Chicago Ramblings

Seriously, I need to fix my computer

2012-01-26T00:41:00.001-06:00

Someone is spoiled.

Sorry!

2012-01-05T22:44:00.001-06:00

Sorry I've been MIA. My computer keeps freezing so I can't post anything, but I CAN post from my snazzy new phone, so here you go! This is Izzie's Christmas present. It's a little blanket with toys on each corner. She pretty much sleeps on it every day. And sometimes she plays with the mouse too!

Family Photo 2011

2011-12-23T12:10:00.001-06:00

I know Nikki posted this to her blog already, but for anyone that checks mine and not hers...

This is the family photo we took at Thanksgiving. It's the first time we've all been together since Christmas of 2009. We didn't include Hoss on purpose, he just kind of wandered into the picture, posed, then walked off. I think we should photoshop the rest of the pets into the background. We could put each of the cats on different parts of the fence and then put Molly and Kisses playing in the background down in the right hand corner of grass. It'd be awesome :)

American Kestrel - Montrose 11/13/11

2011-11-13T17:16:00.001-06:00

This post could also be called "Fun with Editing Software". Just so you know.

I chased this poor Kestrel all over Montrose today. The pictures are in reverse chronological order and also go from when I was closest to when I was furthest away, although you can't always tell because of all the cropping and zooming I did on the photos. Sorry if some of them are grainy. It was not a sunny day.

He really had a thing for perching on man-made structures. I think I have one of him in a tree (sapling), and the rest are all on signs and lightpoles. I wish the editing wasn't necessary and you could see him as he actually appeared in the binoculars because his colors are just gorgeous! Not that you can't tell in these, but most had to be "enhanced" and you can kind of tell.

This is my favorite picture (just a zoomed in pic of the first one)

Although this one's kind of nifty too!

Birding Montrose 10/29 & 10/30

2011-10-30T22:26:00.000-05:00

So I ended up going out to the hedge again today to see if the Sage Thrasher was still there. It was just starting to rain and the wind was blowing, but when I walked up, someone called me over to their car and pointed to the tree that it was in. So what did I manage to do? I flushed him, of course. Argh. So I stood there in the freezing rain while my pant legs got soaked waiting to see if he would come back.

He did not.

So I went back to my car and decided to bird from the car. I saw a bird fly back into the tree and ran out to see what it was. It looked like a robin, but it didn't much matter because I flushed that daggone thing again. I went walking after him and thought I'd finally found him, but realized that the movement in the grass was just a chipmunk. I'd nearly given up hope when I saw another robin fly back into the same tree as before. So I walked back, and from the back, he really does look like a robin, but it was the Sage Thrasher. Considering it was rainy and cold and overcast, the pictures turned out pretty nicely!

The previous day was when I found the Common Gallinule. Actually it was pointed out to me twice. The first time I had walked around the edge of the half of the harbor that he'd been spotted in, but couldn't find him. So as I was walking back I ran into a group of 3 men that had binoculars and cameras and they pointed him out to me. He was really far away, though, so I only managed a couple of pretty bad shots. At the end of the day when I was trying to escape the masses of people that had come to see the Sage Thrasher, I walked back around the harbor again and another guy with a camera told me where he was, which was much more conducive to picture-taking. I already posted the best pictures, but I like this picture even though the sun wasn't out because he's about to jump in the water. I can't get over how odd his feet are.

So after I ran into the guys who pointed me in the direction of the Gallinule first, I kind of stayed with them because one of them had a son that had found a LeConte's Sparrow. It's a fairly rare sparrow for our area, so we walked over to the bush that he was in. I got one ok picture of him. I should've been able to get a really good picture of him because he kept hopping out into the open, but all the other guys had these really big, expensive cameras and I was afraid I'd flush the bird if I moved, so I didn't try too hard.

I ended up spending the rest of the day birding with those guys which was really a lot of fun. They were all guys that post on the message board that I read, so it was interesting to finally meet some of them. One of them had seen some Redpolls out in the meadow and pointed us in the right direction. I got a wonderful picture of one of them except the stupid little bird turned away at the last second so all you can see is his back (which is not that exciting). Redpolls have a little red spot on the front of their head. The picture was perfectly zoomed and in focus and everything. Sigh. So no pics posted of the Redpolls. They're a sparrow-type bird and are a typical backyard bird, so some of you may see them at your feeders if you have them.

The juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk that I took pictures of last weekend was still there and he just doesn't mind people being around at all. The guy I was birding with probably got some amazing shots of him because he had a really nice lens and was within a few feet of the hawk. Over the course of the day I saw him flying around the hedge constantly and it wasn't necessarily because he was being flushed. Once I decided to take off, I walked back to my car through the back edge of the park that is in a overgrown area with lots of trees. I heard a very liquid sounding "plop" right in front of me. I thought to myself, "I wonder if that hawk is right in front of me and he just pooped". Sure enough, about 2 seconds later he flew away (he'd been obscured by leaves) and I walked forward and found the bird poo on the trail. You know you've hit a certain level of expertise when you can recognize the sound of a bird pooping. I'm so proud. Anyway, when he flew away he went and landed on a light pole out front and I got a few pictures of him up there.

Here are just a few more pictures of some birds that I took. This is a particularly cooperative Hermit Thrush (they were everywhere).

And here's a Horned Grebe that I saw in the harbor while I was trying to find the Gallinule.

All in all, I've had a great week. I've added 5 new birds to my list:
Sage Thrasher
Common Gallinule
Common Redpoll
LeConte's Sparrow
Snow Bunting

Yay!!!

2011-10-29T17:48:00.001-05:00

Here's the Gallinule. It's called a Common Gallinule. Up until this year it was called a Common Moorhen, and then they decided to separate the North American subspecies out into its own species, so now it's a Gallinule. I have A LOT more to write about birding today and more pictures to share, but I wanted to post this right away. I saw three new birds today (LeConte's Sparrow, Redpoll, and the Gallinule) and also met a whole bunch of new birders. If I had cared to stick around after the hedge got descended on by rabid birders (after a rare bird alert went out), I could've seen a very rare bird for our area called a Sage Thrasher. However, as much as I like seeing new birds, I'm not really big on birding in huge crowds, so I left instead. :) I'll post again soon!

Montrose 10/27

2011-10-27T23:37:00.000-05:00

I got home early from a trip for work today, so I checked my birding message board and then headed out to Montrose to see what I could see. There were kinglets, golden-crowned and ruby-crowned, a hermit thrush, some robins, a downy woodpecker, many yellow-rumped warblers and a few others. There was a storm coming in, so it was drizzling rain a little and the storm ended up out over the lake. I saw one really good streak of lightning over the lake which was very cool.So while I was birding, there was a wren that kept taunting me and I eventually got a few pictures of him, but they're not good at all. It's a House Wren I'm pretty sure, so that's actually the first time I've seen one of those. Wrens are fairly shy.

After seeing that I headed out to the beach and saw this:

Strangely enough, there WAS a jackpot at the end of that rainbow. Literally where the rainbow is pointing, there were these little guys:

Sorry the pictures aren't any good. They just kept running and it was dusk and overcast and my poor camera just couldn't keep up. These are Snow Buntings and I think they are just gorgeous!!! I was so, SO excited about seeing them. I was within a few feet of them. They actually behaved a bit like shorebirds that keep running up and down the beach so you can never get a decent picture. They really are beautiful, though.So on the way home I was so happy because I've been wanting to see a Snow Bunting for a couple of years now. I was thinking about how I was going to call Mom and be so happy and explain to her all about the pretty, adorable Snow Buntings. So happy. Just to clarify.

So I get home, and I check the message boards to see if any one else had seen the Snow Buntings because I wanted to post about it. I knew they'd been around, so this wasn't going to be major news, but I wanted to post my pictures and brag a little. I check the boards and I see a post that I hadn't checked before. Turns out that in the harbor there had been a sighting of a Common Gallinule (a species recently separated out from the Common Moorhen). It's a type of rail and it has only been spotted twice (TWICE) at Montrose in the last THIRTY YEARS. Seriously. I had briefly perused the harbor and hadn't seen it, but then, I didn't know it was there and apparently he was hiding in the walls of the harbor. It's not like that message wasn't on the boards when I checked them before I left. I just missed it. GAH!!!! The most recent sighting was within 30 minutes of when I got there and was looking at the harbor birds (of which there were none). Seriously? My previous snow bunting-fueled elation was entirely deflated. I had been SO happy, and then I was just...pth.To be fair, Gallinules (and Moorhens) are not uncommon. They're just uncommon at Montrose. Apparently they're all over the place in South Carolina. I just have to drive 14 hours to go see one. Ridiculous. I'm going to get up early tomorrow and head over to see if he's still there. We had a big storm tonight, so I'm hoping he stays in the harbor and is still there in the morning.

So anyway, to put it in perspective, I DID add two birds to my life list today and the Snow Buntings really are gorgeous :)

Montrose 10/23/11

2011-10-23T20:20:00.000-05:00

Brown Creeper

A friendly Robin

Female White-Crowned Sparrow

Hermit Thrush

Eastern Phoebe

Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk (he was very cooperative)

Golden-Crowned Kinglet

A little closer

Total List for the day:
Brown Creeper
Hermit Thrush
Eastern Phoebe
White-Throated Sparrow
White-Crowned Sparrow (male and female)
Red-Tailed Hawk
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Horned Grebe
American Coot
Mallards
Canadian Geese
Robin
Eastern Towhee (female - common in Florida, not so much up here)
Cardinal
House Wren
American Tree Sparrow
Fox Sparrow
Gulls

:)

2011-10-02T19:27:00.001-05:00

Birds of Europe

2011-09-29T01:08:00.001-05:00

I meant to post this like a year ago, but oh well. Here, without much in the way of explanation, are the pictures of birds I saw in Europe when I went to Italy and Switzerland last year. We saw a lot more than what's here, but didn't get pictures of them all. Not all the IDs are 100% either, but I'm pretty sure on most of them.ShagGreat-Crested Grebe

Barnacle Goose

Mute Swan (headless)

Mute Swan and Goslings

Female Red-Crested Pochard

Male Pochard

Eurasian Coot & Baby

Eurasian Coot (look at those feet!!)

Baby Eurasian Coot

Male Red-Crested Pochard

Great-Spotted Woodpecker

Greylag Goose

Baby something or other (no idea)

Great Tit (cleaning himself obviously)

White Wagtail (yes, they really do wag their tails, but up and down, not side to side)

Mute Swan

Grey Wagtail

Muscovy Duck (someone's pet/farm animal)

Chaffinch

Domestic Geese

Collared Dove

Mute Swan

After-work Birding

2011-09-22T19:16:00.004-05:00

Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk (picture heavily edited)

Katie & Paul's Wedding Adventure

2011-09-21T20:09:00.007-05:00

I went to a wedding last weekend in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. My friends Katie and Paul got married at her parent's place and it was gorgeous. Here are a few pictures. There are very few pictures of me (posted here) taken late at night because the flash made my dress see-through, so sunlit pictures only to preserve my modesty :)

The Bride and GroomMe and the Bride

Me, Amanda, and Katie

The cupcakes (they had a dessert table instead of a cake - all home-made)

Me and a very cute 9-week old puppy at the bonfire. Don't worry, my hair is not actually that color.

Me and my friend Kitty, and the only good shot of my dress because it's in the sunlight and, therefore, not see-through. To clarify, it wasn't actually see-through, only in pictures where the flash was used.

The cool kids table

The whole Chicago clan without the bride and groom

The whole Chicago clan with the Bride, but not the Groom :( He was unavoidably detained and we never were able to put everyone together for another photo.

Shorebirds 8/31

2011-08-31T21:53:00.003-05:00

I had heard that there were Avocets down at Montrose Harbor the last couple of days, so I went down there tonight after work. No avocets, but I did get 3 new life birds! I also got schooled by 3 completely separate teenage boys on my bird identification. That's humbling. The pictures are pretty awful because my camera didn't want to focus in the dusk, but here's what I got.

This is the Short-Billed Dowitcher (my ID confirmed by a kid that couldn't have been more than 13 years old)

ADORABLE juvenile Semipalmated Plovers. I mean, they're cute anyway, but when they're also super-small, they are VERY cute

This is my excruciatingly bad picture of the Sora. I was thrilled to tiny pieces to see this little guy. He's a type of rail (a type of ground bird) and he's actually really gorgeous! He was smaller than I thought he'd be. I was seriously within 5 feet of him and my stupid camera wouldn't focus. I don't have a single in-focus, non-blurred picture. Argh.

I also saw a Baird's Sandpiper, but the picture is so blurry it's not worth posting.

The List:

Sora*

Spotted Sandpiper

Least Sandpiper

Sanderling

Dunlin (maybe)

Semipalmated Plover

Baird's Sandpiper*

Short-Billed Dowitcher*

(* is a bird for my life list)

If it seems like I'm bragging, it's because I am

2011-08-17T12:22:00.005-05:00

As most of you know, Nikki talked me into training for a half marathon this summer, which is 13.1 miles. I had seen the advertisements for the Chicago Rock'N'Roll Half marathon back in the spring and it was supposed to be on August 21st and benefitting the American Cancer Society. August 21st is my Dad's birthday, so it felt like it was "meant to be". Once we signed up, they had moved it to August 14th so as not to interfere with the Air & Water show, but the sentiment remained.

So Nikki started training using a friend from high school, Allen, as her coach. She managed to do the training, by herself, through a bout of shingles, jet lag from flying to Korea, an upper respiratory infection, vertigo, and a monsoon (all in Korea), and jet lag home from Korea, not to mention some nagging IT Band injuries and still taking care of a 2 year old. I'm very proud of her!

I procrastinated starting my training and so I signed up with Chicago Endurance Sports for their training program. I met some really wonderful people. I was in the "white" group, which is the slowest group in the training and they call us the "mighty whites". Condescending? Maybe a little, but I loved my group. I didn't have any major setbacks except for having to train in the most ridiculously hot and humid July that we've seen in ages. All of our longest runs seemed to be on days of 90 degrees and 90% humidity. I did almost pass out once, but my coaches figured out that I just needed to drink more Gatorade on the hot days. Also, I have learned more about electrolytes than I ever wanted to know.

Nikki flew in for the race on Friday and we ate at my favorite Italian restaurant, Annamaria's that night, which was lovely. We spent Saturday trying to be "good", fuel up, and stop being nervous. Nikki was more successful at that than me. The day of the race we got up at 4:20am to get ready and drove downtown (the El doesn't start running until 6:45am, and the race starts at 6:30am). Nikki got to meet my coaches and they gave her a CES "karma koin" and a purple ribbon to put in her hair since it was her first half-marathon. It was a beautiful day for a run, and by beautiful, I mean, upper 60's, overcast, with sporadic rain. After running in awful heat all summer, it was paradise to run in that. I told my coaches that God owed us after all of the heat of summer.

We crossed the start line together and I ran with my pacer for CES, Margaret. I do a run/walk ratio of 4 minutes running and 2 minutes walking, and Nikki does all running. We even out to the same pace because my running is faster than hers, but during the walking she goes ahead of me. Margaret wasn't feeling well, so I left her around Mile 7 and caught up with Nikki not long after. Nikki had a few more adventures than I did which included almost getting taken out by an idiot owner and her beagle and also almost being blown over by a gust of wind that blew away a course roadblock thing. From mile 7, we essentially ran the rest of the race together. We sprinted to the end and crossed the finish line together. Our time was 3 hours, 8 minutes, 30 seconds, which is an average pace of 14:38 minutes/mile, and it was a really great race for us both, I think. Approximately 21,000 people started the race, 15,259 finished the race, and I came in 14,333rd. Considering how much I talk about how slow I am, I was pretty happy with that! The race raised $325,000 for the American Cancer Society!!

I guess that's all, but I just wanted to share our experience with everyone because we had such a great time and, frankly, are pretty proud of ourselves!

Oh, and here is a pretty good approximation of how we felt afterwards:

Florida Birds

2011-05-13T20:23:00.006-05:00

This is pretty much in reverse-chronological order here because I don't feel like re-ordering the pictures. If you wait til the end, you get a super cute pic of all the kids that I forgot to put in the first post.

So Florida has Ospreys. Lots of Ospreys. And there's this beachside park about a mile from Nikki and Mom's house that has Osprey nests. And lots of Ospreys. Just so you understand. Pretty, pretty Ospreys.

This one was flying over us as we hung out on the beach. There was a tree in the middle of the park that he/she liked to perch on. This is a zoomed in picture. Check out the talons.

This is non-zoomed (on the computer, I mean). I love his pose here.

