Photo: Cooper's Hawk Close Encounter

Cooper's Hawk 2
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

Woah. So there I was walking along the sidewalk between the Charleston Slough pond and the windsurfing pond when I hear a rustle like ten feet ahead. I look up and this lovely creature lands just ahead at eye level in a little tree. I just had time to grab like 6 or 8 shots before he got wigged and flew off.

Report: Trip to Malheur NWR

Wow!

We're just back from an amazing weekend at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon with our favorite birding guide, Steve Shunk of Paradise Birding.

Despite unseasonably cold and snowy weather we really enjoyed ourselves and got to see almost all the birds we could reasonably expect at the Refuge. I really recommend a visit to the high desert of eastern Oregon. It has a kind of serenity you don't find anywhere else, due largely to the striking volcanic rock formations and fantastic cloud formations. The sunlight at dawn and dusk is warm and velvety, you could shoot landscape pictures all day and never get tired of it. (note: I'll post some of my landscapes soon, I promise).

For you birders out there, I've posted my trip lists for days one, two, three, and four, and you can also take a look at the weekend total species count.

I had a few good bird pictures over the weekend, especially this American Dipper.

Riders

Great America
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

While looking for a Plumbeous Vireo and a Clay-colored Robin in the parking lots around Great America, I had several chances to photograph folks riding the roller coasters; this is one of the best ones

About this whole accordion thing...

So, my wife and my guitarist have been hassling me for years to take up the accordion. Although I might grudgingly admit that certain applications of that instrument (for example, in Zydeco music) are pretty cool, I'll certainly never tell them that. The more they talk about it, the more I dig in my heels.

Until now.

RSS is actually Simple?!

Conventional wisdom around our office is that any specification or standard that begins with Simple or Lightwight is definitely neither (anyone care to make the case that LDAP is truly lightweight?). Imagine my surprise this morning when I managed to add an RSS feed to my birdWalker site in about 10 minutes. If only WSDL, XML Schema, and SOAP were this easy.

birding website now "bloggier"

On Saturday, I updated the look of my birding field notes website to make it less cluttered and more blog-like. I especially wanted the front page to show details of the most recent trips at the top, with as many photos as possible. Feedback appreciated.

Dowitchers and Plovers

Dowitchers and Plovers
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

Dan and I combined his lovely new Canon 20D body with my 300mm f4/L lens at coffee break. I wanted to see how the AI Servo focus mode on the 20D, combined with its large shooting buffer, helps with taking shots of flying birds, a task which is very difficult even with all these amenities. I filled up 2GB (!) of Compact Flash in like 20 minutes. This is one of the better shots, slightly cropped. Here we see a flock of Dowitchers (smaller) with one Snowy Plover (larger) leading the flock. Note the black wing pits.

What's on the iPod: "COWBOYbebel"

The playlist-of-the-week on my iPod is the one I titled "COWBOYbebel". It's two parts "Cowboy Bebop" anime soundtrack per one part Bebel Gilberto's latest album.

Just in terms of story and visuals, Cowboy Bebop stands apart from every other piece of Anime I've watched. What really makes it special is its pairing of techno/film noir visuals with retro big band music. It's a combination that really seperates Cowboy Bebop from the rest of the pack, just as Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack lifted the Charlie Brown animated specials into the realm of classics.

Bebel Gilberto's latest (self-titled) album is more mainstream, less techno than her previous offering ("Tanto Tempo", also excellent). She mixes up singing in English and Portuguese this time, and the results are infectious, light, airy.

I couldn't say why these two seem to fit together; I guess it says something about my appetite for eclectic juxtaposition. Anyway, give 'em a listen and lemme know what you think.