Good News, Bad News and My Inner Child

Rats! The bad news is Don isn't coming to bird this weekend. We'll chase cranes come February on the dead presidents weekend. The good news is Don isn't coming this weekend so I can continue moving stuff out of my future bedroom.

I hadn't mentioned it before but when Barbara was here last weekend she took all my Happy Meal toys that I'd collected in the manner of a mad-woman over a decade or so. I never, ever looked at the toys or used the toys, or even remembered exactly which toys I had. I think they were part of one of my 'manias' during which I sink into a genre, let it absorb me and then later walk away from it. Whatever the reason I had the toys, I don't have them now and my 'inner child' was a good little cherub and did not pout or fuss or even seem to notice that her toys are gone.

Barb's kindergarteners will enjoy the stuff. Hurrah! Bigarse empty space in my garage now. Will continue dumping stuff in preparation for retirement and moving. Don't want to find myself moving stuff I don't need or want.

At lunch yesterday I told Mommy Nancy that Barb took all of my toys. Nancy could scarsely believe her ears. She said, 'You got rid of your Legos?'

'What, are you flippin' crazy or something? Hell no!'

Get rid of my Legos? I don't think so. Let's not get silly.

Cryptic

Have thought about What the Bleep Do We Know? for days. It fits in to the stuff that scared the crap out of me in the early 1990s. I had an open mind then and “stuff” would happen that was so far afield that I would panic. Eventually I crawled into a back room of my brain, slammed the door shut and assumed the fetal position.

What the Bleep opened the damned door again and at the off, “stuff” began to happen again. As before it starts with little things. In this case, I spent Sunday thinking how I am not “only” lucky in my friendships, but I am lucky in all things. I opened my email Monday to discover I won a pair of tickets to a comedy show this Friday. See? BIG changes are not the rule, only small changes to start, things that are easily 'explained' away by the annoying scientist in my brain; loads of small changes, which perhaps because I had no explanation for the phenomenon before, used to upset me.

Inez, my Crescent City friend, keeps telling me to try and learn to accept it all and just now I’m assuming I can accept ‘it’. Will continue to feed my brain pleasantries on a daily basis.

Yippy Skippy! Had a chat and slide show from Terry. He has the same camera I do, a Canon 20-D and he romps around the same park I used to haunt with Chiquilla.

Terry takes great shots of the coyote, deer and birdlife on the American River. He’s full of useful hints. Right now I can only bow to his expertise because my photography remains hit and miss.

Terry’s latest show had some excellent shots of egrets, the prettiest of which was of a Great Egret in flight over the river – flowing & elegant. There was a nice pic of a coyote that looked so much like a tame dog it made me laugh. The animals in Terry’s Park are used to seeing humans, particularly Terry, roaming in their domain. There is a buck Mule Deer with a notch in its ear that allows Terry to approach quite close. It’s the same buck he photographed crossing the river a month or two ago.

I hope the weather holds up this weekend so I can get some birding in.

Birding Brewer

Yesterday I had my chores all lined up for me. There were boards missing from a segment of the backyard fence. I galumphed out there to measure the board and when I got to it and looked up, the boards were there! In place! Obviously repaired by the neighbors on the other side - and maybe they know why the boards got knocked down in the first place? Huzzah! Suddenly the afternoon was free from the necessity of a trip to Home Depot or nailing boards. What to do now? Start in on the gardening chores? Clear out the ghastly mess that is the back bedroom? Apply myself to improvements in general?

Hell no, time to bird! I decided to head out to Placer County, Brewer Road where the birding is always interesting. The last time I was there was a month ago and I found acres of Wilson’s Snipe, Long-billed Curlew and White-faced Ibis. All of Northern California was deluged recently so I was hoping for some nice shorebirds. I was not far off – I hit the mother lode for waterfowl; Tundra Swans, Snow Geese, White-fronted Geese, a few Cackling Geese, some Northern Shoveler and Pintail Ducks.

There were thousands of waterfowl in the flooded farming fields. The area is not a wildlife refuge but the birds really don’t give a rat’s patootie for official declarations of bird-worthiness. They just want someplace to rest and puddle about, which from what I saw, they are expert at. I never noticed before that White-fronted Geese are like Mallards, in that they love to go arse-up to forage/dabble under the water.

Snow Geese trying to fly in V formation but settling for a U

Lark Sparrow

Incoming! Snow Geese. The picture only shows a tiny segment of the thousands of waterfowl lounging about.

The Brewer Road area is fun. I got my lifer Northern Shrike there a few years ago. If I had my spotting scope bet I'd have found a few Ross's Geese. Must get out there again on the weekend.