Sea Eagle

 

We went to the beach in October and it was actually nice because no sunburns and also no crowds. As shown in this comic, toddlers can act like poor speech-to-text software with just assuming similar words are your words. He was super excited to see the birds, whatever they were. And we did not feed the beach birds - what goes in then goes up and comes down. 

Text:
L: Look - a seagull!
O: WOW! Eagle!
L: No, a sea gull.
O: Oh! Sea Eagle!

Bluey Games

 

In the show "Bluey," there is a game about being tickle crabs and they are defeated by a seagull. My kids like this game. They like most of the games from Bluey, which means we have to be engaged watching the show so when they ask us to play some random game that's mentioned for a minute we can acquiesce. 

Text:
R: Squalk! Can you be a tickle crab so I can eat you?
O: No. No thank you. 

Duck Mango

 

Sometimes parenting is a lot of guesswork and I mean it's guessing what on earth your child is actually saying. We haven't even gotten into slang yet thankfully but wow toddlers learning concepts is a ride. The conversation pictured actually happened in my car and I could tell she was looking at the picture she had colored at the library so I had to wrack my brain as to what was on the picture (a bunch of summery items) and then what could be misconstrued as a duck and/or mango. 

Explanation: sometimes a kid can think all birds are ducks (like how some people say all sodas are cokes), and "mango" and "flamingo" sound similar so why not sub one for the other.

Text:
R: What this duck - a mango?
L: That bird is a flamingo.

Playing Stardew Valley

 

So I just started playing Stardew Valley because my husband recently started playing it and I was intrigued. I share his copy on Steam which means I can only play it if he's not playing a game in Steam which is a bit restrictive but it does mean that I won't waste my time gaming in the evenings if he's wasting his time gaming in the evenings. And if I'm not playing then maybe I'll work on my comics? It's a theory. 

Explanation: In the game Stardew Valley, you can gather resources and one of those is sap. Also, there's a bird called a yellow-bellied sapsucker in real life.  

Text:
Title: Playing Stardew Valley
L: What did you pick up?
M: Sap.
L: Are you a sapsucker?
M: Yellow-bellied. 

Repost: Happy Mother's Day 2019

 

A repost from 2019! This might be my favorite line from Dr. Seuss, taken from the famous Are You My Mother book which WAIIIIIIIIIIIT it's not a Dr. Seuss book???? But it's shaped just like them??? It's actually a P. D. Eastman book. Today I learned. It was published in 1960, which means it's older than my parents. 

Text:
Baby Bird: I am glad you are my Mother. And that you are not a SNORT.

Retweet

 

I'm not on the Twitter/X so is it still called retweeting? I have the same name as a celebrity so my ability to get accounts with my name is rather limited and I haven't tried to enter that particular sphere. Also did I draw a chick who should be cheeping rather than tweeting? Maybe. Maybe it's a baby tweety bird that just happens to be yellow and orange. It could happen. HAH I should have looked up what a baby mockingbird looks like, they would be retweeting since they like mimicry so much. 

Explanation: Birds are often characterized as saying "tweet" so a natural progression from that would be to "retweet." 

Text:
Title: Some kids are born leaders - others, however...
Baby Bird: Retweet! Retweet!

Accountability Partner

 

The other week, I got a push notification from the green owl with something like "you're in 6th place in your league but I know you can do better!" and I was kinda insulted but I get what they're doing there. Not to make light of accountability partners - they are great for keeping you honest with your goals and helping you make good choices. 

Explanation: DuoLingo is a language learning app with a green owl as their mascot. Said owl is used in their push notifications to cajole you into doing your lessons for the day. 

Text:
Duo: Need an accountability partner?

Modern 12 Drones of Christmas

 

Happy early Birthday to my brother! 
If they're all birds, and birds aren't real, then did your true love give you nothing??? Also, as I figured out in my previous 12 Days of Christmas comic, if you do the additive version then it's 364 drones. You could make a cool lights show with that many. 

Explanation: people wearing tinfoil hats are (usually?) conspiracy theorists, and a popular conspiracy is that birds aren't real. 

