.... roasting a butterflied leg of lamb tonight in a marinade of garlic, honey, soy, white wine, and cinnamon...... should turn out quite nice with a hint of Mediterranean flair..... of course, I am also lowbrowing the dinner just a bit by serving it alongside my parmesan & onion roasted potatoes.... still, though, it should be an interesting meal....
... other than that, it's pretty much business as usual around The Compound here..... all pigs are currently fed, watered, and ready to begin flying operations at a moment's notice....
... in other news, the grackles are back.... I suppose they are visiting here from more northerly climes, but wow, there certainly are a lot of them...... I took a short video earlier today of just a small section of their flock as they fidgeted through my back yard..... Mother Nature, folks, she's one psycho chick.... behold....
.... well, since YouTube rejected my video file after two different uploads, let's try something completely different..... if you care to watch the vid, just click here, folks.......
...... if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that there were at least 10,000 in this flock..... notice the "huff" of their wings when I stomp the deck near the end of the clip.... good god.... when they took off, you could actually feel the air move from 60 feet away...... talk about a butterfly effect?..... the "grackle effect" was pretty damned impressive.....
"the video you requested is not available" :(
Bullshitted by Bou on November 29, 2009 09:36 PM..... yeah, I know...... it is taking forever for YouTube to process the vid.......
Bullshitted by Eric on November 29, 2009 09:43 PMServing your Tennessee 'Taters alongside that lamb would hardly be "lowbrowing" it, sir... them 'taters is Da Bomb, and you can take that to the bank!
That lamb sounds almost North African in style - hope it turns out to your satisfaction - I do love me a butterflied leg o' lamb...
Bullshitted by Elisson on November 29, 2009 11:25 PM:( The video is still down. Can't you do voodoo to the utube? :)
Bullshitted by Lemon Stand on November 30, 2009 01:20 PMWhen I was attending Memphis State, they had a European Starling problem in the Martin, TN area. More birds than you could imagine. So much so, they took to spraying their roosts in the evening via crop duster prior to a rain with a surfactant that would void their feathers of insulating oil and allow them to freeze to death.
I remember an interview with one of the pilots describing how the big radial on the front of his AgCat was clogged to stalling with birds, that they punched holes in the leading edges of the wings, and splattered all over the cockpit plexiglass.
Killed a helluva lot of birds that way though. Seems like they were picking their little carcasses up for weeks.
Bullshitted by Andy on November 30, 2009 05:44 PMSuccess at last! THAT was a LOT of birds. Oh and love the flamingos! :)
Bullshitted by Lemon Stand on November 30, 2009 06:31 PMAndy's talkin' close to home. I remember those days. Gackles and starlings took to winter roosting in those parts. I remember flocks going over to roost that were a quarter mile wide and it took well over an hour for all them to pass over. There were estimates on the total numbers that ran from three to five million birds.
They tended to roost in cedar thickets and pine plantations. The weight of the birds would actually break off the limbs they were resting on. They totally wiped out one thirty acre pine plantation that I remember. The limb breakages along with the droppings that so over fertilized the soil it acted as a poison killed about 95% of the trees.
I walked through that plantation in February not long before they left the winter roost. The dropping were so deep they came half way up to my knees.
They sprayed them the following winter and killed a bunch but not nearly all of them. It did disperse the flock and they went on to winter else where. Interesting times... and no one thought to blame it on global warming as that hadn't been invented yet.
a marinade of garlic, honey, soy, white wine, and cinnamon
This may work for grackle, too.
Bullshitted by Cappy on November 30, 2009 08:48 PM... you know, I really do love you guys and gals..... especially for your comments.....
Bullshitted by Eric on November 30, 2009 09:33 PM