On TV they keep showing how lots of countries are lighting up their landmarks blue and yellow in solidarity with Ukraine. It's a lovely sentiment, but I feel like we should be doing more than lighting things up. However, we don't want to get into a nuclear war with Russia, so we do have to tread carefully. There's a forty-mile-long convoy of Russian army equipment headed to Kyiv, and I keep thinking that if we could blow that up, we would take out a lot of their hardware. Forty miles! War sucks. Like everyone else, I am pulling for the scrappy Ukrainians and their scrappy comedian president, but how long can they hold out while we just watch, too afraid to help? At some point we'll have to do something, because sooner or later Putin will attack a country in NATO, and then we'll be obligated to help. The correspondents who are in Kyiv always seem to stand in front of this gorgeous white building with gold onion domes, so I googled it and found out it's the Monastery of St. Michael. It was an ancient building that the Soviets tore down in the 1930's and replaced with administrative buildings, but architects had secretly made drawings of it so that sixty years later, when Ukraine was independent again, they could rebuild it. And now will the Russians destroy it again?
On a lighter note, I got this sticker from DuoLingo. It would have been so fitting if I'd gotten this on Twosday, 2/22/22, but alas, I got it the next day.
Here are some pretty orchids I saw on Saturday that I didn't remember seeing last time.
When Travalon and I were walking along the canal yesterday, we saw this mushroom drawn on the underside of a bridge. My regular readers know I find mushrooms not only delicious, but totes adorbs too.
Travalon took some photos of eagles in Sauk on Saturday.
Tiffy and I didn't have good cameras with us on Saturday, so we couldn't take photos of the bird party at Tenney Park. Travalon took some photos yesterday. Here you can see tons of geese came from the south to join the bird party.
In this photo you can see scaups and red-headed ducks.
This is a goldeneye duck.
Here is a scaup next to a mallard that is dabbling. The scaups are diving ducks, so they are harder to photograph because they keep going underwater.
And here is another scaup, and I'm not sure what the duck to its left is. The female?
I had to google some of these ducks, and ask the hive mind on social media to ID others, but I know mallards when I see them!
For some reason a ton of the Canada geese were heading towards this house, which I found hilarious. Was there a party I didn't know about?
This is apparently a female bibbed mallard, which is a cross between a mallard and a domestic duck.
And this is the bibbed mallard drake.
This is the sunset over the jetty at Tenney Park locks.
This scaup looks like he's laughing!
Then Travalon caught him in a more sober moment.
I don't know why bird parties make me so happy. Maybe seeing all the birds hanging out together, looking like they're having fun, lets some of their joy rub off on me. Tiffy and Travalon enjoyed the bird party too, and on Sunday a ton of people had gathered to watch them, so it's not just me.
No comments:
Post a Comment