Monthly Archives: February 2010

Spring Cleaning

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These two pictures of a Redheaded Woodpecker were taken a week ago Saturday.  They were taken in the Park.  That was the last time I have been on the bike.  I had hoped to get back on the bike this last Saturday, but other things came up instead.  Today’s header was taken a few days ago.  It shows a gibbous moon, daring to be greater.  Today, Sunday, the moon is full.

I didn’t go biking on Saturday afternoon, because Anne and I were working together, upstairs in Dave’s room.  To be more accurate, I was working in Dave’s room and Anne was working just outside of Dave’s room, in the hallway.  Saturday, if we didn’t finish the job that Anne and Dave had started over Christmas break, we came darn close.

When Rey came to visit with us last fall, we felt bad that he had to sleep on the couch.  Neither of the two upstairs’ bedrooms were habitable at the time.  When Jane first showed interest in visiting Saint Louis, Anne spurred Dave into several room cleaning sessions.  When Jane’s arrival became more indeterminate, the room cleaning effort lost focus too.  This week, Jane firmed up her travel plans, this set our wheels once again into motion.

We hauled twenty-five trash bags down to the basement.  They’ll go out on Tuesday.  We also hauled three bags for Goodwill down.  It was exhausting work, we feel rewarded with what we have accomplished.  So Dave’s room is down and Dan’s room is yet to go, and then there is the basement.

Riverlands Conservation Area

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I went to the Riverlands Conservation Area today.  I was able to photograph half a dozen different species of birds.  The Riverlands is located in Saint Charles County, Missouri, on the western end of the Alton bridge.  It was under this bridge that I met Matt Shellenberg, an avid birder and a way better nature photographer than I.  Checkout his website here.

There were plenty of  Bald Eagles roosting around the Riverlands.  The individual above is one of two that I got good pictures of.  He/she seems to be keeping an eagle eye on me.  I suspect that they were all just hanging about, because this is their nesting season.

Most of the Trumpeter Swans seem to have departed the Riverlands.  I did find one small flock (less than forty) in the wetlands area that Anne and I had gone bushwhacking for them a month ago.  I spooked them as soon as I got out of the car and only got a couple shots of them as they flew away.

Anne and I have seen Common Goldeneyes all winter long, but this pair are the first that were close enough to get a shot of, that I was willing to publish.  The female is to the left and the male is to the right.  You can’t tell it from this shot, but their eyes are really golden.

Pictured above is a pair of Common Mergansers.  Again the female is to the left and the male is to the right.  These birds seem much larger than the Mergansers that I see in the summer on Lake Superior.

I was shooting pictures of a line of Mergansers and caught this Male Bufflehead.  This is only the second Bufflehead that I have seen.  I posted a picture of the first one that I have ever seen, just a couple of days ago.  I saw that one earlier this month at Crissy Park in San Francisco.  Even though I was closer to that one than the one pictured above, the above picture is a better shot.  Chalk it up to better light.

The sixth species that I saw was a Great Blue Heron.  It is featured in today’s header.  Check it out here.

Looking forward to Spring Break

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We got some news from the great state of New York this week.  That would be from David, of course.  Of the graduate schools that he has applied to, he has only heard back from UC Berkeley so far and he didn’t get accepted there.  🙁

He hopes to hear from the others soon.  In addition to the schools that Dave applied to he has also been speaking with a professor from Penn State, about their neurological kinesiology (see below) program.  He is also investigating Rochester’s KEY program.  This would allow him to continue studying at Rochester next year.  David has a meeting today with the program’s director.  Dave is also exploring with his current boss, opportunities for summer employment. 

Neurological Kinesiology balances the anatomy & physiology of your brain and makes changes in your behaviour patterns and responses simple and permanent.  This work is cutting edge as it addresses your subconscious fight / flight responses with amazing results.  Your brain has many glandular tissues that secrete a variety of hormones and neurotransmitters.  Neurological kinesiology balances these physiological processes, instincts, drives, and emotional responses, which largely dictate your behaviour and body function.

This was the first Google hit, on Neurological Kinesiology that I found.  I hope that this helps to explain things.  Frankly, I’m still mystified. 

All of this technical stuff sounds industrious, but I think that what is foremost in Dave’s mind these days is spring break.  A week this Sunday, Dave flies to Cancun, Mexico for a week of fun in the sun.  I hope that he uses plenty of sunscreen.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Dan has his own “Spring Break” like trip planned next month.  He’ll head west to LA and interview with CalArts.  He plans on being there over five days, so he ought to get to do a little sightseeing too.

We here in the midwest guard our airports in order to intercept errant neighbors snow-birding to the south. I flew under the radar this month with a one night business trip, that I stretched into a four-day trip to California.  Come to think of it, with about two plus weeks of posts, I haven’t been that much under the radar afterall.  Anyway, I’ve had my flight south for this spring break.

Anne’s spring break has been on the calendar all year.  We’re talking about going to Gatlinburg for a long weekend, but when does Rey become a slave to baseball?  We might have to wait until the season has started.  Jane is coming to town, all in the same week.  We are looking forward to celebrating her visit.  It seems to me that next month marks the beginning of winter’s thaw.

California Birding Roundup

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The picture above is of a White-Crowned Sparrow.  This is a pretty common bird, but I need to add it to my life long list anyway.  I rather like the picture though as it sits atop some brush at Point Lobos.

The male and female Buffleheads, pictured to the left, were photographed at Crissy Field in San Francisco.  Their photos aren’t the best, the darn things kept diving at exactly the wrong time.  I wish that I could have taken better pictures, because for ducks they are a bit exotic.

