Democracy for New Mexico

Sunday Bird Blogging: Bears Superbowl Edition

Bears fan Bosco the Peach-Faced Lovebird will be ringing his little bells every time Brian Urlacher makes a tackle

UPDATE: If you're watching ads during today's game, be sure to watch for this one.

Today's the day. The time is right for dancing in the end zone with Bears and lassoing Colts behind the line of scrimmage. All that and Prince singing Purple Rain at halftime in a game that may well be played in plain old driving rain. Wish they were playing at Soldier Field in Chicago, where it was predicted to be in the range of -2 to +2 degrees this afternoon. Bears weather!

Chicago's Jennifer Jennings Band sent us a link to their special Bears Superbowl anthem, Rock on Chicago Bears, to get us in the mood. Mary Ellen and I are wearing our NFC Championship Bear shirts, and I dug out some Bears paraphernalia I bought back in the dark ages, when the Bears last played in the Superbowl in 1986.

Sunny the Sun Conure intends to follow the game online, so he can enter comments in all the football blogs and generally trash talk about the Colts. He predicts Colts QB Peyton Manning will choke. Again. This morning Sunny found a picture of the famous Picasso sculpture that presides over Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago and is insisting it's a bird:

And Sunny was positively put out by a CAT wearing a Bears helmet in front of Chicago's Art Institute:

Sunny sez the Monsters of the Midway seem to be everywhere these days.

The seven parakeets -- Whitey, Queenie, Ginger, Hambone, Peanut, Jumbo and Georgie -- were too edgy about the game to even have their pictures taken this morning. They'll be twittering nervously and pecking on chips and dip until the last whistle is blown in Miami today. They won't be alone ... My prediction? Bears 21, Colts 17. So there.

Note: Neither of the above photos was photoshopped. This kind of thing really IS going on in the frigid reaches of Bear-mad Chicagoland. Hey, when your team gets to the Superbowl every 21 years or so, you go all out!

See our previous post to check out a video of the Super Bowl Shuffle and other recollections of Bear games past.

Sunday Bird Blogging: Tie-Dye Edition

Click on image for larger version.

You didn't know that Sunny the sun conure parrot is a hippie, did you? Check out his tie-dyed sleeping and playing "nest" where he likes to cuddle in at night and act groovy during the day. Note the other day glow items in his cage including, well, Sunny himself. Sunny wanted to show solidarity today with all the other "dirty hippies" who are marching for peace, lobbying for peace, contacting members of Congress for peace and trying to gain support for Bush-Cheney impeachment this week. Are you with him? Keep on truckin'!

Bird Blogging: Deck the Halls Edition

Bosco the peach-faced lovebird likes to help with organizing and putting up our Christmas decorations. Here he is (above) helping us prepare some of our deck the halls material.

Bosco likes to include his play gym area, near our front window, in the Xmas displays. Here he is sprucing up his Roswell space alien toy, which he insists be part his holiday decorations since the spaceman is a Christmasy green color.

Sunday Bird Blogging: Sunny the Acrobat

Sunny the sun conure loves to play with toys of all sorts but his special favorites are balls, especially plastic or straw varieties. Lately he has taken to rolling onto his back with his feet in the air while playing with his balls (no, not those kind). He likes to perform acrobatically on the top of his cage where he generally hangs out, and loves to be noticed while he does so. He's an avian ham.

In this recent video he also seems to develop a strange fixation on his tail feathers, grasping them with one foot while he performs other amusing moves on top of his cage. He hasn't shown any interest in doing this with his tail feathers before or since this performance, so savor it as a rare treat. We do.

Sunny's cage is in our back den, where I've been camped out during my convalescence, and he's given me many hours of entertainment in the process. I have to admit we had to move our 7 parakeets to another room as their near constant singing was the precisely wrong prescription for my headache-dominated malady. Even Sunny screeches at times, but thankfully he usually limits his loud vocalizing to times when I leave the room. Sun conures are known for their playfulness and tricks and Sunny definitely fits the mold. Enjoy.

Sunday Bird Blogging: GOTV Edition

With only nine more days until the November 7th, 2006 election, even our birds are getting into the act. Bosco the peach-faced lovebird (above) has been doing lots of phone banking, working for a big turnout of all his Democratic avian and non-avian friends. Whenever he sees an image of Bush, Wilson or other Repub candidates he makes strange, gutteral sounds. I know how he feels.