Surprisingly, the bird of the weekend was not the Ospreys, but the baby Great-Horned Owl (!). Nikki's neighbor was outside fixing her lawnmower (without being asked) and we were talking to him about birding and he oh-so-casually mentioned the Owls down at the beach. I had a mental heart attack and then Mom and I went back (speedily) to try and find them. We looked all over for about 30 minutes, and right after I spoke the words "I'm so disappointed we're not going to see them", or something to that effect, I turned around to go back to the car and saw the baby silhouetted in the sky. I'm pretty sure I left marks on Mom's arm. So this little guy is called a "brancher", which means he's probably six to eight weeks old. When they're first born, they stay in the nest, then they become branchers and scoot out onto the branches of the tree they were born in. They can't fly yet, but you can see that he's getting his flying feathers on the edges of his wing. When we went back the next day, I actually flushed the mom and I had no idea they were that large. She was massive. I felt bad for flushing her in the middle of the morning, but I was a good 30 or 40 yards away when I flushed her. I didn't know she would fly away so easily. Also, Great-Horned Owls aren't strictly nocturnal so it may not be quite so disruptive for them as for a purely nocturnal owl to be flushed during the day.

My family is very nice about humoring my birding ways, so we went on a trip to a little park about half-way between Nikki and Michael's houses. It was lovely. I saw a Carolina Wren, Prothonotary Warbler (actually Nikki and Michael found them), and this guy. He's an alligator snapping turtle. Michael kept luring him to the top of the water (I won't say how). He was cool.

I saw this pair of ducks at the same park. The white one is a mallard duck (believe it or not), and the greenish blackish one is a Muscovy Duck. They're both probably ducks that were kept captive and escaped. This is an Eastern Towhee, Florida's version of a Robin. They call the ground robins.

And here is a Carolina Chickadee. You can tell only because of his range and his song. His chick-a-dee-dee-dee is much faster than the Black-capped. Also, the two chickadees don't overlap in range much, so if you see on in Florida, it's a Carolina, and if you see one in Chicago, it's a Black-Capped.

And, finally...aren't they cute?
Final list for the trip (not necessarily w/ pics)
Eastern Towhee
Great-crested Flycatcher
Tufted Titmouse
Broad-Winged Hawk
Osprey
Black Vulture
Turkey Vulture
Red-Winged Blackbird
Red-Bellied Woodpecker
Red-Headed Woodpecker
Indigo Bunting
Yellow-Billed Cuckoo
Brown Thrasher
Red-eyed Vireo (maybe)
Carolina Wren
Northern Mockingbird
Prothonotary Warbler
Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher
Great Egret
Great Blue Heron
Great-Horned Owl
Double-Crested Cormorant
Laughing Gull

Happy Birthday Leah!!

2011-04-24T23:22:00.006-05:00

So I went down to Florida last weekend for Leah's birthday (and mine and Nikki's too). Leah got to have a big 2nd Birthday party. It was Elmo-themed (as you will see below) and I think everyone had a great time. Nikki made these amazing ribs and we had mashed sweet potatoes and cake and ice cream. I mean, what two-year old gets ribs for her birthday? Lucky girl.

I love this picture. She's surrounded by presents!

Opening Mommy's present from Daddy:

Leah's present from Daddy. Pretty much the coolest present ever.

CHEESE!

All the kids reading a book.

Leah's present from Uncle Michael and Aunt Christine was a bubble machine. Big hit.

And a couple of random shots from the rest of the weekend. I just think this is cute :)

And, no I've not rubbed off on my niece at all. Why do you ask?

We also went to a place called Turkey Creek - it was a nature trail. We tried to get the kids to sit for a picture, but Leah just wanted her mommy :)

That's all for now. Of course there are bird pictures, but I thought most people would be more interested in the family pictures :)

Hee!

2011-01-20T17:02:00.000-06:00

Christmas Pics!

2010-12-29T21:02:00.006-06:00

This is Christmas morning breakfast. :) Not much else to narrate. Christmas morning is a lot of fun with kids around :) The first picture is of Cole and Abby exchanging presents on Christmas eve (cute, no?).

I in no way coached Abby to lovingly hug the doll that I gave her. Nope, not a bit.
Abby's present of galoshes and an umbrella. You'll see this again.
Christine's going to kill me for posting this, but it's so cute! Michael got her the coolest crafting table ever for Christmas.
The kids decided that the Christmas Day rainfall was the perfect excuse to try out their galoshes.

And the night after, sitting down to an intimate dinner :)

Izzieness

2010-12-21T22:24:00.004-06:00

Snobby Izzie
Addict Izzie (she has an addiction to smelly shoes)

Cats-in-Sinks Izzie (there's a whole website devoted to the topic: http://www.catsinsinks.com/)

Starving Izzie or Dramatic Izzie, take your pick

And, finally, I felt that I should document the only two known pictures of Izzie's lower 2 canine teeth because they are no more.

She had a dental last Tuesday that went very well up until the point where they found resorptive lesions on her two bottom canine teeth. Resorptive lesions are unique to cats and are when the gums essentially absorb the roots of their teeth, and the only thing to do is to extract the teeth. Both of her bottom canine teeth's roots had been almost entirely absorbed, so they took off the tops and stitched up the holes. She was pretty pathetic for the first couple days (and so was I). She had a fentanyl patch and she refused to lick anything, including drinking because she didn't like the feel of her tongue on the stitches. Her pain patch came off on Sunday and she's gotten almost back to normal since then. It's less noticeable than I first thought. I think when I picked her up, her jaw was swollen which made her look different in her face and that killed me. But now that I look at her, I don't think you can tell much at all. Except when she opens her mouth :( The picture of her w/ the shoes is post-surgery. She's gotten back to her old self for the most part, including the kissiness, although not as much as she used to. The stitches should dissolve by next week and she has a checkup next Wednesday. So everyone can feel bad for poor Izzie and mourn her bottom teeth now :)

I would also like to take this moment to thank my sister for listening to me freak out about this for a couple weeks on end (first about the cost, then the risk of anesthesia, and finally completely losing my **** when they pulled her teeth). Just take my word for it, she is a very, very, verrrry good sister (and vet). :)

Florida Birds

2010-12-21T01:20:00.006-06:00

When I visited Michael & Christine in Florida in October, I subtly hinted to them ahead of time that I might like to go birding when I was there. I swear, it was like, barely noticeable that I wanted to go :)

So we didn't have any wildly successful outings, but the overall trip was pretty darn cool. As I was waiting for Christine to pick me up from the airport (like literally the minute I stepped outside) I saw an Osprey above. While I was there, we went down to the beach twice (Christine and I) and saw some shorebirds each time. They have different gulls down there. Up here the predominant gull is the Ring-Billed Gull. Down there are the Laughing Gulls. Difference being the black bill and black legs (and probably 8 dozen other things, but a gull expert I am not). There was a Sanderling hanging out with him too. There was a Cormorant that flew over a few times too - probably Neotropic. Both times we went we also saw a Willet. He was not shy at all and frankly kind of stupid. He kept trying to eat a fish tail that had washed up on the beach, and I was pretty sure he was going to choke to death on it. He kept getting it stuck in his mouth and then having to kick it out with his legs. On our way back to the car I identified a Eurasian Collared Dove sitting on the electricity wires, but got no pictures.

Laughing Gull accompanied by his pal the Sanderling:

Stupid, but very cool, Willet:

Don't worry. He eventually left the tail alone.

Michael and I went out to a State Park down there one day, and they'll loan you some binoculars if you hand over your driver's license. So I'm pretty sure he had a nicer pair than me :) We didn't have a ton of luck, but saw a Black and White Warbler, a Red-Bellied Woodpecker, and some Brown Pelicans over the water. And a lizard. And some really cool spiders.

Edited 12/23: Ok, so I thought I'd research and see if I could identify the lizard. I had it narrowed down to two in about a minute, but after tons of research I think that it's the Southern Fence Lizard. That is because of the blue on his throat and sides and his spiny appearance. There is another very closely related lizard called the Florida Scrub Lizard that ONLY lives and appears in a type of habitat called scrub. So I thought I'd eliminate him by researching and seeing what kind of habitat we saw him in. Turns out that Rocky Bayou State Park, and in particular where we were hiking is one of the rare places that is a "scrub" habitat. Sigh. So then I couldn't let it go that we saw him in "scrub", but apparently the scrub lizard has a lateral brown stripe down both side of his body and there just isn't one on this guy, so he must be the more normal fence lizard. Tada!

Afterwards we were on our way to get something to eat and I saw what I thought were vultures in the sky. You have to understand there are Turkey Vultures EVERYWHERE down there. But when I looked up I realized that they had some white markings underneath which meant they weren't vultures (all brown). So, given the size and the shape of the wing, they had to be...Bald Eagles. Juveniles, to be exact. I made Michael pull into a parking lot and we watched them for quite a while. They were waaaaay up there, so this is the best shot I can give you. A better birder than I could tell you exactly how old this guy was, but he's probably a 2nd or 3rd year because he's got some of the white tail and head and they become the typical bald eagle w/ the white head and tail in their 4th year.

I don't have any other pictures, but did see some more birds. They live near a retention pond that had a lot of birds. There were a zillion Blue Jays, Mockingbirds (which is the state bird of Florida for a reason), Eastern Bluebirds, Carolina Chickadees, Brown Thrasher, Cardinals, and a hawk of some kind lived there around the pond because I flushed him 3 times. I think he could've been a Broad-Winged Hawk based on his size and underwing pattern, but I really couldn't tell. I also saw Black Vultures and they are really, really cool if you see them perched. There were some Great Egrets in a marshy area along the highway and Great Blue Herons as well. I know I'm missing some because I waited too long to write it up and didn't write down what I saw. In particular, Michael and I went down the road about a mile to a spot that was on the map for the Great Florida Birding Trail and saw almost nothing, but I know we saw one stupid bird fly up into the trees and watched him for a while, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. It might have been a pair of Mourning Doves, but I can't be sure. I also feel like I saw more birds with Christine on our walk to the retention pond, but can't remember all of those either.

So, adding to my lifelist for that trip were:

Carolina Chickadee

Black Vulture

Brown Pelican

Willet

Laughing Gull

Eurasian Collared Dove

Thanksgiving pics

2010-12-17T19:50:00.006-06:00

Not much narration is needed for these. They're just the pictures from Thanksgiving. I can't tell you why we put Cole in this, but I think it looks kind of like a toga.
I should really consider doing my hair and putting on my makeup before I take pictures with the kids.

Say whaaaa?

Tada!!

Quick Post

2010-12-16T18:44:00.005-06:00

This one is new to me: Red-shouldered Hawk. We had just turned out of Mom's apartment complex on our way up to Kokomo for Thanksgiving and we see this guy on the side of the road. I make Michael turn around so I could take a picture. Here's a hint. You can't get a good picture unless you let the car come to a complete stop. Let me rephrase. I can't get a good picture and will scream at you to stop the car. Sorry Michael.

Also, Juvenile Cooper's Hawk. You can tell because of the fine brown streaking on his chest and, y'know, the fact that he looks like a Cooper.

I also saw a female Northern Harrier on the way home (this was all Thanksgiving weekend). It was along I-65 and she was on the side of the road, eating something and I thought it was a Red-Tailed Hawk, but Harriers have a bright white rump, so they're easy to identify if you can see that when they're flying. Obviously no picture since I was driving :)

Montrose 10/16

2010-10-16T20:09:00.003-05:00

I had a super fun morning at Montrose today. For no apparent reason I woke up wide awake at 6:30am just as the sun was coming up, so went down to Montrose to check out the birds. I got there about 7am and there were some other birders there (maybe 7 or so on the beach), but not a ton. As I walked into the park a Cooper's Hawk flew right over my head, so that was a good sign. There are always tons of Golden Crowned Kinglets around (for the last couple of weekends) and I THINK Ruby-Crowned Kinglets as well, but in the fall, the Ruby-Crowned isn't Ruby-crowned - they just have a plain head so I'm a little uncertain.

So I made it out to the beach and as I'm walking out to go check out the shorebirds, all the seagulls go up in the air. That caught my attention and I noticed that one of them didn't look like a seagull. It was gorgeous and huge and flew really oddly (really fluid). It was...a Short-Eared Owl! Drop Dead Gorgeous. It looks almost exactly like the Long-Eared Owl I saw last year (in its face and size), but it just doesn't have the big long ears that that one did. I imagine you were all smart enough to figure that out for yourself. I have one slightly blurry picture of him (or her) in flight. As I was watching the owl fly over the lake with my binoculars, I realized that there was a Peregrine Falcon on the tower on the pier. I took about a zillion pictures of him. He was chowing down on breakfast and after he was done, he let the head of his prey fall down onto the concrete (with a nice "thunk") and another birder checked it out and saw that it was a Woodcock. They are apparently very slow flyers :( One of the other birders said "Why don't they ever eat the Pigeons?" and I wholeheartedly concur.

When I went back into the Hedge, my day had already been made, but I actually got to see a lot of birds that I don't see that often (plus one I'd never seen). A PAIR of Coopers Hawks flew right over my head (again) and went to roost in one of the protected areas. Right before I left the park ANOTHER Coopers Hawk flew over my head yet again. Each time they were about 10 feet over my head. Also on the way home I think I saw a Sharp-Shinned Hawk overhead as well. It is Hawk season apparently.

Peregrine:
Short-Eared Owl:

Cedar Waxwing:

Ruby-Crowned Kinglet
And my other newbie, a Winter Wren. He's about 4 inches and very twitchy, so I wasn't able to get a picture of him. Here's one I poached off the internet for reference.

So here's the total list:

Coopers Hawk

Short-Eared Owl

Ring-Billed Gulls

Herring Gull

Peregrine Falcon

Brown Creeper

Downy Woodpecker

Black-Bellied Plovers

Savannah Sparrow

Hermit Thrush

Dark-Eyed Junco

Winter Wren

Golden-Crowned Kinglets

Ruby-Crowned Kinglets

Cardinals, Robins, Goldfinches, a Starling, Mallards,

A flock of American Coots in the Harbor

I also went on Thursday and saw a Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk, Blue Jay, Sanderlings, Horned Larks, Orange Bishop (he's an escapee that's been living at the hedge all summer), and I saw the Coots for the first time this fall.

Florida!!

2010-10-14T22:43:00.002-05:00

Just got back from visiting Michael and Christine in Florida. We did all kinds of stuff, but I didn't take too many pictures unfortunately. Here are a few of them:
Cole chillin' Me and Cole and Abby

Me and Abby relaxing on the beach

I also did a bit of bird-watching. I have a few pictures, but not too many. Here's the exhaustive list of birds. I'll post pictures and any good stories later.

Northern Mockingbird (State Bird of Florida for good reason - they're everywhere!)

Blue Jay

Eastern Bluebird

Brown Thrasher

Turkey Vulture

Black Vulture

Eurasian Collared Dove

Willet

Laughing Gull

Cormorant

Great Blue Heron

Carolina Chickadee

Black and White Warbler

Red-Bellied Woodpecker

Bald Eagle

Red-Shouldered Hawk

American Crow

Great Egret

Brown Pelican

The Princess and the Pea

2010-09-06T17:18:00.001-05:00

Birding

2010-08-29T22:38:00.006-05:00

I really haven't been birding very much lately and what I have been doing has been very abbreviated. That's why it's kind of ridiculous that I just added 3 birds (pretty much the only 3 birds I've seen in the last month) to my life list :)

Tonight I went to the harbor in the morning but I barely had any time so I saw a Goldfinch and a female American redstart (not a bad find), but that's all. So I went back this evening and on a whim stopped towards the front of the park where there's a gate to the back of the golfcourse and there's a little pond that I've seen things in before. I walk about 2 feet into the gate (where I am NOT supposed to be - the gate's usually locked) and see something, bring up my binoculars and there is a Green Heron. SO COOL. There were actually two. The first one shown is the juvenile and the rest of the pictures are of the adult. I don't think I've ever mentioned this, but just FYI what I can see through my binoculars is much closer and clearer than what I photograph. So, the pictures are a little grainy because I zoomed in digitally on them (and it was dusk, so not really enough light for pictures), but you can see him pretty well. The first pic was taken through the gate and I'm actually waaaaay closer to the juvenile than I was to the adult, but it looks the same distance because I digitally zoomed the adult pics and not the juvenile.

If you look closely, he is looking down his nose at me. They have very odd eyes.

As I'm watching the Green Heron, I look back at the path behind the gate (it's a very wide path) and there's a Chicago Police Car parked there. Ruh roh. I was disappointed because I knew he was going to tell me to get out of the golf course. So I stepped out of the gate and he rolled down the window and asked me what I was looking at. I told him that it was a Green Heron, and he's like "Cool - I've seen some Night Herons in there sometimes". Oh yeah. The cop was a bird enthusiast :) We sat and talked for about ten minutes, I showed him some pictures, and then he let me go back in. Not a bad idea, making friends with the cop that patrols the park, eh? I also made another friend, Maryanne, who is an amateur like me. I let her look through my binoculars and we talked all about the herons and the hedge and stuff. She told me about a spot quite a bit further south where I might see some Yellow or White-Crowned Night Herons, and I walked all the way down there, but they weren't there (although there were some Wood Ducks and some other ducks that I didn't identify). Still working on those.

