Category: Birding

Back to Work, Starting the Night Shift

Posted on by chappyshi

Well, I start week five of my new job tonight.  I did two weeks of normal business hours, two weeks of days (0600-1400) and now I am starting nights (2200-0600).  I am working Monday through Friday night this week.  Next week I think  I am on Sunday to Wednesday so I will  only get one day off in between.  Then I go to Saturday through Thursday nights for the foreseeable future.

I think that I will be working on Thanksgiving night but should still be able to enjoy the dinner prior to going to work.  Since I will work Thanksgiving, I should get Christmas off.  I do not know how long this schedule will be in place but I will deal with it in hopes of better things down the line.

Today is the tough day since it is my first night shift.  I have been getting up reasonably early and today I was up at 0730.  I  will probably have been awake for nearly 24 hours by the time I get to sleep tomorrow morning.  I feel confident that sleep will come easily.  I  never had much trouble sleeping during the day when I was shift working in the Navy.  Of course I am 16 years older but….

I did get out and get a nice paddle in on Burke Lake and walk on the treadmill for about 35 minutes.  I would like to get more walking in but am having problems with my left leg.  What I believe is a pinched nerve or sciatica is causes alternating numbness and achiness when I stand up for too long and/or walk.  Nonetheless it was a beautiful day albeit very windy and a bit chilly.  Not chilly enough to keep me off the water though I did use my splash skirt.

Pictures from Vacation in Salvo, NC, on the Outer Banks

Posted on by chappyshi

It took me longer than I had wished to get all these pictures together.  The downside of digital photography is that we can take too many pictures and look at them before printing or publishing them with minimal  monetary impact.  Nonetheless, I spent the time and put together a set of pictures from our recent trip to the Outer Banks.  Many thanks to my sister who made the arrangements and paid for the place!

Check out the pictures here on my photo album or browse to my photo album from the main page of my blog and look for the Salvo vacation pictures.  The only real downer of the vacation,  other than a couple of trips  to Urgent Care centers, was the traffic.  For one four hour stretch, we averaged 19 MPH!

Kayaking the Potomac River Near Point of Rocks, MD

Posted on by chappyshi

I had quite the nice paddle on the Potomac River on Sunday, 8 August.  We have had a dry summer and the rivers are down but, after a mass of rainstorms came through last week, the Potomac near Point of Rocks, MD, still had a pretty good current flowing.  The water was crystal clear.  At one point up about 1/2 mile from my entry point at Nolan’s Ferry Road, I saw a school of about 300 good sized fish, presumably Largemouth Bass.

The paddle  up from Nolan’s Ferry Road to the Rt. 15 bridge across the Potomac was right about four miles and quite a good workout.  There were some stretches of low water where the going was slowly but there were more stretches of deeper water, up  to about four feet, where the going was much easier.  I saw a few Great Blue Herons and Osprey but no eagles on this trip.

Here are a few pics from the trip:

Fawning Over Falling Flora

Posted on by chappyshi

We lost a few trees in the apartment complex due to the heavy snows last winter.  I have been watching this one tree that was at the side of my building…just waiting for it to come down ever since early winter.  Today we had some heavy rains with very strong winds.  I had been at my sister Julie’s working on my job search when it all started.  I commented to her that I was worried about the tree.  I did not think it would take anything out if and when it came down but I was concerned.

By the time the storm abated and I headed home, I had totally forgotten about my concerns.  I walked to my building, checked my mail, gave some  packages to my neighbor that I had secured for him,  and settled into my apartment.  Then while grabbing Hamlet’s bowl to get ready to feed him I caught something odd out of the corner of my eye.  It was the top of the tree that someone had cut off.  The tree itself was down baring the few roots it had.  Considering the lack of significant root ball, it is amazing the tree stayed erect as long as it did!

I am sad to see the tree go.  It did block the view of the condos across from me in the winter.  More importantly, it provided  shelter for birds, particularly in the winter.   Finally, it was a tree and trees are good.  I did not even get the chance to see or hear it fall…  Damn it Jim!

Greetings from the Outer Banks!

Posted on by chappyshi

Trips to “Urgent Care” not withstanding (everyone is okay), we are having a great time at the Outer Banks (Salvo, NC).  Thanks especially to Julie for getting the house.  We have nice a house with pool and hot tub and are about a five minute walk from the, very uncrowded, beach.  Of course we are BBQ’ing like crazy!

Traffic was hell getting down here.  It took Kim, Don, and I 5 hours to drive the 125 miles down here.  Julie, Ed, and Ryan had about a 9 and 1/2  hour journey from Centreville.  Dave came down Sunday.  He had the longest drive but made it in less than seven hours.  Locals say the traffic was nearly as bad as they could recall it being.

Julie and Ed took a short trek down to the beach Saturday night but the rest of us didn’t make it out until Sunday.  Unfortunately it was in the mid-90’s with a wicked wind blowing from the south.  The wind was blowing major sand so we didn’t last too long on the beach.

