Ducks! Ducks! Ducks!

Harlequin Duck
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

Mary and I had a great day trip to Santa Cruz and Monterey. We saw lots of great birds. We've been down to Monterey every January for a few years now, but always on our own. This time we decided to prove to ourselves that we could manage this trip on our own, and I think we did really well. We saw our target birds, managed our time pretty well, and didn't get lost.

The bird of the day was almost certainly this male Harlequin Duck. When first I saw this bird in Monterey Harbor, I was so excited I couldn't even say its name, I just hollered out "Ducks! ducks! ducks!"

Snowy Owl! In California!

Snowy Owl
Originally uploaded by Bill Walker.

Life bird! Life bird! Along with most of the birders in the bay area, we descended on Liberty Island Road south of Davis this morning to see the first Snowy Owl recorded in California since 1978. Here are some more photos. What a day!

Pre-flight defecation

We had a great trip with the Santa Clara Valley Audubon folks to Ogier Ponds today (for more details see the photos or trip list). This Osprey was one of the birds of the day, and capturing this moment immediately prior to take-off was definitely the photo of the day.

From the Archive: "Electric Build-it Set"

Growing up, I had a lot of building and science-oriented toys. This is one of the ones I don't remember all that well, but I thought we could all enjoy the artwork on the box, which is straight out of the Tom Swift novels I used to check out of the library.

Mom and I found this while going through my bedroom back home. Inside we found an old silverware tray with a small handful of wire snippets and pieces of sheetmetal. I'm not sure what all I built from this set, but I think some of it was pretty cool.