Mokka mit Schlag

Dateline: Beijing, Wednesday, April 23. We ate an early dinner at the Rathskellar again (not its real name, but I don’t know what else to call it.) We had the fish hot pot again. Then we grabbed a cab for the other side of town to catch the “Peking Opera for Dummies” at the Liyuan Theatre. We planned to wander around a bit before the show, but we hit the worst traffic we’d seen the whole trip, and got there with not so much time to spare. The folks we were planning to go with never showed up. I hope they just didn’t come instead of being stuck in traffic for two hours and still missing the show.
Read the rest of this entry »

Reflecting back on my recent trip to Beijing (more on that still to come as I get time to write up my thoughts) one of the most striking things was the contrast between personal, day-to-day freedom in Beijing and the United States (especially NYC/Los Angeles/Orange County). I’m not talking about political representation or freedom to read whatever I felt like, but just the simple ability to go whereever I felt like going without being hassled. To my surprise, by that measure Beijing came off way better than the United States does these days, and that doesn’t speak well for the U.S.
Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes when trying several wireless networks before finding one that works, I connect to one that gives me an icon like this in my menu bar:

Basically it looks like a small classic Mac in a gray piece of pie. Does anyone know what this means? All I’ve figured out is that the connection usually (always?) doesn’t work.

Peking Duck is everywhere in this town, but live ducks are much harder to find. Beijing sadly does not have a large semi-native park like San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, or Manhattan’s Central Park. Instead they have a number of smaller palaces and temples surrounded by carefully planned and manicured gardens. This just doesn’t make for very good habitat, or even migratory stopover points.

After leaving Sicha Hai on Friday, I stumbled into Behai Park. It looked pleasant so I paid the 10 yuan admission and entered. Unfortunately from a birding perspective this proved to be another collection of old temples and other buildings. There were few birds except for the ubiquitous Eurasian Tree Sparrow. Some of the temples were quite impressive, but the only real garden area was closed.

After exploring the temples on the east side of the lake, I bought a ticket to cross to the west side and the Jade Islet. At this point I had pretty much given up on finding any more birds today, and had capped my binoculars. However, while I was standing in line waiting for the boat, two small ducks flew by heading South very quickly. I tried to get my bins uncapped fast, but only got a very quick look at them. My general impression was “Wood Duck”.

Wood Ducks are a North American species that doesn’t live here in China, but they do have a close relative over here: the Mandarin Duck. Unfortunately I couldn’t really be sure from such a quick look at flying birds. I almost got out of line to see if maybe they’d landed somewhere south of us, but by this point I’s already waited fifteen minutes and the boat was finally coming. Sine I hadn’t seen them land, I decided to just go on across the lake.

On the Jade Islet, I climbed up to the White Dagoba, and back down through some caves. I’m not sure I was supposed to exit the caves where I did, but no one stopped me. (I really didn’t feel like climbing all the way back up.) I walked over to the bridge connecting the Islet to the mainland, and there I spotted the first ducks I’d seen swimming anywhere in the central lakes. This time I had my binoculars ready, and put them on the birds almost immediately. There they were: unmistakable Mandarin Ducks.

Read the rest of this entry »

I spent some time looking for Black-headed Grosbeak last May in San Francisco without success. Who knows? Maybe I even saw it but didn’t recognize it. I certainly didn’t recognize life bird #407 in Santiago Oaks two weeks ago on a Sea & Sage trip led by Linette Lina. However I did at least recognize that i twas something weird when I saw it. My first reaction as Oriole. My second was Robin. My third was Bluebird, and all this within the space of a couple of seconds. That should have clued me in that I had something new. Fortunately Linette recognized it as soon as I pointed it out as a Black-headed Grosbeak.

Migration hadn’t quite fully kicked off yet, but we had a more than respectable showing with over 30 species:
Read the rest of this entry »

Can someone explain to me why John Updike doesn’t have the Nobel Prize yet? I just got around to reading Bech: A Book, and was once again transfixed by Updike’s command of the English language. There may well be authors in other languages who deserve the Nobel in Literature more than he does, but I can’t think of one still alive and writing in English.

The man’s pushing 80. He may not have that many years left. Can’t we get him one before it’s too late? Surely if Nobels can go to Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison, there’s room for an Updike?