{"id":1060,"date":"2008-12-19T12:39:54","date_gmt":"2008-12-19T17:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2008-12-19T12:39:54","modified_gmt":"2008-12-19T17:39:54","slug":"dang-what-a-big-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=1060","title":{"rendered":"Dang, what a big bird"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href='http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/blue-heron-scaled.jpg' title='blue-heron-scaled.jpg'><img src='http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/blue-heron-scaled.jpg' alt='blue-heron-scaled.jpg' \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em>A great blue heron (Wikipedia)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I got out of the Jeep in the driveway in front of my house earlier today, and the biggest bird I&#8217;ve ever seen lifted off from the front gable of my house and lumbered out over the woods like an overloaded 747. It was huge, with a five-foot wingspan or more. It almost certainly was a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Great_Blue_Heron\">great blue heron<\/a>. If a stork on one&#8217;s roof is a sign of good luck, I believe I&#8217;ll assume that a heron is good luck too.<\/p>\n<p>I have a lot of work to do learning to recognize bird species. A few days ago I saw a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pileated_Woodpecker\">pileated woodpecker<\/a>. They too are an impressive bird, and they make a wild, gooney-bird sound in the woods.<\/p>\n<p>It speaks well of the health and variety of the local habitat that such a wide range of species can be seen here. I was amused, listening to Bill Moyers interview Michael Pollan recently, to hear Pollan say that in areas where there is an overpopulation of white-tail deer (like here), hunting them and eating them is good food policy. From bears to foxes, we&#8217;ve got them here. The little streams seem healthy, with plenty of minnows and tadpoles this spring.<\/p>\n<p><a href='http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/bird-leavings-cropped.JPG' title='bird-leavings-cropped.JPG'><img src='http:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/bird-leavings-cropped.JPG' alt='bird-leavings-cropped.JPG' \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em>The heron left a heron-size poop streak on the roof of the house.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A great blue heron (Wikipedia) I got out of the Jeep in the driveway in front of my house earlier today, and the biggest bird I&#8217;ve ever seen lifted off from the front gable of my house and lumbered out over the woods like an overloaded 747. It was huge, with a five-foot wingspan or &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=1060\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Dang, what a big bird&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sustainable-living","category-the-land"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}