Becca's Blog

Kingbird in the 'burbs.

On today's morning walk with the dogs my ears pricked up when I heard an unfamiliar call. My first assumption was that a neighborhood starling had learned a new call--this wasn't their typical wolf whistle, but it was on their turf. I looked around, and the bird was conveniently in full view at the top of an oak, in full sun.

The bird was nearly robin-size, pearly gray, with yellow coming up the sides from its belly; it has a dark eye and pale under its eye, and a shortish, dark bill. (Mind you, I didn't have binoculars and the bird was 25 feet up.) I started thinking about olive-sided flycatcher or something in the same family.

After I finished the dog walk I went back with binoculars, but the bird was gone. Based on the field marks, though, it was a Western kingbird--the first one I've seen in my neighborhood. I'm more used to seeing them in open fields in the Central Valley, or in the cow pastures at Point Reyes.

How can I make amends to the oceans?

I know that headline sounds self-aggrandizing. I imagine that everyone (with the possible exception of Dick Cheney) feels grief, and at least a little remorse, about the oil that's been hemorrhaging into the Gulf of Mexico for over a month. So many people I know feel some spiritual connection to the ocean that we have to all feel this loss. But I can only talk about my feelings and how I might respond.

The fact that the Gulf is likely to be a dead zone for years to come makes me feel physically ill. I feel guilt and sorrow for the millions of ocean- and marsh-dwelling creatures who can't be protected from the pollution of their home. I feel regret and worry for the thousands of people whose livelihoods are ruined for who knows how long. I feel that the people of the Gulf Coast region have suffered enough already and this is really unfair. I feel selfish regret that this is one more place I haven't yet been that is now trashed.

I wonder if BP, faced with a ruinously high judgment for cleanup, will simply declare bankruptcy and disappear, leaving American citizens holding the bag once again. I know this will be litigated until we're all dead, and I wonder how President Obama intends to make BP "pay for every cent of the cleanup." I think about how much can't be fixed with money. I wonder if the allegations of shortcuts and negligence will ever be proved and if BP and its partners can be convicted and sent to jail for aggravated assault on the world. I want more than an apology from BP and its shareholders; I'd like to see someone commit hara-kiri on TV.

The things I can think of to do in response seem so pathetic: Venting my grief and anger in a message to my elected representatives will get me form letters in return. They'll posture and demagogue about this in predictable ways.

I want to drive my car even less, clamp down on our household energy use even more, and try really hard to use much less disposable plastic (because it all seems to ultimately end up in the ocean and it's made from virgin petroleum, for fuck's sake). I'll be making a donation to the International Bird Rescue Resource Center. I wish I could go to Louisiana and spend two weeks scrubbing rocks. It doesn't seem like much.

Travel Diary: The Red Center

The first part of my travel diary is here.

The in-progress album of photos from our trip is here.

Alice Springs is in the middle of Australia—in the "Red Center." It's in the middle of cattle station country and in the novel A Town Like Alice was held up as a paragon of outback civilization. Anyone remember that miniseries with Bryan Brown? No? Anyone remember the Jam song "Town Called Malice"? Same cultural reference, and you're welcome for the earworm. And that is still pretty much the extent of my knowledge of Alice Springs. We spent less than 24 hours here, and coming from Sydney, Alice Springs definitely felt like a dusty little backwater.

It had been raining heavily, so some of the roads were impassable, including the one to our hotel. Our bus from the airport had to take a detour, and the driver remarked on how rarely that happened. Everyone talked about how the Todd River usually just had a trickle of water at most. We got a quick glimpse of the backside of town from the bus, which seemed to have a lot of public housing under construction. We found that our hotel, a big, generic outpost of a chain, was about a mile away from the central business district.

At the hotel I spotted the first new birds since our arrival. They were Galahs, which look something like African gray parrots with pink heads, but they're actually in the cockatoo family.

After settling in, we started out from our hotel to explore on foot. As we left, a team of fresh-faced boy athletes were arriving. They looked like a junior varsity soccer team.

