7.31.2006

Yoohoo Peeps! Why is it so hot?

In Fresno, the morgue is full of victims from a California heat wave. A combination of heat and power outages killed a dozen people in Missouri. And in parts of Europe, temperatures are hotter than in 2003 when a heat wave killed 35,000 people.

Click the link above to read why it is so hot, record breaking hot, the hottest ever! Not just here, everywhere!

This heatwave may be more than just an odd weather story, start making the connections, record breaking heat waves are making headlines all over. Why is that? How hot does it need to get before you take notice and look for the root cause? Is it hot enough yet?


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Your Favorite?

The 50 Greatest Comedies of All Time

Everybody loves comedies. Premiere Magazine has compiled a list of 50 of the all time best in chronological order. Some of them are before my time, but of the ones I've seen these are my favorite.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail
CaddyShack
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

What's your favorite?

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7.30.2006

Great Blue Heron and Cormorant

Heron

This is a great blue heron I saw at the High Falls River Gorge. The great blue heron is the largest heron in North America.

heron2

This heron appears to be a juvenile, it has a gray crown and dark upper bill.

cormorant - juvenile

There was a cormorant at the gorge, also a juvenile. Juveniles have pale upper breasts and throats, adults are dark all over.


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7.28.2006

Pets/Animals

PS Hunt

Great Blue Heron

Grab the Scavenger Hunt code.
Join the blogroll.
Visit participants.

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7.24.2006

Even in the parking garage

advertising

It's creeping into everything. No matter where I go there's advertising. This is the first time I've seen it in my parking garage, it probably won't be the last time.

David doesn't like it either.
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7.23.2006

Seasons

Winter
There's nary a spot of color in my New York state backyard in the winter time. Below is the same backyard four months later in the summer time.

summer
The contrast is striking. Some people love the change of seasons in New York. I enjoy the change in seasons too, it's just that winter seems to be the longest season, and summer is my favorite. Warm summer nights always bring me back to the care-free days of my youth. Spending time with my friends in the warm night air was one of my favorite things to do, it was so much fun. It was a common summertime occurrence for me yesteryear, an infrequent one now.

One of the things I like best about summertime now is gardening. Below is a picture of one of the hosta from the picture above. I looked out my kitchen window and saw that the plant was spotlighted by the sun and it was just begging to have it's picture taken. This hosta is nearly three feet tall (four feet if you count the flowers) and five feet wide. I count it among the favorites in my yard.

Hosta

Do you have a favorite plant, bush or tree in your yard?
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7.18.2006

High Falls River Gorge

A man stopped me on the pedestrian bridge this morning to warn me that there were some men drinking on the benches at the far end of the bridge, near the brewery. He advised that I may want to be cautious about going near them. I thanked him for warning me and got my binoculars out. I saw Carol at the opposite end of the bridge and approached her. I asked her if there were any men drinking around there and she said she had not seen any and she had been there for an hour. She mentioned that she was drinking water. It was 6:50 AM and she needed to get into work. Luckily for me Jeanne showed up in a few minutes.

Jeanne and I were the only watchers there until we left a little before 9:00 AM. Things started out pretty slowly, so I began video taping other creatures. These pictures are copied from the video, so the image quality is not to great. I'm including them to go along with the narrative.

DuckCrowSpider Web
We saw ducks, crows and spiders, there wasn't much going on in the gorge.

Falcon stooping on a gull
Then, at about 8:45 a falcon decided to stoop on a gull.

Another falcon flew in high, but it was time for us to get to work, so we departed. We would be back!

I returned to the gorge around 6:00 PM, Kelly arrived at the same time. Chad was already there and he was watching a falcon high in the air above the pedestrian bridge before it flew off towards downtown. We all began scanning the skies trying to spot the falcons.

CormorantCormorant
A cormorant was flying around the gorge.

Aura
Aura slid into the gorge on a rainbow! She made her way onto a support beam under the pedestrian bridge at about 6:20 PM.

GroundhogGeese
BeaverTurkeyPoult
There was a lot more activity in the gorge in the evening. We saw a ground hog, geese, a beaver, a turkey and a poult (aka turkette). At 6:25 PM Carol made her way to the gorge. I was at the end of the bridge near Jimmy Mac's trying to find Aura on the bridge. Kelly and Chad were hanging over the side of the bridge taking pictures of her, Carol joined them. I'm not comfortable doing that, in order to get a good shot I would probably need to get half my body over the edge because I'm not a tall person. That just sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Aura
I decided to tilt the view finder on my camera and stick my arm way out to get this shot of Aura.

