PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

Read this before you email me for the first time. Personal mail only. No spam. No mean people. If you can't say something nice, I'm not interested. Recent entries in pursuit of booted eagles and red-neck falcons - 2012-01-29 blue crane dancing - 2012-01-28 ain't nothing cuter than a little old lammergeier fledgling in the cliffs hoping to hustle his parents for food even though he's just as big as they are - 2012-01-19 it's raining long-crested eagles, it's raining amur falcons - 2012-01-18 hell is other people, heaven is crowned eagle - 2012-01-17 Drool on my personal collection of stones by clicking right here. Coming soon: I plan to offer some cool stones for sale in upcoming months, so you can support the site and get a nifty collectible too. By public demand, and after a delay of an embarrassing number of years, I've finally put my notorious essay, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman, free on the fabulous internets. A bibliography of my published books and stories. Here's a simple card-counting FAQ to get you up to speed on the basics. Here's the true story of the notorious DD' blackjack team, told for the first time on the fabulous internets. No other team went from a starting investor's bankroll of zero to winning millions of dollars. A Sadean take on Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics can be found in Roger Williams' NOW REVIEWED ON SLASHDOT!!! The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Adult readers only please -- explicit sex and violence. For updates on the "Dead Tree Project" and other topics, you may visit the localroger diary. Visit Peachfront's Cookbook, for recipes that are fast, cheap, and good. A work in progress. My Bird Lists -- My Louisiana State Life List, My Yard List and, tah dah, My World Life List.

in pursuit of booted eagles and red-neck falcons 2012-01-29 - 9:09 a.m. Jan. 23, 2012--Madder than a wet Booted Eagle Rained like hell in Cape Town today. We had a tour set up with a local expert who took us around the Tokai Forest and Table Mountain National Park in search of various nest sites. Since it's getting late in the season, it was a day of just-fledgled food-begging raptors crying in the rain. By the way, the expert was an older lady but not a hobbyist, rather an actual ornithologist. She wasn't the first older female raptor expert we've met either. I guess in South Africa, with no hummingbirds, women don't get relegated to the hummingbird ghetto? Anyhoo, the day in order: A large troop of Chacma Baboons...lock your vehicle in this area, for an unlocked door is an open invitation to a soaking wet, soaking mad Chacma Baboon. The funniest male I saw was trying to pry open a supposedly animal-proof garbage bin. Black Sparrowhawk -- finally a decent view between the raindrops More Steppe Buzzards, more Elgin Buzzards -- although this lady seemed to prefer the term "mystery buzzard" to "Elgin Buzzard." New (I think) trip birds were African Dusky Flycatcher and Neddicky, both well seen Some of them saw Cape Batis but just as I turned to view the bird, a German put up an umbrella and blocked the view. Grrrrr. Umbrellas should not be allowed on birding trips. What's wrong with a nice rain poncho? A break for lunch, while it continued to rain like hell and I slipped next door to the elegant boutique with the handbag sale. I did throw out the unlucky handbag in London, so I'm due another handbag for Peachfront's fabulous handbag museum, and the price for a beautiful olive leather bag in the fabulous Cape Town boutique was too low to pass by. The dollar is weak, but the rand is weaker. Not sure why, since there's a lotta gold and fabulous wealth here, but I'm not sure why the "soft dollar" exists either so direct your macro-economic questions to the next website. Spectacular visit to the nesting grounds of Rufous-Chested Sparrowhawk, where we had many fine views from every angle of flying and perched two food-begging youngsters and one of their parents. Noisy birds, constantly crying for attention. Since it is a life bird, I suppose I will always remember them as birds who create quite a racket, even though this stage is probably a brief one in their lives, a bit like the human "terrible twos." Booted Eagle was the pride of the day. Three of us, S., P., and myself joined the lady in her four-wheeler for a bouncy, soggy journey to the top of the mountain, where I suddenly looked down and realized that I was looking right down on a fine, soaking wet, young light morph Booted Eagle. Wonderful views. The bird was almost tame. The lady explained that the nest was right by a popular path, where her husband strolled for exercise every day, so he's the one who actually discovered the first nest site of Booted Eagles in Cape Town. These birds seem to have no fear of humans at all, allowing us to get out of the vehicle and enjoy the show from every angle. Poor baby. His head feathers were wet and