Part II: I was down in Fishers a few weeks ago and I convinced Mom to go birdwatching with me. Before that little trip, however, we had dinner one night out on her balcony and what do we see up in a nearby tree but a Cedar Waxwing. It was very dark so the picture's kind of terrible, but he was very pretty ;)

So for our trip we went up to Morse Reservoir to a spot where we used to go fishing. At the dam are a TON of Great Blue Herons (around 15), Canadian Geese, and one Least Sandpiper. When we were pulling up I mentioned that I really wanted to see a Belted Kingfisher. I think I thought of it at that moment because the dam spillover is the type of habitat that it would fish in. So, because the Bird Gods apparently grant my every wish...

I saw him fly from the trees and saw his white underwing stripes which looks a lot like a Mockingbird's wings, but I could just tell from his disproportionately large head that it wasn't a Mockingbird. I knew what he was pretty quickly. He caught a fish and sat on the fence trying (for probably 10 minutes) to get it positioned so he could eat it.

Love this shot

I have some really ridiculously good shots of a Least Sandpiper, Sanderling, and Semipalmated Sandpiper from Montrose a few weeks ago too, but I'll post them later.

Photoshop

2010-08-18T21:02:00.001-05:00

My friend Anna played around with one of the pictures that I posted from our trips to Venice. It was one of my favorites even though it wasn't that colorful. Well, she brightened it up a bit and now I love it even more! Even though I have more pictures to hang on my walls than I know what to do with, I might blow this one up and frame it :) Thanks Anna!!

"At least I can't fall off the edge of a tunnel!"

2010-08-16T22:06:00.024-05:00

Ok, here it is, The Neverending Journey. We decided that we wanted to go to Bern, Switzerland before we went to Italy because it's originally where part of my Mom's family is from. We plan the trip about 1 day before we leave and we find that Switzerland is really, REALLY expensive. So we mull it over, but decide to go anyway. The day or so before we leave Nikki suddenly gets vertigo. Like, hasn't had it in almost 4 years, and then suddenly, just sprouts up. We start out a little later than we probably had wanted to on Thursday, but it should be about a 5 1/2 hour drive to Luzern, Switzerland, which is the first town that we're spending the night in, so we thought we'd be ok and maybe be there by 6pm.

So we start out with Nikki driving because she knows the little roads around Budoia very well and thinks she can do it. As we're driving, the GPS decides that the Autostrada (the largest interstate going east/west across Italy) doesn't exist. It was slightly stressful, but Nikki knew where she was going so it was kind of ok. About two hours in, we start to hit really bad traffic. As we're driving, Nikki kind of explained the rules of the road to me because we figured I'd have to drive at some point. The reasoning being that Mom is a champion baby-entertainer so we didn't want her driving because she was so good at keeping Leah entertained and calm and fed. Leah just gets upset when Nikki is in the back with her (and w/ the vertigo that wasn't going to happen anyway because of the motion sickness) and I am the world's biggest control freak and can't stand to be in the passenger seat when Mom is driving. I believe I am "just like my father" in that regard. We actually realized this when Mom drove us to the Pordenone train station and up to Lake Barcis in the days previous.

So about 3 hours in, we're still about an hour or so outside of Milan and Nikki starts to get sick, and we're stuck in really bad traffic (still) and we pull over to a rest-stop. That was also the moment of Leah's previously mentioned only major meltdown. I start driving, and my understanding was that the third lane was reserved for the crazy drivers, so I stuck to the middle lane mostly. I think I did ok, although I was super freaked out for the first 20 minutes or so. Like SUPER freaked out. Not sure why. The traffic continues as we head north towards Switzerland and we realize that we are WAY behind. After some time, we decide that Leah needs to get out of the car for more than 20 minutes and we stopped at a rest stop that had like a full dinner buffet (I can't remember what they're called) and we hung out for about an hour. The hotel that we were staying at in Luzern closes the front desk at 10pm, but we were only about an hour outside and it was 7ish when we stopped.

Mile for mile, Switzerland has the most expensive roadways in the world because it's mostly bridges and tunnels. But, for the most part, the highways (the A2 was what we were on) are really nice and big, and even though you can see the mountains, you're essentially going along a nice, flat part.

It's getting to be dusk and suddenly traffic comes to a screeching halt. Everyone is getting out of their cars, hanging out on the side of the road, which Nikki says is pretty normal when traffic stops because in Europe, or at least Italy, when traffic stops, it stops for a long time. There was a little exit to our right, but we didn't want to use it, because we didn't want to get lost and we were just about to enter a tunnel, so that road might not have taken us to where we needed to go anyway. But after a while we see an emergency helicopter fly over and land on the other side of the tunnel. And so we wait. And wait. And wait. Now it's starting to look like we're not going to make check-in at the hotel, so Nikki calls her friend who calls the hotel and they agree to stay open late for us (so nice!). I believe the exact phrase was "(pause)...Ok, we will" (except say the "w"s as "v"s, and say it very emphatically). It was very nice of them because the desk clerk's shift actually ends at 10pm so she would've had to stay late.

We're becoming desperate because the helicopter hasn't taken off and it's been like 30 minutes. So I hit the "detour" button on the GPS and, lo and behold, it tells us to take the exit to our right. We figured that since so many people were doing it, that it was a good detour. So the GPS routes it and, yeah, there are some squiggles, but they don't look so bad, right? The route we were supposed to take was the tunnel THROUGH the mountain, so this was the pass. I mean, how bad could it be?

So we take it and we're a little nervously giddy because the first thing we do is take this big sweeping bridge up and over the tunnel and into the mountains. So I'm all nervous because (of course) I get a little weird about heights, and so does Nikki. And so does Mom (um, I think, she didn't seem that nervous to me). We're going up the side of the mountain and it really is the most gorgeous sight I will probably ever see in my life. We are WAY up, so the snow-capped mountains are even with us, and it's just gorgeous. Even before we took the pass I remember thinking to myself that I could brag to my friends that I had driven in the Swiss Alps. Then as we were driving up the side of the mountain I thought "Now I can REALLY tell my friends I drove in the Swiss Alps!" Unfortunately, I'm so freaked out that I can't take my eyes off the road (for good reason) enough to see it much, and it was too dark to take pictures. We're probably going 30 or 40 mph. At one point I see up ahead of us this AWFUL part of the road that has essentially been built out over the edge of the mountain, but is attached to the side of the mountain. So it looks like it's floating on air, and of course our lane was on the outside. Nikki just kept saying to me, "Just look at the road, just look at the road". Which I did with great concentration. So at that point we're still kind of laughing nervously about everything, and I really did think that that kind of thing would be the worst of it.

THEN we hit the fog. Oh, I'm sorry, that's not fog, that is a CLOUD. A big, white, fluffy, wet, DENSE cloud that has descended over the mountain top, and I can't see freaking 15 feet in front of me. So now I'm driving along the edge of a mountain, can't see anything, the road is turning every 100 feet or so, but I can't see the turns coming, the road is wet and a little icy, and there are banks of snow 5 and 6 feet high on either side of us, and my contacts are drying out and things are blurry because we've been driving for 9 hours. That's when it stopped being fun. The road just turned (sometimes hard, sometimes not) constantly, and I'm pretty sure there were not necessarily guard rails in all the places that there should've been. I felt really sorry for Nikki because she was on the side of the car that was closest to the edge. Right when we hit the fog, I pulled over to let the fast cars go by and I thought that was a good thing because then I could follow their tail-lights down the mountain through the cloud, but they were obviously more used to that than I was because they left me behind in like 30 seconds. Never did see them again. I think I was averaging 20 to 30 mph, but sometimes I would go all the way down to 15mph. Edit: Mom says that I need to emphasize how freaky this all was and how scared I was. So here it is: I was so ridiculously freaked out during this drive and I never want to be that scared ever, ever again. Seriously, those roads were insane and I really, really didn't want to drive my one year old niece off the side of a mountain, or, you know, the rest of us.

We went up for a while, maybe another 10 minutes, and then we started the descent. Therefore we thought it would be another 10 minutes until we got out of the clouds, which made us very happy and was something to look forward to. But, I think because the cloud had been moving over the mountain and dropping, it was at least 30 minutes until we got down to clear roads. I have never been that tense for that long in my life. My thighs hurt SO bad. Fortunately Leah was asleep and Nikki knows me so ridiculously well that she knew exactly what to do to help. She was concentrating on the road just as hard as I was (and I was just staring so hard at the center line trying to keep my eyes from looking off the side of the mountain) so I felt like if I missed something she would catch it. And I knew she must've been freaked out, but she didn't show it at all, which also helped. Mom tried to tell me to switch down a gear, which probably would've helped a lot with the pain in my legs because I wouldn't have had to ride the brake so hard, but I was so freaked out at that point that I was scared to take my eyes off the road. I didn't look at the odometer, the rearview mirror or anything but the road. Over the course of that pass I remember feeling this pain migrate slowly through my body - first my back, then my neck, then my arms, then my stomach, then my legs, then my feet and hands. I imagine it was the tension because it eventually went away altogether.

Some of the highlights of that particular part of the trip were when I managed to make it into a tunnel, I said "Oh thank God! A tunnel! At least I can't fall off the edge of a tunnel!" (really, best quote of the trip). Also, on the way down (and we had started to relax a little) traffic suddenly slowed way down because there were a family of Rams in the road. Yes, rams, curly horns and all. There was a dad and a mom and a baby! And we got to see them up close (I think we were 2 cars back from them). Nikki was like "See?! If we hadn't taken the pass, we wouldn't have got to see the baby ram!" I'm still deciding if that was really worth it. I believe also at one point we managed to be in the "turn" part of a switchback at the same time as a tour bus who obviously was not nearly as freaked out by these roads as I was because he was going super fast (or so it seemed). And I remember seeing buses and the like coming at us and trying to figure out how in the world they could make it up on those roads because they were super narrow and winding and just nuts! People would actually pass slower cars in some of the tunnel-type things (they weren't really tunnels, just reinforced parts of the road where there was concrete over your head, but the sides were open - there's a picture further down). It really is kind of a shame that I couldn't relax and enjoy it more because the mountains (when we could see them) were really gorgeous.

So I've attached some pictures of driving and mountains, but those were actually taken on our way home (which also went through lots of mountains, but in broad daylight, and after driving that pass, it just wasn't that big of a deal). The pictures of the mountains are nice, but they're nothing like what we saw off the side of that mountain (one day I'm going to figure out the name of it, I swear!).

So we got to Luzern and to the Hotel about 9:45pm after 10 1/2 hours. Fortunately, there wasn't a lot of traffic IN Luzern otherwise I probably would've lost it. That's partly because the GPS decided after we finished driving the pass and were back on the A2 that we hadn't had enough fun for the day and took us OFF the A2 so we could drive the scenic route (along winding, narrow roads at night) through the valley that we were in. I couldn't get too upset about it though because at least I was down in a valley and not up on a mountain. Also, I'm kind of glad it did because we got to drive through some really adorable towns, but it was just kind of ridiculous at that point. Pretty, but ridiculous.

Of course when we got to the hotel Leah is freaking exhausted and doesn't want to fall asleep and Nikki had to stay up half the night with her. We got up in the morning and had breakfast downstairs and Leah was being fussy so Aunt Chrissi (yes I talk about myself in the third person, what of it?) took her upstairs. Well, the only way I could entertain her was to let her play with my stuff, preferably anything that opened and closed. So Leah played with my makeup and toiletries until Mom and Nana got back. We had LOTS of fun!

Look Daddy! I like makeup! (If you look closely you can see blush on her nose). I think this is her best supermodel pose.

This is our Hotel:
The rest of the pictures are of lots of places around Luzern. It has a big river running through it and we hung out there for about 4 hours or so in the morning. Enjoy!

I figured since I subsisted on a diet of chocolate croissants while I was in Europe that I should take a picture with the Golden Croissant. (that's not what the sign says, I think it says Koch Bakery).

Here's the end result of all that picture-taking:

Lake Barcis

2010-08-16T21:53:00.005-05:00

Before we headed out to Switzerland, me and mom drove up to Lake Barcis for half a day. We didn't do much, but the lake is drop dead gorgeous, so I thought I'd post some pictures. And, yes, we dipped our toes in the lake, just to say we did.

Part II Venice and Burano

2010-07-27T22:50:00.001-05:00

Sorry this took me so long to get to. I'll try to be better :(

So these pictures are kind of in order. Me and mom went to Venice 2 days in a row while Nikki had to work. The first day we spent totally in Venice. We walked all over everywhere (including into a residential section that we couldn't seem to get unlost from). We very much enjoyed the shopping, and I, at least, enjoyed the meandering. We went to St. Mark's and up into the balcony, but once again I skipped the Doge's Palace since we didn't have a ton of time (nor did I want to pony up the 22 Euro for entry). I didn't take a ton of pics in Venice, but here they are.

This is just a restaurant that Mom wanted me to take a picture of. I can't imagine why.
Here's Mom on the Balcony of St. Mark's

A little side canal (my favorite)

Even though this picture isn't super colorful, I love it for some reason.

Me at the top of St. Mark's (you can't even see my legs shaking)

I think this might have been either a Military HQ or Police. We kept seeing men in uniforms go in here. We actually were sitting in a little plaza across from this having a bite to eat. (If it is the Police, that would be very exciting for me as I am currently reading a detective series set in Venice by Donna Leon).

So the second day we went to Burano. We didn't have quite as much time as we would've liked for various reasons. First of all, we got a late start. Then, the vaporetto to Burano takes a long freaking time. Also, the stupid vaporetto went the opposite way around the island of Murano as it said it was going to, so I essentially messed up. So we had to get off at Murano and wait for the boat to Burano. We were starving and I made Mom run through the streets of Murano so we could get something to eat. We (finally) found a little cafe that had some take away sandwiches and I swear I almost told them to take the stupid things out of the oven early it was taking them so long to heat up (we were on a deadline to make the next boat). So we got a nice running tour of Murano is what I'm telling you. But all that was worth it. I LOVED Burano. I just loved the colors (less so the pushy saleswomen, but whatever), and it seemed so different to me than the rest of Venice. Now here's the pretty pictures :)

So the other reason that we didn't have much time that day is because as we got on the boat out of Burano, we noticed a storm rolling in (apparently Mom and I had better things to do than check the weather). It was quite pretty and we got to the mainland all right. I think we got off the vaporetto because we had to, it was the end of the line for that one. So it had started to rain so we went down to the next vaporetto station where ours was going to be. Um, yeah. Guess what everyone in Venice does at rush hour in the rain. I swear every citizen and tourist of Venice was on that stupid floating station with us. And dude, pushy. Seriously. Me and mom (being a bit pushy ourselves) made it to the front of where the doors opened after maybe 45 minutes. The problem was that every vaporetto that came, by the time it got to our station was ridiculously packed. I kept thinking of how people seem to die in stampedes at soccer games every year. I'm not sure why I associate being trampled to death with Europeans, but I do. So the next vaporetto to show up, me and mom decide to make a break for it and we totally made it on. I mean, MAYBE 7 or 8 people were making it on each boat and the boats were a good 15 minutes apart with at least 80 people crammed into that little station. We got lucky, really. So I was standing up on the top of the boat with my back to the outside and rain is just dripping down my back. I, being a stupid tourist, did not have an umbrella or jacket and I was freezing. I said to Mom at one point that I needed to just think of Chicago in January and then it wasn't so bad. Some woman took pity on me (a very, very nice woman) and gave me her umbrella for the rest of the ride. I actually memorized the brand name of this umbrella because it was so awesome. I believe it was Roncato or something like that (ok maybe TRIED to memorize). So that's why we (and by we, I mean me) cut our day short. Mom wanted to go back out in the rain to buy towels and look at paintings because she is the world's most persistent shopper. :)

Next time: Lake Barcis, then Part I of the Neverending Roadtrip.

Well, At least I have something to look forward to...

2010-07-22T14:55:00.001-05:00

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Life/Relationships/Man-Woman/Women-are-most-attractive-at-31/articleshow/6187549.cms

Italy - Part I

2010-07-06T21:19:00.010-05:00

So here it is. Finally. We're going to take it nice and slow and in pieces, ok?

First here I am holding Leah after many many hours of flying. I often say that my mother is the baby crazy one, but I pretty much threw my bag on mom's shoulder and snatched her out of Nikki's hands when I saw her :) (Don't worry, Mom IS in fact baby crazy, but she's baby crazy in a nice helpful way instead of a standing around in the airport doing nothing kind of way).
So we got into town, and I have no recollection of what we did. But we must've ended up on base that day (oh, right I forgot, we had to take the safety class to get our international drivers licenses valid on base. I mean, we didn't ACTUALLY take the class (Nikki's sneaky like that), but maybe we should've. More on that (a lot) later.)

So this is Mom entertaining Leah (in that helpful baby crazy way) outside one of the buildings on base.

