Another Year living in Amerongen's Neighborhood
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Jim and Linda at Thailand's Golden Triangle
As has become our habit, we start the year with two Ballard Street offerings that seemed particularly apt during the year. The captions have been modified slightly. If your paper doesn't offer this —the Austin American-Statesman dropped it for some reason — you can read it at http://www.gocomics.com/ballardstreet/.
We traveled a bit this year and managed to achieve our goal of 4000 species of birds identified, in India (PDF Report on the trip). In addition to India, we traveled to Thailand (another PDF Report) as well as the western USA.
However, our biggest trip of the year involved moving from Austin to Oakland, CA, to be nearer to our children and grandchildren. Claire announced during the summer that she was expecting twins, which jolted us into action. We have discussed moving for years, and finally just did it.
We managed to find a nice house in Oakland, and moved in on December 20, ten days before the arrival of Scarlet and Violet.
Our New Home on the Left Coast
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View of 5820 Balmoral Drive
Our search for a new home began in El Cerrito, near Charles and Amy. Claire complained that this was too much out of the way for her if she wanted to drop off children on the way to her hospital. She suggested we look in Oakland, where some of her colleagues lived. This set of a round of suggestions and counter-suggestions from our two children regarding the best location. They would have preferred something in Berkeley, halfway between El Cerrito and the Oakland Childrens Hospital. Actually, Claire thought we should live in a condo in San Francisco near enough to her and Ron that we could drop by when needed for babysitting.
We found a possibility in Berkeley, but were told, “No, you don't want to live there,” by virtually everyone.
Then, we thought we had found a nice place in El Cerrito (sorry Claire) and prepared to make an offer. In the realtor's office, we learned about the Hayward Fault, which runs thru the East Bay and is the source of many earthquakes. We discovered that the house we had selected was within the “high” zone for quakes, less than a quarter mile from the fault. Another house we liked had the fault itself running thru the yard.
Everyone told us that earthquakes are a fact of life here and we should just get over it.
We expanded our search.
It required three separate visits to the area before we stumbled onto the right house. We were out on a Sunday visiting a lengthy series of open houses. The agent at one of the homes we looked at told us about three to add to the list. One was an Architectural Digest candidate, perfect for a gay couple with no children and infrequent guests. Fun, but not for us. Another was what Jim described as “a perfectly acceptable house, but with no soul.” (Interesting that he would attribute souls to houses when…)
The third house was 5820 Balmoral Dr. We loved it. It has a main level with kitchen, master suite, two living areas and a media room/office with a loft for the grandkids to play in. Downstairs are two guest bedrooms.
We modified our criterion of a reasonable price to pay for a house.
In a whirlwind of activity, we sold our house in Austin (ridiculously easy!), found a bank willing to talk to us about closing within 30 days, arranged for the move, and with a dog and three cats tagging along, drove from Austin to Oakland in three days. (Note: We did not strap the dog to the roof of the car for the journey.)
We aren't fully settled yet. The media room is not ready yet. As a result, the garage is full for boxes of books and files. Were getting there.
Have managed to do some birding out here. Finally saw our most recent jinx bird, Varied Thrush, during a visit to Philo. Of course, one showed up in our yard in a few days. We have looked for that bird for years, and it is not a difficult one to find. Glad to finally get a look at a gorgeous male.
We also drove to the Colusa NWR to see a Falcated Duck that has made the news and YouTube. A fantastic bird, this male in full breeding plumage is still attracting birders after more than a month. At the visitors center, we learned that 4000 people had showed up the first month to see it.
For a while, you can watch a multi-media show about our new home at www.5820balmoral.com. The realtor expects to leave the site active for some time as an advertisement of his services.
Our Travels
We ask your indulgence this year. Jim wrote a series of emails from Thailand and India recounting our experiences in those countries. Given that we are already late producing this Report, we have decided to include the PDF files of collected emails (with photos) rather than reformatting everything similar to 2010's Report.
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Family Dinner
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Leafy Sea Dragons.
Searching for a new home, we drove out to California, stopping in the LA area to catch up with some Moorman relatives. We paused for a day to take a boat trip to Channel Islands NP, where we saw the Island Scrub Jay, a larger version of the Western Scrub Jay, as well as hundreds of Common Dolphins. Then we met the rest of the family in Monterrey for a weekend spent at the Aquarium.
Then, we took the long way home, by way of Yellowstone NP, which we have written up as Our Western Swing.
A Long Weekend in Idabel
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Spangled Skimmer with an unwanted passenger
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View of Two Texas Rat Snakes
Linda's cousin, Leslie Fuller, had charge of the ashes of their Aunt Mary V, which she had promised to bury in Idabel, OK, in a family plot there. She had the great idea of combining that task with a mini-reunion, and Googled Idabel to see what she could use as a lure. The search produced the Red Slough Birding Convention, taking place May 7 - 10. We rented a house on the Mountain Fork River, a tributary of the inaptly named Little River, suitable for eight. The river was in near flood stage, which proved interesting.
Greg Lasley, an old friend from Austin was one of the speakers at the convention. He led an afternoon field trip to the Red Slough Wildlife Management Area where were lucky enough to photograph a Spangled Skimmer dragonfly (Libellula cyanea). A new friend, Paul Miliotis, identified the dragonfly for us as well as providing us with a lengthy tutorial on dragonflies and other bugs. Later, I learned that Paul was a fellow arachnophile, who shared a copy of a seminal paper on spiders from the early 20th century. Amazingly, the paper is still being cited today.
We spent some time on the deck overlooking the river, and found that it was already occupied by a Texas Rat Snake (Elaphe obsoleta lindheimeri). In fact, it was occupied by two of them, who proceeded to mate in a large hole in a nearby tree. We took several photos of the snakes, both climbing the tree and in the hole.
Another afternoon trip examined the wild flowers of the local area, which had a much better year than we did in Texas.
All in all, it was a great visit, and the Red Slough Birding Convention is definitely worthwhile for those of you so inclined.
Here are some photos from Idabel.
About Milestones
Back in the old days, when keeping track of life lists meant making ticks in the table of contents of the one field guide we used, we had no idea how many species we had seen. All that changed with the advent of birding database programs.
Jim has used Birders Diary since version 1 came out years ago. As a result, we now have an easy way to count how many species we have seen.
Thus, we know when we are approaching round numbers. This year, we went after 4000 in the world, and found two great birds. Jim's was a little brown bird, Bylth's Reed-Warbler (Acrocephalus dumetorum) ; Linda's was the spectacular Alexandrine Parakeet (Psittacula eupatria). This preserved the streak started with #2000: Jim likes to add LBJs (little brown jobs) and Linda likes showy species.
Check out our pictures.
On to 2012
Best wishes for 2012, or to use an African phrase, "Peace, rain (just the right amount), and prosperity." In Botswana, this takes on new meaning as the word “pula,” which means “rain,” is also the unit of the currency.
Stay in touch. You can always reach us using the contact form on this website. You can also find Jim, but not Linda, on Facebook.