matted, and he'd sort of fluff them to let the wind catch them to dry them out...and then it would start raining again. Eventually, he called in a parent, there was a food exchange, and then a second bird showed up. What a show. We hated to leave the site. S. said later that he almost didn't want to tell the others what they had missed. "It was a highlight of the whole trip," he said. "I don't know why they didn't want to go up." I was thinking the same thing, although with some relief that they didn't all want to pile into her small vehicle. It was a special moment for four people. I doubt it would have been the same with 13 people (our group and the two locals) all sitting on each other's hats and swinging telephoto lenses in everybody's way on the side of a steep wet mountain. For some unknown reason, it was suggested that it would save time to check-in online for tomorrow's flights by heading for the tour packager's house. It was a nice house, and we had a chance to see the book that one of our fellow travelers had written on the birds of Liberia. We also enjoyed the Cape Dwarf Chameleon that is currently using the tour packager's garden. However, there's no way that spending 90 minutes to get checked in online at somebody's house would have saved time over checking in at the desk, since we had to go to the desk anyway and get all our bags weighed. I started to ask about seat assignments and then realized that this lady was just not up to the task, so I still had to go to the desk here at the airport to be put in an aisle seat. We had dinner with a famous guy who wrote a bird of prey book that he was selling and autographing, which would have been better if we weren't already overweight on bags. The new bag fees are the enemy of people who want to sell to tourists, that's for sure -- another way that a small way for small people to make money has been diverted to the large corporations. Actually, in my case, my bag is underweight according to South African Airways, but it's all I can lift. Even though I have discarded my jacket, two pairs of pants, three or four shirts, and a bra, I have acquired a wooden bowl, a handbag, and an extra book, so there is no room for anything more. So our side of the table was more of an excuse to order multiple bottles of wine and indulge in more wretched excess while drinking to the health of the soaking wet Booted Eagles of this world. After our side of the table was well into the second or third bottle, the famous guy made a comment about some woman who has "really turned the cuckoo world on its head." For some reason, this phrase caught our inebriated attention, and the four of us all fell about the floor laughing uncontrollably. "Really turned the cuckoo world on its head? Maybe I'm in the wrong field. Or maybe it's a small world. Maybe it's only one person." I know we're wrong but laughter is contagious, and we just couldn't stop giggling. At least all of the Germans, who didn't give a flying how heavy their bags get or how much their bag fees are, bought books and signatures, so don't think the famous author just came away from the table with some beers, some prawns, and a story to tell about drunken raptor enthusiasts. Jan. 24, 2012-The Kalahari Red Dune Route I wrote the January 23 entry in the Cape Town airport while we were waiting at the gate. We had one of these puddle jumper flights where you catch a shuttle bus to catch your plane. The little plane had an A aisle that was all single seats and a BC aisle where B was the Aisle and C was the window. No miserable middles. I had a B seat with an empty seat next to me, and I was the hero who called the tall Dutch guy to come sit in the open A exit row seat so that his legs wouldn't be squished. It was an hour and a half flight, but it came in fifteen minutes early, and they still had time to offer free sodas and free sandwiches, even though the cans of soda and the sandwiches were less than half the average size required by a normal human for lunch. I'd say the trip to Upington was a winner, even though there was no first class. Alas, the time won by arriving 15 minutes early was lost when we discovered that the rental car agency had supplied two completely inadequate vehicles for 11 people and all their luggage. Peachfront travels light but everybody else had packed like you still had elephants to carry around your photography gear. I finally realized that one of the Germans -- I'll call him the Silent Doctor -- is actually making MOVIES, so no doubt the whole story will be appearing as cut-up clips in a Werner Herzog crypto-documentary sometime in the future. The rental car lady was in my opinion a blame layer rather than a problem solver. I will accept the answer that no one told her that we had a last minute addition to the trip. I don't think she needs to keep returning to that point. We know there was a last minute addition. We're not interested in laying blame. Assuming we can't leave the dude in the desert, we need