Crossbills and Christmas trees

 I had my Christmas letters in their envelopes a week ago and finally put them in the mail today. Why the delay, you may be asking. I ordered stamps online, thinking that my request would be forwarded to my local post office, and in a day or two my stamps would come in a small envelope to my mailbox. There was a warning that the order might be delayed two to four days because of high volume, etc. While ordering stamps did effectively prevent exposure to COVID from other postal customers, in every other respect it was not satisfactory. It took a full week, Saturday to Saturday, for the stamps to arrive. Furthermore, the four books of stamps, which measure 2.25” x 5.5”, were placed in an 8.5” x 11” envelope with and 8.5” x 11” invoice AND an equally sized piece of light cardboard, all of which went straight to the recycle bin. I believe I will take my chances at the post office. At least there will be less waste.

Stamps, left; excessive packaging, center and right

Terry and I cut trees for Hilda and us this week. We are doing concolor fir this time. We actually cut two of three trees that were growing in a group. Thus, we each have basically half a tree, but you can’t tell from the front. It worked out well. We can have the tree closer to the wall which allows for better TV viewing.

Oh Christmas tree!

I realized recently that Aunt Sam has a deformed beak. For a long time, I thought she was carrying around a stick, which chickens do sometimes. But she seemed to ALWAYS have a stick in her mouth. I finally got a closer look, which was tricky because (as you may recall) she’s skittish and a bit hyperactive. It was delightful to try to get a good picture. I must have taken 20, of which three were both in focus and showed the deformity. This is the best one.

Aunt Sam's cross beak

Here’s what I find interesting. There is a genus of birds (Loxia) that have crossed bills as an adaptation for prying apart conifer cones. There are two crossbill species in North America. I have no reason to believe that these crossbills are closely related to chickens. Certainly, Aunt Sam may have gotten a cross bill through an error in development, and it might not be genetic at all. But what if it were a mutation? That suggests that there’s not many genes, maybe only one, that separates a normal beak from a crossed beak. If that were true, this gene would be responsible for beak development across a wide diversity of birds. Maybe I think too much.