The picture below is of an American Coots, also from Crissy Field.  A rather drab looking bird, walking along a drab shoreline in the still cloudy and drab part of what became quite the bright and fine day.  I think that the zoo might have this species and that I have photographed it there first, but this is much more sporting.

The final picture with this post is of a Brewer’s Blackbird.  It is another common bird in California, but is not native to the midwest.  I think that this wraps up all of the birds that I saw and can identify in California.

Today’s header shows an American Pelican in flight.  This picture was taken in Saint Louis and not California.  I did see pelicans in California and even managed to get a silhouette shot of one that I have already used as a header, but this is a better photograph.

This month, on the first morning that I was in California, I woke up in my hotel room.  The wake up call had just come, I answered it and then turned on the TV.  I was hoping to catch the weather.  I flipped through the channels until I got a local news broadcast.  What I caught first, was the tail end of some news article, but what the announcer said stuck with me.  He was explaining about some video that had just been aired and was now posted on the station’s website, “You are going to want watch it in IE and not Foxfire, it will play much better that way.”   With that one sentence, I knew that I was not in the midwest anymore, but in Silicon Valley.  I never did learn what the video was about.  Frankly, when a TV announcer makes such an exclamation, the content that he was talking about is probably over my head anyway.

San Francisco Landmarks

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The pictures with this post features two of San Francisco’s most famous landmarks, the Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid.  The Coit Tower was built atop Telegraph Hill in 1933 at the bequest of Lillie Hitchcock Coit to beautify the City of San Francisco.  The Transamerica Pyramid is the tallest and most recognizable skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline.  Today’s header features the sign atop Ghirardelli Square.  Ghirardelli Square is a landmark shopping district, with shops and restaurants in the Fisherman’s Wharf area of San Francisco.

Anne and I met Dan and Annie for dinner on Monday night.  Dan wanted to start making his travel plans for going to California next month.   In response to his applications, he has received the following news.  He has had a phone interview with CCA (California College of the Arts), that he thinks went well.  CCA has two campuses, located in the Bay Area.  He didn’t visit this school on his last trip to California, which was limited to southern California, but on his previous trip out there.  This would be the trip  that he saw my folks and Liz on.  It is also the trip that his friend Cat drove up and down the state of California several times for him.  On that trip he did not get to see any of the southern California schools due to forest fires.

On Monday night, Dan was a little down, because he had just received a rejection letter from UCSD, University of California – San Diego.  This was a blow, because this is where he saw himself most likely going to school.  UCSD is a state school and the California state university system is under a lot of stress these days.

The reason that Dan is traveling to California this time is because he has an interview at CalArts (California Institute for the Arts).  They’re calling him in as a finalist.  Dan has applied to continue his studies in sculpture, but CalArts is most famously know as a school of the performing arts.  This is not too surprising considering that Walt Disney founded the school.  CalArts has a handful of alumnus among this year’s Academy Awards Nominees.  They are primarily associated with animated films, not too surprisingly.  Most of the nominations are associated with the movie Up.  I heard elsewhere that at one point ninety percent of Pixar’s artists were alumni of CalArts.

OK, I let the glitz of Hollywood overwhelm me there.  Dan has applied to two other schools, that he has not heard back from yet.  There is UCLA which would be even harder to get into than UCSD and there is Claremont Colleges, which is also located in the LA area.  Annie, who has applied to most if not all of the schools that Dan has, plus a few more, is still waiting to hear from them.

Schadenfreude

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Schadenfreude is a German word that means deriving pleasure from the misfortunes of others.  Monday morning I indulged in that pleasure.  I was driving to work and had just gotten onto the highway.  There was a clot of slow-moving traffic ahead of me, clogging the arterial roadway.  I waited my turn and moved over into the fast lane, which still wasn’t all that fast.  In an instant, I had a black SUV riding my butt.  This continued for a couple of miles, as me and the cars in front of me slowly passed the cars to our right.  I kept a safe distance from the car in front of me, all the while Ms. SUV hugged me ever closer.  Eventually, after Page, the jam broke apart.  I moved over and the SUV surged ahead.

Page is the northern terminus of the old Interbelt.  When we first moved to Saint Louis, the highway ended there.  It wasn’t even an interstate.  A decade later, I-170 was built.  The old Interbelt is still pretty much a lawless area, even though it runs through some of the riches areas of town.  Really, there is no need for a police patrol on the Interbelt portion of I-170 during rush hour.  There is too much traffic to speed there.  When there is a wreak, it is usually just a fender bender, someone texting when they should have been driving.   The cops and a wrecker show up soon enough and an endless traffic jam parades by and by.

So we had passed Page, I pulled over and the SUV roared ahead.  Do you see it coming?  While south of Page I-170 is rarely patrolled for speeders, north of Page, I-170 is almost always patrolled for speeders.  Sure enough, not a quarter mile ahead of me a cop light up his lights, pulled in behind the SUV and escorted it off to the right side.  All staged as a play, right in front of me.  That my friends is what Schadenfreude is all about.  The fact that just last week, I had seen the same view in the mirror as the driver of the SUV, only heightened the Schadenfreude experience.

This is the second winter in a row that I’ve escaped winter’s embrace, if just for a little while, by traveling to warmer climes.  It may not be snow-white here in Saint Louis, but it is certainly gray enough for me.   So if your still enjoying this winter’s blessings, please consider this post’s California flowers be a shout out to spring for you.  In Saint Louis, Schadenfreude might really mean deriving pleasure from the Missouri of others.