to figure out how to work around the facts as they stand. I don't accept -- totally do NOT -- believe that every truck, van, baggage delivery man, and spare taxi cab in Upington had already been rented out. It's 100 degrees at high noon in the Kalahari Desert. In fact, from what we saw later, we KNOW that her claim couldn't be remotely true. From what we saw on our flight, and what I've seen around the park, they get about as many visitors in high summer as you'd get in Death Valley. The vehicles were available. She just didn't want to give them to us, for the price agreed upon by the trip packager. However, we made a huge mistake in the negotiating process. We started loading the bags into the van instead of walking away to call some other rental car agencies, so the lady knows if she just hangs tough, we're going to take those vehicles rather than walking away. On reflection, I wonder if we needed to be more explicit. I recruited a guy who was willing to be the third driver, but perhaps we didn't make it clear that we would be willing to pay extra to have a third vehicle. Perhaps the lady thought we wanted bigger/extra vehicles for the same low, low price. There's a problem of diplomacy here, and Peachfront is no diplomat. The goal is to support the raptor research by paying enough to make the trip profitable for the researchers. However, B. also fights to get the price down, to make it more affordable -- and, in this case, I have to strongly suspect that I'm one of the people he's trying to keep it affordable for, since I'm almost certainly the least wealthy person on this tour, by a long shot. It's a lot of work to keep things under a certain budget. How much work I probably didn't appreciate until I tried to price out a tour for my mom. And it's a very difficult exercise, and at this point our leader is caught in the middle of the mess. So perhaps we the tourists don't make it clear that we have more money to get, and the lady doesn't see a profit to be made in solving our problem; she sees a profit to come from giving us the two shittiest vehicles on the lot. Not just the two shittiest because they weren't big enough, but (as we found out further down the road) the shittiest as far as the door don't close and so you have to go along listening to a constant bell ringing. Basically, we got the low bid vehicles on the lot and this lady, not recognizing a chance to upsell and make more money, took the petty price and gave us the petty vehicles. The van was madly overloaded, and I knocked little old ladies out of the way to get picked for the other vehicle. We have all arrived alive, and there is nothing to buy here by even the most determined well-to-do spendaholic German, so we should acquire no new possessions and I'd hope that we will be able to return in more or less one piece. Pray for us. Packed with luggage, the van held 6 people in hazardous circumstance. Therefore, there was no choice but for our car -- I guess you'd call it a mini-SUV, the kind that holds 4 people -- to take 5 people. The physical misery was intense. However, the birding was great. It started with a bang with our first Pale Chanting Goshawks. We could see these wonderful birds, lifers for many of us, in many poses and both adult and juvenile plumages. After awhile, the Pale Chanters became a nuisance on the ground, or at least on the telephone poles. Who knew that there were so many of this thriving species in this wicked world? It took a couple, three hours, but we finally arrived at Kgalagardi Transfrontier Park. Our gate is on the border of Botswana and South Africa, and we had not entered the Botswana part, even though it is just a couple steps away from the reception desk. Not sure why not. Maybe you have to pay the small fee, unlike Lesotho, where all of us except for the one lucky winner got to enter the country for free. They call it "camp," but it's more luxury cabins with AC, full kitchens with microwave, full size fridge, all the cooking utensils and dishes and wine glasses and cooking pots you might need, and count 'em, not one but two, picnic tables with four chairs each for each cabin. Also a full BBQ pit...all this...for one person. I could weep. As we milled around waiting to find out if our cabins were in South Africa or Botswana, we found an orange Chameleon. Orange in color, as opposed to orange in species name, since we don't know the species. Onward to the cabins in question, which are in fact in South Africa. I was immediately identified as a soft touch by the White-Browed Sparrow-Weavers, who hit me up for a hand-out. I assured them that I'd get something for them from the store at the earliest convenience. Close enough to touch her female Golden-Tailed Woodpecker, and I don't want to hear anything else about how it's out of range. We have evidence. The bird might be lost, but she posed cooperatively, and we had great views from every angle. Hence my perplexity when I heard the call, "Cardinal Woodpecker." But I think