New Format, dumped one ,gone to three mat

Well, I was warned by my "conflictees" that they would block me from Inland County Birds, do not know if they did . So no shots from this side. But accessing is just impossible, my access is compromised, and I need to revise my Yahoo account each time I try to leave a message so. screw it. In an effort to be pleasent, doing pretty damn good so far, I will split my e-mails in half. First half Bird stuff, then a "DO NOT GO PAST HERE NOTE".
Then my whatever notes. So we will give it a try.
Part one of two, being the first part of two, with the second being last, as there are only two parts. (I do not think I have upset anyone yet)
Oh-oh screwed up already.Christ !
If you are dyslexic, then you will read this after you read the second part, thus making the first part the second part.
If you are blind do not have a dyslexic person read this to you or you will miss the point.
BIrds. Went out with no set plan just to bird. Lots of sparrows of almost all the expected flavours, a dawn ladder Back, a quit time Gila nicely bracketed several sparrows.and a townsends Solitaire neat yard bird and a Kingfisher.You get 2 (Two) Sage Sparrow shots (a very very good bird at this time of the year) oh! (For me)
Why we all ask? Because I hit the wrong damn button.
But it emphasises my excitement. This thing came crashing out of some scrub like a mini Shrike, landed on this fence and begged to an adult who left, enough time to take 8 high speed lucky shots. Do Sage Sparrows breed in Riverside county ? Cos this is a home boy
Oh dear did not get around to vikkification. Will try tomorrow.
rh

I'm knackered !

Knackered a great word.Describes my physical and emotional state right now. Only to be resurected by the knowledge that a Guinness awaits me in the "Ambient temperature of the Blue Bell inn in Cottinghams cellar " Ah, the ale of the gods !
picture ? If you have a none photo chop/shopped picture of the upper and lower tail feather patterns of two fighting Juv Common Sands in the same frame,THEN all I have to say is.... good for you.
I am going into pleasent mode for a couple of days, at the suggestion of a nice friend who suggests that "If you would only just regard everything in a more positive context, you would be a much happier and wholer person, and not so tense". I feel happyness coursing through my veins already. Because after spending 4 and 1/2 hours spitting at the IRS answering machine, and almost dying of dehydration and listening to their crappy god dammnable renditions of the four seasons, and being put on hold so I can be put on hold, over a past tax tardy fee from 1996, that would not buy a days worth of secret service coverage for Obamas friggin dog nor Chenys shot gun shell bill, and the secret agents that pick those up, I realise this is the way to go. Peace,harmony,inner bliss, and positive attitude. My new Mantra.
"May you enter the gentle tidal nurturing life beds of your perspective and draw in the love and soulful ambience of mans compassion and the calming balms of the knowledge that the chargers had better win good on Sunday,cos I get me da spread, and dat de fing 'cos I need ma Bling" I think I heard that from a guy on Oprah. A rapper called "Two pac chopra Phil "
Another get rich on platitudes assh.. OOps nearly slipped. OHMMMMMM
Roger

maths

I love Maths. How far was I from this stunning bird ? Calculate knowing the following numbers, Distance from Pole less than 30 feet, height of standard telephone hmmm ...........Scientific Wild Ass Guess (or SWAG as "we in the know call it)Pretty close to 30 feet. Then the camera was about 6ft off the ground, then you have to take out the little bitty triangle behind me ,and apply Monty Pythogerouses theory to it. And the computer said compensate for optical curvature of the compound lenses, another 3 hours. Any way I was close enough for this pic. Lovely bird.
When I worked at palomar I had the pleasure of working with the consumate brit, waistcote, tweed hat and matching suit. Rumple of the Observatory. Hell bent on learning me the maths of Optics. "Roger I will send you a book, you must read it and study it" IT arrives " OPTIKS by BEER" I am in, probably had a few before he mis spelled the title. Problem? Yes written in German. Decided to loan me "The theory of knots". No chance, Tonto.
This idiot who runs around finding secret societies in the shape of Duh Vincis drawings and scratch marks on the tombs of the Knights who say "NI" and strange messages in the shapes of shrubbery, needs to look into the scrawlings of mathematicians, got be a code in there somewhere. I'm starting to think that the Brownies are a secret cult !!LOOK out the paranoids are after us !
Years ago, again on palomar, some silly people were sat around my house debating the heat of the core of the 345/rigel/ sector 14/Beam me up scotty Nebula core. Again Brits, this time it was Bocksenbergs Flying Circus (True story), the one who looked exactly like Michael Palin, said "It has to be 40000000 billion degrees, if it has such a red shift" At which point the red haired impetuous one said "Centigrade or Kelvin?' "Oh kelvin" "Oh ok" That clarification still causes me to laugh 20 years later.
Enjoy the day
rh
ps Hope that book comes out soon !

edjerk- ators and idiots

Too funny, a schoolish observation
Total panic, meetings to discuss meetings and reform for meetings. THE STATE IS COMING IN TO EVALUATE the school. This usually means (Yes I am stereotyping, so what)
Every one rushes around wasting time and effort on crap they are too narrow sighted to see. they already have their agendas. Why worry, we are going to fail anyway !
You think these jerks are going to give up their six figure paychecks by saying "Looks good to me" .How naive can "Administrators" be. Oh we failed by 12 points on the wacky scale they will be back in two years, everyone run around... Christ what fools. If you where making in excess of 125k a year to drift around scaring people by your presence and doing NOTHING, god forbid teaching 213 9th graders a day. My task. Lets swan and pose and suck pencils and look erudite.
Laughable , none have taught in a classroom. After all they are educators, they do not need to deal with kids. They always seem to get steered away from me for some reason. Here is a typical school evaluation committee, they stay in different hotels and drive seperate cars. Now you know they are important. They meet at random times, and talk behind closed doors while hunting through documents and consuming my years science budget $253 in treats, and placating pencils engraved with "PVHS is so happy to share our shool with you " etc you get the idea. After 11 years, of this beauracratic bull crap I can describe the team before they get here. Yes "Educator Profiling" 101.
the first will be a skinny spinster, in tweed skirt and flat shoes,with a sensible top, and hair that looks like it needs a wash and the bad dye job redone. She usually leaps in the air with a look on landing of "Oh my god I am in Blythe and a man talked to me, what horrid thing is next" and scurries into the conference room and hen pecks muffins. The next is a toss up. Its either Grendls Mother clad in full battle tweed dragging a conestoga of records behind her, in an ark with two wheels, breathing fire and hitting both sides of the corridor as she lurches ponderously to her seat in "The Sanctum" Where upon she sends the early lady into coniptions and then for a 40 gallon starbucks and a case of pigs feet Or ms "I got up at midnight so I could look this cold and professional, check out how good I look as this is related to my intelligence" Usually slaps the first lady and allows her to carry her Blackberry for her.Then comes tinkerteach, perfectly groomed , scampers from spot to spot waving arms, scratching perfectly groomed goatee, whilst nodding head and uttering repeatedly "yes I see I had not looked at it that way" " of course you are right" "you know I missed that inference" " I think we should implicate that action on a team decision, but only after you have approved it of course" and my favourite, something along the lines of " I think that we should all look at our own recommendations, and to be fair to all wait until you can share your thoughts with us before we commit, thus keeping an honest open flow of information"
You get the idea. Then we get the wanner be Nazi war camp administrator, who had to go in to Education, and everyone will now pay for this error. Usually found burrowing in documents like a jack russel down a rat hole tail quivering, when he backs out clutching a document proving the schools depravity and noncompetance. Gleefully , his iron cross swaying in the wind, wild eyed and nostrils flaring stroking the blood soaked notches on his baton,one for every school he demoralized and terrified, hops around shrieking "lock the school down, excecute the staff, I have found two documents for free lunches from 1989 which clearly show fraud. Here the mothers name is juanita Delgado, a year later it is Maria salcido, and the father has two different names and the child is called smith" Will stick in a pic for dressing. Shower, then Tropical KBird studying for tomorrow !
regards rh
ps Almost let this one slip by. Good to know we still have "I did not see it so it must be an escape, morons" hanging on in the uk. I thought they had all come to california. But NO they linger on. 7 ultra lucky folks had an undeniable Tufted Puffin drop in front of them, in an estuary in England. Immediately some crack pot eschewed the record as an escape One. Obviously because he did not see it, and two, because it was not off a rocky cliff. I am stunned. So someone in Europe is raising Tufted Puffins and tossing them into estuaries to confound the British birding world. What an idiot the Puffin raiser is. I hope he changes to a rocky out point near that idiots home from now on, so it can be accepted !
I give up!

Feeling poetic !

The hell with "Behold the russet dawn" and all that crap and the idea of the sun creeping over the horizon like a cat on guilded splinters, or was that the dark in Under Milkwood?
Right now I am chewing at the bit to go birding before I get roped in to plant four Bottle brush shrubs.Kid down the road needs $10.
And right about now the sun is rising with the speed of a block of cheese bowel movement. I think you get the picture. Polished my bin lenses so mamy times ,my old 8x Bushies are so concave I have to hold up a magnifying glass in front to compensate.
Loved Obamas heckler, and the behaviour of the Republican chaps, during O's Health care speech. Now this is the difference between Real Britsh democracy and pretend US democracy. In america you go tush tush not good, to be rude in a distinct state ceremony to the leader of the worlds richest most powerful country. In England, if our state head had been treated like that ie the queen I would have flown back to join in the ceremonial beheadings, and resulting party. Now this is democracy
Pause to add pics As I was adding , paused to ponder pics. IN MY LIFE TIME ! The change in Photography is amazing, and peoples regard for them nowadays is that of an ephemeral, neat, but delete. Get better one tomorrow, or not oh whatever !
I have an old suitcase full of formal posed "Auntie Sid and her husband Bill" B and w and scratchy ink writing on the back . Well thats how the writing looks, and thats how they look and I always wondered why that branch of SWMBO's family died out.This suitcase contains a history, of long forgotten folks, but back then a photo was your gift to future generations. Jumpy super 8s, got a projector and splicer if you need one !. Film, snap snap, each pic costs a bundle, send to Kodak, get 20 out of focus pics, one probably worth keeping, 35 in trash bin. Spent the summer tossing boxes of time damaged slides. Kodak has killed Kodachrome 64. End of an era. I have a fabulous Canon and lenses sitting on the floor near me. Gone the way of the dodo.Polaroids! Say no more ! Hardly bird phot-worth. Hellish good college black mail equipment though !
Stopped making them. Digital. I probably took 200 pics yesterday, six rolls of film !Came home ran 'em through puter whist lunching, deleted all but six. Got me to thinking, ten years ago, I would have saved a lot more on film. Due to expense. ie How do I justify tossing this when I paid so much for it and it is tangible. I wonder if the current disposable generation who take a billion pics and hours of quality video every day on their PHONES for heavens sake, and delete before the dawn to text, will leave or even save the record of their youth for posterity?
I can just see them in the future with a row of scan disks in a frame, on the hallway walls of their nursing home rooms. "This disk is Auntie Sids wedding and his live in companio Bill", always assuming they can dodge the "Obama Hospital Death squad" decision to pull the plug. Need to read "Soylent green" again ! Idiots.. Monday am, never got back !
Will have to do for nowStrange week of visitations fro educators, six figure idiots who can not teach ! Oh well. Plus the Williams Act lady.She makes six figures, for what? She travels Ca and visits every school and asks the kids do you have a text book at home, shew of hands. Looks for my signs proving I operate under the Williams act, posted by my clock in Spanish and English and then leaves, checking a myriad boxes on a giant sheet. My schedule would follow migration up California, and then back down. How 'bout you ?
Roger

A picture

Will type in a more erudite socially acceptable piece,TOMORROW. When I feel more erudite and socially acceptable, Reread that, why set myself an early morning impossible challenge.
Just liked this photo.
So....
rh

So much for that !

Well the tail end of Hurricane Jemima, or whatever is moving through Net result = appalling humidity, non photo light, rain and no birds. Quit. Will type this, then go catch up on sleep/tv. Love to say will continue my research into" plumage nuances in Solanders Petrels, based on my recent observations " But why fake it !
An observation.
Why do people take part in TV polls, and go through all the grief of finding the voting site to type in C I am not sure , or C I have no opinion.
For some reason that bothers me !!!
WEll 2 weeks of school, this is setting up to be an endurance year. The poor kid in the room next to me has the dregs I beat into shape last year, already in tears. Very nice, young Mormon lady, short 5'2 a little overweight, naive.Just first year in the trenches Would make a perfect nurse.
33 per class from 6 foot black rappers, to west side Mescan Gangsta's, and tatood pierced white trash on their second kid. If you are over 45 you would not know what the youth of today are like. Nor would you want to.They are chewing her up day by day. Sad When you walked down the corridor and saw a teacher coming did you step out of their way ? Me too. Not any more they knock our female staff over and up against the walls. Honest. I told our new principal, they will stand out of my way. I can tell he is still pondering whether me laying a kid out is worth the principle. I had a 14 year old on Friday tell me "NO I AM NOT MOVING. " She did, but as she walked out the room She turned around and said "WE will see about this you crazy old bastard". Inspiring methinks.
An idle thought. Boys on reaching puberty must check their testicles in. They get them back when they are 21 and have a job.Several pregnant 9th graders on the map, sadly their peers admire them and are excited for them/jealous. Oh well.
I can not believe the furor over Obama speaking to kids. Indoctrination, the religious right scream, on their way to their 12 year anniversary of continuous attendance at the Local "Religion of your own choice" at the "cult building of your own choice". See, equal opportunity "Brain washing"
This simply makes the Politicians who agree and are wasting time when there is a dire crisis in this country, look like jackanapes ! nay even, cut loose !
"YOU SENATOR, are nothing more than an apogeneous,bovaristic,copralalial,dasypygal,excerebrose,facinorous, gnathonic,hircine,ithyphallic,jumentous,kyphotic,labrose,mephitic,napiform,oligophrenial,papuliferous,quiquillian,rebarbative,saponaceous,thersitical,unguinous,ventripotent,wlatsome, xylocephalous ,yirning, zoophyte "
Just an abecedarian curse , feel free to use any or all whenever the occasion arises. The sun is struggling out, maybe ?
Take care
Roger

Pics to ponder

Simple premise. You are working on the premise that if a Black headed Gull can shew up in Blythe, Palearctic waders are a given !Fantastic premise. So you whip out some . Can you id them ?Which one should and will be going to the raries committe ? All have definite Black legs. America makes its choice. You tell me !Roger

Finally, it works again.

something during a breif power surge , when I was mid way through a blog, caused it to hate me and delete my blog. So in between the controlled disaster known as starting school, and me scratching away at the problem, I have it fixed. My url was not in the same gate as pbs and the utep, or something , any way expect a 2 part update in three episodes, or two chapters, depending on my mood !
Back from the Glitch !
rh