Parks and Gardens

A side-benefit to birding.

 

It draws us to places like this!

 

 

Airport bathrooms

 

Maybe a year ago, how to segregate restrooms was a big deal.  There was lots of talk about how to identify which gender was using which restroom, and who should be accommodated.  Here is how they resolved the issue at the San Diego airport in California.

 

There are all the normal men or women restrooms, then there are these scattered about.  I love it.  Why make anything harder than it needs to be?

 

The sign for this restroom reads:  Anyone can use this restroom regardless of gender identity or expression.

 

 

 

Jon helped

 

He birds South Texas every day, so he knows where some of the birds I need are.  We met up in Corpus way before dawn and drove to the Guadalupe River Delta.  We missed the American Woodcock and the Short-eared Owl, but scored on the Sedge Wren, and a total surprise to me, a Winter Wren; all before sunrise.  This is easy.  497.

 

Drove farther north, on Jon’s hunch, to Powderhorn Lake.  Now in the morning light, we played call notes for sparrows and up popped Nelson’s Sparrow and Seaside Sparrow.  499 and it’s not even 9 O’Clock!  We’ve got lots of options to get one more bird.

 

Drove to the LeConte’s Sparrow spot.  Nothing.  Grasshopper Sparrow spot.  Nada.  Drove to a Barn Owl spot out by Austwell.  An empty barn.  Drove back to Aransas Pass, across the ferry to Port Aransas and back to the Birding Center for another try at the American Bittern.  Nope.  Not there.

 

Uh oh.  It’s starting to get a little desperate.  I’m running alternative scenarios through my head to get that last bird if we don’t get another today.  I could drive north tomorrow two hundred fifty more miles to Houston for one of three birds there: Red Vented Bulbul, Brown-headed Nuthatch, Red-cockaded Woodpecker.  I could drive home and catch a plane to Orlando for:  Snail Kite, Limpkin, or Florida Scrub-Jay.  I could catch a plane to Sacramento for Yellow-billed Magpie or California Condor.  Any one of those options are a lot of travel, but doable before the end of the year.

 

Three more possible birds to find here, Barn Owl, Ferruginous Hawk, and Cassin’s Vireo.  Drove to Chapman Ranch for the Barn Owl.  Barn Owls roost in abandoned barns during the day.  Again, an empty barn.  Down to two chances.  Picked the Cassin’s Vireo at Rose Hill Cemetery.  It is an unusual bird for here but has been seen with a mixed flock of little birds; sparrows and warblers.  Scoured the Cemetery.  Found the flock!  Scoured the flock.  Bingo!  Cassin’s Vireo!  Bird number 500 for the year!  Yeaaaa.  I predicted I was going to see 500 species in 2019!  It wasn’t a slam-dunk; it required a concentrated effort in December, and welcome assistance from Jon at the end.  Jon is a good birding friend though, so it felt good to finish with him too.

 

South Texas part of the trip map

 

Zero birds to go.  (And six Continuing Education hours.)

 

 

 

Oops, I missed the boardwalk photo from tonight

 

 

 

 

The final push has begun

 

Drove to Riviera.  Missed on the Ferruginous Hawk and Fork-tailed Flycatcher.  The flycatcher left a couple weeks ago, but checked just to make sure.  From a distance I saw a big dark hawk with a red tail fly away.  That probably wasn’t the Ferruginous.  Drove to Goose Island.  Scored on the Whooping Crane at Big Tree.  495.  Spent two hours looking for the American Bittern at the Birding Center in Port Aransas.  I enlisted everyone on the boardwalk to help me find it.  Several people saw it yesterday, but none today.  Watched until it was too dark to see.  I don’t think it was there.

 

Spending the night in Corpus Christi.

 

South Texas part of the trip map

 

Five birds to go.  (And eight Continuing Education hours.)

 

 

 

 

 

On this last trip to California

 

… I spent eight nights in eight different hotels.  And I learned something.

 

I’ve rarely been comfortable in hotel rooms.  More often that not, I don’t sleep well.  I tend to wake up hot and sweaty in the middle of the night and have to toss the covers off, regardless of how cool I set the room temperature.  I take this to mean there is something too synthetic above or below me, or both, in the bedding.

