anonsally replied to your post “kaiyves replied to your post “Dipped on the oriole this afternoon….”

THAT NASHVILLE WARBLER IS THE CUTEST BIRB EVER!!!!!

It’s very much a “celebrity” bird to me. I’d always overlooked them up until this year. But I made a point this fall that I was going to push myself on warblers, and that meant that I’ve been able to see and appreciate several species that are rare around here and take some effort to see. I’ve seen this one several times in the last few months and it always feels special.

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kaiyves replied to your post “Dipped on the oriole this afternoon. Trying again tomorrow.”

You ATE an oriole?!?! ;-)

anonsally replied to your post “Dipped on the oriole this afternoon. Trying again tomorrow.”

Good luck! (but what does this mean?)

I guess it’s only fairly recently, and only around fairly hard-core birdwatchers, that I’ve heard the phrase “dipped” used this way. It means to try to see a particular reported rarity, but come up empty.

I dipped on the Orchard Oriole again today. But someone else saw him, so he’s still around.

A Nashville Warbler has also seen several times in the same spot.

And a short distance away people have been consistently seeing a Blackburnian Warbler…

…and a Swamp Sparrow.

All of those would be great if we could get them for the count. Ten more days…

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anonsally replied to your photoset “Vestas exits the Med As of October 24, 2017, Vestas 11th Hour Racing…”

ooh! has it started?

It has! They started Sunday in Alicante, Spain, exited from the Mediterranean Monday afternoon/evening, and are now en route to the turning mark just northeast of the island of Madeira, about 700 miles southwest of the Straits of Gibraltar. If all continues according to the plan they’ll finish Leg 1 in Lisbon, Portugal next weekend.

It has been quite exciting so far, and the coverage has been really good. They are posting video from the boats on the official site’s Raw content page, which is something I’ve been particularly whiny about wanting them to do in the past, so good on them.

Pre-race favorites MAPFRE have clawed their way from toward the back up into second place. But the surprise leaders so far have been Vestas 11th Hour, the team led by Charlie Enright and Mark Towill, the two young(ish) Americans who led the Alvimedica team last time. Their main sponsor is Vestas Wind, who sponsored a different group of sailors in the last race. They (Charlie and Mark) have picked up some top sailors for their crew, including Simon Fisher, who was navigator on Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (the overall winner) last time.

Wind has been easterly, meaning they had a quick run out through the Strait of Gibraltar. The wind funneled through there enough to give them gusts of 30 knots yesterday afternoon, which is when those helicopter shots of Vestas were taken. Besides some really good navigation from SiFi, they’ve been sailing aggressively, using a larger sail (the Masthead Code 0) when Akzonobel behind them changed down to a more-conservative Fractional Code 0 to get through the Strait.

Now (Tuesday night) the wind has pretty much died. MAPFRE has positioned themselves well to the north of the rest of the fleet; it will be interesting to see if they can get the new wind first.

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anonsally replied to your photo: lberghol: Yellow Rumped Warbler coming at you!…

!!!!! that’s an amazing story.

anonsally replied to your photo: lberghol: Yellow Rumped Warbler coming at you!…

Don’t mess with goshawks!

They’re amazing birds! Falconry is one of those over-the-top commitments that only singular obsessives can pull off, but in my secret wish-fulfillment heart where the imagination runs wild I’ve sometimes played the game of “if I were a falconer what bird would I want most?” 

I know peregrines are the traditional choice, and a gyrfalcon would be its own kind of amazing. But it would be hard to beat a goshawk for pure badassery. 

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halloweden
replied to your photoset “halloweden:
a v good day at one of my favorite places in the world…”

I totally understand what you’re saying! But I’ve actually grown to appreciate this place more lately since having many discussions with my art management intern advisor talking about the accessibility of art. I love that it’s a little oasis filled with both originals and copies of pieces you would normally have to go to a place like the louvre to see. I feel like in that sense Hearst accomplished making a museum for everyone

I’d love hearing more about some of your favorites there. I’ve only done the “great rooms” tour. @anonsally mentioned to me how much she liked seeing the kitchens, and I’d definitely like to do that tour some day.

I can’t imagine spending the $750 (!) for a private tour, but it’s fun to imagine what that would be like.

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I think the excitement of seeing it is seeing it multiple times… Really, we want people to have the experience of the multiplicity of it, and the only real way to do that is to come back and see it again and again.