Text:
A: How was your Christmas?
B: Excellent, my true love gave me a modern 12 Days of Christmas so -
A: 78 drones?!
B: Yep!

Swallow

 

Both of my kiddos are droolers but for the baby that's normal - the toddler needs reminders to close her mouth and swallow. 

Explanation: "Swallow" is a type of bird and also an action where you keep the spit from falling out of your mouth and dripping on people, places, and things.

Text:
A: Do you still call your daughter Robin?
L: Well, nowadays we usually call her Swallow.

Lenora Was Hopeful

 

This comic is directly inspired by Rhymes With Orange's one that I can't find a direct link to but it's on this page under "Cartoons." Basically it's a snake reading a book titled "Anyone can knit" with some needles and yarn next to him and the title of the comic is "Leonard was hopeful." I think emu are the best bird (they are so unique and weird) and they don't really have wings so when you combine that with the really long neck, yeah violin would be out of the question. 

Explanation: to play the violin, you really need arms and also a way to hold the violin between your chin and shoulder. The emu has neither of these prerequisites. 

Text:
Title: Lenora was hopeful.
Comic: An emu, with a violin case leaning against her, stands by a music stand with the book "anyone can play the violin!" 

Ariel Hunters

 

I thought this up while watching a nature documentary but I forget which one. For a while we were watching them with my toddler because she liked watching them with us and they're pretty calm and interesting so wins all around. The episode about the birds of prey was narrated by Anthony Mackie who plays the character Falcon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and I thought that was humorously fitting since falcons are birds of prey. 

Explanation: Birds of prey (like hawks) can be called aerial hunters because they hunt from the air. The Little Mermaid's name is Ariel, which sounds like aerial. 

Text:
M: Look at those aerial hunters!
L: How do you know that those hawks are going after The Little Mermaid? 

Bird Watching

I like that they are looking different directions :) Just two people watching different birds. And I like my explanation that blackbirds level up and become red-winged blackbirds. Now to think through how a bird levels up - fighting in Pokémon-style battles? Gathering the right items from a variety of side-quests? Studying hard and acing the test? Who knows. 

Text:
A: Is that a red-winged blackbird?
B: Nope, just a regular blackbird. He hasn't earned his stripes yet. 

Bird Wing Wish, Part 3

 

The conclusion of the whole matter, where I remind you yet again of my favorite bird. You can search my blog to find my other references to emu or I could just add them here. But that's a wrap with the three wishes from the genie! I had to look up how to spell vestigial since that's not a word I use often or spell ever. This person should have just wished for like a hang glider or something simpler to attain flight. 

Text:
A: I wish I had real, feathery bird wings on my back.
G: Ok! 
*POOF*
A with small, non-functional wings on his back: What?! Vestigial?!?
G: I think emu are really cool.

Bird Wing Wish, Part 2

 

A classic trope, when you try to get more specific then you mess up in new ways. What will part three be??? Will he finally get his bird wings??? Do you like that the KFC from the previous wish is still in the panel? Object permanence! I'm working on it, don't usually have much need for it since my comics don't have many props. 

Text:
A: I wish I had real, feathery bird wings.
G: Ok!
*POOF*
A, holding a bird cage with a bird in it: WHAT?
G: I did you one better and got you a whole bird!

Bird Wing Wish, Part 1

 

So this is a three-parter, because most genies in the stories give three wishes! Yes, in this one the person gets some KFC chicken wings. hot and fresh and all that. Why am I thinking of bird wings? I was not sure but my husband reminded me that we had just watched The Batman before I drew these (they started out as sketches on the back of a page-a-day calendar, like all great comics) and that movie has a lot of things with wings (Batman, Penguin, Falcone, ...), So that's probably the link. Stay tuned for the next wishes!

Text:
A: I wish I had bird wings!
G: Ok!
*POOF*
A, holding a bag of KFC: That's not what I meant and you know it.
G: fresh from KFC!