 

Well, during the California trip, I slept comfortably two out of the first three nights.  I hadn’t been choosing hotels by type, I was choosing them by location; by where I wanted to start the next day. Those two comfortable nights were at La Quinta by Wyndham and Howard Johnson by Wyndham.  Something in common in those names struck me.  Wyndham has apparently bought up several hotel chains.  Could it be that they created a standard for bedding for all their hotels?  I tested the theory.  Every remaining night, except one, I slept at a Wyndham property.  Every remaining night, except that one, I had a comfortable night’s sleep.

 

So if you’re traveling, and you tend to have trouble sleeping comfortably in hotel room beds, I suggest you try Wyndham hotels.  They don’t always say Wyndham in the name, but you can google Wyndham properties and get a list of the Wyndham hotels wherever you are.

 

Merry Christmas!  (And thank you Wyndham.)

 

 

 

Mexican Duck at Salineno.  494.  Missed on the Seedeater.

 

South Texas part of the trip map

 

Six birds to go.  (And ten Continuing Education hours.)

 

 

 

Merry Christmas everyone

 

Or Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, or Have a Nice Day!

 

We got all the electronics out for a digital Christmas morning with Matt and family, and Becky and family.

 

The weather was delightful.  Judy made us a great dinner.  We had a quiet happy day here.

 

Happy Holidays!

 

 

 

Along the way

 

Eared Grebe.

 

Bufflehead ducks.

 

Snowy Egret.

 

 

Black Phoebe.

 

Allen’s Hummingbird.

 

 

Red-whiskered Bulbul.

 

 

 

And what if you’re driving an electric car

 

…and you run out of power and you can’t make it home or to a charging station?  What then?  Do you just pull over to the side of the road and you’re stuck?  That keeps me from getting serious about buying an electric car.  I might start out to drive twenty miles and end up driving a hundred.  My trip to the island and back might get extended to two hundred miles.  I don’t always know ahead of time how much range I’ll need.  Gasoline cars can carry a gas can.  Can electric cars carry an extra bucket of electrons?

 

How about this; buy a little Honda generator and throw it in the trunk of the electric car.  In an emergency, fire up the generator and let it charge up the batteries until there is enough to get you to the next stop.  A bucket of electrons?  Problem solved?

 

 

No additional birds today.  The only thing I saw in the air today was me.  Miles driven: 600.  Miles walked: 36.  Birds seen: 28.  Birds remaining: 7.  I’m back home in South Texas with my charming wife and puppies. 

 

It’s good to be home.

 

 

 

 

And traffic lights

 

We have self-driving cars.  They’re loaded with artificial intelligence making a thousand decisions a second.  Put a small fraction of that technology into an intersection and smart traffic lights could make some simple decisions, not only about whether there was anyone waiting at the light and triggering the light to change at the next cycle, but look down the road and modify the cycle to accommodate the natural flow of traffic.  If there is only one car waiting to go when the light turns green and there is no-one else coming, just move on to the next part of the cycle.

 

Southern California part of the trip map

 

Standing in a marsh, in the pre-dawn dark, making noises like a rail, hoping not to get arrested.  It worked!  Got the Ridgway’s Rail and I didn’t get arrested!  491.  On to Mile Square Park for the Swinhoe’s White-eye.  That’s a big park, it really is a mile square, and I walked it all, before I finally got the flock of White-eyes.  492.  Drive south to the San Diego River.  Search through five hundred American Goldeneyes to find the one Eurasian Goldeneye.  Got it!  (With the help of a local birder couple who had spotted it earlier and refound it for me.)  It’s all good.  It counts.  493.

 

That’s it for the day.  We’re down to single digits.  Seven!

