For the Birds

Today, let's once again minimize the news this week and focus on our bird banding trip last week. There is a bit of news at the end of the column if you have no interest in the Eastern bird migration. Birds are important for a number of reasons. For one thing they are the canary in the coal mine. Bird populations are down 30% since 1970. Insect populations have decreased by 70% in the same period. We drove all the way to SW Alabama for the banding with hardly a bug on our windshield. Bird banding is a way to track and assess the decline.

The grosbeaks, like this rose breasted, require a stainless steel band because their beaks are so powerful they can cut off and get rid of the typical aluminum bands.

So how do they catch and band the birds? They use nets which the birds can't see. If you look toward the end of the nets, you can see a bit of sunlight reflected on the net.

The nets are invisible to the birds, and difficult for us to see.

There are three sets of pockets on both sides of the net. Birds can be captured on both sides.

John simply threw one of the collecting bags at the net and it was captured.

Every 30 minutes the crew goes out to collect from all the nets.

They are hung on a wheel to be processed as quickly as possible.

Each bird is identified by species.

And then banded and identified by number.

Measurements of the bird are taken.

They also blow on the belly feathers to look at the fat deposit which they rate from 0-3. It takes a 2.5 or 3 fat level to make it across the gulf. If they have less there are a couple of options. They might fly back up Mobile Bay to the Tensaw Delta and fatten up, or go west and hug the coast to Mexico or Central America.

Feather morphology helps to age the birds.

And it is weighed.

All the data is entered as it is gathered.

Some species of interest have a feather taken and put in an envelop for DNA analysis.

The big winner was our resident friend the wood thrush with dozens and dozens collected and banded.

But many types of thrushes were banded...

The Swainson's Thrush migrates from N. Canada to as far as Argentina.

The Northern water thrush was common during the banding too.

There was a Louisiana water thrush caught and banded. We often hear their call along a stream at a friend's house.

Lots of common yellow throat warblers were banded. This is a female.

The male has a band over the eye...

There were also many Red Starts banded...another little warbler.

The red start is sometimes called the Halloween bird...

...when the yellow turns orange later in the season.

Lots of birds I hear but rarely see...

Like this white eyed vireo.

Many Magnolia Warblers were banded during the week...

When they bring out the birds to tell about them...

They often point out useful ID tricks like these two tail markings.

The feather morphology can give clues to age and more...

The bird banding gives you a chance to see birds in a way you just can't observe in the wild.

The female hooded warbler...

doesn't have the full hood of the male.

I only saw two of these chestnut sided warblers...

The reddish brown chestnut color is under the wing.

I often hear the appropriately named cat bird...which sounds like a cat

But I never see them.

However, I regularly see the black capped chickadee.

They hang out around our place as well as the Nuthatch, which I found out uses the calls of the chickadee as warning. So they are often seen together.

Another of our regular residents is the summer tanager.

They hang out in the tree tops, and the coloration of the female makes it difficult to spot. However, they sing to us all summer. They love when we play music on the porch and will come around looking in at what is making those sounds. The male is a red.

The oven bird, so called for it's oven shaped mud nests is another I often hear, but rarely see.

It's call of "teacher, teacher" is common in the Eastern deciduous forests.

This young Rose Breasted Grosbeak still had colorful wings.

They also have a pretty good bite.

Only one indigo bunting was caught this year.

It was changing to it's dull winter plumage.

After each bird "show and tell", they ask if anyone would like to release the bird. You hold out a flat hand, and they place the bird in your hand...

....and zoom they're off. In fact so fast I never got a good shot of a release.

The crew has a new project...placing transmitters on hummers.

...in order to track them.

These folks are dedicated birders and love what they do. All of them are excellent educators and took turns at the various stations.

They were generous with their time and knowledge, and enjoy conveying their love of birds.

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So much for being flighty. How about some news!

Did you catch Lavrov's UN speech (23 min) the other week? He gives the US a good look in the mirror.

Full text
Here's an excerpt:

... in 1970, the General Assembly unanimously decided in its Declaration that everyone must respect the territorial integrity of those states whose governments respect the right of peoples to self-determination and thus represent the entire population living in the territory concerned. I would like to stress that this was a unanimous decision of the UN General Assembly after many years of complicated discussions. There is no need to prove that the Ukrainian neo-Nazis, who seized power in Kiev in February 2014 after a bloody coup supported by the United States and its allies, never represented the Russian population of Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya.

The Western leaders, who are obsessed with the topic of human rights at every given opportunity, pointedly remain silent about these rights in relation to racist actions of their Kiev clients. In light of this forgetfulness I would like to remind another requirement of the very first article of the UN Charter: to respect the rights and fundamental freedoms of any person regardless of their race, gender, language and religion. The rights of Russians and people associated with the Russian culture have been methodically eradicated following a coup in Kiev. The Russian language has been prohibited in all spheres on a legislative level – education, media, culture, and even everyday life. Another law banning the canonic Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been adopted recently. These gross violations of rights of Russians enshrined in the UN Charter, along with threats to security of Russia and entire Europe which comes from the Kiev regime and all those who pull it into NATO, are prime causes of the current Ukrainian crisis. The special military operation, which Russia is carrying out to protect its security, the present and the future of the people on their indigenous land, is aimed at eliminating them.

