Mokka mit Schlag

Surely I’ve seen a Common Moorhen before now? Well, yes I have. Many times and on more than one continent. However, the American Ornithological Union has just split the species into 2, Common Gallinule (Gallinula cachinnans) in North America and Common Moorhen, (Gallinula chloropus) in Europe. When I heard this I had to check to see if I’d had the bird in Europe and indeed I had, at least four times on my trip to Munich back in March. In fact. I even managed a bad photo of one at Schloss Nymphenburg:

I didn’t think much of it then, but now it counts as a new life bird.

I’m trying to come up with a system for rating my photographs in Lightroom. How’s this sound?

5 Stars: Submit to BBC Nature Photographer of the Year, Audubon Magazine Photography Awards, and other contests
4 Stars: Consider making wall prints and framing, using in a calendar, putting in a photo book, submitting to nature magazines, etc.
3 Stars: Submit for Microstock
2 Stars: Upload to Picasa
1 Star: Personal interest; documentation photo. E.g. a personal life bird even with a crappy photo.
0 Stars: Keep
X: Delete
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I just signed up for the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival in November. I picked the five most intense day trips they had, and I still may not see half the sites I want to visit:
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I’d estimate that about 50% of my external hard drives fail over their useful lifetime. The manufacturer doesn’t seem to matter a lot. Lacie, Western Digital, Maxtor, etc. I’ve tried them all and they all fail. Multiple redundant backups, and close attention to signs of problems are necessary to maintain data. And yet to date I think I’ve had exactly 0 hard drives replaced or repaired under warranty. Why? It simply isn’t safe to send hard drives back for replacement. Today’s multi-terabyte drives, and really any drive, contain too much personal data to let it out of my sight; at least not without running it through a degausser that costs as much as several dozen replacement drives first.

Once an external hard drive has failed, it is usually not possible to erase it, much less securely. However the most common mode of failure for an external hard drive seems to be that the enclosure fails, but the data on the platters is still there and can be recovered with enough effort and tools simply by pulling the platters out, and shoving them into a working enclosure. It’s not something I would usually do unless I didn’t have backups. However more often than not it’s something that could be done, either by someone who intercepts the package, a tech working at the hard drive company I return the drive to, or the next warranty servicee who gets back a reconditioned drive with my data still on it. Usually they’d have to use a disk recovery tool to see that data, but sometimes not even that. One third party Mac repair shop once sold me a “new” hard drive that came complete with the contents of someone else’s system: Quicken files, college essays, personal letters, etc.

I recently had the uncommon experience of getting enough warning to erase a hard drive before it failed completely. One of the Western Digital Elements 2.0 TB USB drives I use for rotating Time Machine Backups began making a whining noise. That’s a pretty reliable sign of imminent failure. For a little while, it wouldn’t mount at all, but after some coaxing I got Disk Utility to recognize it and did a single pass erase with all zeros. After that, I was reasonably comfortable sending it back for replacement under warranty. I paid for postage, but otherwise, Western Digital made the process relatively painless. I just entered my serial number in an online form, entered a reason for return, and they gave me a shipping label. I packed the drive up, took it to the mail room, and sent it off. And then a week later they sent me back the wrong drive.
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Looking around my apartment, I notice a significant number of Canon lenses and cameras I’m not using any more. If you’re interested in any of this (especially if you’re in Brooklyn or Manhattan) drop me an e-mail:

• Canon 400 mm f/5.6L lens: $1100
• Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 SP Di VC USD XLD for Canon Digital SLR Cameras, barely used, $350
• Tamron AF 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 XR Di LD Aspherical (IF) Macro Ultra Zoom Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras: $275
• Canon 18-55 IS II, broken autofocus: $50 or best offer
• Canon Extender 2X II: $250
• Canon Powershot SX30IS, barely used: $350
• Canon Powershot A650IS: $175

Most have original boxes, manuals, chargers, batteries, lenscaps, etc.

The Tamron 70-300mm and the Powershot SX30IS are still under warranty. The rest aren’t. Shipping is not included.

I will also consider trades for Canon DSLRs and pro-grade lenses.

Lately my life birds have been getting further and further from home: Connecticut, Iceland, Texas, Munich, and Florida. That’s the natural state of things as you gradually fill out the local species, and even local accidentals. My Brooklyn list is over 200 out of 328 total species, and my New York list is around 275 out of a possible 400 or so. However, many of the species I don’t have in New York, I have seen elsewhere so I haven’t felt the need to chase them locally. But surprisingly there are still a few local birds left for me to tick, and one I found today in my home territory of Prospect Park.

I was up on Lookout Hill today with about nine other birders, all enjoying spring migration and the warblers that come with it, when one of them asked me to look at a strange bird he had spotted and didn’t recognize. However, I was having trouble finding it and before I could put my binoculars on it, it took off and flew across our field of view. It was dark and vaguely gull shaped, but no gull. That could mean only one thing: nightjar! But which one?

It was large, seemed almost Ring-billed Gull sized. And it didn’t show any white wingbars in flight. That ruled out the most likely suspect, Common Nighthawk, and left two possibilities: Whip-poor-will and Chuck-will’s-widow. Whip-poor-will is sadly uncommon on Long Island these days, though it used to be more prevalent. Chuck-will’s-widow is relatively easy to find on Staten Island at certain locations, though I’ve never bothered to trek out there at night to listen for it.

The bird returned two more times, each time flying in front of us quickly and then vanishing into a tree. These are incredibly well camouflaged birds in daytime. They are very hard to spot, and we were not able to relocate it even when we saw exactly which tree it flew into. After much fruitless searching, we thought the bird might have sneaked out down the hill away from our view. However the consensus of birders there was that by size alone this was a Chuck-will’s-widow, #540.
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