(no subject)

Haven't seen or heard the raven in a while. Not a lot of crow activity, either.

OTOH a ruby throated hummingbird showed up at the neighbor's feeder yesterday. I don't like using binoculars when I'm in the backyard and not very obviously staring into the high part of the local trees, because it can be super misinterpreted, but when I saw the specific motion characteristics of that little speck I whipped the binocs out. 99% of insects don't move like that; I wanted to be sure.

(Clearwing hawkmoths don't really move the same way as hummingbirds, either, but the damn things are the size of hummingbirds and very similar in coloration. The first time I saw one it looked like a flying fuzzy green shrimp and I had to write to a scientist at Princeton to find out what I had just seen.)

Also, I am beginning to feel that most large birds of prey, like lions, do not sound anywhere near as awesome as their PR departments would have you believe. I've seen bald eagles in Canada, Alaska, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts, and on the occasions I've been close enough to hear them, they have made silly squeaky peepy noises. I thought that was because I was looking at a nest with babies in it at first. Nope. That's the adults. No awesome noises, no dignified screams or cries; the sound cinema has associated with eagles is in fact the sound of a red-tailed hawk- which admittedly is a fairly impressive bird but it is not a bald eagle. Similarly, yesterday as I was looking at the hummingbird, I heard this loud, loud, incessant EEK, EEK, EEK noise from the direction of the street. I thought, well, maybe that's the starlings the guy across the street has living under his eaves, they can be pretty loud sometimes... nope. Turns out that's what ospreys sound like. It's the sound recording at this page labeled 'Osprey L1 - High-pitched whistled calls from a male in flight'. EEEK EEEK EEEK EEEK.

This is going alongside 'poops in fluid projectile arc' on my list of notable characteristics of the osprey. Nature does not need to match human standards of dignity and majesty in order to be loved.

*sigh*

Instacart order was so promising this time. I got pinged by the shopper to say the kind of ham I wanted was out of stock and did I want Boar's Head instead. I said no, there was an allergy involved, did the original brand come in a slightly different variety; the shopper said yes and got two of that.

Then the order arrived, and the vegan bacon substitute I had ordered because I wanted to try it out wasn't here. Neither was the other vegan bacon substitute I had said was okay as a substitution if the first one was out of stock. There was instead a pound of Boar's Head bacon.

And instead of two bags of King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour there were two bags of store brand bleached all-purpose flour. Which... used the same color bag, so maybe the shopper figured it was an acceptable substitute in case color coding was a common thing? I'm not upset about it not being bread flour, a lot of people don't realize the difference between bread flour and all purpose. But I definitely would have said to skip the purchase entirely if they were out of KA bread flour and I would not have wanted a bleached flour substitute.

And the kitchen cooling rack that was part of the order doesn't seem to have been dropped off at all. Which is like $15 worth of merchandise that just isn't there.

I've submitted a problem report about the incorrect substitutions and the missing rack, and I requested a credit to my account, but I left the shopper four stars. She did try. And I am very grateful for getting the ham order right. She just screwed up two other things and charged for a third, then forgot to leave it.

Unless she magically comes back with the cooling rack I'm debating reducing the tip. If Instacart lets me say 18% instead of 20% I'll go with that.

ETA: Instacart credited me for all three items. So there's that, at least. I'm going to see if my ground floor neighbor needs/wants the flour, otherwise I'll contact the local food pantry. Probably going to have to check with the second floor neighbor about the bacon as my ground floor neighbor has had some health issues in the past that may have been coronary. I was also able to dial the tip down to 18% manually.