Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for February 16, 2025

Black-and-white stripes are the old orange.

For anyone out there who ever doubted this strip is for the birds…

Oh, sure, Ed. Denigrate the black-and-white warbler.

I see my favourite bird in panel 4 of 6, the Cardinal. After growing up in Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Indiana between ’49 and ’86 I certainly miss seeing them in Washington and Oregon between 1986 and today. (But not missing them enough to go spend any Winter time in WI again!)

I always knew Cranky was a birdbrain…

“That’s Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, Joe, Curley Joe, and Fake Shemp.”

I figured Crank would say something like “Sure, I can name all the birds. That’s Frank, Tom, Nancy, Martha, and Ralph the Chirper. Later on, we can expect to see Betty Lou, Sally Mae, Moses the Wise, Otter, Pinto, Neidermeyer, Marlene and Bluto.”

Sometimes, this strip makes me flip Batty the bird.

What no owlbirds in the night?

Its called birdwatching!

Is that a magpie in the last panel? If so, I wouldn’t call it a jailbird, just an avid collector of interesting and shiny objects.

I guess the black and white stripes are the “giveaway”!!!!!

not even a ostrich and a penguin could make this funny maybe woody woodpecker and buzz buzzard

Ha?

Does Cranky know which one is the Larry Bird? O<[|;o)

Ah, the tyranny of the Sunday six-panel format. Today Batty gives us a five-panel joke about the succession of birds coming through at different times and comes up one panel short, so we get a bonus joke in the final panel.

I helped my late father with his bird feeders when we lived on LI. Trying to figure humane ways to stave off the squirrels was part of it … BTW, Mourning Doves are as dumb a rocks … One got surprised one morning when I came out to fill up the feeders and began battering its’ little head against the glass at the back of the feeder. I gently removed the panicked bird from the feeder, pointed it toward the open air, threw it up into the air, and it did a 180 arc straight back to the side of the ranch house.

I must be getting soft-headed … this was the second consecutive Crankshaft I clicked the “Like” button for! Here the nifty renderings and witty title frame (?) remind me of Mark Trail nature drawings, a tradition which Jules Rivera has nicely kept going with a precision that contrasts with the looseness of her characters.