12 Birds Down!

So the ever exciting employment update: I kind of have a job!! I went to an interview this morning at a vineyard about 30 minutes from my house, and came back semi-employed! I will be a "food & beverage consultant", so basically I am doing catering for events (mostly weekends) at this beautiful vineyard, on a casual basis. I am happy with this, and they will pay me $15 an hour, but I am still hoping for another, more consistent, position. The only problem is now I need to purchase my own car. Beth, Nick, and Adam are buying Jeff and I out of the Rhino so that they can use it to their total discretion, and Jeff and I can purchase something of our own. I like this idea, I just really do not want to go through the car buying process again. oh well, it's not like I have anything else to do.

I have very few bullet points on my "things that make me feel like a bad ass" list, but today I was able to add one, and probably the biggest of them all. Today I drove a motorcycle! Yes I sat on it, turned it on, put it into 1st gear, and rode it in straight lines until my legs were sore from turning the bike around. It is amazing how cool/scary/badass it feels to drive a motorcylce, and i really didn't drive very far. After seeing that it was much less complicated that I previously thought, I am considering getting my junior licence in NZ and learning here.

There have been commercials recently advertising for a movie called "The Inbetweeners", and it looked hilarious. Dan, the British roomie, explained that it is a movie that stemmed from a British comedy series of the same name. He wanted to see it, and despite not seeing the series, we wanted to see it too. It was the funniest movie I have seen in a while. Yeah it was post-high school, pre-college humor, but in a quirky and unpredictable way, in some way different than in the states. The reason I put this in here is because if anyone ever comes across it in the States I would definitely say give it a go. The series is supposed to be even funnier as well.

Now for the birds. As very few of you may know I was a member of the University of Pittsburgh Birding & Ornithology Club. I didn't attend too many trips (as they were very very early in the cold morning), and I attended most of the trips for the fast food we'd be consuming on the road and the remote location away from Oakland, but I did see that birds did deeply interest others, and that made me think that if I was actually going to make my dues worth it I was going to do it in New Zealand... so, after weeks of weak attempts at photographing birds ::drumroll:: I was able to photograph (some very poorly) and identify 12 different birds! Now I realize this is nowhere near my goal, but for me it is an encouraging start to a long list of birds I will one day see. Up until today my watching has been passive, and I have been taking the "let the birds come to me" approach, but I have started to step it up a bit. For example, today I sat in my yard on a log for 10 minutes in boredom (aka silence), and all of the sudden i heard a series of clicks, whistles, and screeches, and sure enough it was the bird I've been chasing around with a camera at every national park, and now he was in the tree right next to me!! It was the Tui!

Now I definitely expected to see a Tui in my yard, but not exactly in the spot I was sitting. I expected to see the Tui in my other spot in the yard near the Tui feeder I made a few days earlier. Despite the overly sweet water I filled the feeder (aka poorly cut milk jug) with, and the welcoming text, no birds have visited it to my knowledge.

The Tui is one of the more obvious native New Zealand birds, but for all of the other birds I used "The Hand Guide to the Birds of New Zealand" book I borrowed from the library. The following birds are identified to the best of ability, but I would like to be corrected if i'm wrong please!! The book was able to identify the other bird I saw on my sit today as the Black Bird; A bird brought from Europe, and also seen in America.

You may have trouble spotting the bird, or seeing much detail, but after zooming in I was able to see enough detail to confidently choose a correlating title for all of the birds. Although it would be nice to have beautiful pictures of every birds, my main goal is just the photograph the bird well enough to identify it. I have to admit it is fun to go on a hunt to match a bird with it's name. It was the beak color that allowed me to distinguish the Feral (rock) Pidgeon from the New Zealand Pidgeon, who is only found in New Zealand.

hmmm so i think there may be a limit on how many pictures I can upload in one blog entry, so the rest of the birds will have to wait! I'll put them up asap though.

Right now it's ultimate frisbee time... we'll see if anyone shows up, other than our friends! Cheers!