 

 

 

I’ve been thinking

 

What’s the point in pulling someone over and giving them a ticket?  Is it to educate the public about traffic rules, create safer streets, and punish wrongdoers?  Well, can you imagine a less-efficient way of doing it than having police in cars waiting randomly for an infraction, catching up to the infractor, pulling them over, running plates and registration, writing up a warning or a ticket, and delivering it, and maybe even a lecture, in person?  That must take at least half an hour per ticket.  Wow.  Maybe 10 or 15 interactions in an 8 hour shift.  That’s not a very good return on investment in police officers.  Look at all the technology we’ve got now; speed limit signs that tell you how fast you’re going, license plate readers on the highways, intersection cameras.  Look at what’s happened to toll roads; no more stopping at one end to pick up a ticket, then stopping at the other end while the attendant calculates the charge, then exchanging money or worse, a credit card with a clipboard, paper, and a signature.  Now, we just drive through a reader and the charge shows up in the mail or against a prepaid pass.  All these technological advancements, but the process of writing traffic tickets hasn’t hasn’t changed in a hundred years!  No, I didn’t get a ticket, and I’m not saying we should use technology to write ten times as many tickets; I’m saying, couldn’t we use technology to free up police officers for more productive constructive work?

 

Still putting dots on the map.

 

L.A. Basin part of the trip map

 

And birds on the list.  Four more today:  Red-masked Parakeet, Red-whiskered Bulbul, Yellow-chevroned Parakeet, Mitred Parakeet.  Finished the day at 490!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I take everything out of the car at night

 

…and into the hotel.  The next morning, I take it all out to the car again and lay out the stuff within reach that I’ll need for the day.  Binoculars.  Camera.  Birding ears (that contraption that lets me hear high pitched noises I can’t otherwise hear).  Portable speaker (for when there is no-one else around to bother, and I’m not in a protected area, to play bird calls).  Granola bars for when I’m not near food or don’t want to stop.  Nuts.  Hat.  A note pad with lists for all the birds I’m looking for that day.  Any empty wrappers.  By the end of each day the front passenger seat looks like a homeless camp.

 

The Charlton Flat picnic area up on the Angeles Crest Highway was very good to me today.  California Quail.  White-headed Woodpecker.  California Scrub-Jay.  And Wrentit.

 

A group of three parks in Pasadena in the afternoon yielded Western Bluebird and Band-tailed Pigeon.  A trip to the Parrot Roost at dusk resulted in a couple hundred Red-crowned Parrots (I already have those), but I missed on the Yellow-headed Parrot.

 

A six-bird day!  Year count 486.

 

L.A. Basin part of the trip map

 

 

 

Happy Birthday to me

 

It’s odd spending my birthday away from Judy.  Haven’t done that since 1965.  But here I am, hammering out birds:

 

Allen’s Hummingbird

Cassin’s Kingbird

Scaly Breasted Munia

Northern Red Bishop

Pin-tailed Whydah

 

Five more birds to the count.  Ended the day at 480.

 

 

Parks and gardens.

 

 

 

And white pelicans doing their feeding ballet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun fact

 

The high in Fairbanks on Saturday is going to be 29 degrees below zero!  And it’s snowing in Barrow.  They’re below zero too.

 

Saw four year-birds today.

 

Mandarin Duck.

 

 

This thing.

 

Whatever it is…

 

Oak Titmouse.

 

And Nuttall’s Woodpecker.  (No photo.)

 

That brings the count to 475.  That was our target count in 2017 when we finished at 474, so this is a new record for us.  475.  Only 25 to go to get to 500.

 

Parks and Gardens.

 

 

And this should ring a bell for brother Bill.  Puddingstone!

 

I recall you taking me fishing there when I was a kid.

 

California part of the trip map

 

 

 

A productive day

 

Couldn’t sleep past 5.  (I’m a time-zone sissy.  I don’t easily adjust.)  Got a few hours of work in.  Took a half-day class for CPE on the computer.  (I’m still counting that down for the year.  10 hours to go.)  and did some birding.  Three new birds for the year:  California Towhee, California Thrasher, and California Gnatcatcher.  Now we’re at 471!  Only 29 to go.

 

One of my stops was the botanic gardens; that always seems to be a stop.

 

 

Ended the day in Oceanside.  Sister-in-law Barbara met me for dinner at Angelos.  That was a good visit.

 

Hot Pastrami Sandwich!  I demolished it.

Or it demolished me.

 

 

 

I was just looking at the 2019 trip map

 

..and there is one corner missing.  There aren’t any pins in the bottom left.  Until now.

