Is That A Bird On Your Head, Or...?

Speaking of having a bird on your head, crows do it, too.  This is Nadine the crow years ago as a fledgling, getting all excited at feeding time.  Note her oversized blue eyes (they get darker with age), scruffy baby feathers and gape flanges.

He could walk all around with a crow on his head.  

But not for long, because FOOD.  Finally she'd notice the food being prepared and get all excited and start dancing around, flapping, gaping and yelling.  Yelling at the food dish, I might add.

When you feed baby crows, the excitment and noise is amazing.  They have a LOUD call, they flap, they gape.  The technique to feeding is to mimic the parents and get a glop of food on your finger and just ram it right down their gaping maw--if you just nicely place the food in their mouth they sit there, beak open, and allow the food to fall back out...and then give you a disappointed look.  Enthusiasm is key with crows, ya gotta participate, man.

Like this (this is not us, just shows a great example of baby crow feeding):
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlqOom_cYNI

Hence, Nadine attempting to swallow a finger while making those excited, garble-y 'baby crow swallowing' noises, loudly, which only made us laugh.

As far as Nadine was concerned this kind of ridiculous behavior was absolutely necessary, she loved it.

Nadine, Our Little Feathery Oracle

Nadine started yelling her 'danger' call again non-stop tonight, so I knew we were in for another earthquake of size somewhere. She started in around 1AM and kept it up until about 20 minutes or so after the earthquake had passed around 2:10AM, a 5.1 about two hundred miles south of us. I was up anyway (got me a double dose of pain/insomnia the last few days) but in the other room, and when I had gone out to check on her around 1:45AM or so the baby chicks were also alert, standing around being still like they were all listening for something. Normally they are asleep at that time, or are in varying stages of eat/play/sleep. Not this time, they were ALL standing & listening. Creepy.

I stuck my head out the front door, listening for any bark/howling dogs (THEY had been going off around Midnight to 1AM) but everything was quiet. Except for our local mockingbird who was barking HIS 'danger' call along with Nadine. It was that eerie, too-quiet thing, too.

So far Nadine has pre-warned us of at least three bigger earthquakes--she's 4 years old this month and ignores smaller ones, only seeming to click in on either 4.3+ quakes that are right under us, or larger quakes farther away. Jake and Scout also react, but in a lesser way, not as vocal. Nadine also yelled about the 7.2 quake in Mexico on Easter Sunday, but that day she yelled for a longer time, about 2 hours beforehand--maybe Pwaves start happening earlier for bigger quakes, or are bigger and more easily sensed for bigger quakes...? She also had a strong, dramatic reaction for about 2 hours beforehand to the 4.3 earthquake March 17th that was centered right under us. I've never read up on P-waves, so I dunno.

It's pretty cool seeing the 'animals sense P-waves' thing in action, but I wish the damned earthquakes would have the common courtesy to not happen in the wee hours of the morning!

edit: Earthquake count for the week for CA/NV currently at 2,956, we're closing in on the big 3,000 mark!