As I was leaving this morning, still dark, warmer so no freezing rain today but so windy I found one of the garbage cans (square, four and a half feet tall, heavy) out in the middle of the street, Alpha gave me a bag of stuff I was forgetting and told me the feathers on the doorstep were from a Sperber. Her mother the ornithologist had identified them. This is what a Sperber looks like. According to the text, it is a small bird of prey. The tail feathers (attached to something gristly) found on our doorstep would appear to have come from a male of the species.

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So far, the new year has been slippery and hard to scrape off my windshield. I couldn’t fall asleep for the longest time last night, just lay in bed, levitating about three inches off the mattress, with this dynamo thing going on inside, despite being tired from staying up late New Year’s eve.

On the auspicious side, our largest cat left on the welcome mat something which may be the tail of a hawk.

Oh, and Alpha reminds me that it is the year of the sheep, not goat.

And all that good stuff.

The Bug says Happy Year of the Goat.