KVARESTO8
Walking Projects
Fairfax Cross County Trail, 41 miles: completed 2 July 2010.
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Monthly Archives: November 2006
Constitutional amendment Question 1
Well, at least I can take comfort that 72% of the voters in my local precinct (unofficial results) are willing to vote for tolerance, even if those in the Commonwealth as a whole don’t agree.
Memed: 1
Via Birderblog.com, the The Hawk Owl’s Nest is conducting a survey:
- What state (or country) do you live in? Virginia
- How long have you been birding? 13 years or so
- Are you a “lister”? Yes
- ABA Life List: 338
- Overall Life List: 338, which is also my Lower 48 list total.
- Favorite Birding Spot: Huntley Meadows Park, Fairfax County, Virginia.
- Favorite birding spot outside your home country: none yet
- Farthest you’ve traveled to chase a rare bird: about an hour for a Pomarine Jaeger that had wandered far inland into Loudoun County, Virginia.
- Nemesis bird: Florida Scrub-Jay
- “Best” bird sighting: A lifer: American Dipper in Eldorado National Forest on Christmas Day, just after the snows had melted sufficiently to make the roads passable.
- Most wanted trip: Maine and the Maritimes
- Most wanted bird: Atlantic Puffin
- What model and brand of bins do you use?: A somewhat beat-up porro prism Celestron 9.5 x 44
- What model and brand of scope do you use?: Kowa TSN-1
- What was the last lifer you added to your list?: Piping Plover near Oregon Inlet, North Carolina. I never would have noticed the flock of seven birds on a wind-whipped flat if I hadn’t stumbled upon a pair of field researchers who were tracking them with radio.
- Where did you see your last lifer?: see above
- What’s the last bird you saw today?: Alas, I think the last bird I noticed was a Fish Crow at dusk yesterday.
- Best bird song you’ve heard ever: Wood Thrush, in the backyard of my suburban, habitat-fragmenting townhouse.
- Favorite birding moments: A visit to the Powdermill banding station in Pennsylvania. My first trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina (“My god, it’s full of birds!”). Seeing two lifers in my bins at the same time in a park in Sacramento. On a work-related training trip to Orange County, getting up early to drive down to the beach, then patiently keying out a California Gull for #300.
- Least favorite thing about birding: High winds.
- Favorite thing about birding: Using it as an excuse to vacation somewhere I’ve never been before.
- Favorite field guide for the US: Peterson
- Favorite non-field guide bird book: Proctor and Lynch, “Manual of Ornithology”
- Who is your birder icon?: Let me get back to you on that one.
- Do you have a bird feeder(s)? No. I don’t enjoy feeding squirrels.
- Favorite feeder bird? White-Breasted Nuthatch
Hitting the books
Defective Yeti reads Melville. Not quite as graciously or insightfully as Waggish reads Proust, but he might actually finish. And he’s a fellow Danielewski fan.
Notes from computational musicology
Mainly useful to wireless guys
Cool beans: Metro has exposed its next-train info (what you see on the message boards in each station) to the web. Here’s the board (without the script to size the popup window nicely) for one of my stations, East Falls Church.
Crooked CA watch
The former chief of what was known as Computer Associates International, Inc., Sanjay Kumar, has been sentenced to twelve years in prison for his role in a massive accounting fraud. Charges were made that
Kumar and other executives instructed salespeople to complete deals after the quarter had closed — a practice known within the company as the ”35-day month”…
Time to start passing the hat
And a really big one it will have to be. Elden Street Players, a community theater located nearby in Herndon, is scrambling to purchase its performance and shop space, which its landlord has put on the market.
Helping you out
For those of you looking for a Christmas gift for a special someone (me, that is), my Amazon.com holiday wish list has some suggestions.
