Tidbits of Grand Forks - January 13, 2022

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Of Grand Forks • East Grand Forks January 13, 2022

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Issue # 1,253

TIDBITS ADMIRES ®

BIRDS

Here for you when you need us.

by Janet Spencer

• Birds have been around for over 100 million years, whereas humans have been around for only about 250,000 years. There are about 10,400 different bird species, which is more than twice the number of mammal species.

There are perhaps between 200 and 400 billion individual birds on the planet, working out to a ratio of between 30 to 60 live birds for every human on the planet.

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BIRD BRAINS

• The hippocampus is the part of the brain responsible for memory and spatial learning.

The more neurons there are in this region, the better the memory. Researchers found that chickadees living in harsh areas (Alaska, Carpet Cleaning Maine) have a larger hippocampus than those www.elitecarpetsgf.com that live in milder climates (Iowa, Kansas).

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BIRD BRAINS (continued):

• In primates, the larger the social group, the bigger the brain. However, in birds, the opposite is true: birds in large flocks have smaller brains than birds in small groups. It seems that forming close alliances with a small number of others is a more demanding task for birds than having a casual relationship with many individuals.

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Quiz Bits

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Dr. Marshal Pederson, D.C.

5. How many herbs and spices are in the original recipe of Kentucky Fried Chicken?

6. What year did the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” starring Jack Nicholson debut in theaters?

7. What was the name of the little penguin who couldn’t sing in the movie “Happy Feet”?

8. What kind of bird is the muppet Big Bird?

?

1. 3% of mammal species are monogamous; what % of birds are?

2. Do birds that migrate have larger or smaller brains than birds that don’t?

3. A frigate bird has a 7-foot wingspan. Which weighs more, its skeleton or its feathers?

4. This is the world’s most widely distributed bird, found on every continent except Antarctica.

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• There are two types of birds. Precocial birds are capable of leaving the nest within a day or two of hatching, such as ducks, chickens, and geese. The word “precocial” comes from the same Latin root word that gives us “precocious.” Altricial birds are completely helpless when they hatch and must be fed and protected by their parents until they fledge weeks later. “Altricial” comes from the Latin root meaning “to nourish.” 80% of bird species are altricial, but altricial birds end up with brains that are bigger than their precocial counterparts.

• A study done at the University of Washington showed that not only do crows recognize and remember human faces, but they also pass that information on to their offspring. In an experiment, teams of people wandered through several neighborhoods in Seattle. Some were wearing different sorts of masks, some had no masks on, and some were wearing scary caveman masks. The people wearing caveman masks captured several of the crows, releasing them unharmed after several minutes. Nine years later, people wandered through the same neighborhoods wearing the same masks.

Only the people wearing caveman masks were mobbed and dive-bombed by crows, including young crows that had not even been born at the time of the original experiment. Crows up to half a mile away also mobbed the “cavemen” though they had not even been in the vicinity nine years earlier. ...continued

Q. Why do birds fly south for the winter?

A. Because it's too far to walk.

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BIRD TOOLS (continued):

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• Here are some instances of birds using tools: • A white stork carries damp moss to its nest and wrings it out to provide water for chicks.

• A crow uses a Frisbee to ferry water.

• A Gila woodpecker makes a scoop from bark and uses it to carry honey home to its nest.

• A blue jay scrapes ants against its feathers, ridding the ants of toxic formic acid spray, rendering the ants edible.

• A crow uses pine cones as missiles to defend its nest.

• A burrowing owl scatters animal dung at the entrance of its burrow and waits for dung beetles to come along, providing a free meal.

• Green-backed herons use insects as bait to lure in fish.

• Nuthatches use flakes of bark as a lever to pry bark off tree trunks, exposing insects.

• A chickadee uses a thorn to pry seeds out of a suet feeder.

• A cockatoo uses a stick to beat on a hollow tree trunk, possibly to attract a mate.

• Many birds use twigs, leaf stems, thorns, or cactus spines to pry insects from holes too deep for their beaks to reach.

• A crow was filmed snowboarding down a snowy roof on top of a jar lid.

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• One ornithologist watched a feeding station in Arizona. Normally the crows would come in first, eat their fill, and then leave, whereupon the Steller’s jays would move in for a meal. One jay was dissatisfied at the length of time a crow was taking at the food station. It flew off to a nearby tree, where it pried off a sturdy straight stick. It then divebombed the crow, using the stick as a spear. As the ornithologist watched, the crow fought back, causing the jay to drop the stick. The crow then picked up the stick spear and flew after the jay.

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• White-crowned sparrows migrate from Alaska and northern Canada to southern California and Mexico. Researchers captured a flock of 30 in Seattle. They were then flown 2,300 miles to New Jersey, where they were released. Would they be able to find their way to California? The adults who had migrated several times did. The juveniles who had never migrated before did not.

• The arctic tern spends summers in Greenland and Iceland and winters off the coast of Antarctica, making a round-trip journey of 44,000 miles every year. If a tern lives 30 years, it flies the equivalent of 3 trips to the Moon and back.

• The pigeons that you see in cities descended from homing pigeons brought on ships with European settlers beginning in the 1600s. Homing pigeons descended from rock doves that lived on the cliffs surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Rock doves forage in the fields during the day and return to their nests at night, displaying a strong homing ability.

• Homing pigeons which are transported in a circular route inside rotating drums in a sealed vehicle are still able to find their way home. Even pigeons whose eyes are occluded are able to find their way home.

• In 2014, researchers outfitted a flock of goldenwinged warblers with GPS units to study their migration. The birds were fitted with the units just as they arrived at their summer nesting ground in Tennessee after flying in from Colombia. Suddenly, the entire flock took off helter-skelter flying in all directions, some going as far as 500 miles away. A few days later, a huge supercell storm slammed the area, spawning 84 tornadoes that killed 35 people. After the storm passed, the entire flock returned to their original nesting site and took up where they left off. Somehow they had sensed the storm when it was still hundreds of miles away.

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by Freddy Groves

OIG Is VA's Crime Dog

*Answer located further back in this issue.

Despite COVID and all the restrictions from it, the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General has been busy. Here are a few of the scams they've uncovered and pursued: Two men in New Jersey pleaded guilty to paying and soliciting kickbacks and bribery. They roped in telemedicine doctors who faked orders for items such as braces and prescriptions. The thieves then billed Medicare, the Department of Veterans Affairs, TRICARE and other programs while hiding behind fake company owners. The tab to the government when they were caught was approximately $50 million.

In Chicago, two VA prosthetics clerks took cash from vendors after sending business to them for medical equipment. Bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy -- this case had it all. The thieves used government purchase cards to place those orders and rented the equipment instead of buying it as the VA doctors had ordered. One of those companies was paid almost $1.4 million.

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*Answer located further back in this issue.

PULL TABS

In Florida, two men were nabbed for much the same thing -- soliciting and paying for bribes, then getting kickbacks for ordering medical equipment such as braces that weren't actually medically necessary. Again, this involved telemedicine. And again, this involved compounded medication prescriptions. The hit to TRICARE, ChampVA and Medicare came to $25 million.

But a final case at a rooming house tugs at the heartstrings. The thief grabbed Social Security and VA benefits that belonged to the mentally ill, disabled, veterans and elderly for their care and housing. There were 35 counts to the indictment, which included wire fraud, document tampering, making false statements, mail fraud and first-degree theft.

The thief managed to get herself named as Representative Payee and spent the money on herself instead of on her tenants.

As always, a big thumbs-up to the OIG.

WITH SERVICE CU

by Lucie Winbourne

• At the height of their fashion craze in the 1580s and '90s, neck ruffs could include up to 6 yards of starched-stiff material with up to 600 pleats, supported by a wire, wooden frame or board.

• In 2017, while on a plane, a woman used her sleeping husband's thumb to unlock his phone, thereby discovering he was cheating on her. She reportedly reacted with "such a ruckus" that the flight was forced to make an unscheduled landing in India.

• Starfish don't have blood. They circulate nutrients by using seawater in their vascular system.

• The first baseball caps were made from straw and worn by the New York Knickerbockers in 1849.

• After the Titanic sank in 1912, ships sent to recover the dead ran out of embalming supplies. It was decided to preserve only the bodies of firstclass passengers, due to the need to visually identify wealthy men in order to resolve disputes over their estates.

• Between 1848 and 1850, the Gold Rush caused the population of San Francisco to grow from 900 to 35,000 people.

• A mother black lace-weaver spider will drum on her web to call her babies to come and eat her alive.

