Mokka mit Schlag

This morning I took a quick spin around Prospect Park to see what was still hanging out in the cold, and perhaps start a BGBY list for the year. I haven’t yet decided how aggressively I want to pursue a BGBY list this year. It wouldn’t be too hard to cross 200 species in Brooklyn and the surrounding parts of Queens, especially using a bicycle so I can get out to the coast, but honestly the habitat around here is fairly familiar and not nearly as interesting as Orange County. Prospect Park is beautiful, but I’ve been visiting it weekly for over 10 years; and there’s just not that much new to see here anymore.

Before I even got to the park I found several White-throated Sparrows hanging out with the usual House Sparrows in the small gardens along Eastern Parkway. This is unusual. Maybe there’s too much snow cover in the park and gardens? Mostly the park was extremely quiet. There were only a few hotspots of activity, mostly where there was food for one reason or another. The first spot where I saw any bird at all was the Vale of Cashmere, where they’re a lot of ornamental plants that have berries throughout the winter. Here I found White-throated Sparrows, Tufted Titmice, Black-capped Chickadees, Mourning Doves, Northern Cardinals, a few flyover Ring-billed Gulls, and a surprising 2 Hermit Thrushes. At this time of year, even a single Hermit Thrush is a good find, but 2 visible at the same time is excellent.
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2009 wasn’t exactly a “big year”, but with 319 species it’s probably the biggest year I’ve ever had. Of course some of the species I ticked don’t really “count”. You can argue for Orange Bishop in California and Muscovy Duck in Louisiana, even if they are exotic; but Black Swan and Cockatiel are complete domestics. :-) I birded in five states and a dozen or so counties in three widely separated areas of the country. I took one pelagic trip. I got 18 countable life birds including the Verdin from Anza-Borrego, although I finished 24 short of my target goal of 500 birds for my life list.

My list certainly increased by birding both east and west coasts last year, though I did miss several easily chaseable life birds that showed up within walking distance of my apartment after I left Irvine: Mountain Bluebird, Green-tailed Towhee, and Bar-tailed Godwit, two of which I could have seen on my walk to work! I also neglected to chase a couple of Northern Wheatears that showed up within driving distance in Connecticut and New Jersey after I returned to Brooklyn. The BBC trip to Barnegat to look for Harlequin Ducks was canceled, and I broke my scope when I searched for them at Point Lookout. :-( I also missed the Barnacle Goose at Sunken Meadow State Park, though I did find the Pink-footed Goose. I also passed on a couple of Ivory Gulls that were reported south and north of me.

In 2010 I should finally be able to push my lifelist to 500 with just a couple of trips out of town. Harlequin Ducks are still regular at both Point Lookout and Barnegat. I’m still missing Mourning Warbler, and that’s regular in Prospect Park. (Opornis warblers are notoriously hard to find, even when they’re present.) Beyond that, if the TSA doesn’t get even stupider, I’m planning my first trip to the Caribbean in April which may just push me over 500. If that doesn’t, I’m looking at South Texas and Southeastern Arizona in the late summer and fall. See you next year!

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For birders the most important part of the solstice season is not presents under the tree or turkey (at least not domestic turkey) but rather the bird counts that end one year and start the next and that have done so for 110 years now. The annual Christmas Bird Count takes place globally for a couple of weeks around Christmas. You can usually find one near pretty much any significant human habitation. This year I did the Brooklyn count on the Saturday before Christmas, the Central Park count on the Sunday before Christmas, and then flew to New Orleans for the New Orleans East count on the Saturday after Christmas (and also to visit family, I feel compelled to mention). It’s especially fun to do bird counts in areas you don’t know all that well, because you’re virtually guaranteed to find something interesting and new.

On Saturday the interesting and new bird for me was an Inca Dove, or rather four of them I spotted in a Live Oak tree in a vacant lot along Hayne Boulevard across the street from Lake Pontchartrain. No photos I’m afraid. On bird counts I usually don’t bring a camera so I can concentrate on finding and counting the birds rather than on photographing them.
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Three regexps for the Python-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Ruby lords on their Rails of stone,
Nine for C++ doomed to die,
One for Larry Wall on his dark throne
In the Land of Perl where Obfuscation lies.

One regex to match them all
One regex to find them
One regex to replace them all and in the text file bind them
In the Land of Perl where Obfuscation lies.
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A recent crash of Firefox 3.6 B3 Namoroka led to an unusual and annoying situation. My main Mac is a MacBook laptop connected to a large external monitor. When docked, I use the larger externally display is my main monitor. The menubar goes there and most of my attention goes there. However, Firefox started opening windows on the smaller laptop display that’s off to my left, and that I have to crane my neck to see.

This seems to be a regular problem, or at least it used to be circa Firefox 3.0. However, the solution I found on the Web — deleting the localstore.rdf file —had no effect. Various other things I tried were equally ineffectual. What eventually worked, was the following:
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Here’s a troubleshooting tips it took me a few days to figure out. If Windows Vista reports your network printer as off-line and won’t print anything, but the printer will print just fine from other computers on the network, especially Macs, check to see if the printer picked up a new IP address from the DHCP server. Macs are smart enough to still recognize and find the printer even when its IP address has changed. Windows Vista PCs aren’t, and get seriously confused when a printer moves from one IP to another.

If this is indeed what happened, you’ll need to delete the old printer from the printer control panel and add the printer as if it’s a completely new printer. I don’t happen to know how to retrieve or reassign any jobs still pending for the off-line printer.