The closest thing to see was the Olive Pink Botanic Garden, so we headed there. It was muggy and buggy and rocky. The few visitors all seemed to be sitting in the cafe. The scenic trail we took was rough and wet, and not much was in bloom. I'm sure in a different season it would have been a stunning display of desert wildflowers, but as it was it just seemed like red-dirt desert. Some large, noisy honeyeater-type bird kept jumping just out of range of my binoculars. We saw a few small lizards, but frustratingly, no mammals. Tired of slapping at flies, we decided to head into town, which, based on our map-reading was quite close. We only had to follow the river to get there.

Trailing a couple of locals, we started down a path next to the river, headed for a main road into the CBD. It was only by scrambling carefully around the ruts that we avoided sinking into red mud up to our ankles. I was concerned about snakes, bugs, ankle-twisting, and being mugged. When Jane said, about four times, "We are so taking a cab home," I replied just as many times, "OK. Fine by me. No argument here." We arrived unscathed and spent some time window-shopping. Alice Springs is a center for aboriginal art, so there are lots of galleries. We looked a bit but didn't buy, mainly because tribal art doesn't really do it for either of us.  It was the first time we saw many Aboriginal people; there were groups hanging out in most of the open spaces.

Then we looked for a place to stop for a beer. We decided to go into a locals' pub, even though we were nervous about whether we'd be welcome. We found an unoccupied table on the patio and kept to ourselves.  As I headed into the bar to find some chips (er, crisps), I aimed a vague smile at the sunburned white guy in sunglasses occupying a table close to ours, hoping to project a benign, live-and-let-live demeanor. In a while it started to rain a bit, and the guy came over to our table and asked if he could sit under our umbrella. We said of course, and he struck up a conversation. It turned out he was an Australian who was traveling the country with his young family in a caravan. They had rented out their home in Perth and planned to circumnavigate the country in 18 months or so. It was quite entertaining to chat with him and hear about all the places, both in Australia and elsewhere, that he'd been. With family originally from Ireland, he'd spent time in Manhattan working in a relative's bar, but he'd never been to California. We told him we were headed for Far North Queensland next, and he said that's where he ultimately wanted to settle his family. He insisted we stop in to Bo's Saloon, a cowboy bar that we had decided to give a pass. It wasn't nearly as hostile inside as we had imagined it might be. Hokey and tacky, yes. Hostile, no.

We mentioned the team we saw at our hotel and wondered if they were rugby players. Our new friend Anthony told us they were Australian rules football players, and there was a big exhibition game in town that night. Part of the reason that so many Aboriginal people were in town was for the game. Apparently there are some really good aboriginal players of Aussie rules football.

After Anthony headed back to his caravan and family, we wandered a bit more, and it rained intermittently. I dragged Jane into a small bookstore that specialized in books about the area. As usual, I picked up books as souvenirs: a general natural history field guide for central Australia and an outback cookbook. While camp cooking isn't my thing because camping really isn't my thing, the recipes looked sophisticated and the photography was beautiful. Also, it's bound with a hybrid paper-hard plastic cover that, as a book production person, intrigued me. The cover is already warped, so it doesn't look like something to recommend for any future projects.

We headed for the cab stand to get back to our hotel, and suddenly cabs were scarce. We ended up sharing one with two lads who were headed back to their backpackers' accommodations with a lot of beer. They said they were in town for the footy game, and asked if we wanted tickets (we declined). They also said that 10,000 people were expected to attend the game. We drove past the stadium, which from the outside looked to me like a fairly ratty high school stadium in the US—but maybe I got an inaccurate view from my quick glance at the outside. I think we learned from these guys that the team in our hotel was the Adelaide Crows--considered the hometown team.

After a shower we went to dinner in the hotel bar--I had a yummy, messy lamb burger with Moroccan flavors. And it started to pour. And poured steadily for a couple of hours as the stadium lights glared on. Apparently the Crows lost to the Melbourne Demons, according to the news the next day. I tried to imagine the amount of mud they had to play in, and was extremely grateful that we'd taken a pass on the game.

The rain caused big chunks of the hotel ceiling to fall at one spot in the hallway and there were buckets standing in the hallways to catch the leaks, as well as helpless-looking staff, just standing around with mops, looking up.