• In medieval times, fruit and vegetables were cooked because they were thought to cause disease, with a book from 1500 even warning consumers to "Beware of green salads and raw fruits, for they will make your master sick."

• Credito Emiliano, a bank in Italy, accepts Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese as collateral for small business loans, holding the cheese as insurance and aging it in climate-controlled vaults for the loan's duration.

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• A man literally died laughing while watching the movie "A Fish Called Wanda." *** Thought for the Day: "Not all paths offer a vista.

But every path offers a lesson." -- Toni Sorenson ©2022 King Features Syndicate, Inc.

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Answer

Weekly SUDOKU

• Soyus is the world’s longest-running space program, instigated by Russia in the 1960s and still in use today.

“Soyus” is Russian for “union.” But the program got off to a rocky start in 1967, resulting in the tragic death of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov.

• Komarov was born in Moscow in 1927. He became a test pilot and an aerospace engineer before becoming a cosmonaut. In 1964 he became the commander of the Voskhod 1, the first spaceflight to carry more than one crew member. Then he became the first cosmonaut to fly in space twice when he was chosen as the solo pilot of the newly developed but ill-fated Soyuz 1.

• In April of 1967, the Soyuz 1 was designed to be the first spacecraft to dock with another craft in space. The plan was for the Soyuz 1 to go into orbit, followed the next day by the Soyuz 2. The two spacecraft would rendezvous, and the crew members would switch places.

It would be a publicity coup, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the communist revolution. This project was in response to the U.S.A.’s Apollo project, as the two countries were engaged in a space race.

• Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union, insisted the project proceed in spite of problems plaguing the mission. Ground tests continued to fail. Inspections found over 200 issues that needed to be resolved before the spaceship could be certified safe, but with the 50th anniversary approaching, there was no time to fix them all before the fateful day arrived. A memo was drafted and sent up the chain of command to Brezhnev, but everyone who passed it on ended up either demoted, fired, or sent to Siberia.

• Vladimir Komarov was first in command of the Soyuz 1. He knew that the spacecraft was not going to make it back safely.

• When Vladimir Komarov was asked why he didn’t just step aside and refuse the mission, he answered that if he did, the second person in line for the job would have to step into his shoes. That replacement was Yuri Gargarin.

• Yuri Gargarin was the first person ever to go to space.

He was a national hero. He and Komarov were good friends. Komarov knew that Yuri would die if he took over. In spite of the fact that Komarov had a wife and two kids, he decided that he had to fly the mission.

• As soon as he got into orbit, things went wrong. Solar panels that were supposed to keep the batteries charged failed to deploy. Antennas failed to open making communication difficult. Navigation was hard. Komarov told Ground Control he knew he was going to die. He made a call to his wife to say goodbye; they discussed what to tell the children. He left instructions that if he died, he wanted his body on full display at his funeral as a “testament” to Brezhnev.

• After his 19th orbit, he began his descent, but the parachutes designed to brake his fall failed to deploy.

The Soyuz 1 hit the ground at full speed, at which time the retro rockets that were supposed to fire in order stop the fall of the spacecraft burst into flames, incinerating the cosmonaut inside. The only part of Vladimir Komarov that remained recognizable was a bit of a heel bone. He was the first space crew killed on a mission.

• U.S. intelligence was listening in, hearing his cries of rage as he plummeted to his death.

• It’s said that when Yuri Gargarin got the chance, he threw his drink in the face of Brezhnev.

• Today there is a commemorative plaque on the Moon in Vladimir Komarov’s honor.

• Yuri Gagarin died in a plane crash in 1968, a year before Americans reached the Moon.

Answer

VLADIMIR KOMAROV

King CROSSWORD

SPACE STORIES

by Matilda Charles

Looking Out for No. 1

Depending on where you live, you might be required to delay surgery because the hospital is full of COVID patients. That's the news that's spreading around the country.

It gets worse. If you have an emergency, the ambulance might be a long time in coming because they don't have enough EMTs, or they might have to come from an adjacent town. Once you get to the hospital, you might be treated in a hallway because no exam rooms are open. © 2022 King Features Syndicate. All rights reserved.

TIDBITSGF

.COM

*Answer located further back in this issue.

©2022 by King Features Syndicate, Inc. World rights reserved

The biggest issues to keep us from needing medical attention are physical safety and health.

