Apr 27
prehensile tail?
yes
YES
vanilla extract
Voting ended onMay 4
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Romania
seen from Netherlands
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Netherlands
seen from Singapore
seen from Germany
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
prehensile tail?
yes
YES
vanilla extract
SUCH a good read. @anonsally, I think you'll enjoy it too!
How one professor changed the culture of mathematics for his students
@anonsally thanks! Looks like they found a new pilot but it will take 4.5 hours for them to finish their inbound international flight and be ready to pilot ours. Good thing I've got no connections pressing deadlines on this trip! I'm so far managing not to stress (much). I may even be able to go have a drink with HAMTACO while I wait. :)
anonsally replied to your photo “Sometimes when I’m birdwatching”
uhhhh... how...?
1. Lumix FZ80 or comparable "superzoom” bridge camera (or a real camera with a nice lens, but I can’t afford that)
2. Arrange to have a peregrine do a flyover of the backyard
3. Follow the birb as it goes overhead, only then noticing that there’s a last-quarter moon hanging above you
4. Snap a shot of it
5. Back at the computer, agonize way too long about composition before deciding, “screw it. just crop it all.”
6. ...
7. Profit
anonsally replied to your post “Bird guides have pictures of "breeding plumage"--but how long does...”
Maybe I'm using the wrong guidebook.
I have a problem with buying too many field guides. For local birds I have Sibley, NatGeo, Peterson, Kaufman, and Birds of Western North America (Sterry and Small). And then I have a bunch more that are specialty guides to family groups, Dunne’s “Field Guide Companion”, Pieplow’s guides to bird sounds, and assorted other whatnot.
And I still get stuff wrong disturbingly often. :-)
fabulousfrodobaggins replied to your photo
WHERE DID YOU GET THIS?! I NEEEEEED IT
Barnes and Noble, I think? A while ago, a long while ago. Made by a company called the Noble Collection according to the box.
anonsally replied to your photo
omg that looks really hard!
It was extremely hard. One of the hardest puzzles I’ve ever done. There was a magnifying glass involved. All the pieces were the same size and shape and you really couldn’t tell if something didn’t fit immediately. But it was super fun to FINISH it.
anonsally replied to your photo “mood.”
there are also not enough slithy toves, and when was the last time you outgrabe?
In all honesty I have not seen a tove, slithy or otherwise, since 1846. I was in Inverness looking for sites related to the Battle of Culloden. I stopped under the shade of a copper beech and there, on the lowest branch, sat a lone tove for a second. Then poof. Gone. If it weren’t for the lingering scent of rosewood and blood, I’d have thought my eyes were playing tricks.
anonsally replied to your post “Today we are going birdwatching. I mean, more than usual.”
post a report!
We came, we saw, we listed.
The final tally for the 11th annual Carpinteria CBC was 155 species found by roughly 75 humans. That’s 3 species short of our all-time high of 158, and quite respectable, I think, given that our pelagic excursion was cancelled due to gale warnings in the Santa Barbara Channel and the afternoon sweep-up-the-birds crew was hampered by the strong winds.
It was my second year running things, and I learned a lot (again). I’m kicking myself about some of the common species we missed: no Rock Wren, no Red-winged Blackbird, no Sanderling, no Dunlin. If I’d done a better job of organizing we could have beaten our record.
But there were some definite highlights. I hiked up Romero Canyon in the dark and recorded the vocalizations of our only Western Screech Owl, and then, just as it was getting light, made a recording of (mostly) wind noise through which you can faintly hear the toots of our only Northern Pygmy-Owl.
Mario hiked up the Franklin Trail before sunrise and got what I believe is only the second Green-tailed Towhee reported in the county this year. (I’m heading up there tomorrow to see if it’s still there.) Patrick, birding on private property on the northern edge of the Carpinteria valley, got the first Painted Redstart recorded in Santa Barbara County in years. Craig and Jenny delivered the Costa’s Hummingbird they’d had staked out for weeks, and Glenn got the Northern Waterthrush in Carp Creek.
And the compilation dinner was fun. My partner in crime organized catered Italian food, which was yummy, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.
I’m glad it’s done for the year; organizing 75 birdwatchers to do a 15-mile-diameter big day is no joke, at least for an introvert like me. But it’s also kind of exhilarating to be part of a one-day effort on that scale. I’m doing two more CBC’s this cycle; Cachuma on December 27 and Santa Barbara on January 4. But those are just birdwatching, which is fun; someone else has to do the work. :-)