Mokka mit Schlag

My pescetarian spouse surprised me with a Tofurkey last night for an early Thanksgiving. Apparently these things actually exist. I thought it was just a bad sitcom joke. Shockingly , it wasn’t bad. Not a turkey by any means, but more edible than most tofu-based products. The texture was off, but the flavor was plausible: not as good as a real turkey but better than the prepackaged, extruded “turkey breast” a lot of restaurants try to pawn off as fresh turkey. I suspect an excessive amount of wheat gluten and strange chemicals.

I’ve run out of identified moths, but I still have a couple of mystery moths left. This one I found in the evening at the Huntington Beach Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center on Pacific Coast Highway last Saturday, November 15:

Anyone recognize it?
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Does anyone happen to know exactly which model of the Philips Digital recorder is included with the Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Preferred Mobile Edition? I can’t seem to find that detail anywhere obvious. Thanks.

I found one Pro version that’s bundled with a Philips 9500, but I’m not sure if they use the same recorder for the Preferred Mobile package or not. I suspect not since the 9500 is about $399 on its own.

Today’s subject hasn’t actually graduated to full moth-hood yet, but I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel. This is the caterpillar of the Yellow-striped Armyworm Moth – Hodges#9669 (Spodoptera ornithogalli).

Campus Drive between Bridge and University, Irvine, 2008-09-14
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Saturday Jon Dunn led about a dozen volunteers from the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy on a field ID trip to Bolsa Chica. Dunn’s a noted expert on California birds in general and gulls in particular, so we found some birds I never would have picked out without him like this first-year Thayer’s Gull:

Notice the skinny, all-black bill, pink legs, dark tail, and dark eye on a coffee-colored, scaly gull that’s the same size as the California Gull in the background. Not so obvious in this poor digiscoped photo (I just held up my camera to the scope eyepiece and prayed) is the white striping along the primaries.
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I found a few more moths in my back albums, but if I don’t find some more soon January will be pretty bleak:

Chytonix divesta, Hodges#9559
Shoreline Park, Mountain View, 2008-06-25
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