Birdwatching in greater San Diego County...

 We were sitting in the hot tub of the pool area at our (?) resort (?) [not pictured - you're welcome] with another couple from Des Moines when four green parrots flew overhead seemingly on a mission in a perfect straight line formation.

At first we all speculated as to whether the animals were recent escapees from the San Diego Zoo or Safari Park (which we had each dutifully visited one of earlier in the week).  After all, a dog had just a few days prior broken in to the San Diego zoo to meet some gorillas, so it didn't seem outside the realm of the probable that an escape had occurred.

After a little googling, though, it became clear that wild parrots have lived in and around Ramona, California, possible since as far back as the 1950s.  Non-native, for sure, but hell, it's California - everyone is from somewhere else!

After spying the same pack of the parrots the following evening at about the same time heading along the exact same path, we decided that they had a daily pattern, and we could capture some photographic evidence of them the following evening... Best laid plans, and all that:

These are they, truly, even though they're hard to see and don't appear at all green in this picture it's a pair of the set of four (or similar compatriots), but I barely caught them.  They tricked me, you see - by flying overhead in the opposite direction about 30 minutes earlier than when we had decided was their appointed time.  We were in the pool, and although I did make sure we got out of the pool to be closer to our phones at their appointed time, I didn't really fully expect them to come back the other way as they had the previous two nights - but indeed they did, and I scrambled for my phone and snapped this pic (and another one of entirely empty blue sky).

So, it seems obvious to me now that each day at about 4:45pm PT the parrots fly east into the desolate nowhere land beyond San Diego Country Estates, and hang out there doing something for about 30 to 45 minutes - whereafter they immediately bee-line it back westward to wherever they are most of the rest of the time.  Nuts, right!!??

Unfortunately, we won't ever get to find out what it is they do, because a mile or so east of here seems to be where the world ends... Even though google maps seems to think that there's a road there (and there is something that looks a bit like a mediocre driveway that's marked with an ominous {and very non-official looking} sign that reads NO EXIT), I didn't attempt it.  

It was reminiscent of a "Private Road" I encountered in Platte County, Wyoming when I was heading home from the Great American Eclipse.  I, and approximately 400,000 people from Colorado and California, had just witnessed the astounding event, stood around for a few minutes looking at each other appreciating the grandeur of nature, then got into our cars and started heading home on one of the approximately 4 roads in the entire county.  I'd been planning to head south get on the interstate and run in to I-80 to cut across Nebraska on the way home, but it soon became clear everyone was heading south, and there would be very little progress that way today.  So I asked google for a detour to take me back north to I-90, and it kindly obliged with a route that seemed a lot less trafficky than the one I was on.  After a turn off (where I was following a dozen or so industrious detourers and followed by a dozen or so more) and a half mile on a very minor road, we passed a sign that read "Private Road", but I didn't think much of it.  I'd been on lots of "Private Roads" which in the East and Midwest generally meant a bunch of rich neighbors paid a community to get their actual road listed as "private" and also to pay cops to harass anybody in a non-luxury vehicle.  In the West, though, it turns out that Private Road can mean "my road" as in "my driveway" that passes directly between my house and my garage and as our impromptu caravan approached the homestead we saw that the whole family (at least 3 generations, it seemed) had come out to watch us drive through their yard as they angrily shook their heads or at times yelled at each of us drivers in turn.  This was Wyoming, after all, the sort of place someone is as likely to shoot you as anywhere for approaching their property.  But there was safety in numbers and collective stupidity and American tourism.

And so we play tourist once more, this time particularly enjoying the birds (our favorite, Big Black Bird, is not pictured here, but are a couple more that we've gotten to know this week {I think an Acorn Woodpecker and a female Western Bluebird, but I could be wrong}).  These we've enjoyed as much as anything here - the puzzle and the pool and a Harry Potter marathon and a couple games of Scrabble (I won both) and Shuffleboard (Brooke won both) and all of the other things that we are supposed to do when traveling.

the eating the drinking the shopping the viewing oh my indeed

Counting Crows @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, IL (9/17/2017)

I love the Counting Crows - unironically, without nostalgia, although somewhat lazily.  It's been many years since I last saw them live, and as much as I love them, I'd forgotten how fantastic the show is that they put on.  Meinetwegen. 



.5. "Lean on Me" - a verse and chorus, from offstage (or pre-recorded)

1. Round Here - drawn out and meandering. In the best possible way

2. Hard Candy

3. Dislocation

4. Colorblind - a bit of a strange tempo shift. Also weirdly pantomime-y

5. Omaha

6. Miami - weird out of place guitar solo

7. God of Ocean Tides

8. Goodnight L.A.

9. Long December 

10. Elvis Went to Hollywood

11. Mr. Jones

12. Hangin' Around (w/ Rob Thomas)

(encore)

13. Palisades Park

14. Rain King

Lake Express

Riding on the Lake Express Ferry for the first time.  We’ve just left behind the last of the birds doing the “Boat Challenge”, which I assume is a contest which consists of a dare to outrace the ferry for as long as possible.  Once the Lake Express gets up to its full cruising speed, it’s passing even the fastest moving birds like they’re standing still… except they’re flying parallel to the ship.