Then the next day we went to Ca' Madresca for a wine tasting. It was SOOO much fun and very informative. First of all, the wine was super tasty and the owner (Adrian, I think) was extremely educational. We got to taste 4 or 5 wines and we even got to pour some wine from one of the really huge tanks to see the difference in a wine that wasn't fully aged yet. He explained how the colors affected the taste of the wine, as well as where the grapes were grown (on the hill or in the valley). It was awesome. As were the appetizers (we got to taste homemade salami). So we tasted wine, shopped for a while, then Mom went and entertained Leah outside for a while, then we played on the barrels, took some pictures and went home before Leah melted down (with 6 or 7 bottles of wine and a bottle of pistachio liquer). I will reiterate this in many posts, but that kid was really a trooper most of the time. I'm pretty sure we made it into the car this time and Mom had to stay in the back and keep her awake (we were only 15 minutes or so from home) so she'd get a good nap in when she got home. I remember only one major meltdown and that was after driving on the Autostrade for hours in idiotic traffic, so I kind of felt like melting down too.

I ADORE this picture. She's like "ewww, why are you kissing me?!"

I like this picture too - Mom (Nana from here on out) has her drink and Leah has hers.

And this is actually that morning when we decided to dress up the doll, er, I mean Leah, in the super cute dress that Aunt Bettie made for her. WITH bonnet.

So as you can imagine, Aunt Chrissi (I think of myself in the third person whenever I'm around nieces and the nephew) did not actually forget about birds while she was in Europe. In fact, I think Nikki was...well, impressed is maybe not the right word but...impressed with my one-track mind. So I harassed her enough that we got up early one morning and went down to the spring at Polcenigo. I'm not going to go into any of the birds on any of these posts and instead do one big bird post at the end.

So this is picturesque, right?

Kind of hazy, neat rocks, a sign in Italian, a goose.

Ah, right.

The goose. Funny thing about the goose - he was REALLY territorial. So of course he didn't want to let us near the spring at all. He kept honking and flapping his wings. Sounds terrifying doesn't it? We thought about trying to scare him into the water, but in this picture is essentially where he wanted to be goshdarnit. Eventually 2 men (British and Italian I think) came along and one of them tried to shoo him away and that Goose was having none of it. He was seriously aggressive. He scared the guy away (at which point the other friend starting making chicken noises and gestures at him and laughing hysterically - it was entertaining). I'm really not doing this story justice - it was really kind of ridiculous. But whatever - the spring was gorgeous as was Polcenigo (um, I think, there were a lot of towns that started with a P and I couldn't keep them all straight). We walked up and down the river a bit and then we went home for naptime.

The spring was at the end of this walkway (we followed the geese...slowly, all the way down it).

A restaurant.

So that's the end of Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is Venice and Burano.

Delinquent

2010-06-27T23:27:00.002-05:00

I know I'm delinquent on posting pics from Italy. To tide you over:

Montrose

2010-05-24T00:37:00.006-05:00

So I went to Montrose Harbor last weekend in the morning for the first time. Due to the fact that it was nice weather and spring and morning (apparently) there were probably 40 or so people there with binoculars. I was a bit intimidated. :) There were, of course, 8 gabillion red-winged blackbirds (more on that later). But also just a TON of warblers. And see, the thing about warblers is they Don't. Stay. Still. ...Ever. Taking pictures of warblers is an exercise in futility. But I did get a few pics :) Also, I think these are just the second time I've posted pictures taken with the new lens converter and I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I discovered the wonder of the "high speed burst" setting on my camera. I don't think the Megapixels are as high, but at least the birds aren't blurry.

Here's most of what I spent my day looking at: This guy sat still for me at the end of the day for me. I believe he is an Alder or Willow Flycatcher.

I ADORE this shot. It's a Black and White Warbler. (I had this down as a White-Breasted Nuthatch, but after looking at it's markings, that didn't seem right. Nuthatches have a flatter body and less of a neck. But when I observed this bird, it was creeping along the tree like a Nuthatch/Creeper, hence the ID. So I looked up the B&W Warbler in the book, and apparently that behavior is common in the B&W as well since they also eat insects out of the bark.)

Gray Catbird. You can just barely see the rufous/red color on his rump. Or, in this case, I think maybe this is a her. I mean, she's really fat, so I imagine she's maybe got some buns in the oven.

OK. Storytime. As I said, the Red-Winged Blackbirds were just everywhere. Also, those suckers are loud! They chirp, and they make these weird chattering gutteral sounds and they chase each other and are just really, really loud. So, as I also said, it was a bit intimidating being around all these other more experienced birders and I was trying to behave in a professional and appropriate manner. I was just sure that all these people could see right through me and knew I hadn't a clue what I was doing. So I finally found a little part of the trail by the magic hedge that was kind of empty. And a female Red-Winged Blackbird (RWB from here on out) flew over my head and perched on a tree about 10 feet in front of me. And I was bemused by how lovely it was to have all these birds just flying about. Ah, communing with nature. Then she let out a loud squawk and came flying right back to where she came from. Well, she was kind of bearing down on me right down the trail, and I thought, oh she just doesn't see me, she'll lift up here in a minute. No, really, just another second. Oh crap, she's gunning for me!!! At which point I let out a loud shriek and went running off the trail. In front of all those much more experienced birders than me. It was humbling. So then for the rest of the day every time I would surprise some stupid RWB hiding in the grasses I would duck or jerk away because I was sure I was about to be attacked. Fun times. This isn't the exact little lady that chased me around. This one was much nicer and posed for me for a while.

This is a Magnolia Warbler. I spent the better part of an hour trying to get a good shot of him.

Hopefully this shot makes up for my 2 abysmal shots of Northern Flickers from a few weeks ago. These normally very shy birds just came up and perched on a fence post for me. It was great!
Just look for the reddish-orange eye. The poor Killdeer just couldn't get away from me.
These are Caspian Terns. I spent the better part of an hour trying to determine whether these birds were Caspian or Fosters or Common Terns last year when I first started birding. Funny thing about bird books, they show the proportions of all the birds as the same. Turns out that Caspian Terns are literally twice the size of Commons or Fosters (saw a picture of some together, the commons look like the Caspians mini-me's).
This is a female American Redstart. I have a picture of the male too, but I didn't like it enough to post. The male has the same pattern, except he's black where she's gray, and orange where she's yellow.
In addition to the above, here's the rest of the list for the day:

Wilson's Warbler

Palm Warbler

Yellow Warbler

Common Yellowthroat

Barn Swallow

Chimney Swift

Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher

Eastern Towhee

Black and White Warbler

White throated Sparrow

White-Crowned Sparrow

Ovenbird

Robin

American Goldfinch

Cardinal

And here's my list of unconfirmed IDs:

Northern Parula

Baltimore Oriole

Spotted Sandpiper

Indigo Bunting

And last story: While I was looking around at the end of the morning, I got a little "pssst" from a fellow birder. I went over to him and he said that he just wanted to let me know that there was a "morning" over in that part of the park. We talked about the warblers a bit and what we'd seen, and I had to try and concentrate really hard to try and understand him because he was talking in birding shorthand and because there are probably 30+ types of warblers so people just call them by the descriptive word, not putting "warbler" on the end (I didn't realize that at the time). So after he left, I thought to myself, what is a "morning"? He wasn't talking about "Mourning Dove's" was he? I mean, I see those all the time! So I looked up birds in the index and decided that maybe he had said "Moorhen". Well a moorhen is like a rail that lives in marshland. So I didn't really think that was it, but I proceeded to go up and down this trail for another half hour looking on the ground, just in case. Once I got home, I realized he meant "morning warbler" after looking it up on my birding website but I was just so confused, and also, too proud to tell him I had no idea what he was talking about because I was so flattered that he was giving me advice and treating me like a real birder! :) I'm silly. If I see him again, I might have to 'fess up. :)

The Wizard of Dogz

2010-04-26T22:27:00.002-05:00

Christine, this is for you. (If you can't see the whole thing, right click on the picture and select "show all" to get a wide-screen view)

Pictures of Me

2010-04-09T23:12:00.003-05:00

So a few months ago, Nikki asked for pictures of everyone in the family so she could post them on a picture wall for Leah. Michael and Christine had done the same thing for Abby and she could recognize everyone on the wall after a while. So I realized that I had only one picture of me that I liked but thought it would be sending the wrong message to my niece to have the picture of me posted on her wall to be one where I'm holding a glass of wine. I can just imagine her at 17 years old going "I don't know why, but whenever I think of Aunt Chrissi, I think of wine". I mean, let's be honest, that may happen anyway, but at least this picture won't be the reason.

So I asked my friend Natalie (well, she was Nikki's friend first, but she lives in Chicago and we hang out) who is a professional photographer if she would consider taking a few pictures of me for the wall. We went out and took them on the lake while her fiance played photographers assistant (which included holding both of our purses). I about froze to death, because the first time I mentioned this to her it was fall and still warm out. Once we finally got around to doing it, it was March. That day it was probably high 30's. But I liked them so well that I thought I'd post my favorites here. The color is a little wonky on the last 2 because they were actually test shots to get the color right, but I like them and you can't really tell unless you're looking for it. So here you go. I'm not fishing for compliments, though, I swear! If anyone deserves a compliment, it's Natalie for taking such beautiful pictures.

Hoo-Hoo!

2010-04-04T21:32:00.005-05:00

Guess what I saw today?! First....ever....Owl!!!

(A note: I am now uploading my pictures to Flickr and embedding the image so clicking on the picture will take you to the Flickr site of the picture. If you want to see a bigger version click "All sizes", then "Large". Also, you should be able to see my entire photostream of pictures there instead of going back and forth between the blog and Flickr. The photostream is to the right on the Flickr page.)

I can't really take credit for it, but I don't care! I was walking down to the pier at Montrose and saw some guys with the really big lenses taking pictures into the Hedge. I smiled as I walked past and one of them asked, "Don't you want to see it?". And I said "what?", and he said "The owl". At which point I kind of freaked out a little and then turned and saw the most beautiful Long-Eared Owl. He was fairly indifferent to all the fuss he was causing.

Then the guy that pointed the owl out to me pointed out a Field Sparrow to me as well and told me how to identify it (pink bill and white eye ring).

My other first of the day was a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker:

I also saw an American Kestrel while I was out on the pier. He was having a lot of trouble with the wind and he was really right above me about 20 feet or so. I just looked up, and there he was. Then I saw him again in the hedge and was able to see his little black markings on his face (the moustache).

I also followed a Northern Flicker around the hedge for a while. They're very shy. I have a couple of pictures, but they're not very good - one his face is hidden by a branch and the other you can only see his face.

Here's a Hermit Thrush (I think)

And here's a Flycatcher of some sort. Both of these ID's are up on my message board for confirmation. Edit: According to the boards this is an Eastern Phoebe (which is in the Flycatcher family).

These are all American Tree Sparrows. The first one is fairly obvious, but the backlit photo you can tell because his upper beak is dark and lower mandible is straw-colored.

At the end of the day, I was driving out of the park and I stopped to call Mom and tell her about the owl. I had just kind of stopped near some small trees and as I was talking to her, I see this small bird climbing up the side of the tree. I yell into the phone "That's a Brown Creeper! I have to go, I'll call you back!" and hang up on her. That is not the first time something like that has happened to her :)

Grebes!

2010-03-28T21:15:00.005-05:00

I have recently (as in about 15 min. ago) learned the art of zooming and cropping in my free photo editing software and therefore seem to be able to upload pictures in a timely manner again. Yay!

I went down to Montrose Harbor today to see the Grebes that I had heard about on the IL Birders Forum and I was not disappointed. I spent forever taking pictures of them, and forever whittling down which ones to upload, but I'm proud to say that I didn't have to download ANY pictures this time off the web to show you what any of the birds look like. These are all my own pictures!

So here we have a male Horned Grebe. I have a picture later which better illustrates why they're called horned. Isn't he pretty? They have a red eye (this is their breeding plumage, non-breeding is grey and white), white tip on their bill, and of course the gold behind the eyes.

Here is what I suspect is a juvenile male. He's too pale to be a breeding male (or maybe he's just not all the way into his breeding plumage) and it took me a long time to try and figure out what was going on with this guy. If you blow up the picture, you'll also note he looks kind of scruffy, which would indicate that he's molting, so it may not be a juvenile, just a male still getting into breeding plumage. This is by far my favorite picture of the bunch! So cool! These guys must be awesome fishers because I saw at least 3 chowing down on fish just while I was watching.

Here's a female Horned Grebe. She has a little of the gold color on her head and neck, but she's mostly gray and white with a red eye.

I was shooting into the sun for this one so it's a little dark, but you can see how the gold feathers on his head stick up a little bit and look like horns.

There were a whole bunch of Red-breasted Mergansers way out on the water, but the only reason I posted this picture, was so I could post the next one.

Action shot!

Actually, I have at least 4 pictures of empty or splashing water where I took the picture just as the ducks went underwater, so I was terribly proud that I got this one in action.

Here is an American Coot. I posted on them last fall and went into some detail about their feet and how they're actually Rails, not ducks. Well, you can see his weird, big toes in this shot. For some reason I couldn't get a great shot of him, although I have a good one of him swimming away from me.

At the end of the day I went over to a little pond on the golf course because I thought I saw a Coot on the pond. Then I thought it was a Ring-necked duck (which I saw a few weeks ago but haven't posted on yet), then I finally realized that it was a female Scaup. The white on the face threw me off.

I also hung around the hedge a bit and got this really good shot of a Fox Sparrow. They spend a lot of time on the ground, so I was lucky to get this shot of him up in the tree before he flew away.

Oh, and I harassed a poor squirrel. It's just so much easier to take pictures of squirrels than birds. They can't fly.
That's all for now. I'll try and post more pictures later :)

New Camera

2010-03-25T23:37:00.003-05:00

Izzie got to be the first one to model for the new camera :) I'll post more pics later once I figure out how to upload them - right now I can only upload one at a time and it takes a few minutes. You can look forward to a duck quiz (I saw 4 new species 2 weeks ago).

Spring is coming!!!

2010-03-10T21:18:00.005-06:00

So I went birdwatching last weekend and, you guys, spring is coming!! I've been seeing so many new birds!!! On Saturday I walked around the Point (the very mushy, melted snow saturated point) and ruined a pair of jeans in the process. (It's ok, I was going to give them away anyway, now they're going in the trash). Most of the winter I walk through the hedge area to get to the beach and it's just dead silent. Now it's very, very loud with very talkative birds :) Yay!!! I saw a Hairy Woodpecker, who was just not shy at all (saw him on Sunday too). I was probably within 3 or 4 feet of him freely moving around and he could've cared less. Previously in the day I tried walking along the harbor wall, but it was too muddy, but that's where the Mallard picture came from. They were all walking along the ice, but the ice was melting and was very very slick, so they kept slipping. It's very funny to watch Ducks slip and slide on ice. I'm not sure why. It's not like Ducks are particularly dignified creatures in the first place, it's just funny. I have video that I might post later, although it's not very good. But I took a picture of the male Mallard and posted it just to show you how ridiculously bright orange his legs are. Spring is so fun - all the colors on all the birds are just so bright! The cardinals are ridiculously red, and the red breast on the Robins is beautiful! Then I went down the pier and walked all the way to the end (which bends around to look like hook - hence the name Fishhook Pier) and I heard this weird sound. On the inner edge of the pier is a juvenile cormorant just hanging out. He was trying to dry his wings, I guess. I picked my favorite picture - blow up the picture and you can see his turquoise eye! Also his gape (the skin around his beak) is very yellow. Shorebirds like that (the egrets, herons, pelicans, cormorants, etc.) all get different colored skin around their mouths in the spring when they are breeding (some go red or green as well as yellow). So the yellow gape and turquoise eye are because it's spring. I was worried that he was sick because it seemed like he was coughing or sneezing, and it seemed odd that he was so close to us, although out of reach, and not reacting to us at all (us being me and the other people on the pier). But I went back the next day to check on him and he was gone, so he may have just been taking a pit stop. While I was checking him out, another couple came up and I got to expound on Cormorants and the other ducks (Goldeneyes, Scaups, and Mergansers) that were at the end of the pier. I thoroughly enjoyed that :) Just so happens that me and Nikki were trying to identify some Cormorants (Shags, actually) that she had photographed in Trieste, so I had spent a lot of time on wikipedia the day before researching them. So I sounded super smart :) They were terribly nice and I let them use my binoculars to look at the cormorant and goldeneyes. So at the end of the pier, I'm pretty sure I saw a pair of Redheaded Ducks fly out. I'll check out North Pond this weekend and see if I can get some pictures of some of them that are supposed to be there. Then on Sunday I went back to the Hedge and it was just alive with bird calls. There were Grackles (which had the most beautiful purple head), Starlings, Red-Winged Blackbirds (loud, loud birds), Cardinals, Robins, the Hairy Woodpecker again, and I also saw a Sandhill Crane fly overhead and a Killdeer came swooping in. Killdeer are loud. I chased him down and flushed him out twice to get a positive ID. In order to identify them, you want to make sure that there are 2 rings around their neck (not one) and as they are flying away they have kind of a light-orange tail which is, I think, diagnostic. They also have white lenth-wise stripes on the tops of their wings which are very easy to see in flight, but that's not diagnostic because lots of shorebirds have that for some reason.