Very early the next morning we boarded a bus to Ayers Rock/Uluru. It was a tour bus, and many of our fellow passengers were doing a tour.  So we got narrative as we drove through pastureland and desert—which looked a lot like deserts in the U.S. I felt like I could have been in Nevada. I slept a lot of the way. We stopped at a camel ranch/rest stop/tourist trap, notable mainly for the flies and the awful coffee. (One of the factoid tidbits that our driver regaled us with is that Australia's outback has feral camels. They were imported for use in building the railroad and then let go, and they naturalized. So, like so many other human interventions, they're now an environmental problem. Apparently there is some market for camel meat and leather, but it doesn't really control the camel population. Urgh. I think I'd feel the same way about eating camel as eating horse--or alpaca.) The flies in the outback are so persistent that they got into the bus on people's clothing after our stops. It was a relief to arrive at Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) and check into our hotel.


Once again, due to a travel agent's screwup, they had us booked in a room with twin beds. I fixed the desk clerk with a steely glare and informed him that we wanted one bed. He calmly switched the reservation, but I was pissed, since I had called the travel agent about this and she said she had fixed all the hotel reservations. Our room was actually quite nice, with modern-style furnishings and a newly remodeled bathroom, although the hotel's buildings were 60's-era cinderblock. The architecture reminded me of college dorms--efficient, not stylish. Later that evening, the smell of rain on eucalyptus throughout the resort took both of us right back to the UCSB campus. It was a weirdly strong sense memory.

Having less than 24 hours at Uluru, we wanted to make the most of our time. We got our bearings and went to find out how to head into the park. At the visitor information center, we were shown a range of tours and a single shuttle out to the rock. Most of the tours cost well over AUS$100 per person. I was ready to throw caution to the wind and sign up for the sunset dinner tour and the dawn breakfast hike the next day, but Jane's cooler head prevailed. Instead we paid just $40 each to be shuttled out to the rock for the rest of the afternoon, and signed up for a sunrise breakfast and walk around the rock. Which we needed to complete in time to check in for our afternoon flight.

We got our shuttle out to the rock and thoroughly perused the cultural center. We learned the Aboriginal stories about the area, a bit about the natural history, and perused more aboriginal art.  Then we took a short hike (um, bushwalk) on a red-dirt trail through conifers and scrub and nearly missed our shuttle back to the village. We flagged down the driver just as he was about to leave.


It rained intermittently all night, which we were told repeatedly that only 2 percent of visitors get to witness. That didn't make us feel very lucky. The good thing about the intermittent rain, though, is that it mostly kept down the flies. In the outback the flies are extremely persistent, and you find yourself waving them away from your face constantly, although it doesn't deter them at all. All over the Uluru resort village, insect nets were for sale. These are worn over your head or a hat, and they put a mesh screen between you and the flies. I didn't care how it looked—I made Jane buy a couple within hours of arriving at the resort. And it was less annoying to wear them than to battle the flies. I can only imagine how buggy it would be at the height of summer heat. Every time Jane and I were in the hotel lobby we saw a trio of older Italian ladies who were wearing their insect nets and looking for their tour bus. They didn't seem to be having a very good time, and I felt a bit sorry for them.

We had to be ready for our morning hike around the rock at 5 a.m., so we turned in early and watched TV. The winter Olympics was still on, and Australian Lydia Lassila won a gold medal in aerial skiing. The media coverage of her win was delirious.


Our tour guide for the dawn patrol was a wiry old character named Barry. He took very seriously all the rules and regulations, such as carrying our permits anytime we were on park land. He also told us at great length many of the things we had already read or heard, such as why it's really discouraged for visitors to climb Uluru. (For one thing, it's steep and dangerous and lots of people die. But we got chapter and verse about why the Aboriginal residents don't want visitors to climb.)


When we started out it was pitch dark. Barry took off his shoes to hike barefoot, since some of the trail could be muddy or have puddles (in his words, the trail could be "squashy"), and he said he'd rather not get wet shoes and socks. Then he took off at a blistering pace. Jane and I don't walk slowly, and we had to hustle to keep up. I'm not sure why he took off so fast, because eventually he slowed down. However, we had let him know that we had to catch a shuttle to the airport shortly after noon, and we wanted to make sure not to miss it—he wouldn't commit to getting us back in time, but we figured the brisk pace was aimed at keeping us on schedule. The possibility of missing the shuttle and our flight lent a little edge of tension to the whole outing.


Eventually it began to get light, but we seemed to be on the wrong side of the rock to see the sunrise, or it was too overcast for a blazing display, or something. At any rate, the sky gradually lightened and we were walking next to an enormous monolith of a red rock, but it didn't turn gold or purple or anything. It's imposing to view at a distance, but in a way there's more to see when you get close up. There are waterfalls and fissures and caves. Although it looks smooth in the photos, the sandstone is really soft and rough. One of the first things I noticed was holes in the rock with whitewash below them. Lots of animals use holes in cliffs as burrows or nests, but the white streaks below the holes made me think birds, and probably falcons. So I was looking forward to asking Barry about them.


Ol' Barry told us about the mountain's geology, about the plants and the recent human history, and ALL the Aboriginal stories related to various sites around the rock, but he really was not big on wildlife. I suppose most people who visit Uluru are most interested in the history and mythology, but I would rather see a few good birds. Although large areas are not off-limits, there are lots of spots around the rock where it's prohibited to take photos. The guides stop you promptly if they catch you pointing your camera in the direction of these sacred sites.

When we stopped for breakfast (which was pretty spartan), Jane asked Barry about the glossy black birds we'd been seeing. He ID'd them as fairy martins with no further elaboration. I said I guessed the holes with whitewash were probably raptor nest holes, and he said, "Nope, all our raptors nest in platform stick nests." OK, so what *does* live in those holes, Marlin Perkins? I actually was too shy to pursue the topic, and he didn't volunteer any information. One bird that we asked for an ID on actually prompted a story. Barry said this flycatcher-like bird was a Willy Wagtail, and told us that the Aboriginal people consider them to be gossips who will eavesdrop on your conversations and then spread stories about you. He said he has seen native kids clam up and turn their backs when a Willy Wagtail comes near. When we saw them later in Cairns, they certainly had an air of being busybodies, racing around and flicking their tails.

With the sun fully up and shining on the rock, there was lots of bird activity. I thought I spotted more than one species of swallow, including one bird with iridescent blue feathers and a bright blue gape. My best guess is that this was a tree martin, maybe an immature.

I had to lag behind the group quite a few times after the halfway point so I could look at birds, and then had to trot to catch up with our group.  That let me get a good look at a rainbow bee-eater, a really amazingly colored bird. Jane missed this one, although I commanded her to get her binoculars out and look for it.

Finally, as Barry was droning on with yet another myth related to some rock formation, I finally saw a raptor, so I rudely put my binoculars up and tuned Barry out. It was a falcon, with a moustache like a kestrel but not as small. It turned out to be a brown falcon.

We saw petroglyphs

and watering holes and waterfalls and caves, and Barry told us lots and lots of stories. We circumnavigated the rock, and Barry delivered us back to our hotel with time to spare before our shuttle to the airport. It was on to Cairns, which, Barry warned us, was in the middle of monsoon season.

Travel Diary: Temporary Sydneysiders

Arriving in Sydney Monday morning, we shared a shuttle with two local women. We were the last stop, so we got a scenic tour of the swanky northern suburbs (gorgeous, with a tropical, colonial vibe--I kept picturing verandahs in those lushly landscaped yards) as the driver navigated rush hour traffic. In our exhausted, disoriented state, we agreed on the spot that there would be no driving on the wrong side of the road for us.

After many tantalizing glimpses of the ocean, and apparently driving over the Sydney Harbour Bridge without recognizing it, we arrived in the beach village of Manly.

We spent our first day getting acquainted with our surroundings. We sat on the beach for awhile, watching people and the ubiquitous silver gulls until the blazing sun made us retreat. As we walked away we heard the lifeguards bellowing for people to stay between the flags or get out, and saying that box jellyfish had been sighted in the area. Lifeguards like to exercise their power the same way the world over--by instilling fear.We wandered the pedestrian mall called the Corso, which is totally geared to low-budget tourists like backpackers and students. The cheap clothing stores and restaurants are recognizable from any resort town.

That afternoon we followed the scenic walkway leading to Sydney Harbour National Park on the point just north of Manly. On the heavily used path past Fairy Bower and Shelly Beach, we realized we were walking on the wrong side--and then saw the signs instructing us to keep left.

We caught tantalizing glimpses of a bird that looked a lot like a starling or a mynah, which turned out to be the aptly named (and native) noisy miners. We also saw the first of many ENORMOUS spiders. I was pleased to hear frogs croaking. 

