Our rain started at about 3-4 AM on Monday and ended at about 8 AM. We got about 3/4 ". No damage but the plants did perk up from the soaking. I did a lot of digging yesterday to remove some huge thorny bushes at the corner by the stop sign. I thought " great all that rain will loosen the roots..."..ha. Took me 2 hrs with a mattock/shovel/loppers. Finally got all 3 out. The soil was dry dry just below the surface. So as Tom says it runs off. They are pruning the 150yr old oak in our front yard soon. It dropped a limb a week ago that weighed over 300 #....right where I was working yesterday. I can't plant the corner till I see how much sun I will have when they get done and also they make a HUGE mess when they cut limbs. Tom , I hope all recovers well from the big storm and that you have no lasting damage. c

Marian - That roadrunner would've been a great thing to get a video of. Happy ending but - I heard a thunk against my window this morning and went outside to find a male Baltimore Oriole sitting on the ground with his head tipped sideways and his beak hanging open. It took him 15 or 20 minutes to recover and he looked like he was getting worse for awhile instead of better. He kept closing his eyes. I couldn't resist letting him sit on my hand for awhile and I fed him some of the nectar from the Oriole feeder. They're so pretty. My kids have made home-made snowflakes and stuck them all over my bay window to keep the birds from flying into it since it's close to my bird feeders. I'm surprised he flew into it but he may have seen his reflection. Yesterday, he was landing on the ledge under the window and pecking against the glass. I wish I had another Oriole feeder. They seem to be territorial. It has four perches but I never seen more than one at a time at it. There were two male Orchard Orioles chattering at each other in the tree for a long time yesterday but neither of them would go to the feeder and the Baltimore Oriole won't go to it if there's already an Orchard Oriole there.

Thanks, Jane, for the references. I found the sites: Carl Strang's June 2009 entry and Stanford group essay on Cowbirds. I'm a little skeptical about Strang's statement on instinctual behavior - it may be true but it sounds more like a belief not based on any science. (Just a quibble on my part - if he'd said the juvenile cowbirds 'appear' to seek out other cowbirds, based on his observations, I wouldn't have been annoyed - but ascribing the behavior to 'instinct' is a jump too far). A very interesting fact in the Stanford essay is that only about 3 percent of cowbird eggs actually result in adults! That's major mortality. The cowbird female just keeps laying eggs and eggs and eggs ... "An average female lays about 80 eggs, 40 per year for two years. About 3 percent of those 80 eggs end up as adults -- an average of 2.4 adults per female. Clearly, such numbers more than compensate for the excessive loss of eggs and young in the nests of inappropriate hosts." I wonder how the current situation differs from the earlier situation when the cowbirds evolved to follow the bison herds and couldn't hang around to set up a proper nest without dropping behind and struggling to find food for themselves and the young. That behavior probably was dependent on the migration patterns of the bison, but nowadays the cowbirds have the luxury of being able to stay in the same area as their young, even if they don't get involved in the raising of them. As far as which came first, the parasitic behavior or the adaptation to it, I would think that the ability to lay so many eggs and the rapid maturation of the young would come early. There's an interesting entry in the Birds of North America Online site (subscription only) saying that "Most fledgling losses occurred 1 or 2 d after leaving nest". There are a lot of unknowns here, but it's an interesting topic for study. I'm glad I don't have to do the research myself, it would drive me crazy trying to pull together all of the variables. Claire

This thread is so funny and reminds me of when my children were young. I was more like Doc. My kids learned colors by helping to sort laundry, and the learned to do their own laundry when they were 10. They had a day, and only that day - dirty clothes were worn once or twice. If they left something out, and I picked it up, the item(s) were returned after one week and not before. They learned. I do NOT think you are being a b*&^h mom Breezy. You're the mom; your job is to teach them to behave in appropriate ways because you want them to grow to be mature, responsible, productive citizens. The reason you see so many children behave inappropriately is because the parents are not providing lessons and consequences and are working so hard to be the nice one that they've forgotten to be the parent. Personally, I wish there were more parents like you; I might still be a teacher if that were the case, but as the years passed, I found that children behaved worse and worse, and conferences were parents who made excuses for their kids or cried (literally) because they said they couldn't make their kids listen - I finally changed careers just short of 20 years. Things will change when kids become teens, but the lessons you taught when they were younger will make a difference. You'll fight battles that are important to you; they will know when you're not going to back down. And, the great thing is that you will see that when they are adults and when you have grandchildren. Funny story - when my kids were teens, they had a curfew, usually a bit later than their friends, but very strict nonetheless. One week restriction for each minute late which could be mitigated with a phone call if there were a real emergency. Each of the girls violated the curfew rule one time only; my son more than a few times - not fun times. I used to tell him that "being late is like being pregnant: either you are or you are not. Your actions are choices; all choices have consequences." Fast forward fifteen years, and my son is a manager for a manufacturing company, and when he got his promotion, one of the biggest problems were people not being on time. So a few weeks into his promotion, he has instructions to clean up the tardy problem or start firing people. Having never fired anyone before, he was loathe to do this, so he decides to have a meeting and talk to his guys. That night he came for dinner. He told me how much he hated the late rule when he was a teen and thought I was being mean for no reason because all of his friends didn't have to deal with the late issue. But in his meeting, he told the guys "being late is like being pregnant; either you are or you are not. All actions are choices, and all choices have consequences" He both groaned and laughed because he said he couldn't believe he quoted me. Being a parent instead of a friend is a good thing.