Carol
Carol wanted to get a picture of Aura at the moment she flew off the bridge. Aura stayed under the bridge from 6:20 - 8:08 PM. Much of that time Carol spent leaning over the bridge waiting for Aura to fly. After all that exhausting work Aura flew off unphotographed. Meanwhile a falcon flying high went over the gorge at 6:45 PM. A little while later, about 7:10 PM, all the gulls on the beach of the island started flying around. One of the juveniles was flying around with them, we didn't see any tags, but bets were on that it was Sabrina. Speaking of Sabrina, if she ever undergoes a sex change operation, my son thinks a good name for him would be Sabre, what do you think? She is a little wild.

Kelly, then Chad left about 7:30. Kelly was sure that the instant she left Aura would fly off, but Aura stayed put even though two watchers left.

Juvenile FalconsJuvenile FalconsJuvenile Falcons
While Carol and I were waiting for Aura to fly off we heard a ruckus behind us. Sabrina and Regal Rhea Mae were flying around kakking about something.

Rhea Mae Rhea Mae landed on the BeeBee station, Carol went around to the front of the BeeBee station to find Sabrina, but Sabrina didn't seem to be around.

Rhea MaeRhea MaeRhea MaeRhea Mae
Rhea MaeRhea MaeRhea MaeRhea Mae
Rhea MaeRhea MaeRhea MaeRhea Mae
Meanwhile Rhea Mae left the BeeBee station and I lost her behind part of the building. I looked all over the back of the BeeBee station but couldn't find her.

About 7:55 Jeanne showed up. I think she and Carol are falcaholics. Jeanne spotted a falcon flying from the Kodak tower to the communication tower at 8:00. Aura left her perch at 8:08.

Falcons between the stacksFuture falcon fanatics
At 8:20 we spotted a couple of falcons flying between the stacks. A group of six or seven people asked Carol, Jeanne and I what we were doing. They seemed very interested in the falcons. Carol answered all their enthusiastic questions. She told the two men in the foreground about the Kodak falcon discussion board. I couldn't remember the link to the board, but I did remember the URL for my blog, so I gave that to them and told them they could find the discussion board link on my blog. I'll include it right here for easy reference: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kfalconcam/

When our new friends showed up I kind of lost track of what the falcons were doing. Carol thinks it was Kaver who flew off the tower, over the gorge, past the apartment building next to the brewery and then did a stoop. I think the juvies did some more flying too. We all left the gorge around 8:45. All in all, a very fine day for falcon watching.
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7.17.2006

July 17 falcon watch at the river gorge

I saw three women looking through binoculars at the top of the Kodak tower when I arrived at the pedestrian bridge at High Falls. It was 7:00 PM and Jeanne, Carol and Diana had Aura spotted eating a meal on the seventeenth floor. Another falcon was circling. The watchers spotted a couple other falcons on the Changing Scenes restaurant resting on the elevator shafts. The falcon circling the tower flew downtown, leaving Aura to enjoy her meal. Then the falcons were quiet. When 8:00 PM rolled around I remarked that dusk was at 8:37 PM, if they didn't start flying soon it would be too dark to see them. At 8:25 my cell phone rang and I was happy to hear my son's voice on the other end of the phone. I asked him a little about how he was enjoying Boy Scout camp at Massawepie. A couple minutes into the call Carol called over to me and pointed out two juveniles landing on the railing of Skye's building. One was definitely Aura from the sounds of things. Then they started flying again.
PHILIPS_DVD_VR-48 PHILIPS_DVD_VR-49 PHILIPS_DVD_VR-57

I decided to head over to the observation deck. I ran over there, it seemed like a very long way. When I got there no one was flying. I walked back, it seemed like a very short walk. I soon noticed three women looking through binoculars at the top of Skye's building. They were looking at Rhea Mae.
PHILIPS_DVD_VR-69

Carol, Diana and Jeanne said all three were in the air, and then things got confusing, there were juvenile falcons flying everywhere. Someone dashed in low over the pedestrian bridge and flew into the sunset.
PHILIPS_DVD_VR-76 PHILIPS_DVD_VR-77 PHILIPS_DVD_VR-78 PHILIPS_DVD_VR-79 PHILIPS_DVD_VR-83

Then another juvie flew low over the bridge into the sunset. She joined one of her sisters on the railing of the brewery.
PHILIPS_DVD_VR-89 PHILIPS_DVD_VR-94 PHILIPS_DVD_VR-103

One of the juvies decided to stoop on a gull before flying towards the brewery.
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Towards the end, we spotted two of the falcons on the brewery.
PHILIPS_DVD_VR-124 PHILIPS_DVD_VR-130

Since it was getting dark we all decided to leave, we were happy we waited for the girls to return home.

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