"I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." ~Wendell Berry
Showing posts with label Missouri Great Horned Owl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Missouri Great Horned Owl. Show all posts
After an initial rough start to the 2018 season due to some unanticipated moves by the GHO, I was able to finish the year with a total of 76 pair and we fledged 360 young.
Kicking off this season with a warmer-than-usual Spring, many of my adult pairs were able to get started with nest-building and egg-laying in parallel during the same 2 weeks. This resulted in many, many nests fledging simultaneously from July 3rd through July 14th, with hundreds of martins returning in the evening, filling the arms on the gourd racks.
The new fledging tree behind my house held dozens of newly-fledged martins. As I watched them every day, I worried that the hawks would be drawn to such easy prey, but it never became a problem The tippy-top of this tree is easily 100 feet tall and the new fledges were able to drop and gain speed quickly. They were safer up there than they were on the top perch rods on my gourd racks.
The young fledges demanded food from whomever came flying in, whether it was one of their brothers & sisters or not.
After watching over the young fledges roosting on the arms for several nights and wondering if I was making a mistake by allowing them to roost there, it became apparent the owl had either tried & failed to broach the nets beneath, or wasn't quite sure she could keep from getting tangled in the ropes. Either way, the netting was the final touch to my cages this year that allowed for a nice balance of allowing the martins to escape during a hawk attack, but also kept the owl out (see this post from June, that was the reason I had to install the netting: http://kathyfreeze.blogspot.com/2018/06/nest-checks-new-hatchlings-and-nets.html)
This was the first year in my 12 years of hosting purple martins that I've had this many fledges returning every night. It was also the first year, the new fledges have been able to safely roost all night on the gourd arms of my racks - protected from raccoons, snakes, and owls.
This was also the first year in the last 5 years of dealing with the GHO where I've felt I have created the best balance between providing protection for the martins and coexisting with both a GHO and a Barred owl.
Instead of the usual fretting, worrying and anxiety, this year was filled with the sheer joy of seeing so many healthy young'uns on the rails and in the surrounding trees.
I'm glad I never gave up the fight and surrendered, because now, I have a lot of experience with what does and does not work when you have to contend with owls.
My last nest check revealed I have 73 pair so far, with a total of 84 gourds offered. I continue to be amazed at the resiliency of the purple martin, especially since the Great Horned Owl persists with her attacks. As an added challenge this year, I've also had a problem now with the Barred Owl attacking my tree swallow and bluebird housing.
But for now, back to my GHO update. On the morning of April 30th, I became quite alarmed to see the GHO has, after 3 years with these cages, now figured out how to get up and inside to perch on the inside arms of the rack.
After 2 days or mourning and feeling sorry for myself, I decided to cowgirl-up and my husband and I designed a "cargo net" style bottom which would balance the need of the purple martins to both exit quickly when a hawk attacked as well as serve to keep the GHO out. With the mandatory requirement of it being "quick release" so that I could continue with nest checks, we purchased some polypropylene rope, zip ties, quick release clips and some garden stakes. The first 'net' picture you see below has 14x12" holes in it - I can always adjust the size of these holes if the owl gets through, but since the owl's wingspan ranges from 36"-60", I'm hoping I don't have to change these. The 4 long ropes are crossed by 6 shorter ropes, tied together using zip ties at each crossing.
I've put together the video below to show other landlords how the netting is connected to the cages and how it quick releases for nest checks. I made a mistake in the video - the rope is called, "polypropylene". :)
For the round racks, a different approach was used to the the netting.
While the owl has definitely made my nest checks a little more time-consuming, my husband has always helped me come up with ideas to enable me to keep doing them. Given the heat & humidity we experience here in Missouri during the summer, it's imperative that I know the ages of the kids, because inevitably, I will have a few nestlings that will either get knocked off porches or they will jump and I need to know in which nest to put them back.
New "pinkies"!
Photo taken by my friend, Lu Ann Coons at her colony site here in Missouri.
It was very apparent the nest in the video below had just started hatching. While it's tempting to help remove the shells from the little, adorable nestlings, because their skin is still so delicate and could be still attached to the shell, I never 'help'. I let Nature take its course - the baby will be stronger for it and I avoid damaging him/her.