Here's my cormorant (Juvenile, Double-Crested)

Mr. Clumsy Duck

And a picture (that I didn't take) of a Killdeer flying away so you can see the orange tail. And also the white stripes that run lengthwise down the wing that you can see when they're flying.

And here you can see the two black stripes on their neck.

Next week: I got my new camera this week and I'm going to take it for a test run this weekend sometime - hopefully it'll be sunny!

Scoters and a Wigeon

2010-02-28T20:42:00.008-06:00

I bet, reading the title of this post, you're not even sure if it's going to be a bird post. It is. I went down to North Pond, Fullerton Beach, and Montrose Harbor the last couple of weekends and got to see a lot of "firsts". Wood Ducks, American Wigeon, Surf Scoters, Black Scoter, Scaups, and a Hooded Merganser were all there. I'll post some good pictures of the Scoters from the internet, then I'll post my pictures for all of them. I also saw a Northern Flicker at North Pond which I've seen before, but it makes me hopeful that spring is coming because the last time I saw them was October. I finally downloaded some photo-editing software to my computer, so some of the pictures I've zoomed in digitally, so they're a bit grainy, but the non zoomed-in picture is too far away to be identifiable.

First up, we have a male Surf Scoter. I saw on the message boards that they had seen a pair of these and a female Black Scoter at Fullerton Beach. I didn't see that board post until after I had already been at Fullerton Beach on a miserable day and did not see them. But I saw them today and was very excited about it. I actually let out a little yelp when I saw them which, of course, made them swim away for a little bit. But they came back. I also saw some Common Goldeneyes, male and female, Common Mergansers, male and female, and lots of Gulls as well as the female Black Scoter.

Male Surf Scoter

Male Black Scoter (which I did not see)

Female Black Scoter

So then, the rest of the picture are pictures I took with my little Lumix 10x optical zoom point and shoot. Hopefully soon I will be purchasing a "megazoom" camera of 18x optical zoom. Here are the male and female Surf Scoters:

This is a picture that actually has the female Black Scoter (at top) and both Surf Scoters (lower right) in it as well as some Goldeneyes.

Here are 3 male and 1 female Scaups (Greater, I assume). I like their blue bills and the female has the distinctive white mark at the base of her bill as well. Their heads are actually green, not black.

And now for my favorite, the Wood Ducks. I love them. They make funny noises and they're small and they sit right next to the shore so I can take pictures of them.

Oh, and an ornery goose.

Then I was looking for the Wigeon because I had missed it last weekend and I was determined to find him today. I looked and looked and then all of a sudden, there he is right in front of me. I snapped one shot, turned away, and when I turned back, he was gone. Argh. So I keep scanning the non-frozen part of the pond which is full of mallards (primarily green, brown, and gray) for this Wigeon who is also primarily green, cinnamon brown, and gray, but in a different pattern. At the same time, people come over and feed the birds (which annoys me a lot) and they all scamper up on the bank to eat. So I went over there and looked and looked, and then there he was right in front of me again. So I snapped a few pictures and was done. His colors are actually quite a bit more vibrant than this, it was just getting to be dusk so it's not showing up as much.

American Wigeon:

Then here's the Hooded Merganser that's on the pond as well. He's tiny and very cute. This is a blown up picture here and then I have another one where he has his "hood" all the way up.

He's hiding behind the female mallard there.
Here's the big version of that picture that's a little sharper.

Another Wood Duck picture. This is a pretty good one of the two females. They like to sit on this fallen branch, but if you get too close, they'll hop off into the water and squawk at you. Squawk is really the wrong word for it, it's more of this high pitched, thin sounding call that goes up chromatically in tone.

So all in all, very successful couple of trips with a lot of new ducks seen. I really need to get working on that Life List now :)

Birds, birds, and more birds Part II

2010-01-24T18:52:00.006-06:00

Here's post #2. Some of these are pictures I took down at Montrose Harbor. Due to the fact that I don't feel like rearranging the pictures, this post might be a little schizophrenic. These are 2 male Goldeneyes down in the Harbor: Here he's diving (they are, after all, diving ducks)

These are 2 Common Mergansers. They and the Goldeneyes are very shy. Every time I would walk even remotely close to the water (and still a good 50 yards away from them) they would swim away.

Here's a flock of Mergansers out at the end of the Pier. It was very treacherous even just getting this picture. Later you will see why.

Here are the Canadian Geese nibbling on the edge of the ice. It was really funny sounding. It sounded like very quiet chattering.

Here's a view of the skyline from Montrose Point.

If you look closely, you will see that the pier is one big ice slick, which is why I didn't go any further out to look a the Mergansers.

A picture of the wall of the pier, covered in ice.

The cutest picture ever:

Duck tracks in the snow! :)

So all of the above was from a walk around Montrose Point in early January.

The weekend of MLK day, I was down at Indy for the weekend and Mom and I went on a hike at Eagle Creek. I swore to her that we'd only be there for a half an hour. We were there for 3. But it was worth it. We saw 21 different species including one I've always wanted to see - the Pileated Woodpecker (Woody Woodpecker's species). He was absolutely, drop-dead gorgeous. The red on his head is scarlet and he's a very large bird, probably 12 inches or so. I couldn't stop talking about him afterwards.

We also saw one of the pair of wintering Bald Eagles. We had been at the new nature center and as they were shutting it, one of the volunteers gave us some pointers on when and where to find them. We found the tree that they roost in, but they weren't there. But he told us that when all the Coots got off the ice and huddled together in the water in the middle of the lake (the only spot thawed) to look for him. So I saw the Coots do that and the Eagle just swooped down and kept trying to pick one of them off for dinner. Just FYI, he went hungry that night.

We also saw a Northern Mockingbird, Tufted Titmouse, Hairy Woodpecker, possible Broad-Winged Hawk, White-Breasted Nuthatch, American Cardinal (male and female), American Tree Sparrow, American Blue Jay (male and female), Black-Capped Chickadee, Mute Swan, American Coot, American Mallard, Common Goldeneye, Dark-Eyed Junco (new one for me), Red-Tailed Hawk, possible Belted Kingfisher (but only a glance, not enough to count him on my life-list) and apparently some other things that I can't think of.

Then I went tonight to Montrose Harbor and saw 8 Mute Swans (4 adults and 4 juveniles) in the Harbor. I'd seen the Mute Swan at Eagle Creek, but a fellow birder identified him for me, so I was happy to identify these myself. Also, I saw the most vividly red cardinal. That means he's finished molting and has his spring plumage. Yay spring!!! Also, last week Mom saw her neighborhood Cooper's Hawk with me outside her house again (actually down the street). I think I will name her Mabel. You thought I was going to name her Cooper, didn't you? And lastly, I've seen American Kestrels, but usually see them in flight, backlit, or puffed up. I saw one driving the other day that was probably a male because he had the most vivid coloring and he was TINY. So cool. I also saw tons and tons and tons of Horned Larks on Hwy 40 west of Indy. Those things are fearless. They always waited until I almost hit them to fly away. I knew they were horned larks because I parked for a second and they landed next to my car and I saw their little mustaches. :) Ok, that's all. Sorry it was so boring :(

Birds, birds, and more birds Part I

2010-01-20T20:57:00.006-06:00

So I kind of stopped the bird posts because I couldn't type so well with a broken finger, but the finger is doing very well and I'm back to full-speed, so I'm going to try and catch up on my posts.

Before Christmas I had quite a few experiences that I meant to blog about and just kind of never got around to. One day I walked out of my apartment to go to work and as luck would have it, I was running early that morning. So I walked out of the gate and I see a large bird swoop into the tree right next to me. I look up, and it was a hawk. So I chanced it and ran into my apartment to get my binoculars. When I came out he was still there, but I only saw him through the binoculars for a few seconds before he flew away. Still, I distinctly saw a gray cap and kind of slender body. I did the research that night and decided that he was a Cooper's Hawk, but I wasn't sure. Then, the next day I went down to Montrose Harbor to look for him (because I figured if he was at my doorstep, he was from the Harbor) and I ran into another birder who told me he'd seen a Cooper's in the park. I walked around for a while and flushed him out twice, although I didn't get a good look at him. So that was ridiculously exciting for me to have him right out on my street, like he came to see me in particular! :) I told mom that since I had given up birding for the winter (or so I thought), the birds decided to come see me instead.

So, then, this morning I walked out of Mom's house to drive back up to Chicago and I hear this very loud squawk, three times. Then again. I thought at first that it was a Blue Jay because it was loud and all that, but Mom has Blue Jays around her all the time and I knew that wasn't right. So I look up, and right in her neighbor's backyard is a hawk up in the tree. So I grabbed my binoculars and looked at him for a nice long while. This time, I'm able to make the identification almost immediately. Then I confirmed with a few field markers. You have to understand that the Sharp-shinned Hawk is a cousin of the Cooper and almost identical, so you have to look at some indicators. First of all, this Cooper was large, which meant it was a female and it's easier to separate from the Sharp-shinned. Male Coopers and Female Sharp-Shinned are sometimes the same size (males are smaller than females), but this was pretty large, so I knew off the bat it was probably a Coopers. I've posted some photos that illustrate some other field markers: the gray cap on his head usually does connect to the gray on his back. but the red goes further around his neck, whereas on a Sharp-Shinned, the gray comes further around his neck to more resemble a hood. So Coopers = cap, Sharp-Shinned = Hood. Also, the Sharpie has a smaller head and less of a neck, more resembling a Kestrel, where it looks like his head has been sat directly on his body. The tail of a Coopers is longer and the individual feathers have a more curved bottom, whereas the feathers of a Sharpie tail are squared off on the ends. Both Coopers and Sharp-Shinned have notches in their tail, although I think it's more pronounced in the Sharpie, and they also both have a terminal band on the end of their tail, but the Coopers is more buffy colored and the Sharpie is white. I also wanted you to notice the orange eye (not all Coopers have orange eyes, but the one I saw this morning did). Finally, the legs on a Coopers are thicker than an Sharpie. Part of the reason I posted the first photo is because he's calling and that's what I saw this morning. According to the books the call of a Coopers is lower and slower than a Sharpie, which is higher-pitched and faster and more resembles chattering. The one I heard this morning was definitely slow.

Ok, on to other experiences.

During Christmas, Nikki and I had the chance to go birding just a little bit in Ritchie Woods on Hague Road in Fishers. It was quite cold and we walked a bit to a clearing and saw absolutely nothing. But as we were getting back in the car, Nikki spotted a woodpecker! I called it as a Downy, but now I'm not sure it wasn't a Hairy (more on that later). We watched it for a while and also some American Tree Sparrows when I heard a distinctive call across the parking lot. As I turned Nikki grabbed my arm because some Sandhill Cranes had flown over the tree line overhead. It was awfully cool! I can't remember EVER seeing Cranes before in my life and I've seen them migrating once in Chicago and once in Indy (not counting going to Jasper-Pulaski). Then Nikki went back to the car and I sussed out the Brown Creeper that had been making all the noise earlier. On our way to lunch we also saw a Northern Mockingbird that I made her turn the car around to identify. Then, in the parking lot of Don Pablos as we were going in I looked up in the sky and saw a hawk. She was still in the process of getting out so I yelled at her "Nikki get the binoculars! GET THE BINOCULARS!!" (You kind of had to be there) I looked at him first and he was white with black tips to his wings. Nikki also saw that he had a gray contrasting head along with some other field markers that I can't remember now (sorry Nikki, please feel free to share in comments!) I brought the field guide with me into the restaurant and we identified it as a male Northern Harrier. Strangely, on the car ride over I had been explaining to her that I have a mental top ten list of birds I really want to see and I had mentioned the Northern Harrier! So Yay!! Apparently she saw another one later that week as well.

Building a Snowman!!

2010-01-07T20:05:00.004-06:00

Alternate Christmas Eve

2010-01-06T21:37:00.006-06:00

Since Nikki, Tyler, and Leah weren't home by Christmas, we decided that the 26th would be Christmas and the 25th was Christmas Eve. But here are some shots from that day.

Christmas Morning

2010-01-05T22:01:00.004-06:00

So I'm going to split up the posting of Christmas pictures because there's so many post that it would take forever to do all at once. Also, there won't be much in the way of explanation or stories because I have a broken finger and I'm not supposed to be using that hand so typing is slow.

My present to Leah. Her Mommy got a matching necklace.

My present to Abby - a stir fry toy. The wok sizzles and the eggs break open and everything!!

Michael's gift from Nikki and Tyler. :)

A few pics from last night

2009-11-08T21:09:00.002-06:00

My friend Amy posted these on facebook, but for those of you that aren't on it, here are just some snapshots from the other night.

Me, Katie, Paul, and Amy
Me, Anne, and Katie sitting on Amy's balcony overlooking downtown Chicago

Me sitting on Amy's balcony because we were 21 stories up and it was making me feel woozy (no jokes about the wine, please)

We were there for dinner, which was VERY good. Originally it was because Amy was leaving next weekend to move back to Baltimore, but she got her contract extended another month - Yay! (She's a traveling nurse).

Starved Rock again

2009-11-08T20:20:00.004-06:00

I went to Starved Rock again on Saturday. I just went by myself to see the Bald Eagles. I did truly try to do research to confirm that they were actually there this time, but couldn't find any real-time info and everything said that they show up around mid-October. Well, the reason they come down here, turns out, is that when the rivers up in Wisconsin and Minnesota where they live freeze over, they come down the river to eat at the dam. Guess what hasn't frozen over yet? So no Bald Eagles, or really much anything else to speak of, but I had a lovely time hiking! And I'm sore to prove it! I did see a few new species and a few old however. I saw a Red-Bellied, Downy, and Hairy Woodpeckers. The Downy and Hairy are nearly identical except for size of both their body and beak. I saw them in the same clearing so it was easy to see the difference. I saw tons of Black-Capped Chickadees, Blue Jays, Grackles, and Starlings. There were these huge swarms of Starlings and Red-Winged Blackbirds flying overhead. Not as big as I saw in Oklahoma, but still. One swarm of Red-Winged Blackbirds went right over my head when I was up on one of the cliffs, and it looks so neat because of the uniform red patches on their wings. Hard to describe, I guess. I also saw a Brown Creeper, which behaves just like a White-Breasted Nuthatch and has the same body type. He was whistling at me for a long time and then just flew up to me essentially. Has a really high pitched, short whistle as a call. I also saw a few Tufted Titmouses (I really want to say Titmice for plural, but I know it's wrong). I think I saw one of those at Eagle Creek the other weekend, but this time the ID was more definite. They have a gray crown, amber belly going into white, and a little black spot right between their eyes. They are actually slightly larger than I thought. I thought they would be around the size of a chickadee, but they're almost as big as a Cardinal. Then as I was leaving the park I drove down another road that borders the opposite side of the Illinois River as Starved Rock and saw a hawk up in a tree. I turned around and parked across the road from him and looked through the car window and was able to see an American Kestrel. I was able to see him up close and not backlit so I could see his coloring and the markings on his face. That was very cool. I've been able to identify Kestrels due to behavior more than once, but never got to see their fancy coloring. Sorry the pictures aren't organized, I'm just tired and didn't feel like doing it :( So here are my birds, and then a few pictures of the park. The picture w/ the waterfall is one of the canyons, the one w/ the stairs is Council Overhang (where the Indians that lived in this area had meetings), and the one of the river is the view from Eagle Overlook. There are two islands in the picture which are Plum Island and another one that the Eagles nest on in the winter.

American Kestrel White-Throated Sparrow (saw it at Montrose Harbor - the only thing left there)

Brown Creeper

Tufted Titmouse

View from Eagle Overlook

Council Overhang

Birding 11/1/09

2009-11-01T21:29:00.004-06:00

So, yesterday, actually, I walked out my front door to a peculiar sight. A dead bird was lying on my front sidewalk in the courtyard. And not just any bird, but one of the most peculiar birds I have ever seen. Very interesting black horizontal barring on the back of the head, eyes, way far back on the head, gray, black, brown and buff coloring, and about a 2 to 3 inch long, thin beak. Just lying there. Not a mark on him. No bugs, nothing. So, turns out that he is a rather shy shorebird called an American Woodcock. I took pictures that I have decided not to post because I'd rather look at pictures of live Woodcocks. So here's one, although the one outside my door had a much more amber colored breast. I'm not sure if it counts as "seeing" one, when it apparently drops out of the sky onto your doorstep. I hope to see a living one one day.

So then today I went to Montrose Point and saw quite a few new birds. I saw three Horned Larks out on the sandy beach where the grasses are. I've never seen any birds there. They were cute. They're actually the very last bird in my bird book, so it took me a while to figure out what they were. In the first picture, you can see his "horns". I didn't see them like that (it's a mating thing), so the second picture is more how I saw them. The ones I saw were 2 males and a female.

I saw a Fox Sparrow rummaging on the ground for insects. He was actually clawing the ground really hard to dig them up. He was easy to identify because of the grey head. He was hanging out with some Robins which were doing the same thing. There are quite a few rufous-colored birds with white breasts that streaked or speckled, and I haven't gotten the hang of identifying them yet. But he was easy because of the head.

I also saw a Blue-Headed Vireo. My first Vireo!! He had a distinctive white eye ring that extends across his beak to form a kind of mask. I think I've actually seen one before, but had been unable to identify it. He also has a yellow wash under his wings and on the sides of his breast, but his actual breast is white. He let me look at him really close up for a while, which always makes identification easier. Someone else that came out and let me see her close-up (i.e. within 2 feet, maybe?) was another Golden-Crowned Kinglet. So, so tiny.

As I was leaving the park I looked at the inner harbor and saw some duck-like birds in the middle that didn't look like Mallards. So I parked the car and ran over to see if I was right. I had heard that you can find different types of ducks and waterbirds there sometimes, but all I've ever seen are Mallards. So there were about 20 or so black duck-like birds out on the water. They were pretty far away, but when I looked at them through my binoculars I could see that they had a white beak. So I thought, "Easy identification", right? Um, no. Because I thought they were duck-like and didn't look far enough into my bird book. There were no other waterbirds that were all black and gray with a white bill. So I "bing"-ed it and found it right away. They were American Coots, which are Rails, not ducks. On the water the look like ducks, but if you see them walk, which I did not, you'll see that they have long-ish weird looking legs. I posted a picture of one walking and a close up of their feet. They don't have webbed feet, but have additional "lobes" on their toes to help them swim. So nifty.

As I said, I haven't gotten the hang of the brown/white streaked breasted birds yet. I THINK what I've been seeing a lot of (Mom and I saw them at Eagle Creek and I saw a bunch today) are Wood Thrushes. But I've posted a pic of an Ovenbird (1st) and a Wood Thrush (2nd). Wood thrushes are significantly larger than Ovenbirds, which is why I think they are Wood thrushes. The birds I saw were hanging out with Robins and were almost as big, whereas Ovenbirds are notoriously shy and are more the size of a wren, I think. They are ground dwellers, so you're always looking at them through brush and they're hard to see. When I've seen them (which, of course, they may not all be the same ones) they've had VERY bright rufous tails that seem to contrast slightly with their wings and back, but I don't see that in any birds as a characteristic, so I'm at a loss a bit.

So I'm very happy with my birding today. I was really only out there for about an hour and a half, and it was very relaxing. I would have preferred less people around, but, oh well. :)

UPDATE: So after posting this, I decided to do a little research on all the different types of brown/rufous birds with white streaked breasts. There are Veerys, Brown Thrashers, Wood Thrushes, Hermit Thrushes, Ovenbirds, Wrens, and many more. HOWEVER, I have definitely identified the birds that we saw at Eagle Creek as Hermit Thrushes. When we were watching them we noticed a few distinct behaviors and plumage. I noticed that his tail looked very red in contrast with his wings, which were more greyish. Also, they have a tendency to let their wings droop down and lift their tails high in the air. They did that over and over and it was distinctive. So as I'm doing the research in the Hermit Thrush notes on http://www.allaboutbirds.org/ it says that they do all of the above in behavior and that the plumage is also as noted. I LOVE identifying birds by behaviors or habitat. Also Hermit Thrushes are the only thrush to stay in Indiana year-round. Tada!!

Halloween!

2009-11-01T20:23:00.004-06:00

Anne went as the St. Pauli girl. AND she made the outfit! Impressive, no?

I went as Hera, Queen of the Gods. If you look really closely at some of these pictures, you can see my peacock earrings. The peacock was her sign. I am a nerd.

Bill is a "Garbage-can Knight". This is an extension of the "Drunken Bicycle Jousting" outfit from earlier this summer. We also thought he could have been Oscar the Grouch with a little green hairspray.

Me and Amy, the ref.

Amanda is a ladybug and Katie is a martian. I'm not sure about the boys.

Everyone.

Kitty was a blank canvas. She was wearing all white, and brought markers that we used to write on her.

After the bar, I went down and met Natalie at Gannon's. She's not wearing a costume because it was her 30th birthday!

Later we met up with Emily, who went as Madonna.

That's all!

Cranes and BlueJays and Merlins, oh my!

2009-10-18T21:28:00.013-05:00

I almost titled this "Cranes, Trains, and Automobiles", but it didn't make any sense. So on Saturday morning (early), Mom and I met at Jasper-Pulaski Wildlife Area to see the migrating Sandhill Cranes. We did a little research (very little) and knew that they met in a particular field to "socialize" on their migration flight path. They roost in the trees, then fly out in the mornings to this field, then fly out to the farmer's fields to eat during the day, fly back to this field to chat some more then either move on or roost again for the night. I was running late (because I didn't get up at 4:30am when my alarm went off, shucks) and thought I was going to miss the cranes. I was very upset. Turns out, they stay in this field and just kind of come and go all morning and really all day. I turned into the parking lot and opened my door, and Holy Cow these things are loud! They kind of sound like a mix between a Turkey and a Goose. Honky, but with a little trill to it. I have a video that I will try to post in which you can hear them all together, and then at the end (assuming you haven't thrown up by then - the video's a little shaky) you can hear an individual crane as he flies overhead.

So this is the field where they all hang out. There's a ton of pictures here. You might want to click on some of these pictures to see the big version, so you can see some of their coloring and stuff.

I love watching them land. This guy's getting ready for landing. They look so awkward with their long legs hanging down. Mom said that it's fun to watch them as they look for a spot to land - like they're looking for their friends.

This is one of my best shots - you can actually see the red on their heads.

Something scared them (maybe a coyote) and a bunch at the far end of the field all took off together.

This is a dance that they kind of do. Not many of them do it really. In the spring, there's an elaborate courtship dance that they do, but in the fall they just kind of flap their wings a bit.

Later, after we had our fill of cranes, we walked around the Wildlife area looking for other birds. Then we tried the Kankakee Fish and Wildlife Area, and then the Tippecanoe River State Park. The Fish and Wildlife areas don't have trails and I was super paranoid that I was going to get shot because it was hunting season. So the State Park was better. Here's a shot of of where we were walking.

A Canadian Goose that we scared away in a algae-covered bog. We also scared out a Great Blue Heron.

More Scenery:

A picture (that I didn't take) of a Red-Headed Woodpecker and then a Juvenile. I saw both (and probably some females). We saw lots and lots of these!

We also saw some Blue Jays, White-Breasted Nuthatches, Robins, and what we are reasonably sure was a Broad-Winged Hawk. We had to do that by process of elimination. We were standing in the middle of the woods and Mom grabbed my shoulder and we saw a very dark hawk fly away. It happened very fast and I didn't get a good look at him, but Mom saw a white tailband. After looking through the books we saw that there are only two Hawks that are in our region and hunt in the woods - the Red-Shouldered Hawk and the Broad-Winged Hawk. The red-shouldered hawk has a heavily striped tail and the Broad-Winged Hawk has a single white tailband that is highly visible. So I'm about 90% sure of that identification. It was funny, as I was watching him, he seemed just a little awkward as he was flying. Maybe it's hard to keep from hitting the trees?

MONTROSE HARBOR:

Then, today, I decided to just run down to Montrose Harbor for a bit for fun. I brought my camera so I could take some scenery pictures for you guys.

Here is a friendly squirrel. He didn't mind me at all.

Here's a whole bunch of scenery shots. This is the actual "magic hedge" on the right.

There is a bird in this picture, see if you can find it!

The view down on the lake of the Chicago skyline

This is the "pier" where I saw the cormorants and sanderlings last week.

The beach

I don't know what bird this was, but I thought the silhouette was neat.

This is the big pasture in the middle where I saw the Northern Flickers last week.

I've always thought that this dead tree should have a hawk perched on it.

The entrance

So I did actually see some birds. Right at the front I saw a little guy with a yellow streak on his head. He was a Golden Crowned Kinglet. Apparently the male sometimes has a larger streak with bright orange in the middle, so the one I saw was probably a female. I also saw an Eastern Kingbird, some Flycatchers that I didn't try to identify, and another warbler that I was unable to identify. Might have been a Nashville Warbler, but I'm not sure.

Here are the Golden Crowned Kinglets (not my picture, obviously).

THEN. I was about to leave and I saw a dark form in the air out of the corner of my eye. I look up and I know it's a raptor. She was pretty small, but I got her in my binoculars as she was soaring. She was right above me and I could see her really well. As soon as I saw her, I thought she was a Merlin. She actually hovered in the air right above me. They have a distinctive checkerboard brown and white pattern on the underside of their wings and barring on their chest. Other hawks and falcons also have this, but hers was very distinct coupled with her size. Merlins are only slightly larger than pigeons, which is their main prey. They're also called Pigeon Hawks. So she soared out of sight and I ran back toward the lake. I walked along the trail and came to a very abrupt stop as I saw her perched in a tree! And so I took some pictures! Very fuzzy, bad pictures, but pictures nonetheless. This is the first time I've every been able to "stalk" a raptor of any kind. Merlins are actually Falcons, not Hawks. So here's a couple professional shots of Merlins, then mine :)

I actually got to watch her chase a pigeon or mourning dove! At the time I thought the other bird seemed unconcerned, but that's before I knew that it was prey!

So here she is perched. Yay 10x optical zoom! And this is without a tripod! I actually had a tripod in my backpack, but not enough time to set it up.
So here she is soaring. A nice silhouette. You can see that her wings are a little thicker in the middle and then come to a point. The bulgier part means she's not a Peregrine Falcon, and the point means she is a Falcon. And you can see that she has a relatively long tail.

I couldn't decide which "perched" picture was better. This one is more from the side and the first one, she's facing me and you can see her tail better if you zoom in.

So that pretty much made my day. I practically skipped to the car. Oh, you might be wondering why I keep calling it "her". The females are more brown on their backs and the males have more of a slate gray color. She was definitely brown, so it's a female.

Birds

2009-10-14T20:59:00.006-05:00

I know I haven't been posting much, but I haven't been doing too much bird-watching. I went down to Montrose Harbor last week after going running, so I didn't spend too much time because I was tired but I did see some interesting birds.

As I was walking through, I didn't really see any birds in the trees, but I saw some somewhat large birds flying away from me that had white rumps. I didn't think too much of it because I thought they were robins. I went on down to the beach and walked out onto this concrete pier that goes out into the lake. I saw a couple of brown birds that looked like cormorants but didn't have the correct coloring. One flew up and perched on this big structure of some kind (probably used to have a light in it) and another flew down and floated on the water. I looked at them for a long, long time then when I got home I was able to identify them as Juvenile Double-Crested Cormorants. So, my first instinct was right. That might be the first time since I've started that that's happened :)

Then I was kind of bummed about not seeing too many birds and I just kind of rested my elbows on this concrete ledge that was chest-level and kind of relaxed. All of a sudden 4 little white and grey birds fly down and land on this ledge about 30 feet from me. I turn to them and look at them through the binoculars and they're just walking along, pecking at the concrete, walking towards me. So I lowered the binoculars and just watched, and darned if one of them didn't walk right up to me! I made a very small sound (oops) and he looked slightly alarmed and walked quickly away. I could have reached out and touched him. He was so cute! So then I watched them as they flew away and saw white stripes on their wings, much like Killdeer and Sandpipers.

On my way back through the hedge, in a clearing I got a good look at those white-rumped birds again and started stalking them around the park. They were large, about 12 inches, and perched both in trees and on the ground. They had SO much going on. Brown head, black beak, black "bib" on their neck, black "moustache", red heart-shaped mark on their nape, black speckling on their body, white rump, and, best of all, when they flew you could see the most beautiful saffron color on their wings, so that it looked striped yellow and black on their wings. They are in the woodpecker family and are called a Northern Flicker. After stalking them a bit, I realized that there were at least six of them and I wasn't the only birder out there checking them out.

Neither of those pictures show the black "moustache". One is red, and one isn't there. From the pictures, it seems that that can differ. Also, the eastern sub-species is the Yellow-Shafted Flicker, and the western is the Red-Shafted Flicker. The ones I saw were yellow.

So, when I went to Oklahoma, I wasn't able to go bird-watching, but I still saw some cool birds. On the way home from the airport I saw at least 3 hawks. One was coming right at me and I thought it had the head and size of a Kestrel, but I wasn't sure. Later that day, Christine and I drove to Target and as we were going down the interstate, which is lined with fields, we saw 2 different hawks exhibiting the same behavior, which was to soar close to the ground in small circles, obviously hunting, and then every once in a while they would flap their wings over one area to stay in the same place. I knew that I had seen this behavior described in one of my books, and when I got home to Chicago I looked it up and it is an extremely common behavior of American Kestrels. I wish I could have seen their coloring, but I couldn't. It's neat. So I'm very confident that those were Kestrels.

So as I was looking in the bird book (yes, I brought my binoculars and bird book to Oklahoma, why do you ask?) I was just pointing out cool birds to Michael and Christine. I showed them a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher and said that I really wanted to see one, but that they weren't up in my area. Well, I looked at the map and they're natural habitat is centered on Oklahoma! Michael and Christine both said they'd seen one. But since I wasn't going to have the chance to go bird-watching I didn't think I'd see one. On Sunday morning, driving to church, I was watching the electrical wires, as is normal for me now, and I saw one!!! I was so excited! Michael thought it was funny. THEN, on the way to the airport, we saw another one. But in that case, I was able to get a better look at it because we were waiting to turn left at a T, and it was right in front of us.

Also in Oklahoma are Great-Tailed Grackles, all over the place. The females and males look different, but they weren't any shyer than the Grackles here :)

And I saw a Blue Jay. I had forgotten how gorgeous their coloring is, and I swear I haven't seen one in the Midwest in years - anyone else?

So, that's all, but they were all pretty cool.

Oklahoma, Cole, Abby, and Birds

2009-10-14T19:27:00.006-05:00

So I went to Oklahoma to see Michael and Family (it's gotten so big that they are just "and family" now). I was a little sick unfortunately, but Christine said it wouldn't be the same if one of us weren't sick :) So I was highly averse to makeup only when the pictures were being taken apparently :)

Abby looks thrilled, no?

I love the little smile!

Big Yawn!

The sleeper I got him :) He looks slightly startled by this turn of events.

What happens when you tell Abby to smile:

Hee.

And a video that isn't terribly interesting, I'm afraid, aside from watching Cole.

New Leah pics

2009-10-03T16:43:00.002-05:00

Happy Birthday Jen!!!

Um, I think she wants the Sprite.

Leah!

2009-09-13T21:09:00.005-05:00

Yay! So I finally got to meet my niece, Leah. I had this secret fear that she wouldn't like me at all, but we got along just fine. I held her a lot while her mom ate. It was a novelty for Nikki to eat hot food, I think :) Anyway, here are some pictures. I was lucky in that I was able to schedule work around the visit, so I was with them for a whole week! These are in no particular order.

Mom with Izzie - they're kind of in the same position, right?

We put the baby bath down and guess who jumped in?!

Leah really liked her Uncle Ralph! They had a ball - I'll post some videos if I can.

And here she is with Aunt Diane

Random picture of me and Izzie. I lost all my pictures of her, so I had Nikki take some new ones.

I'm framing this one and putting on my desk at work. She's wearing a white dress that her Great-Grandma Shackelford bought her, and that's who's holding her. I just love her in headbands!

Great Grandma and her Granddaughter and Great-granddaughter.

Adore this picture. She's saying - Nana, I am not a doll that you can dress up - now get me out of this ridiculous bonnet!

Great-Grandma and Leah

Other Great-Grandma and a sleeping Leah

Leah with her cousins, Emily and Molly (who, of course, asked where Tyler was - she adores him)

Leah and Dave

Izzie was incredibly fond of Leah (really Brendan's) playmat. Thanks Jen! We'll clean the cat hair off before we give it back!

The Magic Hedge

2009-08-31T20:03:00.010-05:00

After 2 days of birding at the "Magic Hedge" on Montrose Harbor (about 1 mile away from my house). These are in no particular order. I'll try to add some more description later. The Magic Hedge sounds like this idiotically hokey name for a very small park smack dab in the middle of Chicago - but that's before you go. Once you go, you realize that the Hedge is, in fact, magical, and I say that without a hint of irony. It's probably one of the best bird-watching spots in Illinois and it's right down the road! The particular bit of hedge that it was named for in the park is amazing - there are birds everywhere and just SO many species. But the park actually butts up to the beach, so you can bird the migrating birds as well. Large parts of it are roped off to walkers so that the birds (and foliage) can live in peace. It's pretty cool. The only downside is that it doesn't really ever get raptors.

