Ducks and geese GALORE!
Nov. 17th, 2008 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pacificpikachuWoo! Sacrificed some sleep for writing last night, which paid off. I wrote about 3600 words and made it to 30K!
Anyway, my Waterfowl class was pretty awesome. I'm just going to summarize it, because I don't think anyone here except maybe![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hitchi is going to appreciate the bird geekery if I go all in-depth on you, haha. I got up early and dad and I headed down to Rocklin while listening to the Once soundtrack loudly. I showed dad Once the night before and, as I expected, he absolutely loved it. :D
Once we got to Rocklin, I got on the bus and went on our waterfowl adventure. The Sacramento Wildlife Refuge is quite nice--it's like Graylodge, but a bit bigger and there's no hunting in the area. First we went out near one of the ponds, which startled a ton of the geese and ducks and they were all flying around and taking up nearly the whole sky over us. :O (See my video later.)
While we were looking at some Audobon's Warblers, we spotted a sleeping barn owl in one of the trees! It was so cute! ♥ We then took off on the bus and did the driving tour, but we made a few stops along to way to observe birds more up close. Some of my favorite things we spotted were a cute downy woodpecker, seven male pheasants and one female, several pelicans, cinnamon and green-winged teals, and cute little grebes.
At one point we stopped at an observatory, and there was a big wasp problem there. Strangely enough, the wasps followed the bus for several miles and were crashing into the windows, and when we got out to observe more birds a bunch of them (around twenty I'd guess) got in the bus. The teacher, Jena, is this petite blond woman and she went on a wasp massacre when we got back into the bus. It was crazy and epic.
Video! PLZ TO BE WATCHING ON HIGH QUALITY! Otherwise it's harder to see just how many little speck-ducks and speck-geese are flying about. It's...rather stunning, really. Ignore the stupid conversation, haha, this girl who knew nothing about birds was asking me what some birds that were extremely far away were.
CUTE OWL! ♥
Grebe! These guys are so small and cute.
White-fronted geese.
Snow geese in flight.
Great blue heron!
Young red-tailed hawk. The shiny strands around it are spider webs.
Miscellaneous ducks and geese.
After I got back to Rocklin, I ended up taking a bus to the Galleria mall to wait for mom there. I didn't know it, but it turned out the Galleria had just expanded to twice its usual size and there were people EVERYWHERE. It was insane there, and everything was so upscale and expensive looking.
I won't go on about it much, but the contrast between being out there at the peaceful, beautiful wildlife preserve and the crowded, glitzy mall was somewhat disturbing to me; it felt so wrong that the wetlands and wild environments are disappearing so quickly and taking millions of animals with them and the human species does little about it, while the mall spent millions of dollars making this fancy, completely unnecessary mall so people can surround themselves with yet more overpriced shiny material things that they don't need.
It's so sad to me that millions, even billions of animals, are suffering while people spend more and more and more money that could save so many of them, that could save so many other starving and suffering people even, on things like fancy malls and $140 pairs of jeans and $30,000 cars and so on.
Anyway, while I'm at it I think I'll make a separate entry for the pictures I took on my hike with dad last week. They turned out quite nice. :D
Anyway, my Waterfowl class was pretty awesome. I'm just going to summarize it, because I don't think anyone here except maybe
hitchi is going to appreciate the bird geekery if I go all in-depth on you, haha. I got up early and dad and I headed down to Rocklin while listening to the Once soundtrack loudly. I showed dad Once the night before and, as I expected, he absolutely loved it. :D Once we got to Rocklin, I got on the bus and went on our waterfowl adventure. The Sacramento Wildlife Refuge is quite nice--it's like Graylodge, but a bit bigger and there's no hunting in the area. First we went out near one of the ponds, which startled a ton of the geese and ducks and they were all flying around and taking up nearly the whole sky over us. :O (See my video later.)
While we were looking at some Audobon's Warblers, we spotted a sleeping barn owl in one of the trees! It was so cute! ♥ We then took off on the bus and did the driving tour, but we made a few stops along to way to observe birds more up close. Some of my favorite things we spotted were a cute downy woodpecker, seven male pheasants and one female, several pelicans, cinnamon and green-winged teals, and cute little grebes.
At one point we stopped at an observatory, and there was a big wasp problem there. Strangely enough, the wasps followed the bus for several miles and were crashing into the windows, and when we got out to observe more birds a bunch of them (around twenty I'd guess) got in the bus. The teacher, Jena, is this petite blond woman and she went on a wasp massacre when we got back into the bus. It was crazy and epic.
Video! PLZ TO BE WATCHING ON HIGH QUALITY! Otherwise it's harder to see just how many little speck-ducks and speck-geese are flying about. It's...rather stunning, really. Ignore the stupid conversation, haha, this girl who knew nothing about birds was asking me what some birds that were extremely far away were.
CUTE OWL! ♥
Grebe! These guys are so small and cute.
White-fronted geese.
Snow geese in flight.
Great blue heron!
Young red-tailed hawk. The shiny strands around it are spider webs.
Miscellaneous ducks and geese.
After I got back to Rocklin, I ended up taking a bus to the Galleria mall to wait for mom there. I didn't know it, but it turned out the Galleria had just expanded to twice its usual size and there were people EVERYWHERE. It was insane there, and everything was so upscale and expensive looking.
I won't go on about it much, but the contrast between being out there at the peaceful, beautiful wildlife preserve and the crowded, glitzy mall was somewhat disturbing to me; it felt so wrong that the wetlands and wild environments are disappearing so quickly and taking millions of animals with them and the human species does little about it, while the mall spent millions of dollars making this fancy, completely unnecessary mall so people can surround themselves with yet more overpriced shiny material things that they don't need.
It's so sad to me that millions, even billions of animals, are suffering while people spend more and more and more money that could save so many of them, that could save so many other starving and suffering people even, on things like fancy malls and $140 pairs of jeans and $30,000 cars and so on.
Anyway, while I'm at it I think I'll make a separate entry for the pictures I took on my hike with dad last week. They turned out quite nice. :D
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 04:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 04:32 am (UTC)Haha, I'm a wildlife person (you know, rehabber, bird watcher, occasionally hiker, etc.) but I spend like...80% of my free time on the computer, LULZ. That said, I do recommend looking to see if there are any wildlife preserves or anything around and going to visit some if there are sometime.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 04:55 am (UTC)I ♥ grebes.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 04:59 am (UTC)Grebes are sooo cute. ♥ I want to snuggle with one.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 07:57 am (UTC)And it was nice to hear your voice! You're the one who said, "I don't know" right? Geez that sounds so stalkerish....>____>
That owl sleeping pic is my favorite <3
no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 08:15 am (UTC)Hahaha, not the most stunning example of my voice, but yeah. XD Maybe I'll do a voice post sometime or something~
The sleeping owl was so cuuuute. The whole class was going on about how cute it was, which is funny because we're a bunch of college students.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-20 09:01 am (UTC)I FOUND HIM FIRST >:(