Help keep me alive and working! My only income comes from my writing and having adventures; so help keep me going even at 74 and with Parkinson’s.
“Stuff is eaten by dogs, broken by family and friends, sanded down by the wind, frozen by the mountains, lost by the prairie, burnt off by the sun, washed away by the rain. So you are left with dogs, family, friends, sun, rain, wind, prairie and mountains. What more do you want?”
–Federico Calboli
Is "effigy" the right word if it is a real deal bird, as that magpie appears to be?
Chas, you're probably right, but you'll notice we use the words "scare magpie" when pointing to the real dead bird in Steve's images.
Growing up in NE Iowa we had huge elm trees lining our boulevard which, during the Fall, were filled with thousands of starlings nightly. The noise and crap smell was horrendous. My father had read where placing dead starlings in the trees would drive them away. The police gave us permission to shoot the birds which we did, tied them to string and flung them into the trees. It didn't work. Riding a bike dragging a snow shovel on the street helped.
You got a great story out of it anyway!
"The paper acknowledges that ravens are intelligent birds with remarkable eyesight, and an acute sense of smell."
That is surprising to me. Most birds have a quite poor sense of smell.
That was the conventional wisdom, but more and more birds are proving to smell well. New World vultures first, but also various seabirds, waterfowl, and pigeons as well as Corvids are now being reconsidered.
Turkey smells pretty good.=p