Vancouver & Two New Ones

Yesterday in Vancouver, one of my favorite populated places on Earth, completing a whirlwind 24 hours tracking down two new lifers.  First, a Redwing, in Victoria, seen after waiting for four hours until it showed up to feed on holly berries with some robins. (Photo courtesy of Andreas Trepte)

Then caught the ferry back to Vancouver and was able to hit the Daily Double before the sun went down and saw another rare vagrant, a Siberian Accentor, which breeds in northern Siberia (surprise!) on both sides of the Urals.  It is migratory, wintering in southeast Asia.  Sometimes these birds go left when they should be migrating right, or vice versa, and they end up on the wrong continent! (Photo of the actual bird seen yesterday, taken by Nathan Ng)

British Columbia is having another mild winter, and the birding is great.  The Vancouver landfill has now become one of the most densely populated wintering grounds of Bald Eagles:  there are thousands in the area, flying around everywhere! (Photo courtesy of Brian Mahoney)

This afternoon at Cedar Grove Ornithological Research Station: banding and releasing raptors (these two are a juvenile and a female adult Sharp-shinned Hawk)!  Notice the juvenile’s eye is all yellow, and the adult is nearly all red, indicating that it’s about three year’s old - when it gets to four the eye is usually all red.

All Dancin’!

On what may end up being the warmest day for the rest of 2015, everyone in our fivesome hit their tee ball on the green within a radius of say 10″ on par 3 #14 at OCC.   No one made birdie, but all made par!

Expanding the Crop

The front fields had a lot of terrific wildflowers this year, including several impressive stands of milkweed, the favorite of monarch butterflies.  Exchanged wildflower seeds and milkweed pods with our next door neighbors today.  Really amazing how the pods dry out and eventually the flat brown seeds, which are attached to a fluffy white floss, are spread by the wind.

New Yard Bird #164

This week saw an American Pipit, scavenging along the beach, looking a lot like this guy from Google Images:

This fascinating yet unsettling article in the Daily Beast brought me back to last Fall, when we were in Paris, and I took these two photos in front of the Plaza-Athenee (the article makes specific reference to this):

Maine

Lots of lobster, kayaking, hiking and visiting the local hot spots; and look what we found today at Maine Botanical Garden (got to be in the Top 5 nationally, really impressive): 

The Man Behind the Curtain?

Jordan Speith, who took the time today on his way to the driving range at Whistling Straights to sign autographs for kids clever enough to gain access by going under the chain-linked fence!  Other photos from the PGA Championship on a beautiful Wisconsin low dew point Summer day:

Practice rounds, where the pros will take a couple drives off the tee, and putt for five minutes before moving on to the next hole.  

These guys will practice putting for hours!

Remember this guy?  John Daly pounded his drive down the middle of the fairway on 18:

Other business to attend to (Sergio and Rory at the Omega tent):

The Sand is Back on the Beach...

…and the transition continues.

16 Million Views in 3 Days!  Heading to be the most viral video ever… (post note:  actually, the most viral videos out there are at about 250-300 million views, so in all fairness, this one has a ways to go….but still)!

Three Picks

Now, would I steer you wrong?  Remember, the last time I made a pick it was ‘Transparent’, and that was pretty awesome, right?

OK, here are three more, recently hitting the airwaves:  1.  ‘Mr. Robot’, series on USA; 2. ‘Catastrophe’, series on Amazon Prime; and 3. the movie ‘Wolfpack’.