Bookish Jet

This past weekend, I went with Shirley to the Wings Over Water Birding Festival. Had a great time! The weather was perfect for the days we were there, though it had poured raining the days before. There were tons of shorebirds on the side of the road in the left-over rain from the flooding.

Saw two bears! These were in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

The coolest thing to me, though, was not the bears (or the possible wolf I saw), but the huge, huge flock of Red-winged blackbirds that took flight and landed around us. This picture does not do it justice, at all. You could see the bright red wing patches on half the birds at any given time. And there was an albino in the flock, which really stood out (though it’s not in this photo. Well maybe it is? I can’t tell if that white thing is a bird or something else).

We went to the beach, too:

I love birding. I love being outdoors and looking at nature (or what’s left of nature).

This looks soooo cool!

Nothing quite prepares you for the culture shock of Jay Walker’s library. You exit the austere parlor of his New England home and pass through a hallway into the bibliographic equivalent of a Disney ride. Stuffed with landmark tomes and eye-grabbing historical objects—on the walls, on tables, standing on the floor—the room occupies about 3,600 square feet on three mazelike levels. Is that a Sputnik? Yes. Hey, those books appear to be bound in rubies. They are.

Browse the Artifacts of Geek History in Jay Walker’s Library.

Me holding an Ovenbird at Kiptopeke State Park bird banding station

I went to the 16th annual Eastern Shore Birding and Wildlife Festival this past weekend with some birding and naturalist friends. One stop was at the Kiptopeke bird banding station at Kiptopeke State Park. They caught, weighed and measured some cool birds while we were there, and we each got to release a bird or two. I released this Ovenbird. He stayed on my hand for a while before he flew off.

More pictures are here.

I don’t like these things! Our Master Naturalist class took a field trip to York River State Park and went down into the marsh to check out a wetland ecosystem. Found out some of the critters that live in that ecosystem: chiggers! I’m not too happy right now.

Palin and the library book issue:

Virginia State Police troopers walk through the Chisel Run town house complex in James City County.

JAMES CITY - Police believe a man arrested after an attempted abduction, police pursuit and lunchtime shootout near the Prime Outlets shopping center Thursday may also be a serial rapist wanted in Williamsburg and York County.

Calm was restored to normally quiet James City County about 12:15 p.m. when police closed in on the suspect and found him hiding under a porch at the Chisel Run town houses.

Read the full article

“I don’t care what they say about me, but I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift boat politics. Enough is enough.”

Obama Responds to ‘Phony Outrage’ - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com.

WASILLA — Back in 1996, when she first became mayor, Sarah Palin asked the city librarian if she would be all right with censoring library books should she be asked to do so.

According to news coverage at the time, the librarian said she would definitely not be all right with it. A few months later, the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, got a letter from Palin telling her she was going to be fired. The censorship issue was not mentioned as a reason for the firing. The letter just said the new mayor felt Emmons didn’t fully support her and had to go.

Read the full article from the Anchorage Daily News

Little bitty mealworms (the brown things, near the pieces of corn. On denim).

Beetles (like those that spawned the little bitty mealworms)

Little, tiny baby mealworms finally showed up in my beetle boxes today. I’ve been waiting for months (probably three months). I feed mealworms to the birds out back from my feeder station. There’s been a national shortage of mealworms for months now, so I thought I’d try to grow my own.

I listened to Jeffrey Deaver’s The Broken Window on my mp3 player the other day. And in the weeks before that, I read the “Science in the Capitol” trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. (I loved the latter. The former was interesting, but the writing was typical best-selling stuff.) RFID tags in these novels played a large role, and in The Broken Window, especially, the idea that people can be easily tracked by the purchases and other interactions they make on a day-to-day basis was prominent. Very scary stuff. Big Brother isn’t necessarily the government, but corporations. Either way, it’s scary.

(So why do I blog and make myself even more easy to track?)