Birds of Paradise Video

Very cool birds:

Tuxedoed Sashimi Fan Assaults Newt Gingrich

Speaker Newt has been bitten by a tuxedo clad sashimi eater. The world continues to spin out control.

Can't the opposition confine their activities to criticizing policy?

So much for the New Civility.

Malaekahana Beach Park Camp Out, Again

About three weeks ago Valerie and I jumped into old Nellie Belle and motored off to the North Shore for several days of camping at Malaekahana Beach Park with our friend Dan and quite a few of the locals of both the fuzzy and the feathered persuasion. We took plenty of food for each so we had plenty of freeloaders to entertain us.

We did have to check out the beach, of course, and on day two discovered that a big log had floated in during the night. As usual, clik on the pic if you want a bigger version.

 

It had been in the water for awhile, long enough for plenty of hitchhikers to latch on:

 

In a few places they were pretty sparse. Note the little brown crab just above center, trying to hide out:

 

Most places, though, they were thick as small government advocates when the politicians are handing out subsidies:

 

It was breezy, and a few sailors took advantage of it:

 

While Valerie and I were hanging around the beach one day a fellow with a grey plastic suitcase in hand came walking up the beach, peeled down to his POLICE wetsuit, put some gear in the case and tethered it to himself, then waded into the water.

 

He came back a few minutes later with an illegally set and unregistered lay net. He looked like anybody walking down the sidewalk in the financial district, briefcase in hand.

The gear he had tossed in his briefcase consisted mainly of his wallet, badge, gun and gun belt: Can't very well leave those lying on the beach, so the gasketted case goes with him whenever he has to go in the water. What a pain.

 

There were a couple dead fish in the net. One, which proved the net had been untended (illegal) had been dead for a while. Apparently legal nets have to be checked daily. The other was fresh:

 

Back at the ranch, Dan gave a little help to his friends. Nothing like welfare queens getting salmon dished up with a silver spoon. Might as well be Democats. Or Republicats, for that matter

 

 

 

Tough cat: Must be a Tareyton smoker:

 

One morning we drove over to Kahuku Golf Course and went for a beach walk, then stopped at the InterGalactically Famous Fumi's Shrimp Wagon for you guessed it, some shrimp. While there we saw our old friend Fumi, the Black Crowned Night Heron:

 

The water in the shrimp pond had been drawn way down, exposing mud flats, or nearly so, and for the first time there we saw a Hawaiian Stilt at Fumi's. They are the endemic sub-species of the Black-necked Stilt, which is common enough elsewhere, but there are only about 1400 of the Hawaiian race around.

 

Here's the same guy:

 

Here's one more. Yeah, yeah, I know: three is too many. Well, it's my blog, and I call the shots. If you want fewer pics of Hawaiian Stilts, go to HuffPo.

 

We did more than lie around the beach and feed the welfare queens, but I didn't take any pictures, so that's all, folks.

The Flying Circus...

...but without the Red Baron.

While I was stuck in traffic on Moanalua Road this morning, I had the chance to glance about, or, rather study the other side of the road at some length. In any case, two house roofs had a conglomeration of pigeons strutting about. Most were snow white, but the rest were a variety of solid colors: a couple were red, another orange, one or two were blue, a couple were green.

I wonder how many state and local permits they require.

UPDATE: More here. Thanks to DMS for the lead.

Three Guys With A Reason To Be Thankful

And that doesn't even include their parents.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Three teens who have been missing in the South Pacific for 50 days — and were already eulogized in a memorial service — have been found alive by a New Zealand fishing boat.

The boys — two 15-year-olds and a 14-year-old — disappeared while attempting to row between two islands in the New Zealand territory of Tokelau

Fifty days and 800 miles later they were spotted by a tuna boat near Fiji.

As seems pretty common amongst those in small boats in the Pacific "the boys survived by eating a seagull that had landed on their boat." Lieutenant Bligh and his men did the same, as did the crew of an American bomber which went down during the Second World War, written of by Robert Trumbull in "The Raft".

Good for these three, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Enoch Reindahl 1904-2000

I met Enoch Reindahl when I was eleven, when my father and Jack Dearholt and I, following a lead from West Palm Beach decoy collector Brodie Henson, drove from Milwaukee to Stoughton in an attempt to find Mr. Reindahl and buy one or more of his decoys. While successful in locating him (he had no phone in 1964) we went home empty handed. Despite a bad hip which made hunting impossible, he was not ready to part with any of the decoys over which he had once lavished almost infinite care.

Whenever I visited during the ensuing years I always found him sitting in his easy chair, watching the traffic pass the big Norway pine outside his living room. The sun shone through a high side window, warming the room and lighting his paintings on the softly faded flowered wallpaper.