It is either 'feast' or 'famine' in Missouri when it comes to rain. This spring, we seem to be in a state of deluge. With the breaks in the rain, my martins were able to get out and find food. The last 2 days of rain though were just too much for them and they came knockin'. Luckily, I had a few crickets left and a few dozen eggs.
It appears my 'regulars' remember the drill. The banded female below wasted no time being the first up to the buffet.
At my house, you best not be late when the dinner bell rings though.
I haven't been able to get an accurate count with the rain keeping most inside their gourds, but I'm estimating there are approximately 50-60 pairs here right now.
In fact, yesterday evening at 7:00 P.M. when the last weather system finally broke, I stepped out to see if my colony was doing okay. I started to worry when I only counted 5 birds on the racks. Finally, at 7:50 P.M., they suddenly started dropping out of the sky and into their gourds. They had taken advantage of the brief amount of sunshine and gone to hunt and gather. It's okay, I'm not offended they prefer live, squiggly stuff over my eggs and crickets.
I awoke today to a loud, raucous noise in my south yard - the sun was out and it was already above 60 degrees! Yay! NO crickets or eggs today! For the first time in 4 days, I was able to just cook a couple of eggs for myself.
As I waited for the weather to warm further, so I could do what I dreaded most today, I noticed my red clover was blooming.
And my homemade bird baths were filled with fresh rainwater. Bob and I have finally found a use for all the landscape rocks.
After putting it off as long as I could, I started lowering my racks and checking each gourd, hoping upon hope that I wouldn't find what I feared most - dead, starved martins. I breathed a sigh of relief after lowering the first 2 racks and not finding any. Such a relief. Then I lowered the third rack and was shocked at the condition of the wire. My mind couldn't put 2 and 2 together to figure out how this happened. And wouldn't you know it - I haven't started up the game cameras yet.
The top 3 broken wires in the picture were bent out and the one on the bottom was bent down and in, with its tip behind another wire. "Ok, WHO taught my Great Horned Owl to use a set of wire cutters?", I pondered to myself and laughed uneasily. Racoon? No way - a racoon would have climbed up the pole and already been inside the cage, wreaking his havoc. Owl? Hmmm - could / would an owl hang on the cage and vigorously work over the joint where these wires were pulled apart? Why not just fly up under the cage, instead - it would take a lot less energy to do that! Would she really wear down her beak gnawing on the wire cage, when there was an easier approach?
I called Bob out to look at it and the ends of the wire where they were separated. Click on the pictures below to see better closeups. Lightning maybe? But check out the picture above....the wires are bent in different directions....
So, other than the big hole in the cage that must have been created by some super-evolved Chupacabra animal here on Gobbler's Knob, all was really otherwise very well. I found 5 eggs in a gourd on this same rack - but I doubt they're viable, since they were very cold and there were no martins around most of the day today to incubate them. I lightly marked them with a marker, so I can keep track of their progress...or lack thereof.
When purple martin landlord, John Miller from St. Louis (who also manages a few public sites in Forest Park), reported a sighting of a sub-adult male on 4/22/2016, I thought he was kidding around. But no, he was serious. And because it was John, I knew he knew what he was talking about. Check out his post here: https://www.purplemartin.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=31644&p=258054#p258054
Turns out, this is his earliest sub-adult arrival ever. I searched my colony on 4/28 and identified a rowdy, reckless sub-adult male also, along with 5 ASY banded males whose bands need to be read too! Not my earliest arrival, but close! On the night of 4/28, I anxiously watched as the sun sank in the western sky and 12-13 young sub-adult males and females tried desperately to find an open nest cavity.
An ASY male - banded - number to be identified (see his lower right leg). He patiently waits as his mate-to-be inspects his new housing.
One of the sub-adult females obviously has some leucistic genes,
displaying some white splotches on her head. You can tell it's a female
by her bright white undertail coverts. The loving gaze she's receiving
from all the males surrounding her is also a dead giveaway. I've never
noticed a bird with pink legs before and I wonder if that's due to the
leucistic genes in her bloodline?
A sub-adult female is checked out by the eager males. Note the white splotches on her head and her legs are an unusual pink color that I've never seen before. I shall call her Betty Boop for her "pink stockings".
Another sub-adult female sits nearby with perfect posture, very lady-like. Note the very white undertail coverts on her also. She was somebody's baby last year.
ASY male and SY female.
No group of sub-adult pictures would be complete without one of the very eager, clumsy SY males also fluttering about trying to impress the females. Note the coloring in his undertail coverts and the purple feather splotches above his right leg and around his throat & chin. Definitely a young male, about to take a whomping from the ASY males in the Trendsetter whose females he's trying to steal.
SY male - note the splotches of purple feathers already showing. He will be very easy to identify and track this season.
The reason I was so anxious the night of 4/28 was because earlier in the week, the morning of 4/24/2016 an old friend had returned. I have mixed feelings about seeing her on my game camera again. For one thing, I was hoping she would leave us alone this year. It is encouraging in the video that she is not actually attacking any of the housing, but simply looking like she is using the perches for hunting.
For all I know, she has been using the tops of the gourd racks for hunting most of the year, but since I don't keep the game cameras running all year due to the obvious high cost of batteries, I don't know what she's been up to. She does look very healthy - downright fat, even.
On the other hand, it is a bit comforting, knowing I have done everything I can to protect my martins and the only way she can get to them now is if they decide to flush out of their housing. For that, there's nothing I can do and they are on their own. I have already found a few feathers of one bird about 100' away from my colony. I can only hope that was from the Sharp-shinned hawk that has now moved out of the area and that was the only loss I'll see this year. Yeah, let's just say that.
Regarding the video, I watched the ones before & after the GHO left
and the patterned shadows on the video look oddly like another owl's
feathers, but I cannot for the life of me, figure out how they would be
spread out like that. But they weren't there before the owl appeared or
after she left. So, is there another owl, perhaps her mate, traveling
with her? I'm not sure, but I've setup my main monitoring system now to
try to watch the overall colony. Take a look and let me know your thoughts in the comments below regarding what you think the ghost shape is.
The first wave of sub-adults has definitely arrived, so I hope you have your housing
open and if you're wanting to expand your colony this year, now is a
good time to add more housing or gourds!
We have gotten a lot of rain in the last couple of weeks - most of it in the last 2 days. Today, I feel like everything is out of sorts, as my Grandmother used to say. Nothing feels right. After almost 2 years of drought, I thought we were going to lose all our fish in our ever-shrinking pond this summer. But now it's overflowing its banks - way out of bounds. I now have to worry that our bass and bluegill will end up in our neighbor's pond as our overflow has backed up and it drains into his pond. Get back in your own pond.
The pond is well over 15' out of its banks - we normally ride our 4-wheelers down this path that is now filled with water.
Somehow, with so much rain, grass is growing in our driveway - way out of bounds. I should celebrate the ladino clover in the middle of it that magically, somehow appeared. You can't mow this stuff too much either. After 5 or 6 mowings already, it is still blooming!
Everything is so doggone wet! Along with 3 launch failures this morning. They are wet & stinky. They're not happy about this turn of events. Neither am I.
3 new failed launches this morning
I swear, even the ticks are parachuting off the door trims and landing on my head. I don't know where they're all coming from. I may choose to borrow Nikki's Frontline.
Even Olivia seems out of sorts - all wet and cranky. As I was filming her playing hide-n-seek, she stopped on the open deck and turned toward me. As she gazed at my toes, I suddenly realized just how vulnerable my bare feet were. I decided it was time to start acting like I knew how to River dance and I kept my feet moving until I was safely back inside the enclosed porch.
But at its root, I know why I'm out of sorts today. After checking on my colony every 10-15 minutes last night, I was alarmed when my GHO flew out from under my deck. I hadn't seen her come in and when I went to check the videos, I found that she had attacked the Trendsetter in between one of my checks, in a spot where a new fledge had been trying for an hour to get into a cavity. Check out the video below - she comes in from the left and hangs on to the Trendsetter for an eternity. In the video, the fledge flies past the camera during the attack, so fortunately, he lives to tell the tale. Other martins flushed from the other racks too. Silly birds....stay put!! Worst of all, my stupid game camera (seen in the video below) is only 12-13 feet away, didn't capture any of it. I checked it today - 99% battery. In the heat & humidity, I was tempted to boot it across the field. Instead, I rebooted it the standard way - hopefully, it won't have anything to capture tonight, but will be able to if needed.
After seeing a video from 12:10 AM on 6/30, it became obvious that Ellie Mae is going to have to visit the unemployment lines. Absolutely useless. As have been most of the other methods that people have suggested. I am out of ideas - it is check.mate. She will always be here. Nothing scares her.
Lights - tried it - failed.
Radio - tried it - failed.
Lights + radio - tried it - failed.
Motion detection lights - tried it - failed.
Scarecrow - tried it - failed.
Let's face it; the only protection that works 100% of the time are the owl cages. I have plenty of alternate food here - rabbits, feral cats, moles, voles, mice, snakes, etc. Yet, my owl prefers an easy-to-get meal. Well, she won't get one here as long as they stay behind the cages. Otherwise I can't guarantee anything. But I won't kill her. Another one will only take her place. We will just do the best we can with *preventative* measures and accept that I have a beautiful, very smart owl. I just need to be smarter.
I will enjoy the positive things. At least the Compass Plant - after 6 years of waiting - is finally blooming. This makes me happy today. Mag.freaking.nificent!!! Beautiful, isn't it? Definitely worth the wait.
Compass Plant - 6 years old, finally blooming.
So, what do you do when you have such an off-kilter, out-of-sorts day? Well, you suck it up. Thaw out some crickets, soak them in some bird-vitamin solution and stuff the wet kids full of food. Leave them in a bucket until they're dry and put them back out in a dry gourd on the rack from whence they came.
You stop and enjoy the clasping milkweed that has grown out of bounds - where no seed has been planted (not by you, anyway).
Clasping Milkweed (thanks for ID info to Louise Chambers)
You stop and watch your happy, chattering purple martins chasing down the bug hatches in the field, because despite my owl's best efforts, they are clearly undeterred in their mission to feed their kids, and get them flying.
You herd the fish back into the main body of the pond, by splashing about in your muck boots. You stop and enjoy the common milkweed that is now spreading out into the yard and tell Mr. Freeze he no longer needs to mow there.
Then you park your butt on the porch with a good book, a glass of wine, a pair of binoculars and your muck boots (just in case you have more launch failures) and watch your colony for the rest of the day. After all, it is still MY little piece of heaven, and despite all the challenges, I am diggin' it here at Gobbler's Knob.
This year, I decided that I wanted a wide-angle view of my entire colony at night, from a general monitoring viewpoint, allowing me to also see what may be skittering around my yard. So, Bob did some research and found a reasonably priced Foscam security camera and hooked it up about a week ago. We've been struggling with the range of the IR (60') and really not wanting to run power out into the yard to get the camera closer to the racks. In my last post, I also mentioned that I was trying out a motion detection light and thought that may help scare the owl away if he ever came into the colony and triggered it on. But since 4/18, I hadn't seen the owl and couldn't prove my new tool was working. In fact, I was beginning to think he was filling up on my neighbor's guineas, whose numbers have gone from 20+ to 3 or 4 now. I hear they taste like chicken. That's the word I'm spreading anyway - 'EAT MOR GUINEAS'.
Yesterday (5/18) I pulled my game card cameras for review and found this video date / time stamped at 5/15/2015 -2:35 AM. It was a bit alarming and given the perspective of the camera, I couldn't tell what mischief Giselda had been engaged in before she landed on top of that pole.
The videos recorded through the Foscam camera were taking too long to scan, so I hadn't reviewed them in a couple of days and besides, the IR range and lack of illumination issues were bumming me out. But somehow, on this night, the stars aligned, the winds were perfect, there was no rain, glowing eyes aided in tracking and the lovely glowing cobwebs added just enough annoying creepiness to make the video below quite interesting. And I now have confirmation that a motion detection light is spectacularly useless in helping to scare a GHO away from your colony. But it does provide some nice lighting for recording what she's up to.
I've done some cropping in the video to remove a total of almost 4 minutes of the owl turning his head away, because you really can't see anything when his glowing eyes are not looking towards the camera. I also removed the first 2 minutes of the video where he entered stage-right, landing on the ground about 15' west of the most west rack. I saw his glowing eyes through the noise on that side of the frame and thought for a bit that it must be a cat, a racoon or a coyote. That is, until I got to the 2:23 minute mark and all doubt was removed - (at the 2:23 minute mark - watch the top of the leftmost gourd rack). You have to watch the video at full-screen and watch along the right hand side - you'll see his glowing eyes periodically and her movement as she apparently glides (I don't think a GHO would run) along the ground.
This video served to provide me with a lot of relief - JOY! Apparently, on this night anyway, she wasn't there to hunt for martins. She was there chasing or hunting voles, moles, mice or snakes that were creeping along the ground. Whew! What a relief! She can have all those varmits that she can catch! That $79 camera just paid for itself in saving me a lot of worry & sleepless nights. For now, my guards are still working and she seems to be ignoring us.
So, new plan - I'm putting my scarecrow back in the yard (she was inside that night, due to expected rain) and we're installing bright spotlights that will aid in video monitoring. Enough fooling around. The cages are working - I just need to know what she's doing. Maybe "want to know" is a better description.
Sssssshhhhhhh, be very, very quiet, my lovely darlings, for ye know not what lurks beneath. Or above.
It is April 12th and I estimate that my Purple Martin Colony is now almost 1/2 full. Last year at this same time, I had around 120 - 140 birds, but right now I have about 35 pairs (60+ birds). But, it's not even half-time in Missouri yet! The adults are still arriving and I have not spotted a sub-adult thus far. In fact, if you're a new landlord in Missouri waiting for your first arrival this year, you still have plenty of time. From my records, I can tell you that I've seen sub-adults arriving through the first week of June, so don't give up. They seemed to arrive a little slower this year and I've actually been happy with that.
It is quite fun to watch the males fall all over themselves when they finally get a beautiful female to land and investigate the perfect home he has chosen for her. It is truly giggle-inducing. In his giddiness, his feet barely touch the porch as he tumbles into the gourd, screeching to her from inside about his own wicked awesomeness in finding *THE* one. It is quite hilarious when she takes off and he's still inside squawking away about where to setup her perfect nest and the couch. Moments later, he will realize she has left and will poke his head out. Lord knows what he's thinking when he finds her gone...after all that effort!
The females, on the other hand, seem to be quite in control and play the 'hard-to-get' part very well, sometimes acting completely uninterested.
Pick me, pick me, PUHLEESE PICK ME!
In the end, she lets him think he's in charge. But we know who really is controlling their future here. :)
So far, my Great Horned Owl has not made an appearance and we are very happy about that. I'll keep monitoring throughout the year, but we're pretty well protected now. And when I say "we", I mean my martins and me. I'm including Me - for my sanity and my love for my sleep. The last 4 days have been very loud with the new arrivals. Their raucous greetings, "Hey, how are ya?", and "HEY, I missed ya!" reverberate off the surrounding hills and my back porch and energize me every morning.
The landscape seemed so gloomy up until about a week ago. But it has warmed up considerably and the martins are taking advantage by storming the racks and setting up territory.
Everywhere I look things are bloomin'. It's amazing how much life springs forth with just a few days of warm weather.
Wild plum - one of the first native plants to bloom here in the spring.
I am so happy I decided to put out my mason bees last weekend. While I haven't found one in the plum groves yet, I have been finding their empty cocoons. And while my sinuses are not enjoying it, the honey bees are really digging all the pollen too!
Plum blooms and honey bees
Now we know where the idiom, "busy as a bee" comes from.
I don't have any idea what this flower is, but it's blooming too!
The Speckled Kingsnakes are on the move too. This beauty decided that she wanted to take a shortcut across my driveway, through my lavender flower beds and across the yard to get to her old hunting grounds under my Butterfly bushes.
My Speckled Kingsnake decided she wanted to take advantage of the warm sun and move back to her old hunting grounds, under my Butterfly bushes, across the yard. I let her pass unmolested - she will eat many mice, moles and other rodents which I don't want around. Just keep movin' Missy - I should paint, "You SHALL NOT pass" on all my predator guards on my martin poles, just as a friendly reminder. I've never seen her attempt it, but I'm sure a hungry one would. Isn't she beautiful?
Dandelions
Even the Dandelions are beneficial to the bees this time of year. I used to fight the war with them every year, until I realized their many benefits. Now, we have an easy truce and I see their very fine flower petals everywhere and enjoy their lemony yellow, happy color scattered throughout the landscape. How could I have ever believed these were bad plants??
Tree swallow pairing is in full swing.
