Best of Twitter: Recreating the St. Louis Cardinals Logo with a Real Bird

Twitter is just the best sometimes.

For instance, the other day I was making some of my usual meaningless observations about birds, this time comparing a photo of a Baltimore Oriole on my feeder pole to one of the logos of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team:

At the feeders with the wide stance like pic.twitter.com/SViLBxxm9Y

— The Birdist (@TheBirdist) May 12, 2020

Then, I wondered how close one could actually get to replicating that logo, which led me to:

I feel like this one is ripe for replication. Can someone make a little yellow bat perch with the attached word mark and get a photo of a cardinal sitting on it? pic.twitter.com/MSiCeSKyv1

— The Birdist (@TheBirdist) May 12, 2020

I expected nothing to happen. Certainly lazy old me wasn't going to do anything about it. But then, Twitter. User Tess Rouillard (@WhiskyEyeBrews) actually went and built the dang Cardinals logo, and put it up near her feeders! What!

Bait set. Now we wait 😆 pic.twitter.com/WBMQZ0Kf4Q

— Tessa “Burn it all down” Rouillard (@WhiskyEyeBrews) May 12, 2020

The trap, as she said, was set. It didn't take long for birds to visit, though they weren't the species we were looking for. A Common Grackle was first up to bat.

Wrong bird pic.twitter.com/VYiIgTUQgh

— Tessa “Burn it all down” Rouillard (@WhiskyEyeBrews) May 12, 2020

Then a Blue Jay, which is actually a pretty hilarious mashup of two different MLB teams:

Wrong bird. Guess we know what the next project is. pic.twitter.com/0scDyFps1h

— Tessa “Burn it all down” Rouillard (@WhiskyEyeBrews) May 13, 2020

Then, this morning, less than a day after I originally posted the thing to Twitter, Tessa and her feeders came through. A real live Northern Cardinal perched on the Cardinals logo!! Incredible!

@TheBirdist aaahahahahah yaassssss. Home RUUUNNN #backyardbirds #birdtwitter @Cardinals pic.twitter.com/05wpS8vHOc

— Tessa “Burn it all down” Rouillard (@WhiskyEyeBrews) May 13, 2020

I think, frankly, that this is one of the coolest things to ever happen on the internet. I think Tessa Rouillard so much for her ingenuity and creativity and motivation. I'm hoping that the Cardinals team will see this and give her some credit for her work! Sports!

Glorious Birder

Good job, Twitter

Ptarmigeddon

I had some time after a recent work trip to Colorado, and I used it to take on my arch enemy: the White-tailed Ptarmigan.

I lived in Colorado from the end of 05 to the end of 06, but never saw a ptarmigan. I took subsequent trips to the famous Medicine Bow Curve in Rocky Mountain NP at least once (eBird says once but I'm pretty sure it was twice), but didn't see a ptarmigan. I was going to see one this time.

I started with an early morning dash up Mt. Evans, just west of Denver. I got top the top -- an insane 14,130 feet -- just before sunrise. It was spectacular. There were two families of Mountain Goats just hanging out and a handful of Bighorn Sheep, each with cute youngsters that I would have tried to pet if not for the threat of taking an angry mother's horn in my spleen.

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Choose Your Own Birding Adventure!

*note: some poll results changed after the action was taken