Birds: nighthawk, catbird are my two new favorites.
Nighthawks do this thing when they are being protective of their nests (which are on the ground) or when they are trying to get a lady nighthawk where the DIVE towards the ground and then flip their wings and make a BOOM sound with their wingtip feathers. You can hear it at this link:
Nighthawk info page, cornell
they look like this:
I'd never heard it before, the more common sound is the nasal peent sound that they make as they are just swooping around eating little bugs out of the air. They are in the order caprimulgiformes, which literally translated means "goatsucker" because in the ancient days birds of this order were typically found
swooping amongst herds of ungulates. Silly superstitious ancent folk. Anyway I went on a walk with my mom in marlatt park in manhattan with my dog (mick) and I FINALLY saw one do it. I literally jumped up and down I was so excited.Marlatt park is a pretty neat place, it's a little chunk of prairie, I typically refer to it as "minikonza" and there are usually fewer people there, and it's real close to my parents house. i used to go there every day for a while in the summer one year. One time I met patmac there and we talked for awhile.
Catbirds are pretty neat too, I see them around town lately. They can fool you because they look like a robin, but they are not. The
y look like this:I heard one call today, they have a chirpy gurgle call and they do, in the center, make a cat sound. This is why they are called catbirds, go figure.
Catbird
I love grey it is one of my favourite colours. (so many oppurtunities for British spelling in that sentence). They are a lovely matte charcoal grey with a little black mohawk on the top of their head.
Well, that's enough of the birds for now.
I haven't been cooking, so I can't really talk about that, although last night I made a tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich (with muenster) and when I bit into it I literally said "mmmm that's gooood." But mick was here so I wasn't technically talking to myself
.
OH! I made bread! From the no bake recipe available here:
my mom and I were shopping at wal-mart and found a cast iron dutch oven for 35 which is EXTREMELY cheap. The bread turned out amazing, and I followed the directions there to a T.
I worked out today and realized I've lost a bit of muscle. Sad, but ok. I felt great afterwards. So great I bought an iPod touch. My iPod is broken and I just can't take getting through work without having something to listen to.
Last week I was in Manhattan. I hung out with Safa. Then I went to Holton, the home of Carly, a new friend, and we were there for her brother's leave celebration party. Here's a few choice parts of that:
I also graduated:
