The neighborhood …
Gulf Waters
Warm and windy yesterday, but a cold snap today. Two days in the sixties; lows in the forties. Wind from the north. Brrr. It is so cold, I had to wear shoes while I walked on the beach today. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
submarine fantasy
Living by the ocean and the bay. Childhood submarine fantasy. Plywood and bicycle pedals. Never got to the point of considering ballast and pumps. Somebody else did. A personal submarine. Fully functional. It’s not in service any more. It’s just on a stand out in front of a shop over on Padre Island. Finally, I stopped and read the plaque.
FW: one of these birds…
Primarily, the pack in the picture is made up of nonbreeding plumage laughing gulls. One is obviously different: the one wearing the black hood. When baby chickens hatch, they hit the ground running. They grow up gradually to the size of their parents. When baby pigeons leave the nest, they are actually a little larger than their parents and slim down slightly as they begin to exercise. Gulls are more like pigeons than chickens. A smaller bird next to a larger one is not a baby larger one. Heard a line on Earl last night. The guy says Feliz Navidad, or something like that. He butchered it. The Latina girl next to him said, “That doesn’t mean anything!” He answered, “Yes it does. In American that means Merry Christmas in Mexican.” I just thought of that. Anyway, it appears we have four different kinds of birds. The primary nonbreeding plumage laughing gulls, the smaller bird at the left front, which is a forster’s tern. They like to stand around with gulls. The bird I originally overlooked is a ring-billed gull over on the left side behind the forster’s tern. You can’t see his ring-bill, he’s snoozing, but you can see he is a lighter color of gray and his legs are a lighter color. The guy with a black hood in the back is the reason I wrote this email in the first place. He is a laughing gull in full breeding plumage, for no apparent reason; kind of like almost all of this email.
FW: one of these birds…
Update. I overlooked a bird in the picture. Now we have four different ones.
From: Steve Taylor [mailto:spt@thetaylorcompany.net]
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 10:01 PM
To: Bill Taylor (Bill Taylor); David Taylor (David Taylor); Tom Taylor (Tom Taylor)
Subject: one of these birds…
…is not like the others. (Actually, two of these birds are not like the others.)