Sometimes we looked at photos he had taken around Stoughton during the 1930s: skiers soaring from the jump which Stoughton once boasted, pictures of trapping muskrats, of birds nesting, and of friends hunting ducks, geese, and crows. There were photos of himself making decoys, and of others farming tobacco. He abandoned the last series when he realized that he would have to ask permission to photograph inside the tobacco warehouse: he didn't know the owners. "I didn't have the guts for that," he told me. "I couldn't just go up to a stranger and ask to take pictures, so I gave it over."

He took his Eastman Kodak to the nearby marsh where he would choose a likely cattail, taller than its neighbors, set the camera close, cock the shutter, then run a string back to a waiting place. When a songbird lit on that chosen cattail he would trip the shutter, walk forward, advance the film, cock the shutter again, then retreat to start his waiting over.

When his camera leaked light, he found an umbrella in the town dump and made its black silk into a new bellows, lined with paper. When he needed a duck boat to get around the marsh, he pulled sheet metal from the dump and beat it into shape. In 1938 he wanted a mandolin, so he made one, using an old Gibson as a pattern and maple from an abandoned lathe stand for the back.

Some afternoons we sat on his pressed-back kitchen chairs while we talked over cups of instant coffee. A cast iron stove sat in one corner with two enameled metal coffeepots on top, one red, the other white, while a corrugated cardboard box half full of wood chips and elm bark sat in front. Next to the door to the dining room stood a two-burner kerosene stove on an enameled iron stand. A two-burner propane stove sat on top of it, while atop that in turn sat a two-burner electric which he used to heat water for our coffee.

While waiting for the water he leaned against the sink and cranked his coffee grinder, cracking seeds from his garden, then, supporting himself on an old mop handle with a white plastic bicycle grip, he carried a few thimbles full out the back door, down the steps and through the grass to the apple orchard where he sat them on a fencepost for the nuthatches, cardinals, and chickadees. He wanted to avoid attracting squirrels and purple grackles so he made the slow trip several times a day.

He told me during the 1970s that other collectors had recently made offers for his goose decoys. He said that he had refused, slowly shook his head in wonder and commented that "it must be some kind of sickness" that made them willing to pay so much.

When he was in his nineties he told me that most evenings he fell asleep in his easy chair, and would wake around midnight, when he would spend an hour playing his mandolin. An era quietly ended when Enoch Reindahl, the last survivor of America's great pre-World War II decoy makers, died on September 21, 2000.

Tom Bosworth

An earlier version of this appeared in Decoy Magazine, November/December 2000.

When Mr. Reindahl referred to the sickness making collectors willing to pay so much for his decoys he had just been offered $200 or $250 for a goose decoy. That was about 1976. In 2000, Sotheby's sold two of his decoys as part of the Jim McCleery collection. A sleeping mallard brought $46,000, while a Canada goose sold for $65,750. At the Guyette & Schmidt decoy auction of July 29 & 30, 2006, one of the three canvasback drakes which Enoch Reindahl made for his 1941 rig sold for $74,750. Guyette & Schmidt re-sold the McCleery sleeping mallard drake at their April 24-25, 2008 auction for $92,000.

House Finches

This morning there was a bunch of House Finches feeding on buds in the Chinese Mango tree in our front yard.

While my Hawaii Audubon Society "Hawaii's Birds" book describes the males as having a "red forehead, bib, and rump", it says that "some males (are) more orange or yellow." These indeed trended yellow with a distinct orangy cast. Very pretty little guys, as were the females, which lack the red/orange/yellow.

What is the proper designation for a group of House Finches? "Flock" seems too prosaic. I suggest a "development of House Finches."

While looking for pictures of House Finches, I came across this pic of a Chinese Crested Dog. Don't ask me: I have no idea why a Google Image search for "Male House Finch Hawaii" produced a Chinese Crested Dog. It just did. Google moves in strange and mysterious ways. Enjoy serendipity, Dude.

It would be interesting, though, to see a bunch of them up in the mango tree, munching on buds.

Yard Birds

Several weeks ago I added to the garden a cast iron soup bowl, two granite soup bowls and an old copper kitchen bowl to provide water for any birds which happen by.

The water has proven to be quite an attraction. From 4:00 to 5:30 or so the birds come by in increasing numbers to drink and bathe. At one point yesterday we had several Mynahs, two mature Brazilian Cardinals, three immature same, two Japanese White Eyes, two Spotted Doves, a couple Zebra Doves, an adult Shama, another immature, several Common Waxbills, and three Java Sparrows.

While I have seen flocks of 15-20 Javas elsewhere, I had never seen other than a pair in the yard, so three is a new record. The third appeared noticeably after the first two, which have been showing up as a pair for a number of days.