We value the genuine aspiration of the entire range of our partners to promote mediation initiatives for the very best of reasons. We respect their constructive commitment to results as opposed to the dead-end peace formula of Volodymyr Zelensky. We encourage our friends to take the above-mentioned facts of the real causes of the present situation fully into consideration in their further efforts. No peace on the basis of the UN Charter is possible unless they are eliminated. The realistic settlement plan was set forth by President Vladimir Putin on June 14, when he once again convincingly demonstrated the good will of Russia to achieve negotiation agreements whose prospects were dropped by Kiev and its mentors following the 2014 coup, failure to comply with 2015 Minsk Agreements and 2022 Istanbul Agreements.

The unprecedented level of hypocrisy and aggressiveness of the western policy against Russia not only brings to naught the idea of global cooperation promoted by the Secretary General but even more so blocks the functioning of the entire global control systems, including the Security Council. This is not our choice, we are not to be blamed for the consequences of such a dangerous course. But everyone will feel the high cost if the West does not stop.

It is obvious for the world majority that confrontation and hegemonism do not solve a single global problem. They just artificially restrain the impartial process of forming a multipolar world order which will rest on the equality of rights of big and small nations, respect the value of a human person, equality of men and women, right of the people to determine their own fate themselves. All of these is a quote from the UN Charter. Just as a principle of non-interference with internal affairs of sovereign states, whose restatement, to the shame of the UN members, was blocked by the US and their satellites at the very summit of the future during the adoption of a corresponding pact.

To my mind Lavrov is the world's premier diplomat.

International Law Does Not Exist
The assumption of benign global hegemony, that economic and political liberalism was a silver bullet to transcend power politics, turned out to be a liberal illusion fueled by hubris. New international geometries have taken hold. NATO expansion predictably inflamed tensions with Russia as Moscow reasonably perceived it as an existential threat, while China’s simple economic rise became a challenge to U.S. global primacy. Globalization as a neoliberal, Westernized-centric process has become unsustainable, in fits and starts with the U.S. stock market crisis. The excesses of liberalism are now repudiated within the West and outside it, causing polarization within societies and the international system. In all of this, International Law has always been seen as a kind of “guarantee” above the parties, to be appealed to indiscriminately, a kind of neutral power that could settle disputes… or play in favor of the stronger.

Trump: "We go in, we blow up countries, and then we leave. We got nothing except dead people all over the place. How stupid are we? That was a Cheney and a Bush. Not just Democrats. It's both. I'm equally angry at both."

A broken clock is right twice a day.

US Weaponizing Dollar – Jeffrey Sachs
The US government has weaponized the dollar rather than having it serve as a medium of exchange or a store of value, award-winning American economist and public-policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs has said. Sachs made the remark on Thursday in his address via video link to a meeting of BRICS ministers of finance and central bank governors. The officials were meeting in Moscow to discuss the improvement of the international monetary and financial system, ahead of the BRICS 2024 summit in Kazan later this month. According to the economist, the weaponization of the dollar was obviously happening through the seizure of frozen Russian assets. He also mentioned the freezing by the US government of Iranian, Venezuelan, Afghan and other state funds. The US and its allies have frozen around $300 billion in Russian central bank assets, around $5 billion of which is sitting in American banks, as part of its Ukraine-related campaign of sanctions.
In April, President Joe Biden signed a bill allowing the seizure of Russian funds held in the US and their transfer to a Ukraine reconstruction fund. “You can’t use the dollar as a payments mechanism,” Sachs said, when a president alone can sign orders and seize essentially billions of dollars in Russian assets. The US currency has become “an instrument of aggressive form of policy,” he concluded. “I’ve said to my own government for the last 15 years ‘Stop doing it, this is crazy, it will destroy trust in the dollar.’ You can’t go on with the system like this, it’s not just Russia.” He pointed out that China wants to have normal trade without threats of US sanctions but, although Chinese banks are part of the SWIFT system, they have to abide out of a fear of being cut off the international financial network.

We all know why we promote the forever wars...
Raytheon Making Billions From Weapons for Ukraine
US defense contractor Raytheon, the world’s largest producer of guided missiles, has been profiting from Ukraine-related military supplies despite previously struggling with sales up until the start of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, a Sputnik correspondent’s analysis of the company’s earnings reports showed. Raytheon Missiles & Defense (RMD), the subsidiary specializing in missile production under the RTX Corporation, has produced the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) directly for Ukraine, while the Stinger and Javelin missiles manufactured by the company have been sent to the conflict zone since early 2022. As a manufacturer of air defense systems such as the Patriot and the missiles used by such systems, RMD has received new orders for these missile systems after such weapons were sent to Ukraine by other Western countries.
Russia has repeatedly stated that arms supplies to Ukraine lead to further escalation of the conflict and directly involve NATO countries in it. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that any cargo containing weapons for Ukraine would become a legitimate target for Russia. The United States and NATO are directly involved in the conflict, including not only by supplying weapons, but also by training personnel, Lavrov said. Raytheon has seen five consecutive quarters of sales growth since the fourth quarter of 2022, after struggling with sales decline for four consecutive quarters before that, the company’s latest earnings report showed. Details from the earnings reports of Raytheon illustrate how the US defense contractor has been able to make billions from continued US military aid to Ukraine and turn its business prospects around by taking advantage of the new demands.