— Mark Jackson, director

Shotgun Players’ Hamlet

for @anonsally​

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anonsally
replied to your post “Why”

most dadly answer ever

That’s probably a good way to find any parents lurking on Tumblr. My response was more or less hard-wired.

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anonsally
replied to your photoset “Carpinteria Salt Marsh, December 17, 2016[[MOR] Last scouting day…”

Looks like a beautiful day! I hope tomorrow goes well and isn’t too freezing cold. (are you having the same cold snap we are?)

It’s definitely on the chilly side for SoCal, but that’s not very cold compared to other parts of the country. Two of the birders in my team are visiting from Idaho. The other day when I met them they told me it was 9 degrees back home.

It will probably be in the low 40s at the marsh tomorrow morning, warming up into the high 50s by early afternoon. I’m hoping it will be good for birding: They’ll need to be out and about to fuel up.

But yeah, should be a beautiful day. A few years ago it was pouring rain throughout the count day. That was a memorable year, but not for finding birds. :-)

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anonsally replied to your post “Christmas bird count update after a cut

I covered the…”

Good luck tomorrow! and… wow, I’ve never seen (and maybe never heard of?) the yellow-crowned night heron! What a beautiful bird.

Thanks! And yeah, the YCNH’s are quite fetching, especially in the adult plumage. I just remembered that I got some photos of one of them today by ineptly digiscoping with my phone; give me a few minutes and I’ll post a few of those. 🙂

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anonsally
replied to your photoset “Best hobby or best hobby?”

Wait, is that a whole book about identifying hawks?

It is! And not just that, but hawks at a distance. Because you know, hawks close up would be a completely different book.

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anonsally
replied to your post “I mean if you count the KitR characters’ roles as also being KitR…”

But it’s not just that–Lenore, Annabel, and Poe are characters that the actors in KitR played in KitR, even without ATTV, right?

Why do I even post on this website? I just embarrass myself. Yes, of course you are correct. At this point I don’t even know what I thought my original objection was.

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My real worry re: Trump vs. Pence? Pence will actually get things done. Trump is lazy and inept and just wants to stir shit up. I think your worry is valid and all of that worries me too. But I think there is some chance Trump is actually the lesser of two evils. I don’t think he believes most of what he says. (Not sure he believes in anything but himself) and Pence does. But South Korea could probably easily provoke Trump into doing something idiotic. It’s all bad.

Yeah. Of course, it’s not enough to assess the odds of whether [redacted] might turn out to be a lesser evil; one also has to deal with the relative consequences of the ways in which each might turn out to be evil.

On the theory that his incompetence could mean he’ll just fail, including failing at doing objectively bad things, yeah, that could be a silver lining. On the other hand, I believe the federal government has important things to do that are in the public interest. If an incompetent administration could be relied on only to fuck up the bad things while still achieving the good I’d be a lot happier about their capacity for failure.

sylvia-morris replied to your link: We should be impeaching him now. But we’re not.

A year or so ago, in the midst of Bernie fever, I was talking to husband about the possibility of Trump as president and I estimated the likelihood of him using nukes in a 4 year term as about 20%. Now, with more information, I can’t help but feel that was conservative. So yeah, they should impeach.

Yeah. I don’t mean to over-simplify things; the ways in which stuff could go horribly wrong are a continuum, not an evenly cleaving pair of apocalyptic-vs.-merely-horrible. And I also don’t want to immediately jump to predictions of the worst possible outcome. There will be many much more mundane battles to be fought either way. But at least for me, the way I’m thinking today, I’d take President Pence in return for keeping He Who Can’t Be Named as far away from power as possible.

Not that it’s a choice I’m likely to have any time soon. This is just me working through my personal value system as I try to process what’s happening.

anonsally replied to your link: We should be impeaching him now. But we’re not.

chilling.

In thematically related news, it’s finally getting cold at night after that unseasonal warm spell we were having. I hope you, Poppet, and Widget are keeping warm.

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anonsally
replied to your link “Children’s Games”

wow, that was dark.

It’s odd. I didn’t think of it as dark when I wrote it. But re-reading it now I see what you mean, especially compared to how I’ve been trying to hold the line against negativity here.

In 2003–2004 I was doing a lot of politics blogging, and it definitely got to a dark place. It may partly be my memory of that that makes me want to maintain some separation now between my political and non-political blogging.

