Update On The Pigeon Project At Bowers School Farm.

I guess I've never discussed this topic here before so I guess a little background is in order:

The West Bloomfield School District (in West Bloomfield, Michigan) had a farm donated to them back in the 1960's.  Apparently someone on the school board at the time had the foresight not to simply sell off the land; the farm was retained basically intact and it still serves as an educational resource for the school district.

About a year and a half ago, I approached the farm manager about installing a pigeon loft at the farm.  He was quite receptive to the idea because pigeons can be an excellent educational tool.  They're not very large and from them students can learn about genetics, animal behavior, physiology and a host of other biology related subjects.

Through a long series of small steps forward and many steps back we finally got a loft at the farm and we've got pigeons in the loft.  We had three pairs of baldhead show rollers, a pair of fantails and two extra male fantails.  This brings me to my update.

One of the male baldheads died this week so I've now got an extra female baldhead roller.  Having a spare female in the loft is not as much of a disruption as is having a spare male (go figure!) so it's not imperative that I pair her up or get rid of her.  Frankly I had kind of expected the male to die because the last time I was at the loft, his breathing was very labored and  I couldn't really do anything for him.

The two remaining pairs of baldheads have clear (i. e. infertile) eggs in their nests.  I would have pulled the eggs but even fertile eggs look infertile for about a week after they're laid so I wanted to wait since I'm not completely sure when these eggs were laid.

The fantails, much to my surprise, have finally laid two eggs of their own.  And at least one egg is fertile.  I hope to soon see a new fantail in their nest. 

 

5:25:13 PM  #  
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Pigeon Billboards At Wimbledon
This strikes me as a novel way of advertising.  Painting pigeons and having them fly around is certainly out of the norm. I've got to hand it to those "ad wizards".  They never sleep.
11:11:26 AM  #  
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Detroit To Host NCAA Men's Final Four In 2009

Doesn't the fact that there is so much excitement within civic circles around Detroit about the fact that Detroit landed the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four for 2009 speak volumes about how desperate the civic leaders of Detroit are for any good news?  I mean I'm sure there is a lot of prestige with this and other high profile sporting events upcoming in Detroit.  But these are all one-time inflows of cash into the economy of downtown Detroit. 

It seems that there are no simple answers to the bigger problems facing Detroit and that's why all the civic leaders seem to be avoiding facing them.  Much easier to trumpet the fact that we're going to be hosting an important basketball tournament than to address the fact that even with new businesses moving downtown there are still a lot of vacant buildings down there.

11:04:45 AM  #  
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Long Time Dry Spell May Be Ending

Ah yes.  It has been a long long time since I've posted anything.  On the other hand since I think I may have one reader there didn't seem to be a rush to share my desultory thoughts with the world.

I've decided to take another crack at not only sharing interesting links that I find but also at assembling coherent and worthwhile thoughts to share with others for the purpose of inspiring thoughtful and incisive discussion.  Or maybe just to start an argument.

I don't think I can pour my innermost thoughts out on a webpage which I suppose sort of mitigates one of the major reasons for maintaining a blog.  On the other hand I don't know that morbid self-revelation is all it's cracked up to be either. 

 

1:52:56 AM  #  
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