 

2019 Trip Map

 

Judy is not over the shingles yet, but the painkillers for nerve pain have her at a good balance point.  So tonight I’m in San Diego.  One more shot at more bird species for the year!

 

The list started the day at 465 birds.  35 birds to go to get to 500.  That’s a long way with just a couple weeks to go in the year.  But I landed in San Diego early afternoon.  Time enough to get to the San Diego River tidal flats before dark.  Three new birds:  Snowy Plover, Red Knot, and Western Gull.  Missed the Eurasian Wigeon.  468.  32 to go.

 

 

 

 

 

At the park

 

 

 

…and waiting for Dad, when I was gone.

 

 

 

 

I was just thinking

 

…about stupid humor.  And I thought of Car Talk.  Car Talk purports to be about cars, but you don’t really have to know much about cars to enjoy the stupid humor of Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers.

 

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510208/car-talk

 

It was fun to listen to some Car Talk episodes, but then I remembered this guy I stumbled across that keeps having run-ins with Bigfoot.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeFL-YOmQvQ

 

He and Bigfoot do have issues.

 

 

 

I’m the reason

 

 

I’m the reason we can’t have nice things!

 

 

 

A conundrum

 

I still can’t figure out whether to be understanding and sympathetic, or pissed off at, Anthony Bourdain.  My immediate reaction was, how could he do such a selfish thing; deprive us of his wit and wisdom.  Not only that, he took the joy out of re-watching his older shows with the sadness of his passing.  On the other hand, consider that the best solution he could find for his pain was to take his own life; how awful is that for him to have lived with for as long as he did.

 

Darn it, Anthony Bourdain.

 

 

 

Now I remember

 

The other thing I was going to say about traveling.

 

In the rental car, there was no Sirius Radio.  Being by myself all day and night, I couldn’t just turn on the radio and hear a familiar voice.  I had a regular car radio though, so I turned it on.  It was preset to FM and I listen to that for a while and explored the options.  After a time, I got tired of Cuban music and trying to follow along with what they were saying in Spanish, and decided to try AM.  The first thing I found in English was Rush Limbaugh.  I don’t usually listen to right wing radio, but I’m open minded; I can listen to all sides of a story.  I made it about two minutes.  There wasn’t any story.  Rush’s presentation is not appealing to me.  It tends to strike me as whiney, and he was certainly whiney that day.  The irony is what he was whining about; Democrats and how whiney they are!  That was a little much.

 

Okay, so I moved on.  What else I found in English was sports talk radio.  I’m not a big fan of sports talk radio; I kind of like some sports, but I don’t obsess about any of them.  Talk radio does.  But you know what I got?  Familiar voices.  I caught a portion of the Dan Patrick Show.  That’s a voice I know.  And Jim Rome.  Jim Rome?  He’s still on the air?  I was immediately transported to the jungle; a clone.  It was awesome.  He was ranting about something or other, some football player who was playing and shouldn’t be, and some football player who wasn’t playing and should be.  It didn’t matter what he was talking about, or whether I knew who the football players he was talking about were, he was hilarious.  It didn’t matter how much he faded in and out through the static as I drove in and out of range of the station; I enjoyed the familiar voice.

 

 

 

Never

 

Never underestimate the power of The Poncho.

 

Last week against the Chargers,

 

23 – 20 Broncos.

 

This week against the Texans,

 

38 – 27 Broncos.

 

Fear The Poncho!

 

 

 

Not all birthdays are the same

 

For her birthday last year, Judy got a new granddaughter.  Hard to top that.

 

For her birthday this year she got the shingles.  An antiviral, a cream to rub, and a lot of Advil.  Really, a new grandbaby was more fun.

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday Judy

 

In the olden days, telephones called from one place to another, not from one person to another.  Local calls were free, but anything outside of your direct dialing area was a long-distance call and long-distance calls were not cheap; the greater the distance, the more expensive the call.

 

55 years ago today, Judy’s 16^th birthday present from her mother was a 3-minute person to person telephone call to me on Okinawa.  Corresponding only by handwritten letters, this was our first chance for a conversation in a year.  The call had to be person-to-person, because the best she could do is call the Company Commander’s phone, they in turn dispatching a runner to find me, to escort me back to the waiting telephone call.  It was an expensive call, but the 3-minute clock didn’t start until the correct person, me, was reached.  This was no small matter.  That 3-minute call cost 37 dollars, in 1964 money!

