Good Morning TN-birders, When I opened the French doors to the deck at 4:30 AM to let my poodles out at my home in the Charlotte Park area of West Nashville, Davidson County, just a few blocks from the Cumberland River across from Bell's Bend, one of the local great horned owls lifted off from my deck rail where it had probably been watching for mice. As I have seen only ONE mouse on the deck since my return from a Florida birding trip, I'm assuming that something did a pretty good job of extermination during those 16 days. Before I left, I had several mice scampering around on the deck to feed with the birds at any given time of day. Praise the Lord for predators!!!! For several weeks, I have had a resident chickadee which sports a curled tail. The last quarter inch or so of the tip of its tail is curled under resembling a fashion of hairdo known back in the 40's and 50's as a "page boy."** The bird's tail looks as if someone took an eyelash curler to its tip and did a reverse job by curling under instead of upward. I have been trying to get a photo, but this little sprite is just too fast at getting the peanut butter and getting out of camera range. Maybe it is ashamed of its anomaly, but I think it's cute. It will be interesting to see if the new tail feathers come in with a "curl" at the end after the bird molts. **For you younger folks, the "page boy" is a hairdo which allegedly was patterned after the wigs of the young pages in government & parliament buildings back in the historic times when wigs were part of the fashion of males who worked in government. The ends were curled under at the bottoms of a mid-neck length straight hair. It was popularized when I was young and was one of the styles worn by "the singing rage, Miss Patti Page" during the time that she made TENNESSEE WALTZ a top song hit BEFORE it became one of Tennessee's state songs! Cheers, prayers & super birding, Dee Thompson Nashville, TN =================NOTES TO SUBSCRIBER===================== The TN-Bird Net requires you to sign your messages with first and last name, city (town) and state abbreviation. You are also required to list the count in which the birds you report were seen. The actual date of observation should appear in the first paragraph. _____________________________________________________________ To post to this mailing list, simply send email to: tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx _____________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, send email to: tn-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field. ______________________________________________________________ TN-Bird Net is owned by the Tennessee Ornithological Society Neither the society(TOS) nor its moderator(s) endorse the views or opinions expressed by the members of this discussion group. Moderator: Wallace Coffey, Bristol, TN wallace@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx _____________________________________________________________ Visit the Tennessee Ornithological Society web site at http://www.tnbirds.org * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Topographical Maps located at http://topozone.com/find.asp _____________________________________________________________