Nebraskan Birds

Happy Birthday to my niece! So there's a theory that birds aren't real, something about they all died and were replaced with drones, and I have questions. Like, most birds fit a given mold of 'small flying thing' but what about all the birds that don't fit that mold? Are flightless birds just terrestrial drones, and penguins are semi-aquatic drones? If you could have a drone for every type of bird out there, that would be pretty cool. But on a technical note, drone makers do tend to look to nature to figure out how to do things (like I remember reading about one that made a solid wing pop out when an uncontrolled landing was happening so it would spiral gently downward like a maple tree 'helicopter' seed). Looking to nature is fascinating when we discover how magnificent so many processes are and we can't mechanically recreate them. God is amazing and nature shows that. 

Text:
M: That's a large eagle.
L: Or maybe it's a drone!
N: Birds aren't real.

Nebraska Page 2

Happy Birthday to my amazing husband! He did basically all the planning for our jaunt out to the Midwest and the trip went very smoothly. 
 For the first panel, we did indeed wear our ski jackets out to the Midwest and it was a good thing we did! It got bitterly cold at times. But as you can see in Panel 5, it also got warm! That panel's dialog was taken from a short hike we did to see eagles - we saw deer and cacti instead and possibly eagles but might have been a hawk or vulture. We did not pack binoculars, can you tell? Panel 3 is a throwback to our trip to Germany when a huge statue was described as "Texas" and now I think that whenever I see a massive statue. We did actually see some tumbleweeds, don't let Panel 4 fool you. And per Panel 7, we did have some juvenile humor surrounding the many buttes we saw. 

Text:
P1-
 M: We're gonna look like tourists in Laramie, Wyoming.
 N: Why, the ski jackes?
 M: No, we'll be in Laramie.
P2 - 
 L: How much longer?
 M: 30 minutes.
 L: I feel like you said 45 minutes an hour ago.
 L2: WHINEEE
P3 - *Denver Airport's massive horse statue*
 L: That statue is Texas.
P4 -
 L: We really are out West - a tumbleweed just crossed the highway!
 M: Pretty sure that was a plastic bad.
 L: Close enough!
P5 -
 M: The sun is hot - I am roasting.
 L: Like a red pepper?
P6 -
 M: That's a large eagle.
 L: Or maybe it's a drone!
 N: Birds aren't real.
P7 - 
 M: To your left, the Rocky Mountains!
 N: To your right, a red butte.
 L: *snicker*

 

Little Bird Gossip

HAPPY 2'S DAY!!!! Yep, it's 2/22/22 and Tuesday. How nice for that to line up.

I don't recall what prompted this one, probably I heard the phrase "a little birdie told me" or maybe I read that passage in the Bible that mentions it. I thought about drawing the birds as stick figures, but honestly I don't know how to do that unless they are little m's in the sky and that doesn't really work with this dialog.

The phrase means you aren't going to tell who your source is when sharing a bit of information, as if a little bird dropped down and gave you some info. Which sounds like something from the song "Do you hear what I hear" - is one of the characters in that telephone chain a bird? Night wind, little lamb, shepherd boy, mighty king, people everywhere - nope, no birds.   

Text:
Title: "A little birdie told me"
Raven: What's up, little bird?
Bluebird: I have all the gossip.

Sixth Day of Christmas

Yes it's the seventh of December but this comic posts on Sun Tues Thurs so it happened to not line up with the sixth. This is based on a true story - when we were looking for a house last year, there was one that we didn't even venture inside because we did a quick check of the yard and there was a fully fenced in back yard with chickens and geese happily milling about. I hear that means the grass would be very fertile but it just struck us as odd that the listing didn't mention anything about the backyard barnyard. Also there was a retention pond right there without a fence or anything around it, so that was also a negative mark on the house. 

♩♪ On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me - six geese a-laying ♪𝅗𝅥

Text:

R: And this house will have you totally prepared for the sixth day of Christmas!
M: Yeah, we're gonna pass.
L: Hard pass.

Seagulls and Baby

 

I thought this up when my daughter was finally sleeping after crying about it (she is in a stage when she fights sleep at least half the time). I think the seagulls from Finding Nemo are just so iconic. 

Text:
When the baby is being cute: *seagulls all saying "MINE"*
When the baby is crying: *seagulls all saying "YOURS"*