Doing the Budgie Boogie!!

This is dakiwiboid, posting for Ernie. Burt died this morning, apparently of a tumor on his chest. moosl and I took him out to Shaw Nature Reserve and left him under a bald cypress tree, among the wild birds he loved so well.

Ernie will continue to post at ernie_bird. Please join him there.

I have to convince Ernie of something. He thinks that the cool songs that we keep hearing all the time are coming from birds. I don't think so. Yeah, they're fun to listen to because they're loud, and because they go up and down a lot, but those aren't birds. I'm pretty sure that the guys who are doing the singing are cicadas.

I don't think that we'd really like them if they came up really close to us, and I think that Ernie should stop yelling out the window for them to do that. Don't you? I don't want them to come banging up on our windowscreen trying to get in here, especially late at night. It's scary.

And they fly! But Burt says the picture is too big, so I put my quiz result behind a cut. See my spirit animal behind it! ( Read more... )

Ernie and I listen to the radio all day. It's mostly KWMU, our local NPR station, though sometimes Mom turns on some classical music or tunes in the jazz station for us. We like listening to the talk shows and the news, especially The Diane Rehm Show. She says "good morning" to us every day just the way we like! We also like The World, although I always have to look up the answers to the quiz. I don't know a lot of geography, and Ernie just doesn't care.

We're actually listening to The Splendid Table which we usually like because it's about food. We like to hear about food. There are usually a lot of things about vegetables and fruit, which we like to eat a whole lot, and we don't mind that there are a lot of things about cooking them, because Mom likes to cook, and that's fun. She makes a lot of fun sounds with the pots and pans, and we enjoy that.

But today those Stern people who go around the country eating stuff talked about something icky. They talked all about eating lobsters. I'm going to put one of those lj cut things here because this is just too icky. ( Read more... )

I didn't mind the part of the show that was about cheese. That was OK. Now I'm gonna read Wikipedia until I feel better.

Mom got up yesterday and ran around like crazy, so I asked her where she was going. She stopped and told me she was going to a science fiction convention. Burt looked it up. It turns out that it's this one and there and people there from around the world, and people dress up as other people, and walk around in the hall that way, and there are thousands of people there, and especially girls! I want to go and pick up chicks!

She told me I couldn't go! I cussed her out. She says I still can't go.I don't see why not. They wouldn't charge me full price, I'll bet, and I wouldn't need a hall costume. I want to see all the shiny stuff! And the girls!

It didn't make a lot of sense. Of course, I'm not very smart, compared to humans. My brain is smaller than a lima bean, but I try really hard to make sure that every sentence I write agrees with every other sentence in the same post. That guy kept contradicting himself and saying strange stuff. It was as if I'd flown up there to Washington and had a press conference and told the press people that Iraq should be in a state of strawberry. Actually, that wouldn't be too bad. Everybody should have a nice, big red strawberry every day. Don't you think so? Do you think that the press would listen to a little yellow budgie?

I could work it really well with my beak, and it would be really cool to use. Mom says I have to earn the money for it all by myself, and pay the phone bill and data connection bill every month all by myself, though. Does anyone have any ideas for me to make enough money for that?

That picture comes from this story about the bird. He's a recurve-billed bushbird. Supposedly these birds were hiding out in forest reserves in Colombia and Venezuela. I hope that having his picture taken means that more people decide to leave this guy's forest home alone, and that they don't just rush down there to look for him and take more pictures.

The lawnmower bird is out there! We like him! He makes a cool sound.

We've also been getting visits from a baby robin. He comes around and says "querp, querp". He's getting bigger and bigger and bigger every day. He's huge, but he still sounds like a baby and follows his mom around begging for worms!

Hey, there is this cool guy that Burt found on some place called the BBC. His name is David Rothenberg, and he knows a bunch about birds. He says that we birds don't just sing to tell the girls how wonderful we are, and the other guys to stay away from our territories. We thinks that we sing because we want to make music! I think that he's right. I like music a lot, and Mom always pays attention to the kind of music I like and the kind of music I make.

Anyway, if you want to hear this guy David Rothernberg making music with birds, you could go here. He wrote a whole book about Why Birds Sing, and did a whole CD about bird song. He's even recorded some duets with birds! I like the one with the laughing thrush better than the stuff with the lyrebird. (Burt says it's because I'm jealous of the lyrebird's tail, but I think the thrush is a better musician.)

I like this guy.

Those icky people are still around. They've made a whole lot of mess outside our window, and they come around every day and bang with hammers, or make scrapy sounds. They keep throwing around junk, and they've scared away most of the birds. Today, they almost pushed Mom's air conditioner into her bedroom, and she had to yell "HEY!" really loudly to make them stop! Sometimes it gets dark all of a sudden, and our lamp and radio go off, and Mom gets mad because nobody told her that this was going to happen. They come in and cut holes in things and then they don't match up with the stuff they shove through the holes. It's nasty.

There's a lot of dust around, too. We don't like it. It would all be so much better if they were just a little more polite about it, but they aren't very nice to us. Sometimes they point in our window at us. It's not kind.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Mommy just called the landlord person to find out when the guys were going to come back to do more stuff in here. She says they aren't going to come out until next week, so she let us out of the cage! We are going to fly around now! YAY!

Mom locked us in our Little Cage, that is, the cage with bars. We don't get to be in the Big Cage, that is the living room, which is what we usually get to fly around in without being locked up at all, until the landlord person finishes yanking stuff out of the place we live in and putting in something called HVAC. We have been waiting this way for a week, but finally a person came just now and ripped out the air conditioner. It was scary, but now there's a hole, and we can hear the birds really well. Mom says that some more scary stuff will happen soon, and we should try not to worry, but it's kind of awful. We're scared.

There is this thing called Caturday. Humph. Why isn't there a Birdday? Birds are cute too!

Burt ate a great big hole in the strawberry, and now his cheek feathers are all pink! He looks silly.

P.S. He's a piggy.

This morning, when Mom fed us, we only got seeds and water. She said we'd get treats later. She went out for a long time, and when she came back, she had groceries. The treats were good! She gave us a really big lettuce leaf, nice and wet. I took rides on it, and lots of baths. Baths on a wet leaf are best. I remember my real mom telling me when I was just a chick that when we were wild birds we took baths on wet leaves outside. I get very excited when I get one of those baths. The lettuce tastes good too, and we eat holes in it.

Mom also gave us some of that stuff that looks like green feathers and tastes spicy. I think it's called fennel or something like that. We got our usual strawberry, too. When I eat strawberry, my beak gets red, and she calls me Redbeak the Pirate!

Two fire engine birds just went by in a row! Lights and sirens are so cool! I love the noise they make! I want to sound like one of those sirens. I also want it to stop raining during the day so that the lawn mower bird comes back. I like it a lot. Vroom-vroom!

This cockatiel guy can whistle the Imperial March from Star Wars! Neither of us can do that! He must watch a whole lot of movies, too!

(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)

✓ I miss somebody right now.  (Little Firefly friend, come see us!)	✓ I don't watch much TV these days.  (Mom, fix the DVD machine!)	× I own lots of books.
× I wear glasses or contact lenses.	× I love to play video games.	× I've tried marijuana.
× I've watched porn movies.	× I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.	× I believe honesty is usually the best policy.
✓ I curse sometimes.  (Mom yells at me for it.)	× I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.	× I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.

( it goes on... )

I think I'd like one of these!

Take the quiz at dicepool.com