Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

I went to the salon on Friday and got my hair cut. Upon request, I handed my stylist my innergeek business card. She exclaimed, “Hey! I just gave you this hair cut!” It was neat.

It looks like I’ll be getting a bicycle next week as an early birthday present from my mom, who’s really into her racing-style street bike and has wanted to buy me a “real” bike for a few years. I’m not interested in hunched-over spandex-laden street biking, so I’ve selected an Electra Townie, which is a model that’s a couple grades above the cheapo bikes I’ve previously owned. I almost didn’t consider that model because of its name… “Townie” was a (sometimes derogatory) term used for year-long residents of my college town. I got over that, though, because it’s a really sweet bike. I have the highest aspirations to ride it to the grocery store and to the little town center that’s 1.5 miles from my house, where I’ll visit the library, post office, pharmacy, etc.

I attended an SCA event yesterday for the first time in a couple years, and while I think I had a good time overall, it wasn’t like events I remember fondly from my college years.  The medieval reenactment population in Utah is much more sparse than it was in SW Ohio, and this particular group is much more family-oriented than the late Teens to late Twenties group I initially joined. It’s a great group for my friends who have kids, and it might suit me better if I actually had kids and/or had a husband who was more into it. There are still some fun aspects like being at a campground, seeing everybody dressed up in various forms of garb and armor, and eating a quasi-medieval feast with friends. But the whole experience doesn’t click with me the way it used to.

However, I still have an explicable desire to Create Pretty Garb. Talent notwithstanding.

Next weekend, my in-laws are visiting us in Utah for the first time since we moved here. We’ve kept the house in a much more presentable condition lately, but there’s still a lot to do this week. The front flowerbedis covered with bindweed again. The best remedy for that, next to “persistence and patience,” is to move.

Mario Kart Wii rocks the hizz-ouse.

During my blogging hiatus, I was enveloped in archiving family history… scanning and touching up old family photos and playing around with a free trial on ancestry.com. I still haven’t traced my dad’s family line back to Charlemagne like my uncle once claimed he’d done… I have some serious doubts about that being fact vs. plausible sensation.

Ahoy, ye scallywags! It be the International Day of Talkin’ Like a Pirate.

In addition to the Pirate Keyboard I passed along ta ye last year, I want ta make it known that ye can start yer readin’ all manner of Pirate books fer free! It be a highly legal opportunity from me good friend, Google Books.

I say ye start wit’ Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island if ye haven’t read that one yet. Y’arrrr likely to find there be a pirate, or hundreds o’ pirates, in all he writes.

Aye, there be also a pirate, goes by the name o’ Hook, in the tale o’ Peter and Wendy by a landlubber named James Matthew Barrie. That’s a picture from the book ta yer left.

And there be Sir Walter Scott’s The Pirate: A Romance, tho’ that’s on me own list of books to read while at sea with a good, strong brew in my hand. Surely there be booty involved in that one.

And don’t ye be fergettin’ ’bout the tale of Blackbeard, the fearsome Pirate of Roanoke! A real life figure he was, not just a tale. Now thar was a pirate to behold. Why, he woulda takin’ the free Google Books and found a way to pirate them, of that ye can be sure!

There be another colored-bearded fellow by the name of Blue Beard, whose pirate tale (oft labeled a “fairy tale” fer some reason, tho’ I’m hard-pressed to be finded any fairies in such a tale of delightful pirate horror) was written by a Frenchman, Charles Perrault, but told fer many a year before that. Ye can read the English version of Blue Beard as recorded on paper by Andrew Lang on page 290 of ‘is Blue Fairy Book.  Pirates and fairies… arrrrr, what a strange combination that be!

May yer Talk Like a Pirate Day be well-researched and may yer life be full o’ many Pirate adventures. And treasure.

Don’t ye be fergettin’ the treasure!

Yesterday’s Mystery Bird that was stuck in my chimney is no longer a mystery! It was a female red-shafted Northern Flicker (photo from Cornell’s ornithology website, taken by Keven T. Karlson).

I was impressed with Cornell University’s ornithology website (which is what you’ll visit if you click on that first link) both for the multiple photos and the ability to listen to a clip of the bird’s song/noises. I’ve definitely heard that bird outside our house before, and it’s really cool to know what I’m hearing now.

