MOOOOOoooooooooo

Moooooooooooo

Okay, be honest. Is there any one of you who, when you were a kid – and perhaps up to the age of 50 – didn’t pass a pasture filled with cows, and yell out the car window (or from a bicycle seat), “Mooooooo!” And what did you expect in return? You thought to yourself, “Stupid cows,” but the cows were probably thinking, “Dumbass people.”

By the way, “Moooo” is the only global sound that an animal makes. Well in Canada and parts of Minnesota, it’s “Moooo-eh,” but this whole thing is an unnecessary aside except that I find all my asides necessary and often side-splitting.

Anyway, imagine you almost grew up to become a “natural” photographic nut, i.e., one who takes pictures of nature, probably birds in particular. How many of you don’t have this shot which you probably titled, “Bottoms Up,” thinking “how clever of me.”

Bottoms Up

Same thing as the cows. I’ve been through many galleries on line, and only the “more professional” don’t have a photo of a duck with its rear end up. Well, that’s how they feed, and having seen some people at a buffet, no difference.

700mm at 20 Feet

But lately things have been getting out of hand. I was taking many, many shots of my baby herons over a two week period. I saw weird things like someone with a 700mm lens taking shots at 20 feet, and that’s about all he was going to get – feet.

The other day, I passed this guy who was handing his cell phone to one of the herons saying, “It’s for you.”  Now, everyone knows that herons refuse to use cell phones, much preferring a wing-free Bluetooth land line after a day of fishing. Anyway, the heron simply responded, “Tell them I’m not home.”

It's For You

I don’t know what it takes for these really old coots to realize that a cell phone in the hands of a juvenile is asking for nothing but headaches and large bills or beaks as the case may be. I guess he thought that “Tweets” were somehow relevant to a green heron, but then they would have been called “Grawkks.”  Besides, herons are notoriously bad spellers.

And then… You’ll notice that Chick and others are wearing shorts. That may have been the last really warm day in this part of California. I don’t know what the hell happened to summer, but we’re running 15-22° below normal. Instead of 100°, we’re running 78, and for that we have to wait until 4 PM. Until then, we keep getting coastal fog over the hills and all the way into the Delta.

Usually we get hot air from Sacramento, the seat of our “government,” and fog from San Francisco, the seat of discontent and nutty supervisors. Not this year. We’re getting fogged by both, and because instead of global warming, we’re having the next ice age (Al Gore probably blocked out the sun when he visited), the birds’ migratory patterns have changed, and even dragonflies are hiding out in warmer, muggier climes. I don’t know why. A dragonfly can still get mugged here.

Anyway, because of the dearth of wildlife and the plentitude (yeah, you look it up) of lowlife, we decided to head for the Pacific coast and get some shots of shorebirds. It couldn’t possibly be worse than the lack of them here. The only picture I took is of this sign, obviously posted by the dyslexic attendant.

Dyslexia of the Lack or Creative 1's?

By the way, that was two weeks ago. Gas is now at $3.44 a gallon. (I’d go greener, but my feet hurt.) The point is that, if this was my shot for the day, what am I going to do if things don’t improve. The black-capped night heron hasn’t replaced the little green heron as it always does in July. The snowy egret came and went in three days. The great egret hasn’t shown itself at all. And the only things we saw at the coast – through the fog – were turkey vultures, probably feeding off the carcasses of photographers who decided that a 7 mile hike down from the peak at Pt. Reyes wasn’t too much for them. I might go back next week and see if anybody left a lens or two for salvage.

For those of you who were wondering what happened to Stephanie (see last month’s blog), I got her back from the police property department, none the worse for wear although she’s been recalculating an awful lot lately. I will have to take her in for some sort of counseling ’cause all of a sudden she’s picked up an attitude. After she says “Recalculating,” there’s an implied “you idiot” at the end of the sentence.

I was going to trade her in, but the only GPS we saw has the following screen which remains constant:

"405-Accident"

Note that “405 Accident” is the actual name of the photo which comes from Toyota. They’re not wrong, and in L.A. you can’t go wrong with just one screen. There’s always an accident on The 405.* I just happen to live 400 miles north.

*Know how to tell the difference between a Southern Californian and a Northern Californian? Southern California freeways all begin with the word, “The.” The 405. The 110. The 605. In Northern California, we simply say 80, 280 all the way up to 980. Our problem is that 580, for example, does not just run East-West as even numbered highways are supposed to. 580 also runs north and south and in two sections. Since she was dumped from the car, Stephie can’t seem to handle this, and we may ultimately have to 86 her.