It's all good if the bird flies away. You really don't want to have to scrape the whole bird, and his/her guts off the windshield. THAT is a serious bird-strike. I saw a perfectly good P3 engine ruined by sucking a bunch of seagulls once (plane and crew ok thankfully, but shaken). Best story we liked to tell in aviation, was about the fighter jock who had a whole seagull go through his glare-shield, nailed him in the eye through his helmet visor, and yes the poor devil lost his eye. And on top of that, had to land his plane.

Fighter jocks really don't like birds. One smart alec came in out our old beat up A4s once, wrote up a gripe "Bird crap on AOA indicator" predictably the boss handed me the gripe. So I went out with a little rag and wiped off this rather small bird speck.... signed off the gripe "Cleaned Guano" as a corrosion control matter. A little guano never hurt anyone, and it's good for the plants.

YES the best singers do hide quite well. They are singing about their nests, and bragging. They are luring the predators away. It's probably a song sparrow. Look up "song sparrow" on line and see if that's the bird. Some really nice birder sites even have the calls of the birds available. Yeah onomatopoeia sounds like a song sparrow to me. If they had red on their breast, in California we call those "linnets". A little finch.

I've been out with some birder groups over the years, but they can be quite snooty and enjoy arguing over the names of the birds. I have yet to hear one cough out the Latin name.... like a mudhen is called a "scouter"(?) here....

We were reading *Alice in Wonderland* in a class yesterday. I was telling the kids there really IS such a creature as a Cheshire cat, and the one I met actually smiled.

leslee there's a really good article in the May *Discover* magazine I thought you might like, on "plasma propulsion"......... basically this guy in Houston who flew on seven spaceshuttle missions, is trying to take the "magnet bottle" and use it to develop a plasma rocket to get us to Mars a little quicker. (Robert Heinlein wrote about plasma rockets in *Time for the Stars* in the 50s, not a new concept). As one might imagine, the tech is pretty scary, and they have one small problem, that is how to generate that much electricity to make the magnets powerful enough to contain the plasma. He's talking a small nuclear power plant.

oh dear........... you haven't seen the library I already have.............. cringe.... seriously I'm an information addict, and can never turn down books. My son dumped two plastic store bins full of really nice quality books on me this past weekend. Some I'm thinking of taking to Children's Hospital in Seattle next time I'm over there... good ones like Percy Jackson and Among the Hidden. You'd like the last one, good series for young adults, very Libertarian (Orwellian). You want them? Easy fiction reading.

groan more magazines. I'm dropping off seven boxes of books at my brother's............. no that's ok, don't be hauling those around. You might check on amazon and see if they are worth money. I'll put them up for sale for you if you like.

I've been wading through back issues of Discover lately (ok stop throwing popcorn at me!) Ran across a cool article about light molecules (pg 18, Discover mag, April 2014) you know when two photons have to bond together??? It was pretty weird... tell me oh sahib what does it all mean??? Is this another of their hoax articles that they like to throw at readers for April Fool's???

They do and I'm throwing it back at them. I'm up for fish and sweet rice, and some sake. I'll drink your portion of the sake.

Don't you dare fly into LAX. NO ONE likes going to LAX!!!! Groan I have got to get hotel reservations....