I’d been sitting on that blog post for a few days, all the time wondering what kind of bird that was and trying to figure it out from online searches and my two birding books (National Geographic Field Guide and Birds of Utah). I finally decided to email Sharon Stiteler over at Birdchick.com to humbly request assistance, and was surprised by her lightning-quick response with a positive ID of the bird! She said that she was checking email at the time and thought my question was a fun challenge. And then she linked to this blog and challenged her readers to ID the bird…. cool!

Incidentally, Sharon’s profile claims her blog’s purpose “To show the world that you can be a birder without being a geek.” Well, I’m a geek, so I hope it’s okay that I want to be a birder!

I started reading Sharon’s blog at some point a while back when Neil Gaiman linked to her. They’re friends who pursued (and subsequently blogged about) a joint beekeeping adventure. And since I’m a wannabe birder, I stuck around and love looking at all the pretty birdy pictures and hearing about her adventures.

I’m a wannabe birder thanks to my good friend Susan from college. She was a fellow zoology major (until I switched gears and majored in English) and ended up in the field of ornithology after graduation, where she’s been ever since. Susan introduced me to pishing, which I’d like to try more often. I am jealous of all the exposure she’s had to owls. Because I think owls are neat, even when they’re being fed frozen mice.

While hunting for an ID for my mystery bird, I also came across the Utah County Birders, who apparently go on field trips (field trips! wheee!) and have monthly educational meetings. I don’t think that I will ever be a hardcore digiscoping birder, but I am definitely interested in learning more about birds. And since I neglected my natural interest in college by only attending one or two Naturalist Club meetings (before the field trips! boo!), I might just check them out.

The cool thing about learning is that even if you become a primo expert in a certain field, there’s somehow always more to learn. I don’t expect that I’ll become an expert in birds. I just want to know more about them!

And maybe find out which birding book should be the next addition to my library?

Awesome: Wild birds.
Not Awesome: Wild birds that fall down a derelict stovepipe chimney and become trapped.

Once upon a time, last week, I was sitting at my computer wondering why it was so hard for me to start blogging again. It was a dim, cloudy day, and rare (welcome) storms were approaching my Utah home. At 3:50pm, I heard a horrifying scriiiiiiiiitch-ing noise and thought that something was scraping maniacally against a window–or I was about to become a front page newsworthy victim of some horrible suburban home invasion.

Gushing adrenaline pushed me out of my chair and into the living room, where it became apparent that the noise was coming from the chimney of our never-used wood (or is it coal? We don’t even know) burning fireplace. A poor bird was stuck in there. (Can you help identify the bird? See below.)

Panicked, guilty horror washed over me, which in my brain goes a lot like this: ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit!

Why guilty horror, you ask? Because a few months back the same thing happened with sad results. The scritching noise started as I was heading out the door, late for work. I called Ben, who had a similar reaction. We weren’t really sure what to do, and I had no idea how to disassemble the fireplace or the chimney, so I went to work. I called a chimney sweep, who quoted me $100 to come out. I called Ben again, and he came home as soon as he could to attempt a rescue… which was successful. But the bird wasn’t moving much when he pulled it out, so Ben set him down gently in the garage near the open door where he staggered on his feet for a minute before falling over. Sadly, it died right there in front of its big-hearted rescuer.

And here’s the part where I look like a neglectful homeowner and horrible person: we realized that there must not be a cap on our chimney, or it had broken, thus allowing a bird to fall down in the first place. But we never fixed it. So yeah, the whole story you’re about to read could have been avoided… but at least this time there was a happier ending. So I’ll get back to that now.