I've gone around my house to look at every inch of floor space to be sure there's nothing that I could possibly trip on. I moved the laundry basket to the closet instead of leaving it near a path where I walk. In the living room I changed one frequently used lamp from a 50-75-100 watt bulb to one that brightens things up with 75-100-150 watts. I removed two small throw rugs ... just got rid of them.

Other things might seem small, but really aren't. I found a balance class on YouTube and I'm following along every other day. I also found several videos on improving flexibility and stretching.

When it comes to diet, I made a quick call to my doctor's office and inquired about vitamins. I was told that a low-dose vitamin C would be appropriate three times a week, and to add an orange to my diet the other days.

Ask your doctor before you do this.

As much as I hate not being able to select my own items, I've gone back to picking up grocery orders at curbside to stay out of stores.

It's up to us to take care of ourselves. That's the bottom line when it comes to our health and safety.

Feeling Down, Sad or Anxious?

Infinity Health Cathie Campbell DNP, PMHNP-BC, GNP-BC

Call 701-885-7920 • Grand Forks, ND www.InfinityHealthND.com

King Features Weekly Service ©2022 King Features Syndicate, Inc. All rights reserved.

© 2022 King Features Synd., Inc.

(Answers located further back)

January 3, 2022

• Generally, for every degree you lower your thermostat during heating season, you reduce your energy costs by 3%.

• Just in time for soup season (and my new year’s resolutions), here’s a great fat swap: Drain and rinse 2 cups of white beans and puree with a cup of no-sodium vegetable broth. You can use this as a thickener in place of heavy cream for soups and stews. — JoAnn • To keep snow off your windshield, use a flannel-backed tablecloth stretched to cover both windshield and wipers. Put it flannel-side to the glass.

Then you’ll be able to lift it (and the snow) off your windshield to drive.

• Wondering what winter fruits and vegetables are in season? Here’s a sampling: apples, dates and pears, as well as citrus, like grapefruit, oranges and tangerines. For vegetables, consider endive, bok choy, Brussels sprouts, kale, leeks, mushrooms, parsnips, radicchio, rutabagas, sweet potatoes, turnips, yams and winter squash.

• “Want to keep your pants from creasing on the hanger? Grab an empty paper-towel tube and slit it down the side. When you slip it over the bottom of the hanger, it creates a wide curve for the pants to lie across, and no more crease!” — M.U. in Colorado • Remember that as temperatures drop and layers of clothing increase, children in a car seat need special consideration. Remove heavy coats before strapping in a small child or baby. Winter wear can compress during an accident, and it interferes with the straps.

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• On Jan. 22, 1779, famed Tory outlaw Claudius Smith meets his end on the gallows in Goshen, New York. Nicknamed the "Cowboy of the Ramapos" for his use of guerrilla tactics against Patriot civilians, legend has it that Smith's skull was filled with mortar and included in the edifice of the Goshen Court House.

• On Jan. 21, 1789, "The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth" is printed in Boston, the first novel by an American writer to be published in America.

Early editions did not carry the author's name, but a later printing credited Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton.

• On Jan. 23, 1855, John Moses Browning, sometimes referred to as the "father of modern firearms," is born in Ogden, Utah. Many of the guns whose names evoke the history of the American West -- Winchester, Colt, Remington and Savage -- were based on Browning's designs.

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• On Jan. 17, 1953, a prototype Chevrolet Corvette sports car makes its debut at General Motors' Motorama auto show at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Corvette was named for a fast type of naval warship.

• On Jan. 19, 1977, President Gerald Ford pardons Tokyo Rose, a Japanese-American woman named Iva Toguri, who broadcast Axis propaganda over the radio to Allied troops during World War II. • On Jan. 20, 1980, President Jimmy Carter proposes to the United States Olympic Committee that the 1980 Summer Olympics be moved from Moscow if the Soviet Union failed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. The USOC later voted to boycott the Moscow games.

