Friday, September 17, 2010

The Truth Shall Set You Free...

...of a job.
WJLA-TV has fired veteran anchorman Doug McKelway... McKelway said (on air, of an environmental protest)the sparsely attended event attracted protesters "largely representing far-left environmental groups." He went on to say the protest "may be a risky strategy because the one man who has more campaign contributions from BP than anybody else in history is now sitting in the Oval Office, President Barack Obama, who accepted $77,051 in campaign contributions from BP."
This apparently provoked his boss into a major confrontation, suspension, and McKelway's firing.

I suspect he really got fired for failure to grovel. And for for speaking inconvenient truths.

The Washington Post has the story.

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Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Yard Birds

Several weeks ago I added to the garden a cast iron soup bowl, two granite soup bowls and an old copper kitchen bowl to provide water for any birds which happen by.

The water has proven to be quite an attraction. From 4:00 to 5:30 or so the birds come by in increasing numbers to drink and bathe. At one point yesterday we had several Mynahs, two mature Brazilian Cardinals, three immature same, two Japanese White Eyes, two Spotted Doves, a couple Zebra Doves, an adult Shama, another immature, several Common Waxbills, and three Java Sparrows.

While I have seen flocks of 15-20 Javas elsewhere, I had never seen other than a pair in the yard, so three is a new record. The third appeared noticeably after the first two, which have been showing up as a pair for a number of days.

So far this fall I haven't seen a Pacific Golden Plover in the yard, tho there are several charging around the grass at Pearl Ridge Elementary School. Yesterday Valerie raised the ugly possibility that all my gardening i.e. replacing cruddy grass with beds of succulents may have made the yard less interesting to the Plover.

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