keystrokes softly click
chairs creak, mouse swish, clicky-click
printer whines, urgent
4/9/12
Friday, May 11, 2012
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Count the Legs, Divide by Two
The announcement went out on the Yahoo group email list and on Facebook: the shorebirds are preparing for migration, and their numbers are "mind-blowing." According to the May 1 post authored by Humboldt birder David Fix, there were "in excess of 400,000 shorebirds" in the northern section of Humboldt Bay, near the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife area. His count, corroborated by seven compatriots:
300,000 Western Sandpipers
100,000 Dunlin
10,000 Least Sandpiper - hard to figure but there seemed to be great numbers of them in the peep flocks based on voice. This is still only one out of every forty peep-types, if so. I visually identified them consistently as they flew past in droves, as well, sometimes in flocks composed mostly of them
Short-billed Dowitcher 3000 - fewer than lately
Marbled Godwit 275, fewer than lately. These and the remainder below were counted pretty firmly.
Black-bellied Plover 200
Long-billed Dowitcher about 100
Semipalmated Plover 30, again
American Avocet 30
Willet 20
Whimbrel about 11
Black Turnstone at least 5
Ruddy Turnstone at least 4
Red-necked Phalarope 1
It was irresistible. The next night there were nearly 25 birders, but fewer birds. They had begun their migration, presumably northward to their Alaskan breeding grounds. Still, the flights of shorebirds were mesmerising, and it was especially rewarding to see so many of them in breeding plumage.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Pi-ku for Pi Day
March 14 (3/14) is Pi Day! Here's part of a rhyme I learned as a mnemonic for remembering pi to the 21st place. The number of letters in each word represent a number in pi (sir=3, I=1, send=4, etc.).
Now, what better way is there to celebrate Pi Day than to eat pie and write Pi-ku? A Pi-ku is a poetry form very similar to the Haiku but rather than following the 5-7-5 form, it follows the form 3-1-4: the first line has three syllables, one syllable in the second line, and four syllables in the last line.
Here is a Pi-ku to me from my husband:
Darling Wife
Oh,
How I love you.
Read more about Pi Day here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/03/pi_day.html
Sir, I send a rhyme excelling
in sacred truth and rigid spelling.
Numerical sprites elucidate
for me the lexicon's dull weight.
Now, what better way is there to celebrate Pi Day than to eat pie and write Pi-ku? A Pi-ku is a poetry form very similar to the Haiku but rather than following the 5-7-5 form, it follows the form 3-1-4: the first line has three syllables, one syllable in the second line, and four syllables in the last line.
Here is a Pi-ku to me from my husband:
Darling Wife
Oh,
How I love you.
Read more about Pi Day here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/03/pi_day.html
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Birding O.D.
Hardly. Just making up for lost time.
The backyard birds have been doing well lately, despite my jaundiced eye. The two seed feeders need to be filled just about every other day. The most frequent visitors include house finch, house sparrow, pine siskin, dark-eyed junco, white-crowned sparrow and yellow-rumped warbler. Steller's jays, norther flickers and robins make regular appearances. A special leap year day bonus was a varied thrush, a first for our yard.
On Saturday, I took a canoe trip down Hookton Slough with friends. Birding from the water level gives one a different perspective than birding from land, and the canoes acted as something of a disguise, allowing us to drift much closer to shorebirds than we could by approaching on foot. The weather was clear and sunny, and made for great birding and paddling: greater yellowlegs, marbled godwit, common and snowy egrets, willit, double-crested cormorant, American avocet, Western gull, Canada geese, ruddy and bufflehead ducks, green-winged teal, greater scaup, a merganser, brown pelican, pied-billed and Western grebes, peregrine falcon, northern harrier, raven and song sparrow. In the zone where the slough joins Humboldt Bay, we saw a dozen or more harbor seals sunning on mudflats, and several Bonaparte's gulls.
The Aleutian Goose Flyoff was hosted again at the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, so I took the opportunity to do more birding, this time with a co-worker/fellow bird enthusiast Drew and his girlfriend Angie. Thick fog diminished visibility but created a mysterious atmosphere -- geese, flying overhead, could be heard, growing louder and louder as they approched. Then they would gradually materialize overhead, pass overhead and disappear again into the gray. Decent birding, despite the weather: Aleutian, cackling and Western Canada geese, green winged teal, northern shoveler, willit, marbled godwit, American coot, least sandpiper, song sparrow, marsh wren, redwing blackbird, robin, house finch, raven, northern harrier, black-capped chickadee, yellow-rumped warbler and ruby-crowned kinglet. I caught a quick look at a non-harrier, non-red-tailed hawk, but the fog made identification difficult.
The backyard birds have been doing well lately, despite my jaundiced eye. The two seed feeders need to be filled just about every other day. The most frequent visitors include house finch, house sparrow, pine siskin, dark-eyed junco, white-crowned sparrow and yellow-rumped warbler. Steller's jays, norther flickers and robins make regular appearances. A special leap year day bonus was a varied thrush, a first for our yard.
 |
| Varied thrush |
On Saturday, I took a canoe trip down Hookton Slough with friends. Birding from the water level gives one a different perspective than birding from land, and the canoes acted as something of a disguise, allowing us to drift much closer to shorebirds than we could by approaching on foot. The weather was clear and sunny, and made for great birding and paddling: greater yellowlegs, marbled godwit, common and snowy egrets, willit, double-crested cormorant, American avocet, Western gull, Canada geese, ruddy and bufflehead ducks, green-winged teal, greater scaup, a merganser, brown pelican, pied-billed and Western grebes, peregrine falcon, northern harrier, raven and song sparrow. In the zone where the slough joins Humboldt Bay, we saw a dozen or more harbor seals sunning on mudflats, and several Bonaparte's gulls.
 |
| Birdspotting: Pia, Laura and Holly. Photo by David Luckhardt |
The Aleutian Goose Flyoff was hosted again at the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, so I took the opportunity to do more birding, this time with a co-worker/fellow bird enthusiast Drew and his girlfriend Angie. Thick fog diminished visibility but created a mysterious atmosphere -- geese, flying overhead, could be heard, growing louder and louder as they approched. Then they would gradually materialize overhead, pass overhead and disappear again into the gray. Decent birding, despite the weather: Aleutian, cackling and Western Canada geese, green winged teal, northern shoveler, willit, marbled godwit, American coot, least sandpiper, song sparrow, marsh wren, redwing blackbird, robin, house finch, raven, northern harrier, black-capped chickadee, yellow-rumped warbler and ruby-crowned kinglet. I caught a quick look at a non-harrier, non-red-tailed hawk, but the fog made identification difficult.
 |
Three subspecies of Canada geese
are in this flock:
Aleutian (foreground, with white neck ring), cackling (mid-group, no neck ring) and common/Western (tall, in back, no neck ring). |
 |
| Least sandpiper, with crab |
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| Waiting for the geese |
Thursday, March 1, 2012
One-Stroke Dragon Paintings
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| Hitofude Ryu gallery in Nikko, Japan |
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| http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDCvPHiqlS8&feature=colike |
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