we've got that kerfluffle all sorted now. We had arrived early enough for a late afternoon drive, although this park is another of the national parks with the annoying gates policy. Their gates close at 7:30, which is at least some slight improvement. We'd barely entered the zone outside the gates before we saw one of my targets, African Pygmy Falcon. Yes, I'd seen this charming species in Kenya, but you can never get enough African Pygmy Falcon cuteness. A family of three Tawny Eagles, two adults and a young one, together in their tree. Some snoozing lions under a tree, but wait...there's more. Black-Headed Shrike and Ludwig's Bustard join the list. OK, and here's something that I'm told almost no one ever sees, although I don't know if they're yanking my chain, because we saw it really fast and easy. Bat-Eared Fox. We saw the mother first, crossing the road and then crossing back and then re-crossing, and I could see that she was nervous about something. Then we all realized what it was: She had three fluffy baby foxes, and they weren't following her. She went back over to where she could keep an eye on them, and we sat for awhile watching the three of them play just like puppies. Too cute. Our leader is jaded and has no use for Lions snoozing under a tree. Our second-in-command is still young and idealistic, and he has faith that the Lions will awake and arise. (Is this starting to sound a bit like a movie plot?) In any case, I was in the second vehicle, and we kinda, sorta slipped back over to the Lions to see what they would do. We're not supposed to tell and make the people in the van feel bad, but -- hey, my diary readers are cool and won't blab -- so here's the real scoop. After we watched the pride for a little while, the male Lion woke up and tried to get something started with one of the females. Yes, friends and neighbors, once again, we saw a male Lion get blue-balled. Considering that the males have multiple females, you'd think they could find one to say "yes." How do little Lions ever get made? But the whole show was freakin' hilarious. Wonderful scene where we followed a Secretary Bird stalking prey. He was going for insects, which involved doing a little dance to scare them up. Our first Oryx. Nowhere near our first Blue Wildebeest, but I noticed an energetic calf nursing on its mother, which was pretty cute. Back in camp, as I strolled to dinner, the Eagle German grabbed me and told me of the Pearl-Spotted Owl. It was being harassed by Cape Sparrows, but it was still there, and I had great views. It even turned its head, possibly to frighten or at least pretend to ignore the bothersome sparrows, so I had a look at the eyes on the back of its head. I joined the group for dinner at the restaurant but not the noisy wine club table tonight. Had some sort of game pie but I've forgotten what. Poor Kudu probably. Not bad but what really stuck in mind was the sky at night as I walked back to my cabin. The Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds, billions and billions of stars, a star for every Pale Chanting Goshawk in the Kalahari Desert! Jan. 25, 2012--Even a Falcon can be a RedNeck Today we drove all day to Mata Mata and back. Here we could see Namibia and were a few steps away from the Border Station, but we did not enter Namibia. Don't know why not. If I was by myself, I would have just to say I did. But maybe there's the question of the small fee or some other consideration unknown to Peachfront. The day started with a bang as the Vereaux's "Milky" Eagle-Owl sat proudly near the gate at Kgalagardi, blinking his eyes in an allegedly sinister manner to show off the pink eyelids. Actually, I think he was just feeling sleepy. Baby owls are a sleepy crowd. For that matter, the adults are pretty good snoozing birds. I'd no doubt seen them before but now we made careful note of the Sociable Weaver and their intricate condo nests, because we were seeking the apartments taken by Pygmy Falcons. From a distance we saw two juvenile Pale Chanting Goshawks scuffling or dancing or otherwise playing on the ground. As we approached, we realized that they were heckling a deep chestnut-red mongoose, which may be the Slender Mongoose. They'd let it get a little away, then fly after it and start with the jabs and the heckles again. Poor Mongoose. They had him running all over the desert, and the game was still going when it was time for us to head for breakfast. I've no patience for all these endless restaurant meals, so I skipped the breakfast and took the opportunity to stroll a stand of trees where the Yellow-Billed Hornbills were hunting large insects. I went to photograph hornbills, but I was quickly distracted by the flirt and call of what I dubbed The Beautiful Bird, as it flicked behind branches and around thorns, making a curious song, while it flashed bits of deep red color. Eventually, I got a fine view of the bird full-on... Crimson-Breasted Shrike. Along the way, Groundscraper Thrush feasting