Fishin's Over, Time to Get Back to Blogging!

When a friend asked me the other day when I was going to "come back from that fishing trip," I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. Turns out that my last post here bore the somewhat prophetic title of "Gone Fishin'." The prophetic part — I haven't posted a single time in the five months since. Ack!

As a matter of fact, I have hardly even done any birding since last September. About that time we started going into overdrive mode on a big project at work, with pretty much all "off time" (including lunchtime, evenings, late nights, weekends, etc.) being spent in bishok mode (butt in seat, hands on keyboard). Before I knew it, Christmas was here with choir programs and family in town and everything else that entails. Then the kids' school was starting back up, our project was going into final testing and then production, everyone got sick, the autotrophs began to cool, Neanderthals developed tools, we built a wall (we built a pyramid), math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries that all started with the... well, you get the idea. Busy.

Now here it is February already and suddenly I'm realizing — I need to get outside and live again! So yesterday I headed over to the little neighborhood park where I used to go so often on my lunchbreaks and WOW, I'd forgotten how wonderful it was to sneak away from the office in the middle of the day and just walk.

It was pretty cool and extremely windy, but as usual there was plenty of avian life to see. Twenty some-odd white ibis waded through the marsh and mud across the field, looking for their own lunches. A couple of red-shouldered hawks soared in the winds above the treetops. The resident kingfisher skimmed over the surface of the bayou, his rattling call echoing through the area. And almost a dozen cormorants were busy swimming and diving in the smaller pond.


Neotropic Cormorant (Phalacrocorax brasilianus)

Yup, it's past time I take down the "Gone Fishin'" sign and got back to birding!