The hike we took is described as being about 5 kilometers, and in our guidebooks it's a clear loop. On the ground, it's not clearly marked at all.

We could see town and the coast at all times, but we often really didn't know whether we were going the right way.

We were dripping sweat and walked partway on roads, not being sure we were walking on the correct shoulder. And Australians are assertive drivers, to say the least. They must gauge their margin of error to the split second because they don't appear to slow for pedestrians in the least.

After a short while as pedestrians in Australia we became convinced that the biggest risk to our health was cars. I  started saying "death comes from that way" as a reminder to look the right, then left for oncoming traffic (that's exactly the opposite of what we've done all our lives--you try acclimating quickly to that).

We went to get a local cell number, and the girl at the Vodafone shop asked me about three times whether my phone was unlocked. I assured her that I knew it was (what do I look like, a techno naif?). Then I humiliated myself by being unable to work my phone. Later, in the quiet of our hotel room I activated the phone so it was usable for calls. No dice on Web-browsing or e-mail, though. Shoot--that was going to be my main link to the outside world.

I ask at the hotel whether there's Wi-Fi I can use, and they say "Sure, for 55 cents a minute." I sniff. This is absurd, because even obnoxious hotels in the states don't charge more than $12 per day, and free Wi-Fi is my birthright. 

All the restaurants reminded me of beachfront places in southern California. I had a delicious lamb-arugula salad with feta and garbanzo beans for dinner, which turned out to be one of the best meals of the whole trip. When we sat down at the beachfront place we picked at random, we asked what the racket from the trees was, and we were assured that they'd quiet down as soon as the the sun set. We weren't bothered (even though it was loud); we just wanted to know what exciting exotic bird it was. We couldn't see them, but we were told they were lorikeets, which turn out to be common as house sparrows throughout the country. We'd see them fly in and make their settling-in ruckus everywhere, almost every night. We managed to stay up until about 8 our first night and considered it a success.

Tuesday morning I was awoken by the same screeching, so about 6:30 I went out with my binoculars. It was already getting warm, and people were exercising all along the boardwalk--it was really  busy for that early in the morning, but it was probably the best time to exercise given the heat.  I heard but couldn't spot the screeching birds. I wandered the boardwalk and side streets looking for a place to buy coffee.  During my walk I heard a distinctively raucous call, looked up, and spotted my first pair of laughing kookaburras--Australia's iconic bird. I also saw squawking streaks of white that were too fast to get my binoculars on, and wondered if they were wild cockatoos. I hoped so and felt the thrill of really, truly not being at home.

I sat down at the end of the Corso and painfully pecked out my first message on the standard phone number pad--I am not a practiced texter, but I want to be. Dammit! I ordered this thing specifically because I wanted a QWERTY keyboard, but I can't find it in any menu, no matter what I try. I don't have the phone number I need--it's programmed into my old phone--so I decide to send the message as e-mail. That requires entering endless configuration data, all using the numeric keypad. And it doesn't work. Technology fail #2. I have my eyes peeled for "free Wi-Fi" signs. I see plenty of "Wi-Fi," but virtually no "free."

I find an open coffee shop, squint at the unfamiliar list of drinks, and order two long blacks, which I figure must be Americanos. The counter girl asks if I want large ones. I say yes. She asks if I want sugar, and I say no, but I do want cream. She looks at me a bit blankly as I wonder which will be more annoying: using a debit card or a $20 to pay for two coffees. My coffees are pulled and I look for some milk to add. I ask the counter girl and the barista, and they both give me the baffled look again, but I do get my milk. I learn later that you just order a coffee drink with milk in it. We will spend the rest of the trip trying to figure out if there really is any difference between a cappucino and a flat white. I grab a couple of super-greasy pastries from another shop and wander through the side streets before heading back to the hotel.

We head to the beach, and Jane stops to rent a surfboard from a sweet, adorable surf shop guy who tells her where the best breaks are.

After maybe an hour Jane gets out of the water. She says the surf was really rough and scary, and she was working hard. The waves break really quickly, so they do seem like they'd be hard to ride. We head for the ferry to spend the afternoon in Sydney proper.

