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Year: 2008

E-gad(wall) That’s Some Birds!

March 3, 2008 • • 4 Comments

I took my survey walk along the trail near the house on Saturday morning. The first thing that hit me when I walked outside was the sheer number of birds that were singing. It’s been a while since it was that loud. It was a beautiful spring day, and the birds knew it.

The pond held a few northern shovelers and a bunch of gadwalls (lousy over-enlarged picture above), a duck I hadn’t previously met in the neighborhood. I counted six of them in the pond with the two shovelers, but all the ducks flew away as one when a family walked up to the edge of the pond to skip rocks.

I got this shot of one of the gadwalls on the way out.

Along the way, I saw the usual suspects: mourning dove, carolina chickadee, northern mockingbird, American crow, killdeer, and lots of noisy blue jays.

The blue jays were a nice surprise. They’ve been lying low these past months, but with such a perfect spring day, they were out in substantial numbers. I heard far more than I saw, but I saw quite a few. They are also back in the yard for the first time since August.

The white-winged doves are back as well. Most of them left in November, leaving only a few stragglers behind. Saturday morning, I saw one of those clean-out-the-feeder-in-ten-minutes flocks that hasn’t been around in months.

So it’s spring, although a front came through today to give us one last bite of cold, and I’m curious to see when the ducks will leave for good and when the scissor-tails and swallows will return. I bet the swallows are here by next weekend.

One other thing I noticed on Saturday afternoon. I took the dogs out and the trees were erupting with chatters, screeches, cooing, twirls, and any other sound a backyard bird can make. The jays especially were having a fit. Then, silence as a hawk flew over. As soon as the raptor was gone, the singing resumed, but in a much less agitated manner. Nice of them to warn us.

Weekend Hound Blogging: The Calm Before the Bark

February 29, 2008 • • 3 Comments

There’s that moment just before a dog barks when you can see it in his eyes.

It’s going to happen.

You know he’s going to bark.

He knows you know he’s about to bark.

It’s like he’s saying, “It’s dinner time. We can do this easy way… or the loud way.”

‘Round here, we seem to opt for the loud way.

[saveagrey]

And If that Mockingbird Don’t Ring

February 28, 2008 • • 2 Comments

A few years ago we went camping up near Colorado Bend. All through the night we kept hearing what sounded like a cell phone ringing up in a tree above our camp site. We initially suspected it to be the mysterious birdus ringus loudus (commonly known as the central Texas greater telephone bird), but it was, of course, none other than mimus polyglottos, the northern mockingbird and our state’s rep among the avifauna.

I have mixed feelings about the fact that there are so many cell phones out on camping trips that birds are mimicing the sound, but still, that’s probably what made me start really paying attention to these ubiquitous little singers. Maybe he was just showing off anyway, thinking to himself, “I can play that… what else you got?” like a jazz musician at a jam session.

Lately, the ones around the neighborhood have begun the spring concert season, making mornings just that much more pleasant.

They can be ferocius little birds, too. I’ve seen them chasing hawks off their territory and people out of their parking lots. It’s hard to not admire such a fearless little animal who also manages to so eloquently grace the trees with his song.

Atticus was right: It is a sin to kill a mockingbird. And that from a finch, no less.

The Lost Book Club: VALIS

February 27, 2008 • • 6 Comments

“Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.”
-Philip K Dick, VALIS

Sound like certain members of the Oceanic 6?

I can’t even begin to say how thrilled I was to see the book that Locke pulled off Ben’s shelf to serve with his breakfast in last week’s episode of Lost, “Eggtown.” That book, VALIS by Philip K Dick, is one of my favorite novels.

Truth be told, I’ve been wondering when Dick would make an appearance on Lost. I even speculated in my post on the Season 3 finale that come Season 4, we’d see Jack reading Dick. He had, after all, turned into a bearded drug-addled nut, a description often attached to Dick, the brilliant writer responsible for the books and stories that gave us Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, and Minority Report. A man who apparently had trouble distinguishing between reality and fantasy. A man who was convinced that They (with a capital T) were watching him.

VALIS tells the tale of Horselover Fat and his attempts to understand a possibly spiritual experience he has had. Dick shifts between first and third person narration “to gain much needed objectivity” while Fat remains mostly unaware that he is, in fact, the narrator. They argue their way through Gnostic Christianity, paranoid conspiracy theories, philosophy and everything else Dick can think of in this novel that attempts to make sense of the notion of God. It is at once sad, troubling and hysterically funny. Dick’s answer is found in the title: Vast Active Living Intelligence System. A paranoid science fiction writer’s vision of God as revealed to him by a pink laser.

At the end of the book, there is an appendix containing Fat’s journal entries and his conlusions. I’ve included a few of the shorter ones that pertain to themes on Lost and make me think especially about Jacob:

1. One Mind there is; but under it two principles contend.

3. He causes things to look different so it would appear time has passed.

9. He lived long ago, but he is still alive.

Okay, enough about VALIS. It’s great. Brilliant. Read it. Not just because I say so either. The Lost writers have suggested we bone up on Dick’s VALIS trilogy (h/t Brian), which also includes The Divine Invasion (okay) and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (beautiful) as well as what is sort-of a first working out of the ideas in VALIS, a posthumous little book called Radio Free Albemuth, less heady, but somehow warmer than VALIS.

