever seen such helpless little objects? Thank goodness for the robin mama, is all I can say.

We disturb the robin as little as possible, but once a day I have to open the front door (or come around the front) to get the newspaper and check my mail. So that's when my husband takes pictures. While he stretches up, standing on the porch railing and steadying the camera on the porch ceiling, the robin disapproves of us from a nearby tree branch, as follows:

I feel thoroughly Taken a Dim View Of, don't you?

CG

Vigilant Mother

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:21:56 GMT

I have met brave robin mamas who will tolerate a fairly close approach, but this one, this spring, will take off to the nearby spruce tree at the smallest sign of us. So we took this indistinct shot of her through our closed front door and screen door -- and you can tell she is still wise to our lies!

Eggs ought to hatch soon.

I swear...

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:24:07 GMT

... I did not Photoshop this!

Happy Spring!

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:33:08 GMT

Does that wish sound belated to you? If so, you live in a sunnier clime than mine. We only just got rid of the snow... but on a specially built platform high on my front porch wall, a robin just laid two beautiful eggs. So okay, it's spring now!

Getting Cute with Chris

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 02:31:58 GMT

There's an offbeat phenom on the Web these days, name of Chris Leavins, runs the fun known to a few of us as Cute with Chris.

Hmm, how did I find him? I think because I'm also a fan of Cute Overload. Yes, I freely admit that I like photos of cute puppies and kittens and, for that matter, hedgehogs and canaries and hamsters... but there's more to it, in both cases, than that. The value added is all in the host's personality, I'd say. It's all in the presentation.

Anyway... I have two tickets to Chris's upcoming show in Toronto. Yep, the Friday one. Guaranteed silly fun. And we get a free pen. And we will laugh!

I'm sure we'll be the oldest ones there...

Fun, educational challenge

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 22:49:15 GMT

Give it a try! So far I have absolutely no idea how the high scorers get those scores... they must really have paid attention during geography class, is all I can say! LOL! (My high score so far is 392,448 pts.)

presented by TravelPod, the Web's Original Travel Blog ( A TripAdvisor Media Network partner )

Little thoughts

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:47:54 GMT

I was just visiting Leonidas the Usually Voluble, and he says he can't think why to write anything just now. I think I'm feeling just the same... I could have written some Xangawords over the past couple of weeks, but I just haven't felt like it. Perhaps it's the ongoing winter weather...

Ten little thoughts that have occurred to me today:

1. I wish there was an easy (non-dusty) way to make a plaster ceiling smooth when a previous owner has done a bunch of yucky stippling on it. Blech.

2. I want to bake this Kentucky jam cake recipe I found. Tasty.

3. I hate melamine and the way it can get old-looking so fast. Drr.

4. Paint-by-numbers are fun. I wish I had one to do this afternoon. *nostalgia*

5. It's so sunny today, I wish alllllll the snow would melt and it would finally be spring. Sigh.

6. There are a number of books in the house that I haven't read yet. I'll have to remedy that soon. *anticipation*

7. Dishwashers are wonderful. Yay!

8. I love to get the newspaper, but I wish it wasn't such a waste of paper. Online just isn't the same, though. Sigh.

9. Filling the backyard bird feeders is so rewarding, especially when two white-breasted nuthatches visit at once. *bliss*

10. Those squirrels may look cute now, but just wait until they start lopping the heads off my tulips in a few weeks. Grr.

CG

Searching for Curious Georgina

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:13:44 GMT

Do you other Xangans ever have fun looking at your footprints and seeing the interesting Internet searches that have led readers to your pages? Well, today was particularly fun for me, with several hits from search engine inquiries.

Someone in France found an old survey page of mine when they Googled "yessitizz." Say, is that French for something I should know? *giggle*

Meanwhile, in Utah, someone needed to know "how to pronounce indignant" and happened upon my version of the "10 pet peeves" meme. A few minutes later, an Ohio resident found that very same page by searching for the "meaning of narrotic." Coincidence? I guess so!

A California surfer entered "I am 'academic fan' first" into a search engine, and found nothing more than my little entry about going to last year's Kalamazoo conference (in another coincidence, I just reserved last night for this year's conference). And in the final footprint quirk for today, someone from West Virginia visited this self-same nondescript page a few minutes later... but not from a search...

<--- clueless -- but curious!