With a tweet, tweet here and a tweet, tweet there!

First I have to say...this blog is for my wonderful friend Heather. I know you are checking up on me! I finally have something new to write about!

There have been birds all over the place lately! I have been walking the dogs around the island all week, and there have been all these little sparrows flitting around. Today I finally decided to take some time and get a better look at the sparrows. Boy, was I surprised. There were a lot of different sparrows around.

Here is a list of the birds that I saw today:
Great Blue Heron
Belted Kingfisher
Bald Eagle
Northwestern Crow
Common Raven

Fork-tailed Storm-Petrel
Harlequin Duck
Mallards
Song Sparrow
Golden-crowned Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Savannah Sparrow
Fox Sparrow
Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Northern Flicker
Merlin
Northern Goshawk
White-winged Scoter
Red-necked Grebe
Mew Gull
Herring Gull
Thayer's Gull
Glaucous-winged Gull
Pelagic Cormorant
Double-crested Cormorant

I think I got them all...hard to remember when you see so many birds! I love birdwatching, but I don't get out to look at them enough. Part of it is that it gets a little boring here in Sitka. We live on an island and there are only so many different birds available to see. I just have to remember that there are always little surprises and you never know when you are going to find one! I found quite a few this past week. My friend Victoria found a Western Wood-Pewee in her yard on Sunday, and on Monday we found an Olive-sided Flycatcher. Both unusual birds for Sitka. I believe that it was the first sighting for the Pewee in Sitka.

I borrowed a camera from my boss, and took a few photos of some of the birds I saw today.

White-winged Scoters

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Golden-crowned Sparrow

Golden-crowned Sparrow

Happy Day, Sad Day

So, would you like the happy news first or the sad news?

Let's start with the happy! The QUAIL are gone! Did you hear, THE QUAIL ARE GONE! I didn't even take any more pictures of them. They were stinky and jumpy and they were making a huge mess in my spare room. To tell the truth, I was pretty tired of them. They were so crazy, it was hard to even change the water in the cage without someone escaping. Oh well, lesson learned. No more quail for me!

The sad news? It's the end of the Olympics. :( So sad. I love watching the Olympics. I always think that I enjoy the winter games better than the summer, but then the summer games come around and I watch every night...well, practically every night! It also means the end of my TV watching days. It's O.K. I will survive. Hopefully I will take more pictures and write more blogs! We'll see! I have been digging into my family roots and creating an ever growing family tree. It's getting kind of big! In fact, I met a distant relative of mine who lives in Sweden. He has also been working on the family on his end. This could get a little insane...in a good way!

The quail are trying to kill me...

I had a great idea this summer. I have a friend that has chicken, pheasants, and quail. They lay eggs everyday. In the spring the birds are busy as bees and the pheasants and quail lay fertilized eggs. I decided I wanted to hatch some baby quail. They are so cute and make the best little peepy noises, and WHO doesn't love babies!

So, we started with 17 eggs. Twelve of them actually hatched. In the end, I lost a few of those and ended up with ten babies. They are currently living in a large rubbermaid container in my extra bedroom. They have been growing and growing. They are still cute, but kind of becoming a pain in the butt. I think they know that I am getting tired of them...they actually tried to kill me the other day!

When the quail hatch, they need to have a heat lamp to help keep them warm. They need this for pretty much their entire lives. They are living in a climate here in Southeast Alaska that is completely opposite from the desert environment that they would normally live. I have a 75 watt light bulb in the heat lamp. It should be a 100 watt bulb, but I didn't have one, so used the 75.

Anyway, the other evening I had to pick up an injured eagle from the airport. The plane was late...as usual! We didn't get done with the admit exam until 8:30pm. I got home around 9 and there was a funny smell in my trailer. It smelled like something burning. Hmmm, the only thing it could possibly be is the quail. So, I go in the room. There is smoke just starting to fill the room. I look in the container and the heat lamp is laying on the bottom in the wood chips. I picked up the lamp and moved the container. There was a perfect circle of melted plastic that was now stuck to my carpet and a perfect circle hole in the bottom of the container! Let's say I was slightly freaked out! Have you ever seen a trailer that caught on fire? I have and let me tell you, it takes about 15-20 minutes to lose the entire trailer...and all it's contents!

I was so freaked out, that I left the light unplugged all night. I lost one quail overnight and figured that I had to plug the lamp back in or they would all die. Of course, I almost left it unplugged. I mean, they were trying to burn the trailer down! What would you do? Now, I realize that the quail have little bitty brains and can't really plot to kill someone, but I have to blame it on something, right? I don't want to take the blame...even though it was more my fault than anyone elses.

My friend swears he told me to put a stick through the loops of the lamp, so it wouldn't fall. I swear he never told me! He probably did, I was just sooo excited to hatch some babies that I may not have heard that part! OOPS! It has really put a scare in me now. I am really freaked that my trailer will catch on fire and burn to the ground. Now, I only have one word left to write...INSURANCE!