As Caitlin writes of Israel: It’s So, So Bad, And It’s About To Get A Whole Lot Worse.
She suggests the US gave the OK to attack Iran. As JtC suggests we are at the brink of WWIII.

Israel is going full scorched-earth on northern Gaza in advancement of its long-planned ethnic cleansing of the area. The IDF is besieging and attacking civilian populations throughout the north, and the UN World Food Programme reports that no food aid whatsoever has been allowed in so far this month.
...
In southern Lebanon, Israel has been deliberately targeting healthcare facilities so extensively that nearly half of the medical centers in areas of conflict have already been closed. More UN peacekeepers have been wounded by Israeli fire as Israel continues to deliberately target staff from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. The Israeli military is now saying they’re going to start attacking ambulances because the ambulances are Hezbollah.
And as horrifying as both these developing stories are, they’re going to be shifted to the back burner as soon as Israel begins its planned attack on Iran.

I wonder if Israel (or Ukraine for that matter) will survive.

‘Intolerable’: Global Outrage as Israeli Forces Fire on UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon

On Thursday, UNIFIL said, “two peacekeepers were injured after an IDF Merkava tank fired its weapon toward an observation tower at UNIFIL’s headquarters in Naqoura, directly hitting it and causing them to fall.” The two injured soldiers were from Indonesia.
“Indonesia strongly condemns the attack,” Retno Marsudi, the country’s foreign affairs minister, said in response. “Attacking U.N. personnel and property is a major violation of International Humanitarian Law.”
Global outrage soon followed, with the top diplomats of Spain, France, Italy, China, Turkey, and other nations issuing statements forcefully condemning the attack.
The United States, Israel’s top ally and arms supplier, offered a more muted response, with the Biden White House saying it was “deeply concerned” by the attack while repeating Israel’s claim that it is conducting “targeted operations” against Hezbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary group and political party.

Once again proving the Zionist ownership of the US government.

Israel Jails Grayzone’s Jeremy Loffredo, Releases Him Pending Investigation
The Grayzone published a statement on October 10 unequivocally rejecting the Israeli police’s outrageous accusations against Loffredo. We repeat that we stand by Jeremy’s report. The claim that Loffredo and The Grayzone represent Israel’s enemy in wartime merely suggests that the Israeli government views the American people and free press as a legitimate target. Indeed, we are an independent outlet with no relationship, financial or otherwise, with any foreign country or political organization.
As we fight the fraudulent charges against Jeremy, we ask readers to contact the US State Department and urge them to act in his defense. The US has an obligation to defend its journalists without political prejudice, particularly when they are fulfilling the vital task of providing the public with facts on the ground.

As to Ukraine...
By now it has become accepted wisdom that Ukraine is losing the war against Russia.
Western governments are slowly accepting that their Ukrainian proxy forces have no chance to turn the situation around. None of their own populations or military are prepared to get themselves engaged in combat. Meanwhile the war support for Ukraine is eating into their budgets.
The situation necessitates to push for an end of the war - at least a temporarily one.
The Zelenski government is officially against any talk of ceasefire or piece without it being a full Ukrainian victory. But behind closed doors such talks are preceding.

Western countries will have a difficult time eating crow for their botched escapade in Ukraine.

Meanwhile the US is obsessed with the election. My question is will it be fair? Some think not.

The outstanding question: will the Democratic Party actually go ahead and attempt to execute an election steal despite growing evidence of a developing Trump landslide that might obviate it? The works are already in motion. The mail-in ballots went out long ago and early votes are getting cast by the day. The overseas ballots that require no US address or voter verification are flooding in by the millions and four years of open borders has 10-million illegal aliens (at a minimum) dispersed around the nation, great gobs of them planted in swing states, processed through the DMVs and social services — with the requisite automatic voter registration — their ballots already pre-bundled for harvest.

We'll see what we see.

I hope you've had a good week. I feel for all the hurricane victims including soryang. Some of you may remember the farming family of Justin Rhodes. They watch as their farm was almost washed away.
UNBELIEVABLE DESTRUCTION: Hurricane Helene destroys our Farm (22 min)
We’re ok, and our house was barely spared but the lower farm is destroyed. Livestock, high tunnel, bridge and more lost forever.
STRANDED by Hurricane Helene (16 min)
Our Road was washed out by the Hurricane and we can't get our cars out. We must get the Chaney's out AND get access to the grandparents.
Some towns were hit much harder and literally washed away.

So I hope you're doing well, coping with whatever life throws at you. I feel almost guilty with my idyllic scene here on Lookout Mountain. If any of you birders see a misidentified bird, please inform me in the comments. Meanwhile this thread is open to any and all thoughts you might have.