Meanwhile, Sunny the sun conure is checking the Patricia Madrid for Congress website to sign up for GOTV volunteer work. They're organizing a big push for the 96 hours before the election, and Sunny will definitely be a part of it. In fact, he's taking off work from his seed splitting job on election day to work, work, work for a New Direction and Democratic wins up and down the ticket. How about you? (Click on photos for larger versions.)

Sunday Bird (Dog) Blogging: Balloon Fiesta Edition

No birds today, but we do have Terry Riley's dog, Ed (above).  As Terry writes, "Everybody talks about how beautiful the balloon fiesta is, and their pictures are filled with the color and the calm beauty of it all. There is another side -- the dogs and horses that are upset by the balloons and the noises that come with them.

"My dogs Ed and Lucy work hard to keep our property safe from invading balloons. Saturday morning I happened to almost catch a picture of Ed rushing to the other end of the yard to protect it.  A balloon had started descending until Ed convinced them otherwise." (You can see a tiny bit of the balloon retreating at the upper left-hand corner of the photo.)

Not many balloons from the Fiesta ventured into the NE Heights where we live, but we did get one floating right over the house with that distinctive whoosh - whoosh sound. I ran out to see it and then checked to see if our lovebird, sun conure or parakeets were alarmed. Absolutely no response, which I found surprising. I guess in the avian world whoosh - whoosh sounds are no big whoop.

PS: I'm still experiencing problems with images and sidebar material loading properly. I've heard from several readers who are having the same problem, yet TypePad insists when they load the page all is well. Are any of you reading this now having any problems loading the page properly or entirely? If so, please write and let me know in the comments. I have to say that TypePad has been very slow in responding and has offered very little useful info about fixing the problems, perhaps because they keep insisting there are none. Such is cyber-life in the 21st century. 

Sunday Bird Blogging: Lakeside Memories

On this gray and drizzly Fall day in Albuquerque, Bosco the peach-faced lovebird (above) and Sunny the sun conure (below) told me they are basking in their memories of sunny days spent in the mountains of central Colorado last month. Here they are hanging out on the banks of a small mountain lake on the road to Cottonwood Pass.

Before we know it the dappled golden light of Autumn and the shimmering aspen leaves will be gone for another year and only memories will remain until the cycle repeats itself, trusty and enduring.

Dazzling...

(Click on photos for larger images.)

Sunday Bird Blogging: Sunny Cabin Edition

Sunny the sun conure loved traveling with us on our recent vacation at a Colorado cabin. It was his first long trip with us and his curiosity definitely outweighed any nervousness he might have had. It was about a five hour drive to our destination and he never uttered a squawk the whole time. He raptly watched the passing scene out the car window, took naps, played with his toys, munched and preened himself -- the usual. Here he is (above) with his traveling cage perched on a picnic table out back of our cabin. He dug the semi-rugged life.

Who knew sun conures could be so enamored of cabin life?

Home sweet Colorado home (for a week), with smoke rising from the cabin's wood stove. It was nippy up there at times, especially in the mornings, and we often breakfasted on steaming oatmeal mixed with pieces of those luscious Colorado peaches. Sunny loved to perch on a shoulder and taste a bit of each as we ate. Spoiled bird? Na, just part of the family. (Click on photos for larger versions.)

Sunday Bird Blogging: Rocky Mountain High

Yes, it's true. We took Bosco the peach-faced lovebird and Sunny the sun conure with us on our vacation last week up to central Colorado. They both have a small backpack carrying case (above) for traveling, and we also carted along a larger abode for each  of them for hanging out at our cabin. During one of our trips into Salida, we stopped for pizza with them and enjoyed it outside at a picnic table as a rainbow provided a perfect backdrop for the end of a perfect day.

Both birds visibly enjoyed traveling. Besides keeping their curious eagle eyes (so to speak) on the passing scene whenever we took rides in the car, both Sunny (above) and Bosco (below) loved to be out in the mountains, beside streams or in the aspen groves, grooving. So did we. (Click on photos for larger versions.)

Sunday Video Bird Blogging

We decided to try out the capability of our digital camera to make short video clips this morning and took a couple short vids of Sunny the Sun Conure. Definitely an amateur attempt, as we have no idea what we're doing (yet), so bear with us on on the clip quality. You can hear several of our parakeets serenading in the background. And you'll see Sunny do one of his tricks -- rolling over onto his back and using his feet to play with a ball. Because he was captivated by the camera, however, he cut the trick short and rushed over to the lens instead. Ham!

What he really loves is for one of us to scratch his belly while he lies there on his back. He's a pure pleasure hound, feathered version. We had to give him a piece of a cashew when he was done being filmed, one of his favorite treats -- a legume reward!