Tree swallows (TRES) are pairing up and in full battle mode, determined to take not only the boxes I dedicated to them (with the TRES slots), but also the blue bird boxes that I left with the 1.5" holes. It is all-out war here between the two - may the best men / women win, because there's not much I can do to intervene. The TRES are ferocious, but then again, they haven't met a truly agitated pair of Missouri bluebirds either.
These 2 pairs usually face off with Nikki and me as we walk past on our daily walks. I think they would really like to pluck some of Nikki's fur for their nests. It would probably help with her grooming.
Oh, how I love the sights and sounds of spring moving into summer! It's energizing and fun to watch everyone get so busy.
I'll be hosting "Purple Martins and Coffee" again this year - 3rd Saturday of each month from 9 AM to 12 PM. I hope to see some fellow Missourians then - and maybe we can do a 'walkabout', if you like!
"I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and
Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am
from Missouri. You have got to show me."
--Missouri's U.S. Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver - 1899
Missouri's unofficial state slogan is "Show Me" and regardless of how it originated, it is now used to indicate the stalwart, noncredulous character of Missourians. Since 2010, I have been sending out a newsletter and publishing newspaper articles on purple martins in order to meet Missouri landlords. I have participated in multiple purple martin forums and seen many of those come and go along the way. I've seen all types of people on this journey; there are the "keyboard warriors" who are really only interested in sitting behind a keyboard and offering their sage advice to anyone they can get to listen, but they never really "show me" anything. Others are only interested in sharing their pictures and talking about themselves, never really showing me anything either. Then there are those who do, much to my delight, really "show me".
One of the first landlords with whom I first made contact in late 2011 when he subscribed to my newsletter was Jerry, located in Troy, MO, approximately 150 miles north east of my location.
How Jerry found out about me, I don't even recall - we've never even met; but he has been in regular contact since that time, letting me know how his colony is growing, issues he's dealing with and his nest check and fledge results.
In 2011, he had 26 pair and after losing ~20 birds to a Great Horned Owl, he added the red flashing NiteGuard lights to the top of his rack to try to deter it, along with individual owl guards for his gourds.
Jerry's gourd racks. The GHO just laughed at his red blinky lights.
The lights didn't help with his issues but the wire owl guards did, losing only one to an owl in 2012. Even with the continued owl problems, his colony continued to grow and he reported 38 nesting pair in 2012, with 116 fledged.
In July 2013, I received an email from Jerry with the subject line, "You Have Mail - Bunny". My curiosity piqued, I opened it and spewed my coffee on my monitor. Jerry's owl had paid his site another visit and left him a present (and maybe a message?) on his starling trap. Who knew that an owl could be so vindictive?
Jerry said, "This is exactly how it was found. HONEST."
Jerry offered 48 gourds and hosted 36 pair with 153 fledged in 2013 and last year, in 2014, with his colony hitting its stride at 8 years old, Jerry decided to do something unselfish and extraordinary. He decided to help his neighbor, who lives 1/4 mile away, attract purple martins. Jerry had sold Bruce his smaller gourd rack, but Bruce was not having any luck with attracting his own martins. Jerry decided it was time to take some drastic measures to help Bruce start a purple martin colony.
Jerry started out the 2014 season by only opening 16 gourds at his colony. As the number of martins grew, so did the fighting. This was prime real estate and the older adults knew it! After 2 weeks Jerry was ready to throw in the towel, but he was willing to go one more week. Finally, before Jerry had to resort to anxiety medication, Bruce reported by 4/22 that he had 7 martins staying at his site.
Jerry happily threw open the doors, offering 48 gourds total. He finished the year with 40 pair, 174 fledged and lost 4 fledges to his GHO.
And his neighbor? Bruce ended the year with 8 pair. How cool is that?
Both Bruce and Jerry are gearing up for a purple martin palooza this year. They have have each now installed a Super System 24 in their backyards, with Jerry offering 72 gourds and Bruce offering 36 gourds in 2015.
These type of people - these fellow Missourians truly step up to the plate and show me. I am so proud to live in a state where they don't just talk the talk - they walk the walk.
Fellow Missourians - showing and leading the way for the future of purple martins - you make me proud to be a part of it. Thank you, Jerry and Bruce - best of luck to you both this year! Jerry, I look forward to more "Bunny" mail from you.
Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions
and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make
them.