3:50 I first heard the sound and concluded that it was a bird.
3:51 Ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit
3:52 I realized the rain had started, so I ran upstairs to close the skylights.
3:53 I ran back to the living room, but the noise had stopped. Loki was sitting two feet away from the fireplace, staring intently at where the noise was but also looking somewhat bored at the same time. How do cats do that?
3:55 I called Ben to tell him about the noise, and that it had stopped, and that I was pretty certain there was a dead bird in our chimney. Or maybe it was alive, and I should try to rescue it? But what if it was really dead? He asked me what I wanted him to do, and I pulled out my seldom-used Girl Card and squeaked, “Can you come home and take care of it?”
4:01 The bird scared the shit out me as I was about to hang up the phone. “I’m coming home now,” Ben said. I spent the next few minutes clearing things away from the fireplace area and pulling out small-ish cardboard boxes and a flashlight.
4:22 The bird went crazy in the chimney again and scared the bejesus out of Phoebe, the scaredy-cat who had been downstairs up until that point.
4:42 Ben arrived. We closed the doors to the bedrooms, wrangled the cats into the basement and shut that door, and opened all the windows on the first floor in hopes that the bird would be able to fly through one after its release. We have double-hung windows so we could open the top portion, assuming that the bird was more likely to fly high. Ben had the forethought to turn off the ceiling fan in the living room.
4:46 Ben pulled off the top lid-thingy on the stove to peek inside. I felt like an idiot, because I think I could have done that. But all we could see was a tail, so I happily relegated myself to flashlight-holder and picture-taker.

The next several minutes were nerve-wracking because in my head, the bird could die at any moment. The shrill sound of frantic talon-scratching on metal was welcome because at least we knew that the bird was still alive. Ben shook the stovepipe to encourage/force the bird to put its feet at the base of pipe, which caused it to climb up a foot somehow. So we waited patiently, and eventually it came down far enough for us to see what its body looked like.

Ben had the genius idea of bending a wire coat hanger to use as a scooping prod. No, of course he didn’t use the hook end to poke the bird! The first time the hanger touched the bird, it freaked out and climbed out of reach again. In the meantime, we scraped away some of the ashes at the base of the hole to allow more of the bird’s body to show. Eventually it slid back down and this is what we saw:

It was a much bigger bird than we thought it would be, which made it impossible to rescue in the same manner as the other bird (which had been small enough to fit underneath that flue bar in the middle). Ben tried one last time to coerce it over the flue bar, but its beak was at least 1.5 inches long and it retreated again.

Then Ben had another genius idea… to try opening the metal flue. Once open, he could see the bird in the pipe and was confident the bird could fit through that opening! I suggested he put on some gloves before sticking his hands up there in case the bird pecked or clawed or there were sharp edges inside.

So I took over as the holder of the flue handle to make sure that the flue didn’t slam shut with Ben’s hand or the bird inside. Ben used the coat hanger and something cute like “Hey there, little bird, we’re here to help you!” and pretty quickly told me to stand back.

And then the bird flew out! It flew up toward the ceiling immediately, paused for a fraction of a second, and then flew out the closest open window. I was very thankful that the top half was open… the last thing we wanted after freeing the bird was for it to slam right into a window.

We ran outside to see where it went or if it faltered, but it flew a straight course over our neighbor’s house and disappeared into the neighborhood. It was sort of anti-climactic… I mean, would have been nice if the bird had perched on the lonely nectarine tree in our backyard and chirped a little thanks before flying off, right? Needless to say, we were relieved and happy that the bird made it out alive and apparently well. A thousand kudos to Ben, my animal-loving hero who’s not afraid to get dirty:

It took a total of 45 minutes to get the bird out from the time Ben came home. Not too bad, I guess… I would say that we’ll now be able to do it faster next time, but I’m hoping there won’t be a next time. We’re getting a cap on that chimney ASAP. Also, a sign that says “No Birds Allowed.”

Can anyone help us identify this bird? From the long, conical black beak (not pictured, but it was around 1.5 inches, I’d say) and the striped pattern on the wing, I think it could be a female woodpecker of some sort, or something similar, but I can’t find a close match in my bird books or online. Those spots on the belly and the orange feathers (underneath the tail and it thin stripes on the wings) are really throwing me for a loop–not that I’m a really seasoned birder or ornithologist.

Head to tail the bird was perhaps 10 inches long and upon a quick glimpse as it flew out the window, I remember the trunk being a little fatter, kind of like a pigeon’s. The eyes were a solid black-brown. I didn’t use flash on the photo of the head because I didn’t want to scare the bird any more than it was at that point. Also, and I don’t know if this will aid in identifying the bird: it didn’t seem to like being stuck in our chimney.

[After posting this blog entry, I sent an email to Sharon over at Birdchick.com. I caught her online and she replied swiftly (it's a birding pun!) with a positive ID on our little mystery bird. Because she linked to this entry as a challenge, I'm going to hold off on my follow-up post for now... but you can see what people are people are guessing here.]