Spring Sneaking In

[akirlu]

Good lord. Sunshine. Bitsy narcissi. Plum blossoms. It's that slow popcorn thing, it's happening again. Fine place for it, Seattle.



And while I'm braggin' on Seattle, just tell me in what other major American city you could expect to see a different bald eagle flying around town for three days running?

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

You took ID on the eagle?

More to the point, your right to claim you aren't a birder has been revoked.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

One of the eagles was a juvenile, so definitely not the same as the other two sightings. The two mature birds were sufficiently far apart it isn't probable they're the same one -- one over Lake Samamish, the other over Lake Washington. But no actual ID, no.

your right to claim you aren't a birder has been revoked

Piffle. Spotting bald eagles in Seattle isn't a matter of being a birder, it's a matter of paying attention to what's around you. If I were able to distinguish individual species of seagull, or cormorant, you'd have a point. But I can't, so you don't, and I'm safe. Neener.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Well, point, so long as you don't answer, Cormorants? Where? the next time someone says to you, Fancy a shag?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

No, no. The obvious answer to that would be, "No thanks, don't smoke."

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Good one!

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But isn't it weird that cormorants are called shags? Did either of you know that before today? I sure didn't.

I also don't know how to tell a cormorant from an anhinga, except that there aren't any anhingas in the Pacific Northwest.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Freshly from Wikipedia - not all cormorants are shags, although it looks like all shags are cormorants. I blame the British. I knew there was a bird called a shag and that Brits knew about them (there was much low humor derived from references to the Common Shag at Corflu UK), but I didn't know they were a variety of cormorant.

See? See? There's tons (even tonnes) of stuff I don't know about birds. I never even heard of an anhinga...

(I hope you're enjoying the spectacle of having cornered me into trumpeting my ignorance like an achievement, by the way...)

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

It did make me laugh out loud, yes, though I'm not sure I would have described it that way.

Andy Hooper calls cormorants anhingas because they look a lot alike and because it's more fun to say "anhinga" than it is to say "cormorant." Anhingas are common in Florida, where watching them and their friends, the pelicans, egrets, and herons, was frequently the best part of my day when I stayed there for a month, more than a decade ago.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I so didn't know it that I totally missed the point of your joke. I mean, what to cormorants have to do with carpet?

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

They use it as nesting material, of course.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Anchorage, Alaska?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Major relative to anything else in Alaska, I'll grant you, but "major American city"? Hmm.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Speaking of bald eagles in Seattle ...

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

They're everywhere. I saw the juvenile on Lake Washington again this morning.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Washington DC. There's five pairs of nesting eagles just across the river from DC and they're seen in DC.

A lot of our ice melted yesterday, but we're getting another ice storm Sunday & Monday, plus snow on Tuesday. Still no new flowers.