Tag Archives: American Coots

Crazy Old Coot

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A couple of the guys at work were discussing this website, when I sat down at an adjoining PC. Less EMF (Electro-Magnetic Field) sounded work related and at some point it very well could have been, but by the time that I had arrived, it had definitely moved off task. Less EMF is a supplier of radio frequency (RF) related instruments and supplies. Much of its catalog looked mainstream, but of course those were not the sections that were of interest. I’ll give you three examples: a starter ghost hunting kit, a Brain Coat, “RF shielding for your mind” (think mob-cap), and Silverell boxer shorts, “RF shielding for your private parts” (definitely not TSA approved). I can only categorize this under WTF? However, if any of these items strike your fancy, I am looking for Christmas gift ideas.

Anne is working on the team that is preparing for the next round of standardized testing. Leave no child behind equals leave no child untested. To this end, she has been hauling our laptop into work with her. Naturally, said laptop had this website as its home page. When Anne fired up Internet Explorer through the school’s network, she got the following message instead of the home page, “This website has been banned for hate speech or profanity. If you need to access this website, please contact your administrator. I guess that I am not as PG as I thought.

Gizmodo made a splash today, with a story about gigantic white lined structures in the Chinese desert. These structures appear in Google Earth’s satellite pictures. Speculation was rampant as to their significance, from spy satellite targets to QR marks for visiting aliens. The story kind of took on a life of its own as readers started sending in pictures of other strange Chinese geographical features. Could this all be Google disinformation? Payback for Google’s mistreatment by the Chinese government?

The photos with this post show American Coots. At the Riverlands, there was a small flock near the road that I spooked and sent running across the water. You can see the results, in their water rippled footsteps. They ran into a larger flock that seemed unperturbed by all the excitement. According to Bill Coatney, the Coots had blackened the water the previous week. I saw about a hundred.

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.