It was a good morning for birdwatching; today at the lake I spotted three
pelicans, five snowy egrets, a heron (Great Blue?), a couple of ducks, and
zillions of those little birds that build mud apartment-style nests under the
bridges. (Swallows? or are those bigger?) Plus a couple of seagulls and some
various generic sort of bird. (I said it was a good day for it, not that I was
good at it. And yes, all that was here at my little man-made lake in the
middle of the Sonoran Desert.
Tuesday was even better; I did extra
distance (12k vs 11K today), spotted four pelicans as well as an avis even
more rara: a very large and fit guy who's trying out for the National team,
getting ready to go out just as I was bringing my boat in. (The part when he was
changing his shirt was especially good.
Rudder, who stayed late to do a double practice, not only saw him but was coached
by him for a whole lap.
One of Rudder's vendors from work came to our
last regatta here and took some wonderful photos of us, mostly black and white and
with a posed, sculptural quality to them. She took him to lunch yesterday and
presented him with an small album as well as one enlarged image of me in a frame -
- definitely one way to keep your customer happy. I'd post a couple shots here,
but don't have a scanner. Which reminds me, we need to go to the camera store
this weekend and buy scads of film for Ireland. I may try some more black and
white on the digital camera, where I can switch on the fly, but really my strength
in photography is in colors and lighting -- alpenglow, sunrises over water, that
sort of thing.