Gray Catbird - I saw one of these at Eagle Creek (ostensibly what got me on my current birding kick) and had to end up identifying it by his call, which is loud and sounds like a really annoyed cat mewing/yowling. Kind of like Izzie when she's hungry, actually. Anyway, I swear this guy was chasing me around the park on Sunday - kept hearing him, and then he'd jump out onto the trail. This time I was able to see his rather pretty rump - which is rufous-colored instead of gray like the rest of him.

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher - probably the only Flycatcher of the 5 that I'll ever be able to identify.
Worm-Eating Warbler

European Starling (juvenile) - an entire freaking flock of them descended on the tree I was looking in - all juveniles in some form of molt.

Purple Finch

Promonotary Warbler

Guesses anyone?
No idea? Here's a hint:

Yeah, that's right, Red-Winged Blackbird. I saw the female first (above), then the next day an entire flock of males all together. I never would've identified the female without some fellow birders coming along.

While looking for a picture to accompany my Male Red-winged Blackbird, I was linked to a story in the UK Telegraph newspaper recounting the frequent attacks being made by territorial Blackbirds in Chicago in 2008. The last line of the article: "Mr. Stoltz advised anyone targeted by an angry blackbird, to stare directly at it. If that fails, barking like a dog should keep it away". Crack journalism, that.

Eastern Kingbird - he sat and modeled for me for a while.
CEDAR WAXWING! I actually only saw the top half of it for like 5 seconds, about 2 minutes after I walked into the Hedge for the first time. I've been dying to see one of these since the 2nd grade because it was the prettiest picture in my bird book. So I'd like to see the entire thing some time, but it sure made me happy that I finally found where that stupid hedge was!

Caspian Tern - probably spent 20 minutes looking at 4 of them sitting on the beach. Finally identified them using the following field markers - Black tail, Black legs, Black tip on the end of the beak that I was only able to see through my binoculars while standing maybe 10 feet away. Another field marker is that their beak is redder and larger than other Terns, but without anything to compare it to, I had to use the other field markers to confirm.

This is how I saw them - standing in a field of Gulls with his black tail sticking out. This particular one is either a juvenile or molting because his black head isn't as striking.

Black and White Warbler (my favorite find of Sunday)

Female American Redstart was another one of my favorites because I had to look her up when I got back home, but I'm positive of the identification. The female has the exact same pattern of colors as the male, but in different colors (gray and yellow instead of black and orange). I could see the yellow on the sides of the breast, but then she flapped her wings and I saw all kinds of yellow which was under her wings. She's very pretty.

American Tree Sparrow

Also saw a Downy Woodpecker, dozens of Ring-Billed Gulls, Mallard Ducks, Flycatchers, Cormorants, a bird that may or may not have been an Ovenbird, a Mama Goldfinch feeding her exceptionally loud baby (or teenager, she wasn't very small, and she sounded like an extremely incessant squeaky toy), and some warblers that I couldn't identify. Also, there were Swallows EVERYWHERE. They call constantly and fly above your head constantly, so your eye is always drawn to them. I think they were Barn Swallows and Bank Swallows, but I'm not very good at identifying them because they're often backlit and they're fast little buggers. And for the third consecutive bird-watching session, I saw the Black-Capped Chickadee at the same time and location as the Woodpecker. It's like they're symbiotic. I also have 2 descriptions of birds in my notebook that I can't identify and don't have a picture in my head, so I probably won't be able to. That's frustrating. But overall, the Magic Hedge lived up to its name!

Illinois State Beach

2009-08-24T18:53:00.015-05:00

I went up to Illinois State Beach this past weekend to go birdwatching (by myself). It was interesting. It was similar to the Dunes up in Northwest Indiana in terms of terrain (obviously, since it was on the lake). In case you haven't noticed, I'm essentially using my blog as my birding journal, because then I can post pictures to it and typing is faster than writing. So the thing about going on your own is that every single rustle in the bushes scares the bejeesus out of you. I kept expecting some exotic animal to come out of the bushes and chase me. I'm pretty certain most of the sounds were chipmunks, but I only realized that after I got used to it. So the birdwatching started out pretty slowly. Aside from the migrating birds that I saw on the Lake, I didn't see an actual bird for like 30 minutes. It was very frustrating. But when I finally did, this little guy came and visited me for quite some time. I thought with all the notes I took on him and the amount of time that he spent with me that he'd be really easy to identify. Turns out that he was a flycatcher in which there are 5 distinct species that all look incredibly similar. I've narrowed it down to a Willow Flycatcher or an Alder Flycatcher, two species that can only be told apart by their song, and my little guy wouldn't sing. I'm going to call it an Alder because my research shows that they've been known to nest in that particular park. Although the following pictures seem different, it's probably just different lighting. The first is an Alder and the second is a Willow. The one I saw had the cute gray crown (which all the bird books call brown, but frankly, I don't see it) like the second picture. But this first guy just might not have his up.

So after him, I didn't see anything (except a brown bird that I couldn't identify) for a while. Then I found a trail that didn't look terribly well-used and eventually I came to a clearing that had a whole bunch of birds. I came upon a bench and was rather frustrated by the lack of birds so I sat down and heard, very softly some pecking which I knew was a woodpecker. So I looked around and found him. And he flew away. So I followed him. He was a Downy Woodpecker. The Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers are nearly identical except for 2 things. The Hairy is about 3 inches larger than the Downy and his beak is significantly larger. As I was studying him, I did focus on his beak because I was looking at the hair around the base and therefore I'm able to identify him as a Downy because his beak was small, not large. The one on the right is a Hairy Woodpecker, and the left is a Downy Woodpecker.

Black-Capped Chickadees so far have been around at the same time as the Woodpeckers. They must like the same habitat.

Then this guy caught my eye. He's a white-breasted Nuthatch. They kind of creep along the branches with their belly to the branch, just like in the picture. He was really easy to identify because of the unique way that his head is marked. I actually drew it in my notebook while I was watching him, and it looks just like that in the pictures. You can't really see it all that well in this picture.

Then I saw a pair of Eastern Bluebirds flying around. It was cute because it was a male and a female and they stuck together the whole time. I didn't have any trouble identifying them, although in the shade, he looked a shade darker of blue - not that bright.

I'm not sure if I saw this guy or not. It's a brown-headed cowbird. I thought that they were relatively large, but I saw a bird from the back that had a navy blue body with a brown head. It could've been a trick of the light, I suppose. But I never saw the face of that bird before he flew away.

There were tons of Goldfinches flying around, as always.

Then I saw a finch-like bird with a red stripe on his crown that I must have made up in my head because I can't find it anywhere. I saw him clear as day and wrote a description down, but maybe I was seeing things, because I can't find anything like it.

It was also during this time that I scared a stag out of the bushes. Scared me half to death. All I saw was him bounding away. His antlers were so freaking cool! I could see the fuzz on them, I was so close. I also had a chipmunk nearly run across my feet at one point. So after my tour of the woods I went to the beach. I've never tried to identify gulls before, so this was new. At the very end of the day I saw 2 Killdeer playing. They're pretty easy to identify because when they fly, you see a white stripe on the wing, plus their markings are unique.

So I kept watching gulls flying along the shoreline, South to North, and I saw white ones and brown ones. Much to my surprise, there are NO brown gulls in the bird books. Turns out that Juvenile Gulls are gray and brown and those are probably what I was seeing. I saw some Herring Gulls (much larger with the really big yellow beak) and Ring-Billed Gulls (smaller with the beak with black on it). You can't really see the size difference in the pictures, but Herring Gulls are probably 1.5x the size of Ring-Billed Gulls.

Ring-Billed Gull:

Juvenile Ring-Billed Gull in flight

Juvenile Herring Gull in flight

Herring Gull

I also saw Double-Crested Cormorants flying over. I would've never known they were cormorants in migration unless I had seen them at Eagle Creek and Starved Rock in their neat wing-drying position and seen them fly before. When they're migrating/flying they look kind of duck-like, black, and you can see their big 'ol yellow beak out in front.

And I finally was able to identify a Barn Swallow. I've seen Swallows before, and all the books said they would be really easy to identify because of their coloring - blue and orange. But I couldn't see the coloring before (which makes me think, now that I've seen them, that those weren't Barn Swallows). There were 2 of them and they were flying all around me and they were absolutely gorgeous! The blue and peach-color of their belly are just beautiful. And it's fun to watch them fly.

So that's all, unless I somehow identify my mysterious finch.

19

2009-08-19T19:53:00.004-05:00

So I drove up from Gas City, IN today for work and was mostly driving on state roads and of course was keeping my eye out for hawks. I saw upwards of 20 Turkey Vultures and I counted exactly 19 Hawks either perched or in flight. I would say there's a high probability that they were all Red-Tailed although I was only able to identify (at 70mph) 4 for sure - 2 in flight where I saw the black patagial bars and 2 perched where I saw their red tails. I've searched online and found some pictures of the 3 variations I saw in coloring.

Interestingly, there were 2 variations that I found and they were grouped by location. While I was down near Kokomo I saw what I'll call the darker morph (although it is by no means what an actual dark morph Red-Tailed Hawk looks like), and as I drove north I saw a standard Eastern Red-Tailed Hawk. The difference in these were that the ones in the north had a much more obvious and lightly colored red head as with these:

You can see they have buff chests where the belly band is barely apparent, you can't see the red tail because of the angle, their actual head and face is red, and the outer feather are a very dark brown that contrast strongly with the belly. Down near Kokomo, the ones I saw did not have the obviously red head, but it looked more like their head was the same dark brown as their back and the belly band was more apparent as with the following picture.

That's still not a great representation of it. I also saw one where part of his face was white. Also I noticed that there was some white spotting on some of their wings as well.

This is the view I got of about 4 of them, which is from the underneath as they fly. You can see that all you really see is buff/white and those black patagial bars. If you're lucky and can concentrate on it, sometimes the sun shines through the tail so that you can see a slight red tint to the tail, but the tail is pale underneath and normally that's all you see.

Then, I was driving and saw a hawk perched low on the ground. He happened to be perched slightly to the side and I was able to see, very distinctly, his red tail, but he had an entirely pale head, like so:

That could have been what's called a Krider's Hawk, which is a subspecies of the Red-Tailed Hawk that has the white head. Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawks can have pale heads, but their tails are not red, and are instead black and white striped. I remember thinking that if I hadn't seen that red tail I would've had no idea what kind of hawk he was and just thought he was a "pale morph". But actually the top 2 pictures are considered (kind of) pale morphs because of their white chests. Most Eastern Red-Tailed Hawks have fairly pale chests and are considered (kind of, again) pale morphs. So I'm not going to go out on a limb and say with certainty that what I saw was a Krider's because I gather they're somewhat rare, but it may have been the mix of a Krider's and a regular Eastern. I gather the coloring variations are genetic, much like our differences in colors of hair and eyes. I suppose if Kriders average about 1 out of every 20, I'm on par for as many hawks as I saw today!

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting to note the geographic variations in coloring and am curious if that is how it works or was just a coincidence (or all in my head).

One day I'm going to write a book titled "Birdwatching at 70mph". I'm a little proud of myself for being able to notice all those details when I probably only saw each hawk for about 2 seconds. And don't worry - I am very careful when highspeed birdwatching :)

Starved Rock

2009-08-17T19:48:00.009-05:00

So on Sunday, Natalie and I got up at 6am to drive out to Starved Rock State Park which is about 2 hours west and a little south of downtown Chicago. I've been wanting to go ever since I learned that Bald Eagles go there in droves. After doing some research I realized that the Bald Eagles aren't there until October or November, but we were itching to go hiking so we went anyway. Ever since Mom and I did some bird watching at Eagle Creek I've been interested in becoming a better birder. So I've bought lots of books and read them and I bought a new pair of binoculars. So here are my birds!

The find of the day was definitely the Osprey. He was circling overhead the Illinois River next to the dam. We were on top of Starved Rock (the actual overlook) looking down into the river. I noticed him circling and with their white head and brown ocular stripe (extending from the eye) they're unmistakeable. I saw my first one at the dam at Lake Shafer around 2000 and I've always wanted to see another one.

The other find of the day was what I think was a Red-shouldered Hawk. I saw two of them on telephone poles as we were driving on the state road right outside the park. I nearly crashed the car when I saw them! Then we saw one more as we were leaving. There's a possibility that one or all of these were actually Red-Tailed Hawks - my raptor identifying skills are not highly developed. But I'm pretty sure that at least the last one was a Red-Shouldered Hawk due to its very distinctive red-shoulders. I saw him flying away low over a field and was therefore able to see his back. Also I looked very hard for the black patagial bars (on the leading edge of the underside of the wing between its "elbow" and "wrist) and red tail that identify the Red-Tailed Hawk and was unable to see it. That said, I looked at the tail and don't remember seeing the distinctive black and white striping of the Red Shouldered Hawk either. The underside of the tail is pale for both Hawks and that's all I really saw. The Red-Shouldered Hawk is significantly smaller than the Red-Tailed by about 5" in body length and 10" in wingspan but I wasn't really able to gauge their size. I did find some information that said that Red-Shouldered Hawks are known to nest in Starved Rock, but they are more commonly found in the canopy of forests whereas telephone poles over fields are more the domain of Red-Tailed Hawks. But it was right on the edge of the forest. You can see where this gets difficult. Especially since they fly away as soon as you get out of the car. This first picture is what he looked like perched. Normally Red-Shouldered Hawks have a very reddish breast, but hawks of any kind have a widely varied colored plumage so you can't rely on that alone.

Here you can see the distinctive red shoulder. The third one that I saw flying low had a back whose coloring looked very much like this, but you can see on this guy that the chest is barred in a more red color rather than pale.

My final determination might have to be that the first two were Red-Tailed Hawks and the last one was a Red-Shouldered Hawk.

Anyway. We got into the actual park and as we were leaving the visitor's center we went past the Hummingbird garden and saw plenty of them.

We then climbed Starved Rock where we saw the Osprey (and plenty of gulls). Then we climbed down and climbed up the other side of the canyon to Lover's Leap and Eagle Look and saw lots and lots of these:

Great Blue Heron

Great Egret

Double-Crested Cormorant:

As we were hiking down we saw these little guys jumping all around in the brush. They were a fun identification problem because I've never seen them before so I just memorized the description: Very small, gray, long black tail, white and black barring on the wings, white ocular ring. They were so cute!

Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher

Behind us a couple of these guys chirped at us. They were slightly dull and may have been molting.

Northern Cardinal

In a clearing Natalie picked up on the American Goldfinch at the far side of the clearing. We saw another one up on the cliff walls.

Then we managed to get lost. Kind of. We were trying to find French Canyon and went down some stairs, then up, then down again...then up. But it ended up being a good thing, because at a bend in the trail this little guy caught our eye. He was very playful and seemed to like hanging upside down off the branches :)

Black-Capped Chickadee

As we were watching him, something black and white caught my eye. Then another, and another...we were within 4 feet of 3 Red-Bellied Woodpeckers. They hopped all over the place eventually flying above us. One of them was even pecking the branch he was on. You can't see here, but they really barely have a red belly - it's actually rufous (rusty) and some of them it's barely visible. Our guys' head weren't that bright either (it's not mating season).
I noticed a reddish-brown bird down in the brush near the ground with the woodpeckers and loftily explained to Natalie that the females look nothing like the males and that it was a female Red-Bellied Woodpecker. Yeah, not so much. The females look the same. I didn't get a great look at it except to say that it was strikingly rufous colored and around the same size as the woodpecker. Going on that alone, it had to have been a Brown Thrasher or Wood Thrush. The Brown Thrasher is around the size of a Mockingbird (same family) and the Wood Thrush about 4 inches smaller. The Wood Thrush's main habitat is forest, whereas the Brown Thrasher tends toward more marshy areas, but will also be found in forests. They are both ground foragers so I just can't make a determination since I was too quick to write it off as a female woodpecker and didn't look closely. I did find a few notations on the internet saying that Wood Thrushes were common at Starved Rock, but both birds are common to Illinois.

Brown Thrasher

Wood Thrush

Last find of the day (before the skies opened up) just a Common Grackle. He was difficult to identify because he was backlit on a tree way far away, but his all or mostly black coloring and tail gave him away.

So obviously, I had a blast. Next time I'll try to take pictures of the canyons and hopefully some Bald Eagles. I did try to take some this time, but they are all bad and very blurry, so you get professional photographer's pictures instead.

Izzie Pics

2009-08-15T01:19:00.006-05:00

Izzie's been hounding me to post pictures of her on the blog for a while now. That consists of jumping on my lap every time I sit in front of the computer and licking my hands. She's subtle like that.

Actually, I've just been wanting to post these pictures of my slightly overweight cat trying to fit in a box that is too small for her. I'm pretty sure there's an entire website devoted to that. The rest are just extras - some I've posted before.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love her little paws?

Whoops! How'd that one get in there?! Izzie doesn't like the competition - too cute!

And the winner is...

