Birds of Europe

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

Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk (picture heavily edited)

Katie & Paul's Wedding Adventure

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

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

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

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