The Wisconsin coastline is still very visible, and Michigan, up ahead, is still just a vague notion.  At the mid-point, I’ll show you what both coasts look like.

It’s an odd blend of people on the ferry this morning.  There is a palpable sense of adventure to many of the groups.  It’s difficult to pin down any generalizations about the socio-economic status of Lake Express-ers.  Even more difficult to figure out is any kind of cultural mean.  There are a couple of foreigners, several “older couples”, a smattering of little kids with a parent or two, and a biker couple.  There are several people dressed like drifters, and an inordinate number of people wearing bright neon, which makes me constantly mistake them for crew members.  I can’t figure why they chose such bright attire, whether it’s their norm, or they felt it was befitting the water voyage.

The terminal, naturally, has the ooky borderland feel that almost any kind of station has.  A multitude of ennui from the people waiting, coupled with the dense feeling of mass anticipation, makes any transit hub a jumble of weighty unpleasant-ness.  Airports are particularly interesting examples of this, because the ‘average’ passenger is so much more bourgeois.  You expect a certain amount (that amount being large) of heavy despair when you’re at a bus station, but when you’re at an airport, it doesn’t seem quite as ‘natural’.  That sense of despair and foreboding is foreign for most passengers preparing to fly, and they don’t like it, and they don’t know where it’s coming from.

Now that we’re en route, though, things are looking up.  The side to side* canting of the boat aside (I’m riding up top), the ominous feel of the terminal is left behind, and the anticipation of arrival has captured the collective imagination of the passengers.  The air up here is heavy with humidity, but feels good, in conjunction with steady wind, and the forthcoming sunshine from Michigan (as you can see, the sun has long since risen, but not above the cloud-line quite yet) gives the trip a sense of hope.

 

* As I typed “side-to-side”, I tried to cast back to my nautical terminology, but only came up with port and starboard (which I think is back and left – a la JFK)… I then looked at the bottom of my shoe, because one of my pairs of shoes (boat shoes, natch) has the labels for all 4 directions of boating terminology (I think a third is aft – I can’t discover the fourth yet).

The Bird Contract

Odd Side-Note: This post was actually written (but evidently not published) in April 2010, but when I went to post it it changed to yesterday's date.  Not sure why this is as typically when I've done this, it posts on the date the post was originally written.  Just an FYI if blogger has changed something and there start appearing oddly timed posts... [Solution Solved!]

Yesterday as i was walking from my parking spot to campus, i watched two male cardinals having a mid-air fight. They were frolicking, swooping, diving - seemed to be having an all-round good spring time together (or at least as much fun as I assume any wild animals have on a given day in an urban environment).

Then, as I watched, the one cardinal (who I've come to think of as 'evil cardinal') chased the other (innocent cardinal) toward the road and he was summarily hit by the windshield of a Toyota Camry.  The erstwhile bird came to rest not 10 feet in front of me.  A few of you may recall that this is not even my first run in with a bird dying at my feet.  Needless to say i was taken aback and the rest of the day had a heavy quality to it, but nothing else really took place, but I am on notice.  One bird tragedy is nothing to get worked up about and a second may just be a coincidence, but were i to find myself present at a third bird massacre I would feel compelled to take action.

It's a bird, it's a plane..."that's an omen."

Today, i was biking to my soccer game - sadly my last soccer game of the season, Sparkle Motion's over-achieving reign of mediocrity came to a crashing end today with a 2-0 playoff loss. As i approached the fields, through a parking lot, i was going over a speed bump when a bird dropped from the sky, dead not 10 feet in front of me. I looked around for a confused hunter, stalking the alleys of Chicago for pigeons, but saw no one. Then there arose what seemed to be a bird scuffle, in mid-air. A pigeon (looked related to the recently fallen dirty dove) was chasing a larger black bird around, squawking at him. So, i assume the black bird was the guilty party (unless the pigeons are equivalent to the Hyde Park police in bird world & every time a crime is committed they go around harrassing any nearby black birds).

Anyway, i took the fallen bird at my tires as a bad sign, but i'm hoping it was an omen pointing to our playoff loss, rather than my final 36 hours until the thesis is due. I think if it was supposed to be an omen for my thesis, the bird would have gotten back up after a couple moments & begun awkwardly, but persistently trying to eat up all the other birds in the world. Though, now that i think of it, i haven't seen a bird for a couple hours.