2009-08-06T21:10:00.003-05:00

Jeanine!!!! Yay!!!

SYTYCD - like quicksand

2009-08-05T22:10:00.002-05:00

So SYTYCD sucked me back in. I have been watching, just mostly on fast-forward. The episode 2 weeks ago pissed me off, and then the elimination made me apoplectic. So I kind of skimmed last week's episode (which was fine, because the dancing kind of sucked) and we're down to the final 4.

Here's the super-fast recap of the episode 2 weeks ago. Jeanette kicked butt and got kicked off (probably because the judges were too fawning both of her and of another routine). Ade and ballerina-girl got a contemporary routine about breast cancer that pissed me off so very badly. It was actually a very nice routine - that did NOT need a backstory, let alone have the girl dancing in a headscarf to make her look like a chemo-patient. Then of course all the judges cried and made it about themselves instead of the dancing (yes, we know your dad died Mia, but why don't you critique the dancing instead of using this show as a therapist). Hate to sound bitter, but I really hate routines like that. Boo.

So anyway, the final 4 are Brandon, Evan, Kayla, and Jeanine. I don't think Evan deserves to be there - he's gotten votes because he's "cute" (kind of like how Benji won Season 2 over Travis, who was a far superior dancer. However, Benji rocked most of the time, whereas I feel like Evan is a cut below the rest of the dancers left). I like Brandon, think Kayla is good, and adore Jeanine. So obviously I'm rooting for Jeanine. Why? Because she infuses her movement - both the big stuff and the transitions, with so much. So much what, you ask? I don't know. She just seems to infuse her dance with life and personality and grace and control. Every single moment. She doesn't stumble, she's never frantic, but her movements are still exciting and fluid.

I missed the start of the show, so I didn't see all 4 of them dance together. Then we have a Jeanine/Evan contemporary routine. Jeanine dances well. Evan kind of flails around the floor. He just doesn't finish any of his movements. Of course, the routine was kind of about Jeanine beating Evan up, so he's supposed to flail a bit, but I think it's supposed to look a bit more like dancing.

Oh, ick, they're individually interviewing the dancers. I think I'll skip that.

Solo: Brandon. Good choice of music, beautiful as always, but just a tad frantic. In fact, some people might call it "desperate". It's not always quite on with the music. I think he does have amazing jumps and tricks and dancing, but he's not very musical in his choreography. He tries, but he just dances all out and I think the choreography needs to be as much in the flow and control of it as in the high parts. His is just at break-neck speed the whole time. But of course, it's stunning.

Kayla/Brandon doing something. I actually liked it quite a bit. Kayla does have the most beautiful extension, but I feel like the choreographers have a tendency to rely on it too much. It's distracting to me when a girl spends half the dance with her legs spread quite that far apart. It's slightly vulgar, even on such a graceful girl as Kayla. There are some neat moves, but when I watch Kayla dance I feel like she never breaks through to the audience, especially when it's supposed to (like in a Broadway routine). The judges, esp. Nigel, go out of their way tonight to tell us that she showed personality, but she didn't. Her dancing is graceful, but thin.

Jeanine solo: Holy sweet jehosophat that was amazing!!! So, I've always like Jeanine's solos, but this was just stellar. She starts out mixing up some contemporary and ballet that goes well with the music (a Tango). She does choreography that is timed beautifully with the music between her jumps and then she does the most amazing pirouette ever. 9 times around. 4 with her leg out, 5 with it in, with the last 2 being excruciatingly slow. As Adam Shankman notes, it was a huge risk to do it because she so easily could have fallen out of it. And before she puts her foot down she even pauses, as if to show completely in control she is. I admit, I watched the solo like 10 times and after watching it I realize that she's correcting herself in the midst of the pirouettes. It's amazing and she gets a standing ovation. I just think she's so much more of a dancer than Brandon. He's more of an acrobat.

Evan and Brandon - do a kind of hard-hitting hip-hop type dance to Janet Jackson's "Nasty". And seeing them dance side-by-side just shows how much better Brandon is. It's uncomfortable to watch.

Jeanine and Kayla - A very beautiful dance by Mia Michaels, I think. Not my favorite contemporary but both girls are gorgeous. Kayla has of course, her stellar lines, but seeing them dance side-by-side, Jeanine just pours life into her dance and my eyes automatically go to her. It's not that Kayla does poorly, it's just that Jeanine adds another dimension to her dancing. If it were music, it would be the difference between a high thin note on the flute, and playing the same note, but opening your throat and blowing from your diaphragm and coming out with a nice round sound. It's obviously difficult to describe, but she just does more somehow. Also, let me take this moment to say that as much as the judges are saying that Kayla is one of the best dancers they've had, I have to disagree. I think that, in moments, she is, but you could say that about a lot of people. She has had flubs. I've seen her fall out of pirouettes, her solos are boring, and sometimes she even looks a little heavy in her jumps, and as opposed to Jeanine, she doesn't help her partners along at all, and rarely has chemistry with them. Also, I did end up watching the interviews and Kayla manages to come off as a little, well, bitchy. Considering that this is one of the few times that people will see her personality, she doesn't come off well.

Kayla solo: Boring. She doesn't use the stage well (they're at the Kodak theatre) and it was just ok. In fact, the judges actually end up judging her on her past performances instead of this one, which seems horrifically unfair.

Evan solo: Didn't watch it. Sorry, Evan bores me. He's done essentially the same solo every week, and it's good and sweet and smooth, but he doesn't belong in the top 4.

Kayla and Evan: Oy. I feel sorry for them. They get some kind of weird couples dance to country. Kayla looks awkward (which I didn't think was possible) and it's just boring and tacky. Boo Tony and Melanie. And Yay to Shankman for pointing that out.

Jeanine and Brandon: Paso Doble. I liked it, but somehow, I wanted more. I liked both of them in it, and the choreography was neat, but I think they took out some of the lifts. They showed them practicing some that didn't make it in. But compared to Kayla and Evan, they knocked it out of the park.

So, as i've made abundantly clear, totally rooting for Jeanine, although I wouldn't be too upset if Brandon won. I think another reason why I like Jeanine so well, is because she seems like she's really worked for this. She's not like Kayla who has the perfect genes for this or Brandon who has the obvious athletic ability (he says he doesn't even work out). She was a dark horse, but only because of her body shape and looks. Every dance she obviously is trying her hardest and just infuses heart into everything she does. I think that's why she has a chance to win too.

SYTYCD

2009-07-16T18:45:00.003-05:00

So I only watched half of SYTYCD last night. Sorry I didn't do a review of last week, but each couple was doing 2 dances and it all just seemed like too much. Also, I didn't really like the dances all that much last week (except for Jeanette and Brandon's as usual).

So this week each dancer will do a solo, there is a girls group dance, a guys group dance, and then each couple does a dance, but the couple's are new this week. I'm not going to do it in order, just by dancer.

First up all 5 girls do a Bollywood number. It's really really fun and the outfits, choreography, music, and lighting all go together so well. There's a lot of hard-hitting parts w/ sharp choreography that is really good and the girls mesh together so well that I had a hard time telling them apart. There were a few costume problems because they were so flow-y, but it was good.

Evan is paired with Kayla (the tallest girl) and they get the Viennese Waltz. They end up putting Kayla in flats and Evan in lifts to make them not look so awkward together. It is harder to dance in heels, so that seemed unfair at first, but if you look at Kayla's feet, she's on her toes during the important parts which must've been difficult. Kayla's lines are gorgeous and she looks stunning in her red dress. Evan did well. It wasn't my absolute favorite. I didn't believe the chemistry, and as Nigel notes, it's not a real Viennese Waltz -it's too fast and apparently doesn't do a lot of the right moves. I feel bad for the dancers when this happens because they just do the choreography they're given, but when other dancers have to do it on other episodes and it's more difficult it doesn't seem fair. Le Sigh. B

Brandon solo - impressive but a little too flail-y for me. He didn't show any control. However he does move really uniquely and the choreography is cool with the music. B+

Ade is paired with Janette. They are doing Hip-Hop. He's supposed to be giving her "funk". She's really adorable in this routine. I think she's one of the few girls I've seen do Hip-Hop that doesn't seem like a suburban cheerleader doing her regional dance competition. Also fun costume changes. Ade is pretty brilliant and they have a lot of chemistry. A

Randi solo - Oh, I love this song "Dream" by Priscilla Ahn. I do love watching her solos, it's pretty formulaic contemporary girls dancing, but she does do it well although she falls out of her most impressive move - a pirouette that she tries to make go around 5 times I think, but she really goes 4 1/2. I'm not even sure if that's the right term. Let's go with twirl. B

Kupono solo - Oh good grief, I just don't think what he does is dancing so much as it is coming up with interesting moves that you then put to music and call it (crappy) choreography. He seems to do ok when someone else choreographs him, but his own stuff sucks. On the other hand it is really interesting to watch and it went well with the music, so I think I'm just not his target audience :) B-

Jason is paired with Jeanine which I was nervous about, but they got contemporary by one of my Season 2 favorite dancers (runner-up, I believe) Travis Wall. LOVED IT! Good choreography, great dancing. They used this heart necklace thing as a prop throughout and I can't believe they didn't drop it. Especially when Jason threw it to Janine as she was running at him and she catches it one-handed, overhand - and made it look effortless. Man that was a sexy, freaking hot dance. It went with the music AND lyrics perfectly. This is the first time that Jeanine was really able to show off how good she is technically. I've always loved her, but now I think she's just amazing! Because the choreography is about friends falling in love (which apparently Jason and Jeanine have become pretty good friends) the chemistry seemed believable too (Jason just looks like this super-nice guy, so super sexy is hard for him to pull off). There was some neat synchronized side-by-side that you don't see in contemporary very much and the rest of it was contemporary without having a bunch of moves in it that I've seen over and over. It was unique and beautiful and I was mesmerized by it. They get a standing ovation from the crowd and the judges. A+

Melissa solo - She's on pointe and she's very good at extending and taking a moment between moves instead of just doing trick after trick, but it didn't hold my interest. I know, cerebrally, that she's a good dancer, but she doesn't do much for me. B

Evan solo - Whew! starts with a jumping splits off the stairs that he lands in on the floor. He looks so smooth and he has a lot of personality, but it needs just a little more zing. B

Kayla solo - pretty, but seems like mostly tricks and very little dancing in between. I think sometimes the dancers just aren't very good choreographers so they throw in a bunch of tricks because they know it's impressive. It is good and shows off her lines, but it seems a bit more like gymnastics. B

Kupono and Randi doing Paso Doble. Eek. Ooh, starts out a little clumsy and Randi is wearing the most hideous wig. They look like the couple off of the cover of a cheesy historical romance novel about spanish pirates. Oh, everything seems slow and clumsy, although Kupono is pulling it off better than she is. He actually looks sharp. This was so bad. D

Ade solo - to Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers -well his grade just went up by half a grade for that! :) Well Holy ****! He danced with his arms more than anyone I've ever seen, and did it well. All the choregraphy went with the music in ways you wouldn't imagine and he tops it out with a laid out full flip at the climax of the music (for lack of a better phrase). So neat. A

Jeanine solo - nifty, incredibly smart choice of music. It's instrumental and has a lot of sharp hits to it, to which she dances, sharply. She does the requisite number of jumps, but does some slow little sexy dancing in between that goes well with the music. This number is the equivalent of a sexy little black dress. Kind of sexy, kind of fun, and very sharp. A

Jason solo - huh. Don't know quite what to make of it. It's VERY laid back, but the jumps and dancing is very good, but not terribly showy. It's definitely more of a dance (or as much as you can do in 30 seconds) than anyone else's. I don't know if he'll get votes based on it, but he should be good based on his dance with Jeanine. B

Ade and Melissa do a Broadway routine that is to Hair which was apparently in the '60's and it's just odd. Like really odd and I didn't like it, but that doesn't mean it's bad, just didn't like the style. Very little of the dancing is either in sync or together, as a pair. There's a lot that looks like it's in that fake slow motion that people do to Chariots of Fire. Meh. But then I'm biased against Melissa. B I guess?

Janette solo - only ballroom dancer left and she salsas her little tata off. She pushes it hard and if you pay attention you will see some different moves, but no jumps (because it's not what she does). I liked it. A-

All guy dance is an African dance that is fine, but seems to go on forever. Maybe I was just tired by then. :)

So the rules change this time - the guy and the girl with the fewest votes go home. The judges have nothing to do! I think Randi and Kupono and Evan and Kayla might be in trouble.

Best solo of the night? I THINK Jeanine just barely edged out Ade because she made better use of the floor. Best couples dance - Jason and Jeanine. Jeanine had a stellar night.

As a note, I'm not going to watch the results show because there's nothing to judge and Masterpiece is showing Sherlock Holmes as played by Rupert Everett and I've seen it before, but he's so brilliant I'll be watching it again. Ciao!

SYTYCD

2009-07-01T21:48:00.002-05:00

So I'm going to ramble off a quick review here because it's late and I need to pack (see you soon Mom!!)

Janette and Brandon were again my favorite dance of the night. Nigel said it was the best Cha-cha they've every had on the show. It was really amazing and highly entertaining.

Kayla and Kupono had contemporary as did Caitlin and Jason. The judges liked Kayla/Kupono's better, I liked Caitlin and Jason's better. I thought that Kayla outshone Kupono because her kicks were higher and I just didn't like the choreography. I really don't like Kupono. I thought that Caitlin's outfit was ridiculously stupid, but it showed off that she can move her body in amazing ways and also she has a lot more personality. I actually liked the choreography and thought the judges overlooked how the details of the dance made it actually really good.

I thought it was unfair that Phillip and Jeanine got hip-hop again since that's his specialty, although with hip-hop it's been known to happen. I liked it ok, but I don't like NappyTabs choreography.

I also thought it was heinously unfair that they added a ballet pas de deux to the show for Melissa and Ade that allowed her to dance in point. She was gorgeous, but it offset that Ade didn't know what he was doing and he looked clunky and out of character next to her. I don't think Nigel could get any more self-congratulatory about having it on the show either.

I didn't like Evan & Randi's broadway routine, partially because I didn't like the choreography at all. They'd've killed Phillip and Jeanine's routine from last week, but this was about smaller movements. The judges liked Randi, but thought Evan didn't try hard enough. I didn't particularly care for Randi, I thought her movements weren't sharp, and I saw some moments of brilliance from Evan, but also some some really lazy movements from him as well.

Karla and Vitolio got the Quickstep, Kiss of Death, and I really really liked it. I think because it was brilliantly choreographed, the costume change in the middle was absolutely frickin' fantastic, and I think the music being all snazzy helped. But even I noticed that they kept their carriage really well and did steps easily that couples in previous seasons made look clunky and heavy. Really very good.

I think the bottom 3 SHOULD be Kayla and Kupono, Evan & Randi, and Melissa & Ade, but I think it WILL be Karla and Vitolio, Evan & Randi, and Caitlin & Jason.

What I've been up to...

2009-06-25T21:30:00.006-05:00

Misericordia Benefit and Silent Auction

This is our loot. I suppose if you look really hard you might be able to see the bracelet I got, but I don't think so. This would be Bill's second bar mirror in 2 years. Jessica got Sox/Twins tix, Kitty got a couple of baskets w/ baby things and grandma things, Katie got the chair, and Amanda got a painting.

Cubs game. I am currently 3-0 and one rain/tornado-out for Cubs games. I am good luck!!

Also, requisite cute pictures of my cat:

SYTYCD Results

2009-06-25T21:04:00.005-05:00

So, bottom 3 are, as predicted, Caitlin & Jason, Vitolio & Asuka, and Jonathan & Karla. They're pretty harsh on Jonathan & Karla even in the results show. They don't usually re-skewer a dance like that.

Caitlin's solo was gorgeous - very musical and well choreographed.
I couldn't see Jason's solo - stupid antenna
Karla - I actually quite liked hers although I did see some stumbles.
Asuka - same ballroom solo that we always see, not terribly good.
Jonathan- gymnastics,+ ballroom, not great.
Vitolio - too many jumps, not very musical.

Going home?

Asuka. I completely agree with Nigel that she hasn't grown. She didn't inhabit her character at all in the last dance and I didn't see any potential that she might be able to ever overcome that.

Jonathan. I kind of thought Vitolio deserved to go home, but Jonathan has kind of sucked and I don't think they could dismiss that.

So our final 2 classically trained ballroom dancers are gone! The only one left (who is not classically trained, really) is Jeanette who is a salsa dancer, not a ballroom dancer.

So Genre Predictions for next week (i'm giving myself a choice of 2):
Kayla & Kupono: Uhhh, Foxtrot or Disco
Janine & Phillip: Quickstep or Contemporary
Caitlin & Jason: Contemporary or Jazz
Vitolio & Karla: Latin Ballroom
Melissa & Ade: Foxtrot or HIp-Hop
Evan & Randi: Waltz or Hip-Hop
Jeanette & Brandon: Contemporary or Latin Ballroom