There's a chill in the air- soon it will be suet time

Hmmm, neuroscience psychology. Caltech had some interesting research a few years ago. Have you checked to see what they're up to these days? I feel for you von. Better you than me. Those days of "small projects" are long behind me... very long to the extent that they are nothing more than a bad memory.

French fries are their salvation so to speak with all those oils in them. Have you ever seen them descend on fries outside a McDonalds?

Oh Ginger! Do you have Wallbies too!

Quite often Jack and Zorro will disappear for more than 1 hour.
They will come back all knackered out.
I always know it’s a wallaby
That has led them off on a long chase.
Some winter mornings there will be half a dozen on the front flats.

Like these von?

There's this,

http://emotion.caltech.edu/research.html


And the below quote from this place, http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:Bl_k1Uoalg8J:emotion-research.net/deliverables/D7c%2520potential%2520exemplars%2520cog_%2520action.pdf+connection+between+emotion+and+cognition&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=3&client=firefox-a

and this one too........

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~gpotts/emotion/Phelps-2006.pdf

Sorry ginger, neat photo. You really need to start a post regarding your Wallabies. I did a search and see that they're indigenous to Australia. You should post more photos in another thread and tell about them so more people can see them, instead of it being buried in this thread. What do you think? I think it would be an interesting topic to many of us.

Thanks Terry!! I was only kidding, but will take it!!

Equil, this is a rather large project actually. UGH!!

I was being facetious when I referred to your "little" project that is due this coming April as being "small". I knew darn well that was no "small" project the moment I saw the due date. I was not being facetious when I stated, "Those days of "small projects" are long behind me... very long to the extent that they are nothing more than a bad memory". On the other hand, there is considerably more peer reviewed research out there now for you to draw upon as opposed to when I had "small projects" well over 25 years ago.

Oh gosh, backing up to joepyeweed's comments about using Crisco I need to add that I didn't have time to gather up actual suet and ended up using 6 cans of Crisco. That's why the color and consistency is so off in my photos above. The birds seem to like it just the same as the suet I've made in subsequent years in which I used suet and tossed in lard or shortening only when I ran low.

Have you ever had a biggun going to town on the metal cap to your fireplace chimney? Talk about resonanting sound. I vibrate and hasve this urge to grab ear plugs just thinking about that bird out there at sunrise. To this day I haven't quite figured out exactly what made that woodpecker go at our chimney cap with such zeal.

That's worse than what ours did to the fence, all right. I can't imagine. This one sounded like a machine gun.

Ours sort of reminded me of getting an MRI only louder. Funny you should mention a machine gun because when my Dad first heard it, he thought either one of our kids or a neighbor's kid was out there target practicing with the metal cap. Bizarre. I can see them going at a wood fence that has obviously colonized with tasty tid bits but a metal chimney cap? What goodies might a metal chimney cap have? He went at it hot and heavy for a few weeks straight. We didn't mind so much during the week but on weekends he was a little bit much to stomach when everyone lounges in bed for an extra hour or so. We actually went out there to try and deter him because we were afraid he might damage his beak pecking away at the metal and he'd fly away and come right back to have at it. Then one day, he never came back. Either he broke his beak or got nailed by a hawk up there doing his thing like a sitting duck. That's all we could figure.

Maybe he thought he was battling a rival. They do have tiny brains. He's probably gone to South America to live out his days in defeat and shame.

"He's probably gone to South America to live out his days in defeat and shame." That was pretty funny.

Equil, Sorry, I should have guessed that was your sense of humor. I think school is supposed to make you smarter, but it doesn't seem to be the case. I think my mind is just mush these days.

Have you ever seen the skull on the pileated woodpecker, without skin and feathers. The shock absorbing system on their skeletal system is amazing (at least to me) from an evolutionary standpoint.

von, you're welcome....just be sure to add my name onto the byline or whatever it is you call it :o)

For years at my parents place in AR, I have heard something, similar to a machine gun sound, but on a tree (if that makes sense), just going on and on. I can never see what it is that's making the sound. I recently found out that it's pileated woodpeckers. I've never seen them, but my parents have. They would have to have shock absorbers to be making the noise they make. Next time I go down, I'm doing something, camping out in the woods maybe, to be able to see them.

Education definitely provides one with opportunities. Other than that, I believe it is a very humbling experience in that one gets to be enlightened about exactly how much one doesn't know. It's that mush factor you mentioned, aren't you just loving being enlightened?

I've seen photographs of their skulls before and I've had it explained to me and it was even noted that their brains were designed to "cushion" repeated blows but this little guy was a veritable jackhammer up there on that metal chimney cap and we seriously were convinced he had either broken his beak or gotten plucked off by a raptor up their doing his thing oblivious to his surroundings.