I'm on it (because it's all I can think about!)

:)

Okay, this is me! I like this picture, the only part I don't like is that piece of hair hanging in the middle of my forehead! I need to photoshop that out!

So, today I thought I would just add a few pictures of things, people, and pets that I like. Also maybe some places I have enjoyed.

Today was a long day! The researchers came back from sea today, I now have a baby Steller's Jay to take care of, and I know it's gonna be a long, long weekend. Hopefully, the weather will be good this weekend and I can take the dogs out to run and get this house cleaned! I think I say that every weekend. Who knows, maybe this will be the weekend that it really happens! We'll see! Enjoy the pictures for now!

This is a picture of me when I was about 8 or 9. This is at White Lake in Montello, Wisconsin. I learned to swim there, before I learned to walk, and I LOVED that swimming suit! This lake, in this town, one of my favorite places!

Courtney and I at The Grand Canyon, June 2008. What a cool place to go! There is so much to learn there. I picked this photo, not because I loved the GC, but because it was such a fun trip, just Courtney and I getting to drive around and listen to music.

So, this is what I do for a living. I match photos of humpback whale flukes to a catalog of hundreds of whale fluke that my boss has taken over the last 30 years. This is Southeast Alaska whale number 1718. It is also one of my favorite whales. It has been photographed in both Sitka Sound and up near Kodiak Island.

This is my baby! His name is Tex and he is a border collie shepard mix. He is about 5 years old and I got him from a rescue in Seattle when he was about a year and a half old. He gets to come to work with me every day. Let's just say he is a little spoiled. He has to be everywhere that I am and about the only time he leaves me is when he gets the chance to go down to the river and play with his favorite toy...rocks!

This is a picture taken by some folks that live in Sitka. This is a partial albino bald eagle. We have been seeing this bird since it was a 2nd year bird. It takes bald eagles 5 years to get their white head and white tail. So in this picture, taken summer 2008, he is 5. He has about 5 white primary wing feathers, white spots on his shoulder and a trail of white feathers down his belly. He also had white talons. He has been photographed in Haines, Alaska during the Bald Eagle Festival in November, but seems to spend his summers in Sitka. They have named him White Wing.

I'm going to call that good for today. I will add more in the following weeks!

Jen

This one will be short...since I am a little perturbed at dogs today. There must be something in the air since no one seems to want to listen today! Very frustrating!

I am thinking that I need to download some more music. I love music. I just don't know what we would do without it. I have a whole list of songs, I just don't seem to take the time to do it. I have discovered this game on Yahoo games...and I just can't seem to stop playing it! It's worse than the TV!

Not sure I mentioned in the last posting that I am getting rid of my cable. I am pretty excited about it. I am going to keep it until the Olympics are through, and then it's gone! I can't wait to see what I can get done. I won't have that damn box to distract me. Well, it's lunch time, and I am starving. I promise to get some photos up tonight.

New to me

A good friend of mine just sent me her blog. It looked very cool and I thought I would give it a try. Not sure how long this will last...and I will try to keep things light instead of filling it with complaints and stuff that bugs me!
To start, here is a little more information about me. I live in Sitka, Alaska where I have been since the summer of 1995. I came up here from Wisconsin/Illinois for a summer job, and just got stuck. I love it here, although it's not always easy living on an island in southeastern Alaska. It is expensive to live here, and very far away from friends and family. Sometimes that is good, sometimes it's not. I am recently divorced and just bought a trailer that I live in with my 2 cats and 1 crazy border collie. They keep me very busy! OH, also there are 10 baby California quail living in my spare bedroom. I decided I wanted to hatch some eggs, so I did. Now I have 10 baby quail that are starting to get to big for their small cage!
I have 2 amazing jobs, that I love. The "day" job is at the University of Alaska Southeast as a research assistant for a humpback whale biologist. It is such a fun job. I do a lot of computer work, but there are times when I get to go out in the field and collect data about the whales. I have seen some incredible things on the water and I really love being around the whales. The "night" job is as a wildlife rehabilitator at the Alaska Raptor Center. I fix injured birds, mostly bald eagles, and get them back to the wild where they belong. We have a really great facility and get birds from all over southeastern Alaska and sometimes from the interior of Alaska. I will try to post some pictures of whales and birds soon.
I also am a crazy birdwatcher. I travel to see birds. I mean, isn't that the only reason you would go some place? I have only been to one place outside of the US, but that place was AMAZING. Costa Rica. Everyone who enjoys nature should go there...really. You won't be disappointed. A few other places that I really enjoyed were Nome, Alaska, Southeast Arizona, Southern Utah and the Grand Canyon (one word, CONDORS), and Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon. Oh, and then there is Hawaii! Can't believe that I forgot Hawaii. I write more about all this later, and post some pictures.

For now, have a great day!

Jen