Greater Bird of Paradise sorbet, mmmm, tasty.

McCain still isn't fooling anybody--and I want to point out to anyone even considering voting for him that if he becomes president and dies (which, considering his age, is likely), we'll have a young person with only two years of governing experience running the country. Did we learn nothing from the first and second time around with Bush?

But I digress. This is supposed to be a happy diversion from things political. Today, I bring you birds of paradise and their mating habits.

When I was a teenager learning at home, my grandmother sent me a few books on birds, one on seabirds, another on perching birds. I read them both, of course, and even requested further books, at which point she sent me a few newer books on flight and migration. There may have been a few others in the old series, and there was at least one on birds of prey, but I didn't get to read them.

The books were old and consisted of full color illustrations of representative species from all of the bird families around the world along with detailed chapters about each family, its habits and habitat, and the forces that made it what it was. From reading this I learned that birds of paradise and bower birds are actually both descended from stranded crow-like ancestors who developed eccentric mating strategies just so they could tell which species they were mating with! Or at least that's the theory. (Imagine Gilligan's Island, only each person was a slightly different species of black bird.)