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last night was the most sleep i've had in quite a while. it totalled only around six hours, but boy, did i need it. i'm hopeful that tonight i will get to sleep before midnight, and sleep past 5:30am.
i got up this morning pretty early, and was going to go out birding before the bird walk i signed up for. it was raining, though, so i stayed home until the rain stopped and took my time getting ready to go out. i left around 8:30, and got home at around 4:30. there was a trip to the grocery store that ate up nearly an hour of that at the end, though. would have been far less time, but there was a legion of idiots ahead of me on the self-checkout line.
-=-=- bird lists, with anecdotes and commentary -=-=-
( bird lists )
i spent a good amount of time stalking kingfishers again today, and had some success. i got a few more photos that don't qualify as good. much to my facepalmness, i narrowly missed getting a really good picture of one in a nearby tree because i miscalculated what tree it was when i came around the bend and aimed my camera at the wrong one. i will be banging my head on the keyboard for a long while to come.
i learned the most about cedar waxwings today, i think. or at least, what i learned about them was a significant fact that means i've probably been seeing way more of them than i thought i was, and i will now probably see way more in the future. there was a guy on this walk that i had not met before; i believe he will be leading some of the future walks, and he co-led this one. he was very knowledgable, and was constantly pointing out birds that he had identified before i could even find them, and rattling out long lists of facts about them. i began to think of him as the bird psychic. no. i really did.
he would say things that were kind of like this: "there's a belted kingfisher overhead. it's a female, as you can tell by the reddish feathers across her belly." or, "between those two buildings near the electrical tower [at least a mile away] is a buteo. it's probably a red-tailed hawk, judging by the way it's flying." or "there's a group of green-winged teals flying over past that raft of ruddy ducks. they're flying like shorebirds with the acrobatics they're doing but you can tell they're green-winged teals based on..." etc.
but to me, a lot of these things started to sound like, "up ahead is the rare and elusive purple-backed mohegan bee-eater. there are forty-seven of them, but just before they arrived in new jersey at 3am this morning, another two were eaten by a very hungry barn owl that had recently evaded a deer hunter in a tree stand that was trying to get an early start on his day. the deer hunter is bowhunting today, though usually he uses a shotgun. but since his wife frannie took the shotgun out to look for wild turkeys today, the bow was all he had left. wild turkeys usually travel in groups, and people are usually shocked to find that they can perch in trees or on highway sound barrier walls. anyway, these purple-backed mohegan bee-eaters range in age from five months to seven years, as you can tell by looking at the tips of the primaries on the front-most bird in the flock that is now a mile away on the other side of that hill. this particular group of bee-eaters traveled here overnight from maine, and two days ago they were in cape breton where they flew over ashley macisaac's house. he's still quit the cocaine, and he's working on his next album. there's a parakeet at his mother's house, and it lives in a small avary in the living room next to a picture of ashley step-dancing as a child. the parakeet's name is angus and he was captive-bred. parakeets in the wild typically eat......."
in stark contrast, here are some of my contributions to the walk this morning:
"group of yellowlegs, overhead. yes? no. yes. no? yes? no... wait, yes! yellowlegs!"
<looking at black-crowned night-heron that had just taken off> "something just flew out from behind them! is that a hawk?"
(in response to the question, "what kind of ducks are those?") "those are tee-eff-ays. too far away."
-=-=-
migration is mad crazy tonight. but i have work tomorrow. *sob*
-=-=- -=-=-
later, i saw a black cat in someone's driveway, and snapped pictures of it.
typing this entry up has enabled me to avoid trying to go to bed before 8pm, which is probably against the law. i just finished one mug of chamomile citrus tea, and i'm going to have another. soon i will climb into bed and hope to fall asleep quickly and sleep for many hours. please please. thanks.
i got up this morning pretty early, and was going to go out birding before the bird walk i signed up for. it was raining, though, so i stayed home until the rain stopped and took my time getting ready to go out. i left around 8:30, and got home at around 4:30. there was a trip to the grocery store that ate up nearly an hour of that at the end, though. would have been far less time, but there was a legion of idiots ahead of me on the self-checkout line.
-=-=- bird lists, with anecdotes and commentary -=-=-
( bird lists )
i spent a good amount of time stalking kingfishers again today, and had some success. i got a few more photos that don't qualify as good. much to my facepalmness, i narrowly missed getting a really good picture of one in a nearby tree because i miscalculated what tree it was when i came around the bend and aimed my camera at the wrong one. i will be banging my head on the keyboard for a long while to come.
i learned the most about cedar waxwings today, i think. or at least, what i learned about them was a significant fact that means i've probably been seeing way more of them than i thought i was, and i will now probably see way more in the future. there was a guy on this walk that i had not met before; i believe he will be leading some of the future walks, and he co-led this one. he was very knowledgable, and was constantly pointing out birds that he had identified before i could even find them, and rattling out long lists of facts about them. i began to think of him as the bird psychic. no. i really did.
he would say things that were kind of like this: "there's a belted kingfisher overhead. it's a female, as you can tell by the reddish feathers across her belly." or, "between those two buildings near the electrical tower [at least a mile away] is a buteo. it's probably a red-tailed hawk, judging by the way it's flying." or "there's a group of green-winged teals flying over past that raft of ruddy ducks. they're flying like shorebirds with the acrobatics they're doing but you can tell they're green-winged teals based on..." etc.
but to me, a lot of these things started to sound like, "up ahead is the rare and elusive purple-backed mohegan bee-eater. there are forty-seven of them, but just before they arrived in new jersey at 3am this morning, another two were eaten by a very hungry barn owl that had recently evaded a deer hunter in a tree stand that was trying to get an early start on his day. the deer hunter is bowhunting today, though usually he uses a shotgun. but since his wife frannie took the shotgun out to look for wild turkeys today, the bow was all he had left. wild turkeys usually travel in groups, and people are usually shocked to find that they can perch in trees or on highway sound barrier walls. anyway, these purple-backed mohegan bee-eaters range in age from five months to seven years, as you can tell by looking at the tips of the primaries on the front-most bird in the flock that is now a mile away on the other side of that hill. this particular group of bee-eaters traveled here overnight from maine, and two days ago they were in cape breton where they flew over ashley macisaac's house. he's still quit the cocaine, and he's working on his next album. there's a parakeet at his mother's house, and it lives in a small avary in the living room next to a picture of ashley step-dancing as a child. the parakeet's name is angus and he was captive-bred. parakeets in the wild typically eat......."
in stark contrast, here are some of my contributions to the walk this morning:
"group of yellowlegs, overhead. yes? no. yes. no? yes? no... wait, yes! yellowlegs!"
<looking at black-crowned night-heron that had just taken off> "something just flew out from behind them! is that a hawk?"
(in response to the question, "what kind of ducks are those?") "those are tee-eff-ays. too far away."
-=-=-
migration is mad crazy tonight. but i have work tomorrow. *sob*
-=-=- -=-=-
later, i saw a black cat in someone's driveway, and snapped pictures of it.
typing this entry up has enabled me to avoid trying to go to bed before 8pm, which is probably against the law. i just finished one mug of chamomile citrus tea, and i'm going to have another. soon i will climb into bed and hope to fall asleep quickly and sleep for many hours. please please. thanks.
