Mokka mit Schlag

I had New Year’s Eve off so I decided to see if I could add a few final birds to my BGBY list. I could have tried for the Northern Waterthrush at San Joaquin or a possible Yellow-throated Vireo at Mason Park. However, those sites are just too familiar. I’ve been to each of them many, many times over the last year; and they hold few surprises any more. Instead I decided to get on my bike and head down to the beach; more specifically to Robert E. Badham, where a lot of the rocky shorebirds and pelagic birds hang out. I hadn’t yet been out to the shore on my Bigby travels this year, and thus there were at least two guaranteed new BGBY birds on almost any trip–Heermann’s Gull and Brandt’s Cormorant–and another dozen or so were possible. so I pumped up my bike tires, packed my scope and a lunch in my backpack, and took off down the Mountains to Sea trail.

The morning was incredibly foggy, not the best climate for viewing birds. Plus high tide was coming at Badham about 10:00 AM and low tide at 4:30 AM. On any other day, I would have called it off, and gone back to Mason or San Joaquin; but this was really now or never for the beach in 2009. When I started I could hear a few birds but visibility was severely restricted. I was very glad that most of the trip would be on bike paths and very low traffic roads since I wasn’t sure cars could see me. I could hear some Yellow-rumped Warblers, a Crow or two, and just barely make out a couple of Mallards in San Diego Creek. I heard Canada Geese honking long before I saw them fly down the creek. I hoped the fog would lift quickly, but by the time I reached Upper Newport Bay, it was still thick on the ground:

I could make out the American Coots in the water, a few Lesser Scaup, a noticeable group of Redheads, and a few shorebirds including a Long-billed Curlew and a Spotted Sandpiper. However, I didn’t even bother pulling my scope out of my backpack since I couldn’t see far enough to need it anyway. Searching for the Loggerhead Shrike or Short-eared owl would have been hopeless. Sidenote: Willet calls from out of the fog are really eerie.
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I finally pushed Jaxen 1.1.2 out the door, and my resolution (singular) for 2008 is to finally finish XOM 1.2 as well. Then maybe, just maybe, I’ll have a little room to take on one more hobby project this year, but what should it be? They’re a few ideas I’m kicking around, and I’m wondering which would b the most interesting/lucrative/fun. Here are a few ideas:

1. GPS tracking software for Android

The screen on my Garmin handheld unit cracked two days after I got an unlocked Android phone to play with. Coincidence or fate? Some folks are already working on Android GPS apps. Maybe I could contribute to their efforts.

In fact, far and away the major feature I use on my Garmin eTrex is simple measurement of how far I’ve walked, along with occasional downloads of paths. I wouldn’t have to reimplement the entire Garmin stack for the Android, just the one or two pieces I actually use.
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So now I’ve had a little time to play with my G1 phone, and my initial impression is that it shows promise, but isn’t fully usable yet. In particular,
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Saturday, December 20, I got to Starr Ranch bright and early at 6:30 AM for the San Juan Capistrano Christmas Bird Count. I was assigned to a team walking the Juanino Trail in Caspers Wilderness Park. The rain earlier in the week had played havoc with the plans for the count since multiple areas were no longer accessible. We car-pooled over from Starr Ranch, and I joined up with Candace and Steve, a couple of park rangers, at the Nature Center.

Stefan dropped the three of us off at the trail head and we hiked back approximately 3.4 miles. Overall the trail was quiet. Yellow-rumped Warblers were by far the most common species, but Turkey Vultures also put in a respectable showing with at least 15. We only picked up about 20 species, but several of them were singletons nobody else in our section of the count circle spotted: California Gnatcatcher, Phainopepla, and Orange-crowned Warbler. I also found a Golden-crowned Sparrow at the Nature Center’s feeders. Technically it was outside my area, but the folks covering the nature center area had missed it, so we added it to their list.

My total list for the morning wasn’t so impressive but we did get some individual species no one lese in casper’s found including Phainopepla, Orange-crowned Warbler, and California Gnatcatcher:
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I knew there was something bugging me about Chrome, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I finally realized what it is: There’s no menu bar!

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You may have noticed I missed Moth Monday last week because I had finally run out of moth pictures. Of course, it’s only the pictures that ran out, not the moths. There are over 10,000 species in the United States and Canada alone, which at a rate of one a week should be enough to keep going for a couple of centuries at least. Last week I was in south Louisiana where many moths are still flying in the unseasonably warm (even for south Louisiana) weather. Here’s the first one from down south, a Florida Fern Moth, shown approximately five times actual size:

Florida Fern Moth, Hodges#9630, Callopistria floridensis
Metairie, Louisiana, 2008-12-23

Thanks to Bob Patterson for the ID.
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