>No go! I am geting new video card this
>morning. Might change my reception from
>the video links.  I sat for ages to wait
>for response from the
>“interests” button. Nothind at
>all!!!

I wish I could help.  I have no clue what you need a video card for?  It should just pop up under the “Intereses” group and once you have that page up, just click on the first box (there
are three different video options). Please try again. It’s worth it.

>I sat for ages to wait
>for response from the
>“interests” button. Nothind at
>all!!!

Monte~

Don’t click on the “Interests” button.

Click on the “Vides Fakti” button.

Then the video message box will open up.

Then click on the first video on the top right corner.

Alda

I give up! My computer is not able to pick up the full page of the site. There is a large gap between economics ans arhivs. No button marked Vides Fakti. So, what ever is goin on, I will not see it. Never mind!

I think it time to get this Thread going again. This is a short story about a very delightful bird. Only problem is to provide a picture, as The only one I can find is in Readers Digests birdbook and I don’t know if they be happy I scanned the picture in my file. I hope we get more bird people to come along with their tales about birds.

BUSH TALES

                    Gelignite Kids

          Building a track in the bush that only has bridle track traces to indicate where to go, and doing that without the help of a bulldozer is not easy. Neither is it as hard as some convict tales would make you believe. Doing the work with pick and shovel and gelignite has it own benefits. Instead of tearing through the bush at the rate a bulldozer can do, pick and shovel forces you to become part of the every day living of the local inhabitants.

          Following the old bridle track insured that I have the best grades available on the ridge top. Henry Ford said, that if you had a tough job, give it to a lazy man. He will figure out the easy way to do it. Old Henry must have known cows well too. Rider can make a horse go practically anywhere, but cows just take their own easy way. The only problem following a bridle track is the ability of cows to walk along a track about a foot wide transversing any grade slope. To squeeze a four-wheel drive on the same slope you need at least six feet of track.

          There was a hundred yards or so of very level bridle track leading into a nice flat saddle. The slope was steep enough to turn any four-wheel drive vehicle on its side. Back to pack and fill. The ground was very hard and rocky. Every shovelful had to be gouged out by pick. With a bit of Henry Fords knack of making a hard job easy, it is quite wonderful how much can be done with few sticks of gelignite. It was easy to poke a hole in the ground with a crowbar, then a stick of gelly, and half the work was done.

          By placing the blast holes about three feet apart on the high side of the intended track, not only was the rocky ground made shiftable with a shovel, a lot was shifted in the right place for the fill. To make the job faster, we were getting a bit impatient to be able to have access to our land, I was blasting three holes. Never fond of electric detonators, it was safety fuse, cut to have enough time to light the fuses, about thirty seconds apart for the explosions.

          There is lot of blasting to do in hundred yards. It can not be done in a weekend. Soon, I became very much part of the locality. To a Yellow Robin I was the proverbial manna from heaven. My attentive friend keenly inspected every shovelful of dirt, retrieving every grub uncovered. The moment I arrived at the head of the diggings, there was my new friend swinging on a flimsy branch. There was lot of chasing other birds, this was the robins personal supermarket of grubs.

          But the real pinnacle of this birdbrain’s keen intelligence was the timing of sorties, diving from the observation branch on a bush safe distance from the explosion, in between the blasts. I was horrified at first. I was going to blow that birdbrain up, sooner or later. But as the work was slowly moving on yard by yard, my respect for the Robin was growing.

          Bang! The Robin dives on the churned up ground, picks up the choicest grub, back in the bush.

          Bang! The second blast, and Robin is on the target.

          Bang! The third blast and Robin is there again. Now there is no hurry at all to fly back to the bush. I used up something like forty sticks of gelly on that section of the job. My only worry half way through was that the Robin will get too fat, and get cholesterol on its brain. After that delightful relationship with a wild Yellow Robin, call me a Birdbrain any time.

          Yellow Robin and me - The Gelignite Kids!

1992 August       Imants ©

Hello Monte, your story of the robin brought back a memory for me, I was a youngster sat on the bank of a river fishing, a robin redbreast alighted on my rod rest, and cocked an eye at the bait box on my knee, it landed on the side of the box and helped itself to one of the wriggling grubs, flew up onto a branch and devoured it,pleased with itself it then repeated the trick, the robins are quite tame, as the anglers usually throw them a few grubs.The robin was having more luck than I was , so I moved further along the bank, I cast in, then up pops my little friend the robin, and helps himself to a free lunch, this time he sat on my rod rest to eat, suddenly he disappeared , all that was left was a couple of drifting feathers, a small hawk had plucked him from his perch, instead of having one eye in the sky, and one on me , he’d had both on his next titbit, and paid the price.Instead of having dinner , he was dinner ! I raced up the bank after him, knocking over my flask, and tripping over my rod, but to no avail, the hawk, plus dinner, had disappeared, I went home dejected , I felt I had let my little friend down , and I had’nt even caught a fish.I went to the library and borrowed a british birds book, so that I could put a name to the murderous raptor that had devoured my little pal, identified him as a cock sparrowhawk, and a spark was lit, I sold my fishing gear and bought a pair of binoculars, became a bird, and wild life watcher, and still am to this day.
The moral of the story is, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so Monte, warn your little friend…..:-)

After I finished that section I did not see The robin for some time. The work was going slowly and some time and distance down the track I had to use the gelignite again. After the first firing, gues who arrived? He had no a lot to pick this time as it was rocks I had to decimate, bet he got some and we had one more encounter again down the track. Then I suppose it was out of his territory. But saw him many times years latter when I had a small bulldoser and used it to upkeep the track, or just driving trough his territory.

There is good photoe’s if You Google “Yellow Robin”  and small photo galery of other Australian birds.