 

I picked up the phone, said hello, and listened to Judy try to talk through tears for 3 minutes, then the operator came back on the line, told us our time was up, and disconnected the call.  Happy Birthday Judy.  You can talk to me all you want today, and every other day, and rarely have to cry while doing it.

 

 

 

Poor Jesse

 

Mirrors, she can deal with, that’s a nice clean image of a puppy.  Sometimes she plays with the puppy in the mirror and tries to hand it her toys.  But her reflection in the glass patio door at night, a shadow reflection, that’s another thing entirely.  There is a phantom out there on the deck that she can see, but also see through.

 

Very scary stuff.  If we turn the porch light on though, that helps, so sometimes the porch light has to stay on until she goes to bed.

 

 

 

 

Traveling

 

Judy and I don’t usually take airplanes; we just go where we can in the motorhome.  That trip to Florida was different though.  Time is of the essence, so I flew.

 

Before I flew, I applied for the TSA Precheck.  I got fingerprinted and survived a background check.  I now have a Known Person Number that I’ve registered on my account at Southwest Airlines and I automatically get a precheck checkmark on my boarding pass.  That made getting through security soo much easier.  Instead of being treated as a person who might be a terrorist, I got treated as if I were probably not a terrorist.  There was no line.  I didn’t have to take off my shoes, go through the full body scan, or even take my laptop out of the knapsack.  It was a snap.

 

The birding was fun.  I started out with 450 species for the year and added 15 over the course of four days.  I drove 500 miles, visited 18 different birding sites, and walked 27 miles.  So now we’re at 465 bird species recorded.  It’s not my target number of 500, but still it’s a pretty good number.

 

Now I’m back home with Judy.

 

And the puppies.

 

I often refer to Henry as the White Shadow, because we never get more than a few feet away from him, and then not for long.  Now the White Shadow has a shadow.

 

 

We covered a lot of ground this year.

 

Trip Map

 

I’ve been meaning to write a summary of the Alaska Journey, but how can I summarize something like that?  If I were to just write down the highlights, I’d end up listing every day of the trip!

 

 

 

A stakeout

 

Here I am, trying to get as many birds as I can in as few days as are left, and I end up on a stakeout.  I spent two hours last night watching for the Antillean Palm-swift where it has been appearing on Marathon Key, and got nothing.  Got a room, spent the night, and was back at it at 7:30 this morning.  The guy from Key Largo was already there.  The couple from Nebraska showed up a little later.  At 9:40, the swift appeared!  Year bird.  Life bird.  Antillean Palm-swift.  It is a rare bird; not often seen in the U.S .  It lives in the Caribbean:

 

Swifts are really fast and erratic flyers.  No way I could get a good shot as it screamed past at hyper-speed, but Harold from Key West did and was kind enough to forward a photo.

 

I love that about birding; instant community.  Thank you, Harold!

 

Worked my way back up The Keys.

 

Florida part of the trip map

 

Saw some great scenery,

 

The Keys always make me think about Hemingway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Had a close encounter of the manatee kind.  Saw what looked like a couple boulders partly exposed in the boat basin at the Deering Estate.  There aren’t supposed to be boulders in a boat basin.  Walked over to investigate and the boulder in front saw me, blew out through her nose,

 

…and swirled away.

 

The smaller one behind followed.  Mama manatee and her calf.

 

Didn’t add any more year birds to the list.

 

Done for the day, headed north back toward Ft Lauderdale on Interstate 75, driving attentively but still scanning for birds too, I glanced to the right from an overpass and there amongst a bunch of wading birds standing next to a canal, 15 wood storks!  I’ve been looking for that bird for four days!  A drive-by year bird!

 

Headed home tomorrow am.  The year bird count by day for this trip: 8,3,2,2. In that order.  The year-list stands at 465.  35 short.

 

 

 

Here is a video Judy just sent me of the puppies playing.

 

Henry and Jesse playing

 

Henry is safe on the couch; Jesse can’t get up there yet.