Friday Night Photos Potpourri Edition

Happy Friday everyone. I hope everybody is doing well. Post any photos, memes, or music you like.

We had a little rain on Wednesday and there's more in the forecast for this weekend. The long range forecast is predicting sunny and 70s for Thanksgiving day next week which will be nice.
It's good to see the price of gas has been coming down the last few weeks. When I filled up the other day regular was $5.09 a gallon. A drop of about .30¢ since the last time I filled up a few weeks ago. Now if only the price of food would come down.
Wishing everybody a Happy Thanksgiving next Thursday.

A little of this and that from here and there while out and about.

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QMS's picture

love lost
heading offshore
determined explorer
pink and green shimmering
tres musicas vamonos
feuding fowls
cost of war
prickly thistles

and at least 14 jammin'

thanks for sharing social!

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truth is considered foreign influence, world peace is a threat to national security

Socialprogressive's picture

@QMS
Thanks for the image titles. The Star of India "heading offshore" doesn't happen very often. I was hoping to get some shots of it with all it's sails unfurled unfortunately it didn't lower the main sails until it was to far away for a good shot.

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Socialprogressive's picture

@humphrey
Nice Gary Markstein cartoon. From some of the photos I've seen he's not to far off the mark. Thanks for sharing it.

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snoopydawg's picture

Great shot of them! I love how you captured the water in the balloon photo. I meant to comment on your wood duck photo last week too. Amazing shot. What settings do you use to make the water look like that?

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
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Socialprogressive's picture

@snoopydawg
Hope you and Sam are doing well.
The two birds are coots and they are fighting. When I'm shooting wildlife I usually set my aperture as wide open as the lens will go to help isolate the subject from the background. In the case of the photo you asked about the aperture was f/5.6.

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dystopian's picture

Hi all, Hey SP!

Great photos as always. I hate seeing those balloons in the water. Soon to end up in a fish or turtle.

Still waiting for some intrepid team to name themselves the Mighty Fightin' Coots.

Not positive, but I think your seed head is an Artichoke.

A few degenerate photos of slides

The Mighty Fightin' Coots
coots-fighting.jpg

some Black Skimmer in flight
blkskmr2.jpg

Black Skimmer
blkskmr.jpg

I gotta fly. Have good ones all!

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

Socialprogressive's picture

@dystopian
You are correct, the seed head is an Artichoke. There is a field of them about a 20 minute walk from my house.
Thanks for the shots of the coots and skimmers. Interesting color pattern on the skimmer. I wish we had them around here.

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dystopian's picture

@Socialprogressive Skimmers are surely around San Diego Bay. These Skimmer pics were from either Newport Bay or Bolsa Chica I think. They were not found in socal in the 60's, the first few showed up in the latest 70's maybe. They have been breeding at coastal terneries since the 90's, if not a bit earlier. I think there is a ternery along the Silver Strand area? Anyway some stay the winters now so you can find them year-round. They roost with gulls and terns along edges of bays and lagoons. Fairly strictly saltwater, and which must be calm flat water so they can skim along with lower mandible in water and snap up fish when they hit them.

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

Socialprogressive's picture

@dystopian

needs to update their distribution maps. They don't show any Black Skimmers in Ca. It's not the first time they have been slow to update their maps.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Socialprogressive

First CA sighting I know of was 1962; 8 September 1962 at the mouth of the Santa Ana River in Orange County, ( https://www.birdforum.net/gallery/black-skimmer.680077/ ). Ebird has them in the Hayward Shoreline (East SF Bay) as early as 1994. They are definitely in San Diego, check eBird for locations.

be well and have a good one

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Socialprogressive's picture

@enhydra lutris
Thanks for the tip on eBirds. I took a quick look at their site. They have much better maps than the All About Birds website.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Socialprogressive

and birding site from Cornell, which has an extremely reputable ornithology program. They also are one of the partners in eBird, which collects and displays historical sighting information submitted by mostly amateur birders. eBird is pretty certain to be more current as it is continually updated.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

dystopian's picture

Hi EL and SP,

If of interest some historical perspective on the socal skimmers... I followed these a bit...

