Month: March 2009

Clear and Cold

As am noted in an earlier entry, it’s been clear but cold here in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, it’s been cold enough, particularly when combined with the strong north winds, that I’ve avoided longer hikes, limiting myself to a mile or less. It was so cold at the beach, and the winds were so strong,

Flags Blowing in Wind

that even the ducks had abandoned the beach at Ruston. The wind cut right through all three layers of cross-country skiing gear, and I limited my beach stay to less than 15 minutes.

In more sheltered areas like Titlow there were quite a few songbirds, but they are also the hardest birds to photograph because they refuse to stay in one spot more than a few seconds, and when they do stop for a moment it’s always in the deepest shade, like this Fox Sparrow:

Fox Sparrow

I guess the good thing is that I’ve managed to get shots of all the local varieties of sparrows. I no longer refer to them as “lbj’s.”

My favorite shot of the day was this little female Downy Woodpecker. I was particularly fascinated with the way she used her claws and tail to hold herself in place while she sought out insects.

Female Down Woodpecker

Some Shots from Saturday

Saturday’s trip to Theler Wetlands in Belfair had a touch of everything. Although we left under bright blue skies, we ended up driving through rain, sleet, and even a little snow before we got there. As we walked down the long hill to the Wetlands, it started raining hard, and I figured we’d end up walking the half mile trail. But by the time we’d gotten to the creek the rain had slowed to a cold drizzle. Looking back, though, I could see clear skies to the south. By the time we returned, there was nothing but blue skies.

Unfortunately, I didn’t see many birds and certainly no new birds. In fact, the only notable shot I got was this one of a Varied Thrush,

Varied Thrush

and I wondered if this was the same bird that has started visiting my backyard lately. Is it pure coincidence that I’ve started seeing Varied Thrushes everywhere? Are there just a lot more of them in the Puget Sound Area this year? Or is it similar to when you buy a new car and suddenly notice them everywhere? Do you seem them simply because you’ve seen them before?

In fact,I only saw one new bird Saturday, this Pelagic Cormorant in breeding colors at Port Orchard,

Pelagic Cormorant

and to tell you the truth I didn’t recognize it as a Pelagic Cormorant until I put it up on the screen on my computer. I’ve never seen a cormorant this small, and at first I wondered if it wasn’t some kind of duck, particularly since the colors seemed much more muted than this when I first saw it.

Although I prefer this shot of a pair of Barrow’s Goldeneyes at full-screen size because the backlight almost gives it a glowing effect, it still might be my favorite shot of the day, even at this reduced size.

Barrow's Goldeneye

Spring Cleaning

If you’ve visited this site in the last three days and wondered if I’d lost my mind, you wouldn’t be too far from wrong. Ever since I “updated” my site, I’ve been struggling to get it to stay online.

It turns out that the problem I had with the theme disappearing isn’t totally unknown in WordPress circles. Most blame it on problems with the server, but I found it strange that it had never occurred until I updated my site. To me that would indicated that perhaps it’s not the server but something wrong in one of the many files that’s causing it.

I tried to solve the problem by moving to a new theme, since the one Shelley designed was overwritten by the automatic upgrade. At first I assumed that it must be the theme I was trying that was the source of the problem. But a simple trial and error approach to the problem proved that assumption to be wrong.

So I tried to install a brand-new, fresh copy of WordPress. Unfortunately, I could not link it to my SQL database, so all the old entries would have disappeared. So I spent an hour or so trying to restore my old site using the RESTORE function of my Internet Provider. The little wheel spun and spun, until I finally went to bed and let it run overnight. When I got up in the morning, it was still spinning its little wheels and my site was still offline.

Finally, I reverted to my FTP program and uploaded my old site piece by piece until it finally returned to its buggy old self.

For now I’m going to try to just rename the theme I’m using DEFAULT. Hopefully that will keep it on line long enough that I can rewrite some of the CSS and make the site functional.

I have pictures and stories waiting to be uploaded, but I’d like to limit my time to making this site looked the best I can at the moment. I’ll just call it SPRING CLEANING!!

Oooops, There Goes the Site

I’ve been wanting to change the style of my web page for awhile now.

Unfortunately, after today’s mistake, I’ll be changing it right now. I made the mistake of pushing the Automatic Upgrade button on my WordPress site and it decided that it didn’t like my non-standard theme that Shelley Powers designed for me several years ago and deleted it.

Worst of all, it deleted my blogroll and I’m going to have to reconstruct it. Damn! That’s gonna challenge my memory and take a considerable amount of time. I’m going to try to find a way to see a copy of my site from the past and see if I can use that to reconstruct my blogroll. Any suggestions are welcomed.