So far this fall I haven't seen a Pacific Golden Plover in the yard, tho there are several charging around the grass at Pearl Ridge Elementary School. Yesterday Valerie raised the ugly possibility that all my gardening i.e. replacing cruddy grass with beds of succulents may have made the yard less interesting to the Plover.

Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Utah

On the way from Idaho to the Salt Lake City airport last Monday we stopped all too briefly at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in northern Utah.

 

Fourteen Western Grebes popped up by the side of the road:

 

Escapee (?) sighted

While I was sitting in the side garden this morning I heard a very short, sharp whistle coming from the direction of the carport. Noted, but didn't do anything about it. A couple hours later I walked thru the carport, and what was sitting atop a great big cooler on the shelves but a lovely Rose-breasted Cockatoo (eolophus roseicapillus)

It let me get within three feet or so and continued preening, tho wouldn't hop onto my by now gloved hand for incarceration in a cat kennel. Eventually it flew into the hedge where it let me get a hand within a foot or so, but still no interest in a ride. A call to the Humane Society got a bit of a yawn- no one has reported said fellow missing. If I catch it they are willing to pick it up. It looked like it had a thin grey ring around it's left leg, but hardly big enuf for much in the way of numbers. Anyway, I shall keep an eye peeled and a few grapes about in case s/he comes by again.

Here's another pic of an apparently happy couple.

Ka'ena Point Natural Area Reserve.

Dan & I trekked out to Ka'ena Point (the Northwestern tip of Oahu) yesterday, going in from the Mokulē'ia (North Shore) side.

After parking in the lot at the end of the paved road, we walked the jeep track to the vehicle barrier, then climbed thru the gate. The jeep track is a pretty ugly walk: while you can stop and look at the mountains, it is so rutted and uneven from off-road vehicles that you better stop while looking, or risk a fall and a turned ankle. Much of this portion of the track has brush high enough on the ocean side to cover that view. Still, there are more than glimpses, and it is pretty nice in spots.

It was too windy to be hot, which this walk can be in spades. I lost my hat a few times, and twice my glasses with it, but no damage done.

Plenty of people had driven in and parked near the shore, putting up tents and sun shades, set up several fishing poles, and seemed to be having a fine time.

 

Once thru the barrier we were on a proper hiking trail, mostly sand and basically flat, with a view of the shore. There are steel wires on metal stakes to keep people on the trail, away from the endangered plants and the nesting Laysan Albatrosses. There are also Shearwaters nesting there, tho we didn't notice any. We also saw several box traps, which I suspect are for mongoose, a major predator of ground nesting birds like the Albatross and Nene goose.

Albatross family:

 

Dan with the same family:

 

Dan spotted some whales going by. At first they seemed to be swimming in a circle, but finally made up their minds and headed east.

 

There were also a couple of monk seals hanging out on the rocks. They are endangered, and one is not supposed to get withing 50 feet or so of them. Yesterday people seemed to be respecting that restriction, tho we have in the past seen people getting within prodding - and biting- distance. Bad idea, especially if there is a pup about.

 

Here is some naupaka, which is an endangered beach plant. Very little remains anywhere in the islands, and it was apparently pretty torn up at Kaena point by off road vehicles until the state turned it into a reserve and put up the barrier.

 

Also Dan, surrounded by naupaka while we were watching the whales and seals. The trail goes thru a lot of naupaka- we weren't in a prohibited area.

 

A couple guys had some success fishing with throw nets. Here they are heading off with their nets around them.

 

On the way out we passed a group of about 10 Laysan Albatrosses. I shot a bunch of pictures of one in flight, but they were all pretty blurry. Here is one settling his wings.

 

All in all, it was tiring, but a nice hike.


Here is a link to a useful state DLNR brochure about the reserve, plants, and animals to see there.

This is also a useful DLNR site.

I found the first dozen or so responses to a Google search for 'kaena point trail' remarkably uninformative: One said it is "fairly long," another that it is 1.7 miles from the parking area to the point, another that it is two miles, another 2.5 miles, and another 3 miles. One said "BE PREPARED FOR CRIMINALS" and "Nothing happened to our group or vehicles, but there was "evidence" of criminal activity in this remote area which can be unsettling for some..." So, what KIND of criminals? Litterbugs? Rapists? Pot smokers? What was the evidence? Empty solvent drums? Smashed windows and cleaned out cars? Hikers' bloating corpses?

And just how should one prepare for criminals in a state which requires a permit to carry a pistol, but which also refuses to issue permits? Carry a litter bag?

UPDATE: For another take on the hike, here is Dan's post at Regruntled.com.