I think that 62 Orange Co. skimmer record was a one-day bird, and not sure any more were in OC 62-72 the decade I lived there birding Bolsa Chica and Newport Bay many hundreds of times. My folks compiled OC CBC's then. We were pretty tuned in, and would have chased any local report. The Sta. Ana River mouth bird was the first socal record actually. Probably why someone (likely OC birders) put it into ebird.

Also I think all records in Dunn & Garrett, Birds of Southern California: status and distribution, 1980, were entered into ebird, as it is the bible for everything prior and up to that date.

Unfortunately most of the copies of that printed were lost in an arson fire at LA Audubon's Audubon House in Plummer Park, in W. Hollywood, shortly after printing. Maybe a couple months? I forget. A buddy got one at auction in the 1990's for $500. I got mine for $20 the week it came out.

Black Skimmer in socal was an accidental vagrant occurence in '62 and remained such coastally a decade at least. The first Salton Sea birds were 3 in 1968, colonization there for nesting began in 1972. The San Diego Bay nesting started in 1976 and was at 75 or so birds present in summer 1979.

But in the 70's a few more had started to show upcoast, mostly from late spring to late summer, as when Elegant Tern and Heerman's Gull move north from Mexican nesting grounds. And where the closest to socal nesting and source birds of all three were.

For skimmer as of 1980 there were maybe 5 or so Sta. Barb. Co. records, double that in Ventura Co., only a very few in LA and Orange Counties. LA Co. had no habitat left. OC had lots with Bolsa Chica and Newport Bay. As of 1980 any OC report would have had all the top local birders chasing it to see one in the county.

Nesting began in Orange Co. at Bolsa Chica in the 1980's, in LA Co. in the 1990's. Again, in both cases associated with new Elegant Tern terneries, as with the first coastal colony at San Diego Bay. The Elegant Tern did not nest in socal in the 1960's either, it was only a late summer visitor from Mexico. All this stuff moving north as breeders, by hundreds of miles, started in earnest about 50 years ago or so for the first pioneers of those three species.

In the 1990's as co-compiler of Palos Verdes Peninsula CBC, the first count records (winter) were early 90's. There, the way to get the best count of them (and Mew Gull - now Short-billed Gull) was to be at the southmost tip of San Pedro at the Pacific Ave. overlook before the sun came up. Which I did for alcids and shearwaters with scope anyway. As long as it was not windy overnight, immediately after sunup, a parade of Mew Gull and Black Skimmer would pass by Pt. Fermin going south in about the first half-hour of light. They proceeded to Cabrillo Beach or Terminal Island (maybe or maybe not visible later in day) where they slept the day off. Yes as long as there is no wind and the sea glassy (night) they feed at sea overnight. And sleep on the beach all day. Not all skimmers do this, but our local birds did in winter. I had been watching those Mew Gulls for decades trying to figure out how they were makin' a living sleeping on the beach all day.

Since the 90's skimmers are resident in socal, with a number of well-established breeding populations in Elegant Terneries. Smaller numbers winter around bays or lagoons, mostly near where they nest.

The Bolsa Chica ternery is one of the great spectacles you can experience with a ternery at fairly close range, and drive right up to. Besides the skimmers, nesting Least, Forster's, Caspian, Royal, and Elegant Terns. Ten thousand or more birds. It is incredible. You ought to hear it when a Peregrine visits. But put all in trunk, leave nothing in sight in your car at the parking lot there. Some birders have lost their camera gear the last decade or two.

