[ad_1]
Effectively, I’ve been away from this website, for much too lengthy. I’m sorry. And since I think there could also be others on the market who, like I, really feel one thing of a private reference to 10,000 Birds’ common writers, I really feel the necessity to clarify my absence. Should you don’t want to learn all this private stuff, please do bounce to the underside of this put up, to get to the feathered stuff.
Anyway, listed here are a few of the causes I’ve been away:
- My spouse and I simply completed a really lengthy, difficult journey. We have been away from dwelling for six and and half weeks.
- This journey included seven worldwide flights, between six international locations, on three continents. The journey was deliberate as a piece journey, however ended up together with a stunning quantity of tourism.
- A few of this tourism occurred as a result of we have been supposed to go to Jordan, however current geopolitical occasions have made People reasonably unwelcome in that nook of the world. Flight adjustments have been required, in mid journey.
- Two different international locations we visited, Morocco and Turkey, have not too long ago skilled catastrophic earthquakes. We stayed in Marrakesh, close to the epicenter of the newer quake. And we had the privilege of consuming within the dwelling of somebody from the epicenter of the opposite, though we stayed very removed from that metropolis. The Marrakesh scenario, plus the above geopolitical scenario, created some doubt as to these visits, though we ultimately have been capable of go to every vacation spot. (If requested, we might reply, “We’ve come from Mexico.” It’s not a lie.)
- However largely, planning this journey was massively anxious as a result of I needed to renew my passport beforehand, and it seems that course of is tremendously backed up right here in Mexico. My utility was accepted seven weeks earlier than our departure, and the embassy’s web site mentioned it ought to arrive in three weeks. After determined motion, I really obtained the passport, I child you not, on the day of our preliminary flight to Amsterdam. So every thing was unsure till that day. I really grew to become so harassed I developed boils, a wholly new response for me.
- And whereas I used to be stressing about that passport, a pair of unauthorized expenses prompted our financial institution to cancel our bank cards. “Don’t fear”, they mentioned, “the brand new ones will arrive in three days”. Arrive, that’s, within the U.S.; and Mexico received’t enable them to be shipped right here. My spouse acquired to fly up for them. As a result of I had no passport on the time.
Now, all of this could not have stored me from seeing, and reporting on, some cool Mediterranean birds. And so I’ll, as soon as it overcome some technical particulars. You see, an analogous journey final yr satisfied me I shouldn’t do main journey with a 3 kilo digital camera+lens combo any extra. So I satisfied my ever-patient spouse to let me purchase a used 1 kilo Olympus mirrorless combo. This can be a nice digital camera. Additionally it is a really, very difficult digital camera. And I’m a gradual learner. The primary third of the journey, I couldn’t handle a satisfactory picture. As soon as I realized obtain these, I couldn’t determine course of the images, which might solely be achieved on the Olympus system. Now I can obtain them and course of them. All I nonetheless have to study is save them and replica them outdoors the system, and also you variety, affected person folks will be capable to examine my new Moroccan and Turkish feathered associates (and one from Spain).
Which brings me as much as the title for this put up. We arrived dwelling solely every week in the past, and as of this writing, I’ve not but picked up my heavy digital camera and gone birding. The truth is, I’ve not formally gone birding, in any respect. So you’ll be able to think about my shock after I stumbled upon a reasonably astonishing chook, the day after our arrival.
Our close by Lake Cuitzeo, you see, has dried up this yr. That additionally occurred a couple of years in the past, giving me the chance to find that such a loss scatters the lake’s winter waterfowl to each physique of water within the area, irrespective of how small.
One such physique of water, a quarter-acre synthetic pond, might be discovered a couple of hundred ft from our church constructing on the sting of city. And as I’ve talked about earlier than, a Cuban ornithologist buddy now attends our church. He birds in all places he goes, together with round our church each Sunday. So this Sunday, after he identified that our winter Say’s Phoebe was again, and identified a reasonably uncommon Merlin that turned up, it occurred to me to indicate him this little pond so he may test it for waterfowl.
We walked over there, stopping to see a number of birds alongside the best way, and after we lastly topped the financial institution surrounding the pond, there was certainly a duck floating on the water. But it surely was not a Blue-winged or Inexperienced-winged Teal, like these I had seen there on our earlier dry yr. This duck had an extended, ever-so-thin invoice, and a stunning brown crest. Having seen them in Europe, I knew it was a Merganser. However which one? You see, North American Mergansers don’t usually attain central Mexico, and I had by no means seen any.
Thankfully, two species of Mergansers generally stray to Cuba, and so my buddy prompt, appropriately, that ours was a feminine Hooded Merganser. He was additionally appropriate when he guessed that it could be the primary Hooded Merganser reported for our state of Michoacán, and that our report wouldn’t be believed with out photographic proof. (Hooded Mergansers shouldn’t go additional south than Texas.) So we did our greatest to handle images with our cellphones and his binoculars. I, in fact, didn’t have any optics with me. As a result of this was a really sudden encounter.
The addition of a household of Least Grebes was a pleasant contact.
[ad_2]