Sunday night we had heavy thunderstorms, the wind switched to the north and abated considerably, and the temps dropped down to the mid-80’s.  That made for much more enjoyable trips to the beach!  This morning has been much of the same.  I headed down to the beach with my coffee, watched the sun rise, and took some pictures.

Here are a few pictures from the trip so far:

America Gave Me the Bird…

Posted on by chappyshi

And I took a picture of it!

Bald Eagle on the Potomac River

I had a great paddle on the Potomac River today.  I put in at Algonkian Regional Park and just happened to look up and catch this Bald Eagle in the tree.  It seemed totally unconcerned that I was hanging out below it taking pictures.  Joy!

Cardinals of the Kremlin or the Red Menace?

Posted on by chappyshi

I took these pictures of this cardinal in Waller Mill Park in Williamsburg, VA.  I stopped there to walk on the way home from my trip to Suffolk.  It was a great walk, the scenery was refreshing, but I could have done without the school bus full of kids who were out in paddle boats and/or walking around making too much noise.

Nonetheless, getting these pictures of the cardinal in a park located just across the highway from “The Farm” was ironic.  Read some Tom Clancy if you do not understand the reference.  And put a parka on because we are going to get all “Cold War” now.

Paddling the James River Near Hog Island WMA

Posted on by chappyshi

On the way from Northern Virginia to my sister Kim’s house in Suffolk yesterday, I stopped at the James River near Surrey to throw my kayak in the water for a couple of hours.  Oh it was sweet…it had been a couple of weeks since I’d been on the water and I expect that yesterday’s and tomorrow’s paddles will be the last of the season.  It is getting a bit chilly and I really need to get the rack off the roof of my car so that I can give the car a serious washing!

Yesterday was very windy and cool, about 50 degrees or so.  While had mostly sunny skies on the drive down, once I got in the water and looked around, I saw pockets of dark clouds and rain all around me.  Fortunately I only got rained on for about ten minutes.  I stayed mostly dry since I had a rain jacket on and was using my splash skirt, due to the choppy water.

I put it at the Carlisle Tract, part of the Hog Island WMA, boat landing on Lawnes Creek and paddled out onto the James River.  Upriver a bit is the Surrey Power station which I had not desire to get too close to since who knows what it was putting in the water and what kind of security they had in place.  I did head up that way just to see what I could of the shoreline.  Then I headed  back downriver to do the same.  Downriver is a boat graveyard across from Fort Eustice.  I had no desire to get too close to that for the same reasons I avoided the power plant.

Having perused a bit of the James, I headed back to Lawnes Creek where I went upstream and took all the offshoots I could find that wound their way through the three  to eight foot high reeds.  It was nice to get out of the wind and waves.  As I prepared to wind up up my paddle, I became increasingly concerned about developing storms.  It still looked nice to the southwest but it was very dark and obviously pouring in the northeast on the other side of the James in Newport News.

I paddled furiously back to the boat launch area and got my boat up on the rack.  It started to sprinkle as I was changing into warm, dry clothes but I managed to finish up and get into my car just before it started pouring.  Timing is everything!

I didn’t see much in the way of wildlife but did see the usual Great Blue herons, Double-breasted cormorants, an Osprey,  and, for the first time in the wild this year for me, a pair of Bald eagles.  One was flying overhead of me for a while and the light was just right so the contrast of white head and tail against the dark body was very vivid.  That sighting made the paddle particularly rewarding!

No Money to Improve Local Parks but…

Posted on by chappyshi

…plenty of money to ruin them.  As I am sure I have mentioned at some time, I like to take a walk on a paved path through a nearby park.  The park is a narrow strip of forest with a stream meandering through it and house on one side and office buildings on the other.  The path exits the park after a while and briefly follows a power line which parallels a road.  While this is hardly wilderness, it is pretty good for me in metro D.C., since it is only a five minute walk from my home.

I have noted for a months now that there has been little effort to maintain the path by clearing back brush and cleaning up trash.  Today I found that they cleared all the brush back for about 10 to 20 feet on either side of the path on the power line.  Woe am I and the fauna that used to inhabit and/or frequent that flora!  I like a bit of trimming of the bush but they wiped out a large quantity of wild berry bushes that certainly provided forage for the birds if nothing else.

The area today seemed devoid of life.  I usually see all kinds of birds and frequently deer, raccoons, and woodchucks.  I don’t know if those bushes can grow back and, if so, how quickly but clearing them all out was a crime against nature.  To make matters worse, now all the trash that has been and will be thrown from cars going down the road is and will be blatantly obvious.  It is bad enough around when the foliage thins out.  Our brown and gray winter landscapes are decorated with the detritus of our throw away society.

I think that I have a mission to lead a crew to clean up that area next year during the Annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup!