Category Archives: Birds

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If eggs aren’t available, why can we still buy chicken?

I note this article this week: https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-trump-fdd6495cbe44c96d471ae8c6cf4dd0a8. That version says that the Trump Administration is trying to rehire bird flu experts that got fired. Most of the news outlets frame it differently: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/usda-accidentally-fired-officials-bird-flu-rehire-rcna192716. Suddenly it is the USDA at fault not the Trump administration’s chainsaw fool.

Should we worry about bird flu? Oh, yes, I think so. I have been wondering why we still have chicken to eat and chicken in the stores, if millions of chickens are being wiped out to try to prevent H5N1 bird influenza from moving into humans. This article explains in unreassuring detail how factory farms, packing chickens together, and killing them at 6 weeks old for meat, puts pressure on the virus to become more deadly and kill the host. In wild birds the influenza virus wants to spread, so it’s better not to kill the host fast. That is not true on our national and international big factory farms.

The Unnatural History of Bird Flu

Firing the people working the track the H5N1 bird influenza and trying to stop it if it starts going human to human, well. Is that injustice or arrogance or stupidity? Or all three? And who wants to work for the government now? It is being treated as a corporation, but it isn’t a corporation. Public service often pays less. Good luck hiring the best and brightest who want to serve our country and humanity.

This is the worst year in the US for influenza since 2017-2018 so far. That is without the H5N1 bird influenza really getting in to people. Here is the graph for the week ending February 15th from the CDC. I keep an eye on it all through influenza season.

The article on H5N1 bird influenza is the best argument I’ve ever read for choosing not to eat meat. I like meat, but the factory farming is going to more countries. It may produce more eggs and more chickens, but if it is also the perfect breeding ground for lethal influenza, that changes my viewpoint. We cannot go on. We will have another pandemic.

Why are humans such fools?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: injustice.

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Solo vessel

A duck is a sort of a vessel, isn’t it? Can you nap while floating in the water? I can’t. I hiked part of the Connected Lakes Trail and spoke to a member of the local Audubon Society yesterday. I did not have binoculars but he shared. I used my Panasonic DMC-FZ150, zoomed all the way in. It is still a bit difficult to identify this bird.

Now the pair are both awake. I think they are a female and a male ruddy duck, but it is a touch blurry and abstract. I like the photograph anyhow. The water and ducks and grasses and reflections were so beautiful.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: vessel.

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Morning ablutions

I took this with my Panasonic F150, zooming in, walking part of the Blue Heron loop along the Colorado River. Wow! Not truly ragged, but think if instead of combing our hair, we had to clean and arrange all of these fantastic feathers! The heron demonstrated many spectacular neck positions and can fan out the feathers in amazing ways. I tried not to disturb her too much.

Done for now.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: ragged.

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Travel light

Pormanteau
Passepartout
What do you know?
Where will you go?

Around the world in eighty days
1873 writer braves
a story to stun and amaze
journeying difficult yet craved

And do we now want it all?
Explore and travel still don’t pall
Yet changing weather makes cities fall
What change will make us heed earth’s call?

No Passepartout to pack my bags
Ethics queries about plane rides
A portmanteau inside my mind
Books are trips, to earth be kind

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: portmanteau.

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Where to relax

I think this is a pinon jay. I took this up on the Colorado National Monument on Saturday. I was pretty blind in the sun, but got the shot, after I cropped it. That’s a new bird to me: here.

There were tons of junipers in the Monument and some pinon pines. The junipers look like the winters might be a bit hard, with amazing twisted trunks.

They are happily producing berries anyhow and look way healthier than the ones in town.

The pinon pines and the junipers appear to be the local armchairs for the pinon jays. There was a pair flirting, too.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: armchair.