• On Jan. 18, 1996, Major League Baseball owners unanimously approve interleague play for the 1997 season. The owners' vote, which called for each team to play 15 or 16 interleague games, broke a 126-year tradition of teams playing only within their league during the regular season. © 2022 Hearst Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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2600 Demers Ave 2600 Demers Grand Forks, ND Ave 58201 Grand Forks, ND 58201 701-746-7361 2600 Demers Ave 701-746-7361 Grand Forks, ND 58201 2600 Demers Ave 2600 Demers 701-746-7361 Grand Forks, ND Ave 58201 Grand Forks, ND 58201 701-746-7361 701-746-7361

2715 S WASHINGTON ST 2715 S WASHINGTON ST GRAND FORKS, ND 58201 GRAND FORKS, ND 58201 701-746-0425 2715 701-746-0425 S WASHINGTON ST GRAND FORKS, ND 58201 2715 SOBTP#B13696 WASHINGTON ST ©2017 HRB Tax Group, Inc. 2715 S WASHINGTON ST 701-746-0425 GRAND FORKS, ND 58201 OBTP#B13696 ©2017 HRB Tax Group, Inc. GRAND FORKS, ND 58201 701-746-0425 701-746-0425 OBTP#B13696 ©2017 HRB Tax Group, Inc.

BIRD SONG

• About half of bird species are song birds.

• The winter wren can sing up to 36 notes per second, which is so swift that the human brain cannot absorb the tune.

• One catbird who lived in a cemetery learned to expertly sing “Taps.” A lark in Germany learned to imitate the whistles that a shepherd used to guide his sheepdogs to such an accurate degree that the sheepdogs began following the orders given by the lark. A pet parakeet’s first utterance was, “Talk, damn you, talk!” An African grey parrot learned to mimic the cell phone ring tones of the various members of the family, thus summoning them at times to a non-existent phone call. A mockingbird was recorded making 20 imitations of calls and songs per minute, and had a full repertoire that included 39 bird songs, 50 bird calls, and various animal sounds such as frogs and crickets. Other mockingbirds can imitate up to 200 sounds.

• Zebra finches prefer mates with the loudest songs; swamp sparrows and canaries like mates whose trilling is the fastest. Birds also sing with regional dialects: a northern cardinal doesn’t always recognize the song of a cardinal from 1,800 miles away. Similarly, local songs change over time so that savannah sparrows sing a different song than their ancestors did, who lived in the same location 30 years earlier.

• One researcher asked a college student to repeat the sentence “I flew a kite” a hundred times in a row, making an effort to say it the same way every single time. The session was recorded and then printed out on a spectrogram. Then the spectrogram was compared to a zebra finch singing his song a hundred times in a row. The spectrogram of the finch was far more precise than the student’s recording. The bird’s calls were nearly identical, whereas the student had wide variations. ...cont'd

OBTP#B13696 ©2017 HRB Tax Group, Inc. OBTP#B13696 ©2017 HRB Tax Group, Inc.

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BIRD SONG (continued):

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• The chickadee is named for its distinctive call of “chick-a-dee-dee-dee.” Researchers discovered that this simple call is actually a very complex vocalization which conveys a lot of information. Close attention reveals that what seems to be a simple “dee” is actually a variety of “fees” and “bees” plus “zees” and even “stheeps” and “seets.” These can be combined in various syntaxes to convey information about the location of a source of food or the presence of a predator. The number of “dees” indicates not only the type of predator but also its degree of danger.

• In the Kalahari Desert of South Africa, there’s a bird called the pied babbler. This species is unusual for a couple of reasons. First, the flock practices group parenting, where one couple is chosen to lay the eggs, but the entire flock participates in raising the young. The pied babbler eats grubs and other insects found by burrowing through leaf litter and duff, which requires turning your back to the world. There are many predators that love to eat pied babblers, so the solution is to post a sentry on a high spot near where the flock is feeding. This sentry keeps up a running monologue of what’s going on in the neighborhood with a series of tweets, peeps, and whistles. Amazingly, other bird species have learned to take advantage of this sentinel system, eavesdropping on the watchman and hanging out with the babblers as they forage, while listening for alarm calls. One species called the drongo takes it a step further. The drongo is an excellent mimic and often calls out false alarms, causing the babblers to drop their worms and flee, whereupon the drongo swoops in to nab the treat.

• The plain-tailed wren of the Andes teams up with its mate to sing a duet, with each wren singing a single syllable at a time, expertly coordinated so that it sounds like a single wren singing.

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1. 80% 2. Smaller 3. Feathers 4. House sparrow

5. Eleven 6. 1975 7. Mumble 8. Canary

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Sports Answers 1. Carl Lewis 4. Pop Warner 2. Louisville, Little Scholars.

Kentucky 5. Sparky Ander3. Packers, son (1975-76 Bucs, Cincinnati Reds, Titans 1984 Detroit Chiefs, Tigers).

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