Month: January 2012

Habituated

It’s hard to avoid habits, both good — if there is such thing — and bad. My favorite YMCA instructor used to preach that repeating the same routine day after day wouldn’t build new muscles so you needed to constantly switch your routines. I sometimes think that’s even truer in everyday life.

I’d like to think that blogging regularly is a “good habit,” but there are times when I question even that. Blogging regularly can get in the way of trying new things, particularly when those “new things” are unlikely to produce a significant blog entry. For example, I keep thinking I need to refine my Photoshop and Illustrator skills, but I’m reluctant to either discuss or post examples of either activity. In fact, one of the reasons I haven’t posted regularly lately is that I’m trying to work my way through Adobe Illustrator CS Five: Classroom In A Book, and so far I haven’t created anything I’d want anyone else to have to endure. Hopefully, in the long run just the opposite will be true, but that may or may not prove to be true.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to post shots that I took before Christmas but never had time to post even though most of the shots are like ones I posted previously. For instance, this shot of a female belted Kingfisher probably isn’t one of the best I’ve ever taken, but it’s hard enough to get a picture of the one at Theler that I thought it was worth posting:

female Belted Kingfisher

Technically, this picture of a bald eagle in flight might be the and best picture of the day, but it’s not one of my favorites because I have become so habituated to seeing bald eagles.

Bald Eagle

The shot that made my day, though, was this one of a female Ring-Necked Pheasant because I haven’t seen one in years at Theler Wetlands.

female Ring-Necked Pheasant

The shot came at the end of the walk when essentially I was through birding and was just enjoying my conversation with John. I hadn’t seen a Ring-Necked Pheasant at Theler for years. In other words, it was totally unexpected.

Common Goldeneye

Since I spent the last blog entry describing the Barrow’s Goldeneye, I thought it only fair to devote this entry to the Common Goldeneye. I thought it a little strange that I see the Barrow’s Goldeneye much more commonly than the Common Goldeneye, but a little research revealed that the Barrow’s Goldeneye is limited to two major areas, and one of those areas is Vancouver, B.C., which is at the other end of Puget Sound. If you get involved with birders, you soon learn that a “rare” bird is often a “common” bird that has wandered off course or is simply on “vacation” in an exotic locale.

Anyhow, I’m more apt to see a Barrow’s goldeneye than a Common goldeneye, though it’s still not unusual to see one on Ruston Way, like this one:

Common goldeneye

Despite some differences that are obvious when you get close, the two species are hard to tell apart at a distance but are easy to tell from different species like Bufflehead or mergansers. I don’t think most people could tell the difference between the two from their silhouette, but the silhouette would readily distinguish them from mergansers, bufflehead, and grebes.

Once you’ve been birding long enough, you can begin to tell birds apart simply from their flight pattern. Sea ducks, however, are more apt to dive than to fly away. I learned long ago to recognize grebes by their dive, and I’ve finally gotten pretty good at recognizing goldeneyes from their distinctive dive,

goldeneye Diving

though I’m still amazed at how smoothly a goldeneye enters the water and how little sign there is of his entry.

Goldeneye diving

I can’t manage to get a picture of the goldeneyes underwater, I did the next best thing and tried to find a shot of one on Youtube. I couldn’t find a shot identified as a goldeneye, but this shot of a duck diving is pretty special: