Absent again

[tiggymalvern]

I'm off today for a few days, spending a long weekend with the mad birdwatchers, aka the Washington Ornithological Society annual conference. Which isn't a conference at all, just a series of trips out looking for birds with people who know what they're doing far better than I do! Weather permitting (and the forecast so far says it will permit) one of the days will be a boat trip thirty miles out to the edge of the continental shelf, looking for species that rarely come near land, like petrels and jaegers, and albatrosses! I've always wanted to see an albatross, they're such amazing birds, and at this time of year we should certainly see one and possibly two species ::fingers crossed::

We're staying at a hotel that we stayed at on the road trip, and though it claims to have wireless, in our previous experience the bandwidth was so overloaded that the google homepage took three attempts to load, and anything with pictures was completely out, so there may be little hope for LJ reading. I just hope I can get mail....

Those of you I owe fic comments to, I shall be taking them with me and trying to get them read in the evenings, so hopefully I'll be emailing you when I get back on Tuesday.

Comments

[solo.livejournal.com]

Have fun, and happy twitching! :-)

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

It should be interesting! Some of these people I've heard stories about from the other birders I've been out with - I'll be curious to see how they measure up to the gossip XD

[alcina2.livejournal.com]

jaegers

Oooh, you've gone all American ;)

Seriously, do they not come near land in the States? Every time I've been to the East Coast in the last month I've had Arctic and Great within half an hour...(the Pom took more effort!)

I envy you the pelagic though; I've never been on one!

[tameiki.livejournal.com]

Have a great trip! I'll be expecting many shots of all the birds you capture in your viewfinder when you get back :)

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

Oooh, you've gone all American ;)

When you're working from a Washington bird list and US bird books it's just easier that way than trying to keep them all straight!

They do come near land, but not in a guaranteed way, and only on the outer coasts - my nearby coasts are on the Puget Sound, where they never go. It takes me 2.5 hours to reach the outer coast and then you have to be in the right place at the right time, so I'm looking to to the pelagic to notch me up at least 10 species. I'm determined to make 300 birds this year!

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

I know :-) I'll be gutted if the buggers don't show....

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

Sadly, ocean-side birds rarely make good photographic material. A lot of the time, you're squinting at them through a scope over several hundred yards of mud - today's birds could have been at half the distance and camera would still have been useless! Hopefully I'll catch something closer over the next four days, though.