Sydney's harbor is vast, and beautiful throughout. Everywhere green tumbles all the way down to the water. There must be industrial sections, and we see military ships and heavy equipment, but the natural beauty dominates. Parts of the ferry ride are rough, as the boat heads past open ocean. All the manmade wonders in Sydney Harbour seem to crowd right around the central business district: Circular Quay itself projects the grandeur of an old train station, but this place is still the nerve center of the city. And the Opera House, the bridge, and the botanical gardens are all right here, practically just an arm's length away from each other.The old-fashioned amusement park Luna Park is also right on the water, and provides a slightly eerie focal point to the night skyline.

Our first afternoon in Sydney's central business district we look at the Opera House, argue about whether to go into the botanical gardens, and wander through the Rocks, the original point of settlement. We see the usual quaint, touristy shops in shure 'nuff old buildings. Since Sydney was first settled in 1788, "old" is a relative term. We have lunch at a bakery in the Rocks and get our first good look at rainbow lorikeets, a pair of which are shamelessly begging from cafe patrons. We see a sacred ibis, which is acting disconcertingly tame. Then we decide to take the train to the Newtown neighborhood, which our guidebook tells us is where the girls are. We have to transfer trains to get there, and we're quite proud of our independent navigation skills.

At the Newtown station, we get out and start to walk. It's a pretty funky neighborhood, but we're happy to be away from the tourist district and where actual people live. As we wander we notice cheap Asian restaurants and clothing stores geared to college students: vintage and Indian. This place has a lot in common with San Francisco's Mission District; King Street looks sort of like Valencia Street, just really stretched out. We see a few members of our tribe, but we don't run across any lesbian bars, or even any comfortable cafes to stop in. We check a couple of used bookstores (they can still support independent bookstores? How quaint!) for a field guide to Australian birds. I don't find one, but I do find a newsstand that has free Wi-Fi, so I quickly check e-mail. We consider heading for the Glebe precinct, but it's too far away to reach on foot, it's getting late, and we're getting rather far away from the train station. And we don't feel comfortable just hopping on a bus. I don't want to miss the last ferry back to our hotel in Manly....

Our return train to Circular Quay is much less posh than the one out. We stop for a beer in a pub downtown (in the CBD, as Australians say) and watch some rugby on TV. We laugh at how impossible rugby is to understand. I allow as how these rugby players are kinda hot in a complete beefball sort of way. And I laugh (too loudly, Jane hints) at the fact that they seem to be grabbing at each others' shorts in the scrum. I text an acquaintance and see if he wants to try to meet up the next day.

Safely settled on the ferry and waiting to leave at dusk, I start scanning the sky for birds, and I spot a wide-winged, heavy-bodied, flapping profile. I watch it for about 30 seconds and then gabble at Jane, "Bat bat bat bat bat!" We love bats. We don't see them hardly ever. We've just spotted our first grey-headed flying fox.

Wednesday we meet Jane's family friend, Jessica, for a visit to Sydney's Taronga Zoo. Jessica is an American who moved to Sydney for a job recently, and we're the first visitors she's had from home. We're glad to hang out with her and get her perspective. I think it's kind of funny when she says she lives in the Glebe neighborhood, which was our "bridge too far" of last night. She says it's just a 15-minute bus ride from Circular Quay, which she shortens to "Circular."  The zoo is cool, but we think the San Diego Zoo is better.  I think I've snapped photos of every bird in the exotic bird aviary. We see reptiles, and a kajillion species of rat-size desert-dwelling marsupials. There are so many that they sort of run together. Echidnas are pretty cool--they're like porcupine-anteaters. We see tawny frogmouths, birds with giant mouths and huge eyes in owl-like faces. Lots of wallabies and kangaroos are in an open-air enclosure; they all look sleepy and/or depressed, which is rather depressing. All the koalas are behind a fence: You have to pay extra to get close to them and have your picture taken (you can't hold them, though). So there are a dozen koalas in individual cubicles--what a natural living environment... We missed seeing wombats and platypuses entirely, and the penguins and cetaceans were nothing to write home about, to be honest. The elephant show was benign but felt dated and quaint. We were done with the zoo in under 2 hours, I think. We took a ferry to and from the zoo to Circular Quay.