So why is VALIS on Lost?

Season 4 has delved deeper into themes of madness and the fluid nature of time and VALIS is certainly a book about these things. More importantly, though, VALIS is a “theological detective story, in which God is both a missing person and the perpetrator of the ultimate crime” (according to the cover copy). Considering the seeming omniscience of the island and its ability to reach out to the characters even after they’ve left the island, I can’t help but think that VALIS – Vast Active Living Intelligence System – is the perfect way to understand the island. I think it’s that simple. The writers are telling us what the island is.

And, as with Horselover Fat, perhaps madness is the price of knowing it. Madness is another of Dick’s great themes and when I think of madness and Lost, I always come back to Hurley and his tenuous grip on reality. Perhaps someone should point out to him that, as Dick wrote in “How to Build a Universe that Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” and (I think) reformulated in VALIS:

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

In the Season 3 finale Jack talked about seeing his father. That led me onto the alternate futures theory track, but after the first few episodes of Season 4, I realize that’s not the case. As to Christian Shepard… Jack has been seeing his dead father just as Hurley has been seeing dead Charley. It’s driving him crazy, and I suspect when he realizes that it’s real, he’ll get his act together and find his way back to the island. Believing in the reality of the island is the key to salvation. Jack, Hurley, Kate, and Sayid never really believed. Never showed any faith in the island. Is that why they are 2/3s of the Oceanic 6? Is that why they are back in the “real world,” a place Dick describes in VALIS as “the black iron prison?”

Go here for a list of the rest of my Lost book posts.

I now realize I even posted a quick blurb about VALIS back in October 2005 in this blog’s first month.

And, finally, some other bloggers’ thoughts on “Eggtown”:

  • Kulturblog where you’ll find lots of interesting observations
  • BB’s Fantabulous Life where BB throughly explores “Eggtown”
  • For the Record where I am reminded that there was a second book in “Eggtown” – The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares

Birdz in the Hood

February 25, 2008 • • 1 Comment

Last week’s Great Backyard Bird Count project got me thinking about long-term counts around the neighborhood. What species come and go over the course of a year? Which are the year-round residents in our neighborhood?

I know that the ducks like this lesser scaup only come to the pond in the winter.

But what of the others? On Saturday, while walking along the trail down to the pond and onward to the creek, I decided to try to take a weekly count of birds and other wildlife I happen to see. If I can maintain this for a year, perhaps I’ll really know my local wildlife. Who knows, maybe they’ll start inviting me to their nests for insects and seed.

Red-shouldered Hawk

The two red-shouldered hawks that circled and swooped over the pond were by far the highlight of Saturday’s walk. One of them even came close enough to let me take this fairly decent picture.

Farther down the trail, I heard a faint tapping up in a tree. I saw two ladder-backed woodpeckers, male and female. The male is the one with the red cap. The female’s is black.

Ladder-backed Woodpecker
Ladder-backed Woodpecker

Along the way, I heard great symphonies of bird song, but only saw these:

  • 1 Lesser scaup
  • 2 Red-shouldered hawks
  • 4 Blue Jays
  • 1 Turkey vulture
  • 4 Black vultures
  • 2 Ladder-backed woodpeckers
  • 1 American crow
  • 1 Killdeer
  • 2 Bewick’s wrens
  • 2 Chipping sparrows
  • 4 House sparrows

Other than birds, the only animals I saw were dozens of turtles on the pond including a few that decided to pile up and sun themselves.

Red-tailed Hawk in Flight

February 20, 2008 • • Leave a comment

Finally, I get a decent shot of a red-tailed hawk in flight. I got that one sitting on a pole back in December, and this might even be that very bird as he was patrolling the same area. Either way, I was glad to have the camera in the car and not much traffic on the road.

They’re pretty common around here; one of the more common birds of prey in North America, actually, but I still love to watch to them. They’re definitely slow-down-and-stare birds.

Though he wasn’t making any noise, the red-tail’s raspy call is the one usually used for all hawks and eagles in movies according to All About Birds.

Great Backyard Bird Count – Day 4

February 19, 2008 • • Leave a comment

Yesterday, I decided to count birds at the small lake at the end of the trail that runs through our neighborhood. I ride my bike along there all the time, but I’ve never walked around and really tried to check out the birds.

When I arrived, I was greeted by a chickadee who immediately hopped into a tree that seemed filled with singing birds. I listened for a few minutes and then headed down to the water to see what birds were hanging around. In the summer, it’s mostly egrets and herons, but yesterday it was filled with birds wintering over.

I ate my sandwich at a bench on the lakefront where I was joined by a couple of coots who eyed me suspiciously. What really surprised me were the fishing buoys hanging in all the trees. Careless casters had decorated the trees as for an angler’s Christmas.

After lunch, I walked along the lake, which was filled with ring-billed gulls and more American coots. I easily forget that some gulls like lakes and so I’m always pleasantly surprised to see them floating on an inland lake. A few soared overhead, the sun shining behind their wings in a way that made them glow brilliant against the crisp blue sky. Gulls have always been favorites of mine, despite that incident back in ’90.

Other ducks bobbed along the far shore, but even with binoculars, I couldn’t make out what kind of ducks they were. Probably northern shovelers or mallards, but too far to tell for sure.

I did get a good look at a new bird for my life list, the double-crested cormorant. They bobbed along beyond the gulls, looking down their sharp-looking beaks at the world. The only picture I got was this, very blurry, of one flying by.

Double-crested Cormorant

After the lake, I walked back up to the woods and wandered among the cedar and oak. In a clearing I found a labyrinth trail and walked through it, winding toward the center and back out again. Along the way, I caught a glimpse of another blue jay.

Before returning to the car, I saw a small flock of chipping sparrows and even got a shot of this guy:

Chipping Sparrow

My favorite, though, was this shot of a black-crested titmouse, seed in mouth:

Black-crested Titmouse

I love watching these little guys hop around in my backyard. I think it’s those huge black eyes or maybe that pointy head, but somehow, the black-crested titmouse has become my favorite backyard bird.

And, speaking of backyards, here are my official numbers for Day 4 of The Great Backyard Bird Count:

  • 2 Northern shovelers
  • 4 Double-crested cormorants
  • 15 American coots
  • 19 Ring-billed gulls
  • 1 Blue jay
  • 1 Carolina Chickadee
  • 1 Black-crested titmouse
  • 1 Bewick’s wren
  • 6 Chipping Sparrows

Great Backyard Bird Count – Day 3

February 18, 2008 • • Leave a comment

Yesterday, I decided to do my Great Backyard Bird Count counting along the trail in our neighborhood. I left at 3:15. The weather was early-spring perfect, and a welcome treat after the previous day’s drizzle and rain.

I spotted a few mockingbirds, including this one:

Northern Mockingbird

I love listening to them sing; it’s like having all the other birds wrapped up in one. I guess they’re like the ipod of birds, set on permanent shuffle.

Often, I’ll follow a bird’s song only to find a mockingbird, but this time, there was a little chickadee bouncing in the tree. The number of dee’s in their call gives their assessment of any threat. I only rated one dee.

Carolina Chickadee

As I walked down the trail, I saw both turkey and black vultures spiraling overhead. I saw two hawks, but even with the binoculars, I couldn’t ID them as they were too far away. I suspect they were red-tails, though, since most of the hawks around here are.

At the bottom of the hill, the trail opens up into a kind of grassy meadow along the creek. A crow sat on the highest tree calling out to anyone who would listen. While studying the trees around the meadow, I saw a great blue heron glide past, slowly flapping its great wings.

Walking back up the hill, I heard a number of other birds chirping in the trees. I caught glimpses of chipping sparrows and even a blue jay, the first one I’ve seen since August.

Up near the trailhead, I ventured into a meadow where a small creek runs narrow and quiet beneath thick undergrowth. Looking up, I noticed a woodpecker clinging to the tree and apparently feeding or depositing something in a hole. He was either a golden-fronted or a red-bellied woodpecker, but he hopped into the hole before I could get close enough (even with binoculars) to figure out what he was.

I did get this shot of his head, as he sat there surveying the woods around him.

Mystery Woodpecker

It’s not enough to ID him for sure, though.

And, here are my “official” counts for the birds I could ID:

  • 2 Northern mockingbirds
  • 2 Turkey Vultures
  • 1 Carolina chickadee
  • 1 American crow
  • 1 Great blue heron
  • 1 Black-crested titmouse
  • 3 Black vultures
  • 2 Chipping sparrows
  • 1 Blue jay

Great Backyard Bird Count – Day 2

February 16, 2008 • • Leave a comment

For Day 2 of The Great Backyard Bird Count, I actually did count birds in my backyard, plus a few in the front.

It was one of those cold gray drizzly days that become a perfect reason for not going anywhere and instead staying in making French onion soup. Over the course of the day from about 7:30 to 4:00, I watched for birds. Here’s what I saw and reported:

  • 2 Bewick’s wrens
  • 2 Mourning doves
  • 6 White-winged doves
  • 1 Ladder-backed woodpecker
  • 13 House sparrows
  • 12 Chipping sparrows
  • 1 Carolina chickadee

That’s most of the usual suspects for this time of year, except for the black-crested titmouse who must have had better things to do than eat soggy seed in the rain.

I actually saw more birds, but you’re only supposed to count the greatest number of individuals seen together at one time. If I kept count of every time I saw a house sparrow or a white-winged dove sitting around by himself, the counts would be much higher. And I’d be watching for Hitchcock to show up.