I don’t want to be too cute about it; it’s all still just me. I dunno. I’ll see where it goes. In the meantime, thank you for being there to provide feedback. I value that a lot.

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anonsally
replied to your post “Brief housekeeping note about my blogging behavior after a…”

You are posting a lot lately about your blogging behavior!

I blame the zeitgeist. Narcissism on the rise! Apologies for the metachatter; I’ll try to keep it to a minimum going forward.

echojar replied to your post “Brief housekeeping note about my blogging behavior after a…”

1) i agree with sally and 2) will you also be posting the blog posts from medium on twitter?

Yes, I will be doing that. So far there’s only one post on Medium, and it remains to be seen how much time/energy I’ll have to do more.

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I don’t think I can read it, but I’m glad someone broke down what he said.

There’s that old truism of political scandal that it’s not the crime [that’s so bad]; it’s the cover-up.

That runs the risk of sounding like I’m minimizing the badness of the crime (in this case, of Trump’s thoroughly gross conversation on the bus with Billy Bush, and the spooky way they both reverted to smarmy rape-culture-laced flirtation – if you can call it that – with actress Arianne Zucker when they got off). I’m not trying to minimize that. But what the tweetstorm from Leah McElrath does is to pick apart Trump’s two public “apologies” and show how they’re textbook abuser-talk.

It’s not like any of this is new information, and there’s the whole other thing of why it was this particular transgression that made (some) of the mainstream politicians who’ve been supporting Trump get scared enough to bolt. But it just makes it so obvious what’s going on when you subject Trump’s attempt to deal with the video’s fallout to this kind of scrutiny.

I’m now going back to trying my hardest not to mention that vile person or the deeply disturbing way that a large swath of my country’s ostensible leaders have minimized and normalized his awfulness in pursuit of their own selfish ends. Thank you (and anyone else who’s still around in spite of my descending into this) for your patience while I work through my feelings.

I mean for this blog to be a happy place. Rededicating myself to that.

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I had my fingers crossed ever since reading it that one of the Shipwrecked folks would pick it. It’s so good! :) So yes, congrats!

Daw; now I’m blushing. Thank you.

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anonsally
replied to your photo “It’s my day to lead the docent tour at the salt marsh. Lately it’s…”

Did anyone show up?

Yeah! I got three people. They were all locals who knew each other and came together. I think two of them had taken the tour before with a different docent (there are four docent teams in rotation; we each get one weekend per month). They asked a lot of interesting questions and seemed to appreciate my slightly idiosyncratic take on marsh ecology (coyote brush, galls, and birds: much info. everything else: not so much.)

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anonsally
replied to your link “Annalise Murphy told nobody but she came to Rio for this Olympic medal”

will you keep us posted?

Winds were too light to get a race off today. They’re going to try again tomorrow. If there isn’t enough wind tomorrow they’ll just award medals based on the current standings, which would give Annalise the bronze.

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funkysafari:

Vertically camouflaged by the shape and color of the surrounding vegetation, a giraffe literally disappears in plain sight, illustrating the power of obliterative coloration to conceal an animal of any size. Each giraffe has its own unique markings made up of dark reddish to chestnut brown blotches of various shapes and sizes on a buff background. These patterns help them blend into a habitat of tree-dotted grasslands in South Africa’s Transvaal- by Art Wolfe 

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anonsally replied to your video:

You should watch this.

Your recommendation seems to imply no gore, but still, I have issues with suspense, so I’m still unsure.

Slightly spoiler-y description of the film’s treatment of such elements after a cut.

Things I recalled seeing that might qualify as akin to gore, or that might make someone who is very sensitive feel squeamish:

• Very early on, I think someone has a bloody abrasion on their hand.
• [ETA: Oh, right. I forgot to mention Erin’s cameo: In the first shot, you see a not-that-scary-looking limp hand lying on the floor, extending through an open doorway.]
• Someone unwraps a blood-stained bandage from her forearm, revealing what looks like a bad scrape/abrasion (though I think it’s supposed to be a zombie bite?) about the size of a silver dollar.
• At one point someone (briefly) gets a nosebleed.
• At one point a character aims a handgun at another character.

And that’s it.

I had an intense emotional reaction to watching the film, but it wasn’t due to gore or suspense, but rather to the writing and acting and editing, operating mostly at the level of subtext. It was painful, but it was the good kind of pain.

Maybe get a second opinion from someone else who’s seen it?

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