The intraweb, she works!
Sep. 13th, 2007 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
Not very fast, but she works.
I got to Aberdeen today, with a plan to go out to the Hoquiam sewage treatment ponds and then on to the Ocean Shores jetty and the game range, which are good bird sites not on my trip itineraries. The sewage treatment ponds have a lot of birds, and the tree-lined entrance road has had several migrant fall-outs recently, with an orchard oriole and Tenessee, magnolia and blackpoll warblers all seen over the past week. When I got there, the trees were birdless, but the ponds were a mass of brown pelicans, gulls and ducks. Just as I was leaving, Michael Hobbes turned up - do you think it means I have the wrong hobby when I can hang around sewage works and meet people I know?
Michael had just come from Ocean Shores and had seen the ruff and buff-breasted sandpipers that have been there for a couple of days, so I wandered over. I stopped at the jetty and found a couple of birders who'd been there a while and not found much, so I passed on the info about the Game Range and they followed me over. We met another birder there, and between us picked up an American golden-plover and eventually a group of three buff-breasted sandpipers, but dipped on the ruff. John had seen the Tenessee warbler at the treatment ponds that morning, so it's still around.
So two good birds before the conference has even started. And I've been to a bar and had a lovely chicken noodle soup and whiskey pepper steak with two glasses of zinfandel for under 13 quid. This is working out well :-)
I got to Aberdeen today, with a plan to go out to the Hoquiam sewage treatment ponds and then on to the Ocean Shores jetty and the game range, which are good bird sites not on my trip itineraries. The sewage treatment ponds have a lot of birds, and the tree-lined entrance road has had several migrant fall-outs recently, with an orchard oriole and Tenessee, magnolia and blackpoll warblers all seen over the past week. When I got there, the trees were birdless, but the ponds were a mass of brown pelicans, gulls and ducks. Just as I was leaving, Michael Hobbes turned up - do you think it means I have the wrong hobby when I can hang around sewage works and meet people I know?
Michael had just come from Ocean Shores and had seen the ruff and buff-breasted sandpipers that have been there for a couple of days, so I wandered over. I stopped at the jetty and found a couple of birders who'd been there a while and not found much, so I passed on the info about the Game Range and they followed me over. We met another birder there, and between us picked up an American golden-plover and eventually a group of three buff-breasted sandpipers, but dipped on the ruff. John had seen the Tenessee warbler at the treatment ponds that morning, so it's still around.
So two good birds before the conference has even started. And I've been to a bar and had a lovely chicken noodle soup and whiskey pepper steak with two glasses of zinfandel for under 13 quid. This is working out well :-)
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 03:50 am (UTC)But Ocean Shores - it's just a huge expanse of flat, with all these empty roads lined by lots for sale and many of the built houses are for sale too because who the hell would want to live there? The place stinks of hopeless and abandoned, and if it weren't for the fact that it has one of the greatest bird habitat diversities within six square miles in the hwole of Washington state, I'd certainly never go there!
I was 5,500 feet up Table Mountain yesterday in shorts and T-shirt, and today I was shivering in the salicornia marshes at Ocean Shores. Blergh. I found fewer of the birds I wanted at Table Mountain, but the view was far prettier!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 06:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-15 01:29 am (UTC)I did pick up two life birds, though, in a Baird's sandpiper and a completely unexpected bobolink - a stray migrant is always a nice find :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 07:28 am (UTC)::sigh:: Why do I get this little stab of homesickness whenever I read 'Aberdeen' somewhere, even if it's not the same Aberdeen and not even on the same continent? God, I am so pathetic.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-15 01:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-15 05:48 am (UTC)Aberdeen doesn't get so much rain. And it's incredibly pretty in the sun. And it isn't too big, but still has decent services / adult educational facilities. As opposed to here, where evening entertainment consists of choirs, golf, and quilting.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 04:36 am (UTC)Having grown up in Lancashire, I can see why that's a plus point....
Isn't quilting the traditional entertainment of communities where it's too cold to go out 6 months of the year? ;-)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 06:28 am (UTC)Did anybody make a rule that one isn't allowed to spend these long dark winter nights *learning* something fun? Like languages or programming? Because there seems to be an embargo on that in this faux-city I live in. You can't even do French or German (as A found out to his cost), never mind anything interesting, and all computing classes focus on the ECDL which, thanks, I wouldn't even want to *teach* because my brain would atrophy.
/rant. Sorry. This has been bugging me for years now. I think I'm ready to move. :-(
no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 12:48 am (UTC)Well, that's what people really did, but they pretended to quilt XD
Learning? Heavens, woman, next thing you'll be saying people should try to improve their minds instead of vegetating in front of the telly every evening. What a shockingly heretical viewpoint!