The Watchmaker

House Wrens can be a bit of a sensitive topic amongst birders who provide and monitor nestboxes because they can destroy whole clutches on their quest to dominate an area but things like wren guards can keep the peace, and they are a native bird, so if they do build a nest in one of my boxes, they can have it. They are charming little things with big personalities, and they make the funniest faces. Here is the female, sitting on her six eggs. (This is not the Chickadee box.) They should start hatching this week.

(sialis.org/wrens/ has very good info if you need it.)

RIP Dee Palmer (2/7/1937-13/6/2026)

One of the great women of prog, Mrs. Palmer was Jethro Tull's orchestral arranger on their first nine albums, including Aqualung and Thick as a Brick. She became a full member of the band as a second keyboardist in 1976, until the band experienced a drastic lineup change in 1980.

Happy birthday, Che Guevara! (June 14, 1928)

One of the 20th Century's most impactful revolutionaries, Ernesto "Che" Guevara grew up in a well-off family with left-wing sympathies in Argentina. As a young medical student, Guevara embarked on a trek across Latin America which would change him forever, as he came to see the plight of the poor and destitute firsthand. He was further radicalized by his experiences in Guatemala, where he witnessed the coup carried out by the United States at the behest of the United Fruit Company against progressive President Jacobo Arbenz. This event galvanized Guevara's view of the United States as the world's foremost imperial power, one which had to be opposed and fought to achieve economic and social freedom for Latin America, and cemented his commitment to armed revolution as a force for social change. To this end, he joined the forces of Fidel and Raul Castro, and became a leading figure in the Cuban Revolution. During the revolution Guevara helped to established schools and medical facilities for campesinos, and helped lead the revolutionaries to victory in the Battle of Santa Clara. After the revolution, Guevara played a major role in the new Cuban government, overseeing land reform and literacy campaigns. However, he soon felt a desire to continue his revolutionary activities, traveling abroad to support revolutionary movements in Africa and South America. While in Bolivia leading the Ñancahuazú Guerrilla, he was captured and executed by the Bolivian government.

Responding to conservative backlash over a large selection of offerings for the month of June, Target announced Friday that they would scale back their gay pride section to a single t-shirt, saying they’d do a threesome with a girl for their boyfriend’s birthday. “It’s a one-night-only thing, and we’ll both do stuff to him—nothing to each other,” reads the bright, graphic t-shirt in large rainbow block letters, the detailed rules of the encounter continuing in smaller letters onto the back, which Target representatives called “the perfect compromise to make everyone happy.”