Back at Circular Quay, a permanent feature is the aboriginal street performers playing digeridoos, posing for photos and selling music discs. I really don't care for digeridoo, and I feel queasy about people exploiting their ancient and ostensibly sacred (and personal) culture to make a buck from tourists. (Although I suppose my feelings about it are irrelevant.) I make a crack about one of my enduring memories of Sydney being awful digeridoo music coupled with secondhand smoke--because both seem inescapable at Circular Quay. Jessica says, "Yeah, this techno-digeridoo bastardization is pretty awful, but you'd be surprised how beautiful authentic digeridoo music is." I'm not convinced. 

Jessica has lunch with us at a pub in the Rocks, and I find my bird guide in a chain bookstore. I think Jessica surely must want to ditch us and get back to her real life already but she doesn't seem to be in a hurry to leave. We figure out our respective bus routes and wait together. Jane and I head for Darlinghurst because it's almost Mardi Gras and I'm still trying to connect with my friend. Jessica has given us the name of a bar that she thinks is fun, the Colombian. We wander for blocks, finally settling in a stuffy coffee shop for awhile and then having a beer at the Colombian before catching the bus back. We never connect with my friend. On Thursday, our last full day in Sydney, we start by going to Shelly Beach, a little bitty calm cove. It's like a swimming pool, and I go in for a wade. Jane swims some laps. Then we return a final time to Circular Quay.

We head straight for the Royal Botanic Gardens. It's not large, but it's stunning, and we get a great dose of birdwatching: masked lapwings, tons of sacred ibis, a dusky moorhen with chicks, magpies. And more wild cockatoos than you can shake a stick at. Amazingly, Jane spots a tawny frogmouth resting in a tree. She is a champion spotter. I'm just the ID'er. Then we encounter the park's resident flying foxes. Thousands of them, in their daytime roosts. They're resting, but lots of them are fussing and squeaking, scratching, squabbling, fanning their wings to keep cool. Some of them are have babies nestled in their armpits. We learn that the park does not love the bats, because their sheer numbers make them destructive to the plant life. But they sure are cute.

We decide we can fit in a trip to Bondi, so we take the bus along Oxford Street again.

 At Bondi Beach, Jane marvels at the beach's sheer size, and the size and energy of the waves. She insists that she doesn't want to find some gear and surf. I think there might be a thousand people on the beach. I'm amused by the workout area/playground, just like at Venice Beach in LA. The water is turquoise and the lifeguards are in charge.

We wander past the usual tourist shops and into a feminist bookstore/cafe that gives me a twinge of nostalgia. We find a cafe for dinner. In my seafood risotto I find a long, wormy-looking string that turns out to be a ring from a biggish squid. I cut that up and eat it, but I can't handle the huge green-lipped mussels. The squishy bits and parts are just too big for me to bite into.

We head the wrong way out of the restaurant and spend a long, tense hour wandering through residential Bondi before we return to the main drag and catch our bus back. We have to pack and catch a flight to Alice Springs the next morning.

The Christmas Bird Count, as told to...

Hey, I did it again: I blogged about something colorful for my local hyperlocal blog, Berkeleyside.com. I thought the natives would like to know something about the crazy birders in their midst.

We leave for 24 hours, and look what happens.

Gone. Left the building. Decamped. Changed domiciles. However, at least one of them was hanging out in the backyard, still adjusting to how the wings work.

Another dispatch from the nest

I expect these guys to fledge next week. We might return from Santa Cruz on Sunday afternoon to see them up and stretching their wings.

What a difference a week makes.

Mom doesn't fit on the nest anymore.

(That's one of the babies, not the mom, and the other one is in there--just obscured by the leaves.)

A sneak peek

...into the nest.






So far, so good. They appear to be getting bigger by the day.

Our newest neighbor.

I blogged about a hummingbird nest under our eaves last summer, and I wondered if we'd have a nest again this year.  Very surprisingly, this year the nest is right off our front porch, at eye level from the front door. She doesn't seem to mind our comings and goings--she doesn't startle when we walk by.

There's at least one egg in the nest, probably two. If I set up a tripod inside our front window, I should be able to get some pretty good  shots of the babies when they hatch.

I did see the mom get nervous when another hummingbird came near. I think the adult males might see the chicks as competition for food sources (like the feeder a few feet away from the nest). Last year after the chicks left the nest, they lighted in a tree in our backyard, and an adult male dive-bombed them. One went torpid and flipped upside down on his branch. It was scary, but the chick recovered quickly. I like to think that clutch still hangs around the yard.