November 2, 2023 to November 4, 2023
Some dunlins
There’s a new bird to be reported, so it must be time to post again. And as long as the space is open we might as well spill a grab bag of photos into it. And, if you stick with it long enough there’s a bit of other news to report at the end.
Thursday
We’ve already seen a post from this day, from my short walk around the neighborhood and along the river with me taking advantage of a break in the weather to enjoy the fall foliage. Rachael was off on her own significantly longer walk then too, on a loop that began with a trip to the downtown UPS storefront to return my old Samsung phone for the rebate they offered when she bought her new one. After that she continued south to walk across Tilikum Crossing before returning north along the east bank.
Along the way, she took the opportunity to familiarize herself with the camera on her new S23. Nice!
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Friday
It’s still dark and misty when I walk the block and a half over to Lovejoy Baker’s for my coffee and almond croissant fix when they open at seven. When I return the sun is up if not quite really out, and I’m stunned by the color of the sidewalk beside the park. I wait for a woman whose taking her own shot of her dog lying down in the leaves to move on, and then take one of my own using the only camera I have with me - my iPad.
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Afterwards, we’re both out on foot again making use of a break in the rains that neither of us expected. She takes a long walk to the northwest and out Leif Erickson Drive, and I head back to the waterfront and walk north this time. No new birds today, but some old ones well worth seeing. It’s really more interesting walking along the river in the winter months when there’s more activity.
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https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/58996/browse_photos?term_id=12&term_value_id=14&place_id=10
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Saturday
The weather just keeps on giving, and we’re both out again to soak in what is surely one of the last fine days of autumn. Rachael’s off to Leif Erickson Drive again, a new destination for her that she finds she really likes; and I hop in the car to head out to Bybee Lake to check out the bird scene there. I’d much rather bike out, but that will need to wait another two weeks.
At first I don’t see many birds at all, but it’s wonderful just being out there enjoying the solitude and admiring the colors of autumn and the fallen leaves blanketing the trail.
Toward the end of the short nature trail though I come to a lookout and see many birds out on the lake - typically though, they’re all too far off to be able to get a decent shot of or even for the most part to identify. I’m patient though, and just stand at the end of the trail and watch; and over the next half hour many of them gradually move in closer. I’m sure that with a powerful scope or binoculars I could do better than what I can bring closer with the camera, but carting equipment like that around has never really worked for me. Still, I do pretty well and identify a decent enough list: Canada goose, great blue heron, great egret, little egret, double crested cormorant, coot, American crow, song sparrow, Bewick’s wren, northern shoveler, green-winged teal, greater yellowlegs, hooded merganser, gadwall, mallard, American Robin, American wigeon, common starling. And finally something new: a small flock of dunlins. I suspect I’ve seen this bird before but never realized it and just thought they were another form of sandpiper. They’re a little larger and stockier though, and their behavior is subtly different - it’s what led me to realize I was seeing something new in the first place.
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In other news
I broke a tooth today, oh, boy.
Actually I don’t know when I broke it - I just realized there was some roughness when I ran my tongue over it this morning. It’s not like the one I broke in England two summers back, when I knew at the time when it broke because I still had a fragment in my mouth. I don’t remember anything happening this time, and wonder if it didn’t occur somehow when I was unconscious on the operating table a few days earlier.
In any case, it’s Saturday and there’s nothing to be done about it now other than to feel thankful that there’s no pain and that I’m in town for a few weeks. I’ll provide an update when I know more.
In more upbeat news, we made our decision and are moving forward on next year’s plan. We bought our flight to Barcelona (a pretty good deal - a one stop with a layover in LA for $538 each, one way). And then we booked our sailings from Barcelona to Alcudia, and from Palma to Denia, and from Santander to Plymouth. And now we’re fine-toothing the draft itinerary I’ve been honing for the past several months, looking for improvements together and making bookings as we go. We’re about halfway through Spain now, and I suspect we’ll book everything through to Santander in the next couple of weeks - under the usual model that everything will be cancellable if we find reason to make adjustments along the way.
And we went to a real, live play last night! We were avid theatergoers for years before we uprooted, maintaining subscriptions to three different local theaters - we probably averaged a dozen to fifteen plays per year for over a decade. That’s all in the past now though and thinking back, we don’t remember having seen a play since before Covid.
This one was one of the greats, and reminds me of how much we loved theater in the past. It’s a set of encounters by two long-time friends sharing pints in an Irish Pub. They’re the only actors, save for the bartender who’s mostly silent in the background working on a crossword puzzle - performed by the director, Scott Yarbrough. Otherwise, it’s just the two friends, talking - about the imminent death of one character’s 94 year old father, as they carry on a ceaseless patter of dry humor, one-upmanships and exaggerations. It’s about aging and friendship and the meaning of life.
Everything about it resonated with me, as an older audience member who’s aged in parallel along with these three actors that have all been favorites of ours for about twenty years. It’s moving just to see them in action again, in a way that reinforces the themes of the play.
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2023 Bird List
207. Dunlin
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I'd like to find a good deal on tickets to Europe! We keep looking. Now we have changed our starting point to Frankfurt, saving the hills of Portugal for the finish. that we are fairly sure on.
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