What will those silly birds get up to next?
Because so many of you liked the little sewing birds (and doesn’t that sound like it should be one of the twelve days of Christmas?) I cleaned up the rest of the photos and I’m posting them all as a gallery here. The additional photos are not as well done as the first two I posted, but they do let you see a little more of the display. Enjoy!
I get distracted easily, but as I recall, not too long ago I was sharing photos from our trip of a lifetime to Alaska. In this one, you see the sky behind the Anchorage visitor center. I love the green, growing roof.
This was the first day we were in the state, having arrived downtown around 11 the previous evening and had our first experience of the very long Alaska daylight in mid-June. Lots of skies to be watched then and there.
Here are a couple more pics of the visitor center.
Skywatch is a meme, a communal sharing, of photos of the sky from around the world. It’s just-for-fun, not-for-profit, and noncompetitive. To participate, blog a photo which includes the sky, then add its link to the master list at the Skywatch website. Enjoy, and visit the rest of the Skywatch posts when they are posted at 7:30 GMT today.
Once upon a time in Virginia, this was a gas station.
In the fullness of time, it became a gallery featuring local arts and crafts.
It put the gas pumps to good use.
That’s a glimpse into my world this week. To see the world through others’ eyes, visit “That’s my World”, a weekly meme sharing photos and impressions of all the world seen through the participants’ eyes.
One night we were walking to dinner from our hotel and passed a shop with a window display that I immediately adored.
As a kid, I always loved feeding pigeons at the zoo or in the park. As I grew up, I absorbed and internalized my parents’ annoyance with them. “Rats with wings,” they said. The birding community reinforces this attitude as well.
But an awful lot of people like them, Mr Wren among them. He reminds me of their close relationship to doves, and encourages me to feed them when we are in London or Venice or any other city where this is the tourist thing to do. So I guess I’ve returned to my roots as a child that loved all animals without prejudice, and enjoyed feeding and interacting with them all.
In that spirit, I give you the pigeons of Paris.
Update, 12/19/2010: I’ve retrospectively added this post to a new series, Pigeons of the World.
Skywatch is a meme, a communal sharing, of photos of the sky from around the world. It’s just-for-fun, not-for-profit, and noncompetitive. To participate, blog a photo which includes the sky, then add its link to the master list at the Skywatch website. Enjoy, and visit the rest of the Skywatch posts when they are posted at 7:30 GMT today.
As my non-birdy friends would say, “You had to go all the way to France to see ducks?”
No, but since I was there ….
They speak a universal language even I can translate. “Quack” means “feed me!”
If you’ve read my bio, you know I self identify as a nature lover and tree hugger. No surprise then, that I live in a place that also identifies itself in those terms.
It’s gray today. It’s cold, it’s snowing and raining, and our favorite local college team lost. Not just lost, embarrassed themselves. What better time to think instead of last June and the “Taste of” festival. So, here’s a glimpse of a local festival on Main Street back in the warm and sunny summertime.
For a look at other great places of the Earth, visit “That’s my World”, a weekly meme sharing photos and impressions of all the world seen through the participants’ eyes.
“Are you a birder if you don’t carry binoculars?” asks Charlie. It’s an interesting post, and he presents arguments both pro and con, so go take a read.
I’d argue that being a birder has a lot to do with interest and attitude, and not a thing to do with what equipment you carry. Two examples follow.
A few years ago when I started birding, I was very excited when I signed up for my first overnight, out-of-town trip. We carpooled to be ecological, and I was riding with the trip leader when we went by a schoolyard with a large flock of geese in it. I asked what they were, and was scathingly told that they were Canada Geese. How embarrassing, to not recognize such a common bird! No wonder he was annoyed with me. I timidly remarked that they looked different than others I’d seen, and was rewarded with a dirty look. You know where this is going, right? We met up with the other cars, and everyone was excited about the flock of brant they’d passed on the way to our meet-up. At that point, the leader of our trip and respected local birder said to me, in a loud voice, “We went right by there. Why didn’t you say something?” He had very nice binoculars, I might add, which he used as he repeatedly ignored “no trespassing” signs throughout the trip.
A more recent example is a local day trip to a park which contains a disc golf course. We met near the parking lot and as we walked around birding, the trip leader (again, a highly respected local birder, Audubon member, and owner of nice binoculars) repeatedly made remarks about the disc golfers. For example, “Oh, good, look who’s here with his hangover.” She spoke loudly and repeatedly about how disc golf should be banned and how all the players were stupid jerks. Worse, the reaction of the birding group was to think this was cute – more than one person told me how funny she was.
Are these examples of bad behavior, by which all birders should not be judged? Absolutely. They are individual aberrations, and I’d argue the same for obnoxious, annoying photographers. I still consider myself a birder, but if it’s binoculars that make the birder, I’ll start leaving mine at home.