Did you see the hardware/jewelry (band) on the bird behind the front bird in last pic? One leg I see a band on it. That is from my friend or one of his students at Bolsa Chica, Dr. Charlie Collins. He is the worlds leading authority on swifts. Named one recently. CSULB. Birded a fair bit with Charlie. Once I was following him way out in the middle of nowhere, to climb Clark Mtn. in eastern Mojave, a peak at about 8000' with firs, in the desert. He hit a jackrabbit, and when we stopped I asked if he knew. He said we would check it in a couple days on way out, he was trying to bait in what would then have been California's first Black Vulture. Charlie was funny.

Somewhere I have skimmer pics with the lower mandible in water, skimming. Whaddabird!

anyway, more than you wanted to know I'm sure... so with apologies...

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

QMS's picture

@dystopian

not to be a bird brain but
what is a temery?

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enhydra lutris's picture

@QMS

colonial nesters, up here, for example, there are islands in the lagoons at the hayward shoreline and when it is breeding season they are simply crammed full of terns, mostly forsters, but some caspians or aleutians sneak in now and then, and, since the 90s, skimmers.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

dystopian's picture

@QMS @QMS Hey QMS,

sorry about another post on this, guess I got terned on.

Of course EL answered already about what a ternery is. Another of those terms is heronry. For birds which are colonial nesting waterbirds in particular, such a term is used for the breeding aggregation and site. Often is is multiple species involved. In a heronry there might be Great Blue and Little Blue Herons, Great and Snowy Egret, Cattle Egret, Roseate Spoonbill, maybe Ibis, and Night-Herons. All nesting in close proximity. Generally just out of bill stabbing distance from each other.

Greynolds Pk. in Miami has a heronry in the park you can walk around at point blank and observe a half dozen species nesting. Stone Harbor in south Jersey has another famous heronry with arms length boardwalk viewing. High Island Texas has one too. A famous ternery near you is Plymouth Beach, Mass., where I spent a summer studying terns. Caspian, Common, Arctic and Roseate Tern all nest there. I was there for the Roseate mostly. There is so much energy in a ternery or heronry it is mind-boggling. And oh the sounds! Though they might not smell the best if downwind.

Remember, one good tern deserves another. Ternabout is fair play, and so on.

I am still trying to find out what a colony of boobies is called. Will advise...

Smile

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

QMS's picture

@dystopian
saw it as tem rather than tern
there is so little space between the
letters but plenty upstairs!

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enhydra lutris's picture

@dystopian

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Socialprogressive's picture

@dystopian
Thanks for all the info, dystopian. One of these days I need to drive up to Bolsa Chica and check it out.

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dystopian's picture

@Socialprogressive Lots of bird photogs go there to shoot, it lends itself well to that. I think the San Diego Bay ternery is either on Navy land or in a reserve, so little to no public access. The Bolsa Chica one is in a reserve, but you can get close enough that birds are constantly flying right by you. The ternery is active from late March or April to August or early Sept., but really May and June is when it gets rippin'. Any of the socal rivermouth areas often have sandbars with roosting gulls and terns, there are probably some around San Diego Bay, I just haven't birded there in a couple decades so forget some of it. San Elijo lagoon at Carlsbad and Buena Vista Lagoon at Oceanside are both good spots too. The backbay drive at Newport Bay often has very close sandbars with roosting flocks of gulls, terns, and skimmers, and shorebirds. Another photogs favorite.

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

orlbucfan's picture

Rec'd!! Smile

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

Socialprogressive's picture

@orlbucfan
I saw where some areas of South Florida got up to 10 inches of rain. Hope you were able to stay high and dry in your area of the sandbar peninsula.

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orlbucfan's picture

@Socialprogressive factoring in king tides on top of the heavy rain. Flooding and power outages. We are much further north and inland. We got a good solid couple of rainy days which we needed. Beautiful weather this weekend. Smile

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

QMS's picture

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Socialprogressive's picture

@lotlizard
Excellent photo.
It appears that she still flies the Hawaiian flag.

NZ9_6282_48724.2

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