on a large white maggot joined the list. Actually, the Thrush wasn't so much feasting as hold up the maggot for my inspection. Yum yum. But it's nice to take pride in your work. While waiting to be picked up by the van, I added a singing Chestnut-Vented Tit-Babbler to the list. Oh Lord. This horrid van. I almost don't know what to say about it. The plan was 5 in the small mini-SUV, and 6 in the van. Since the previous day, the SUV had gone out with the smallest three of us in the back seat, with the less aggressive woman in the middle, and we didn't have enough room for me to be able to move the right side of my body, I didn't see how it could work. Meanwhile, the 6 in the van situation was bad enough, since the back row of seats is impossible. The windows don't open, and it really isn't meant for carrying passengers but instead for the bags. The German woman ended up alone on that seat. The front seats are assigned to driver and some privileged individual -- most of the time, one of the guys who has somehow really invested a lot of money in the trip, such as being in possession of $30K of equipment or (in the case of the Eagle seeker) being the guy who more or less gathered together people for the trip. So the front seat is taken, the back seat has one person (which is already more than it SHOULD have), and the middle row holds BOTH of the guys we'll call the obnoxious long-lens Germans. They are completely obsessive in their pursuit of the photo, they have tens of thousands of dollars of equipment, and they NEVER stop shooting to let anyone see anything. B. said I could take the back or I could take the middle. If I take the back, obnoxious German guys will crawl out both windows, and no one in the back sees or hears anything. You may as well not go out at all. So I take the passenger side seat and put both Germans on the left of me, so that I can control at least one window. Then, just as we're starting to leave, the 6'8" Dutch guy -- OK, I admit it, he gets taller with every telling of the tale, but he IS tall -- gives up on the SUV and has to join our van. The only way for him to ride is to share the intolerable back seat with the German woman, but as he can't fit in the other vehicle at all, he hasn't much choice. So we are packed in, sardines in a can, with three of us not having access to windows or windows that open. That's no problem for obnoxious German in the middle, who simply leans across me or his friend, performing some amazing acrobatics in the course of the day -- and getting some truly astonishing shots in the process -- but it was still an exercise in physical torture. By the end of the day, I was shouting out the window to encourage the birds to Go Ahead! Kill Something! Some new trip birds: Large-Billed Lark, Swallow-Tailed Bee-Eater, Namaqua Dove, Red-Headed Finch. Our first look at a new agami lizard species, this one with a prominent black head. A Lanner Falcon family circles us many times, so that we can enjoy the two adults and the juvenile with the lovely desert light shining through their wings. Our first Oryx. Many giraffe with youngsters. Maybe our first Red Hartebeest. Something I never expected to see -- two Leopards hunting together in the rocks. Siblings, maybe? They caught nothing and finally went into the rocks to snooze off the heat of the afternoon. At Mata Mata, we found a store with not enough meat pies for everyone. I ordered the steak and kidney because there were only two regular steaks and one steak with pepper left, and I figured most people can't eat kidney, but we still came close to fisticuffs over the pies. I offered to split my pie with the Dutch guy but I chose wisely; he is one who would rather not eat than eat kidney. Here too was the entrance to Namibia which, again, for reasons not known to me, we didn't cross the border just to say we did. I'm thinking visa fees -- same thing that kept us from crossing into the Serengeti from the Masai Mara. Tanzania wanted $50 for us to cross from Kenya and, if you're not spending any money there, I can kinda see why. In fact, I still feel bad that I entered a poor country like Lesotho and left nothing except a crap and 12 rand for a Coke light in a pub. Be that as it may, we saw but did not step foot in Namibia, and the lunch supplies were pretty random...but the lunch stop was all worthwhile because of the pleasant White-Faced Scops Owl who snoozes in the tree in front of the shop. It is notable in South Africa how the small owls like to be near human habitations. Is it because they feel safe somehow there from their predators? Do they know that these places are particularly fenced off from leopards, lions, and so on? OK, say they do know that. What leopard ever ate a White-Faced Scops-Owl? It is all most puzzling to me, but it has become clear on my trek through South Africa that small owls form a relationship with the tourist stops. On the drive back, we found a spot close to the road where four Cheetahs rested in the shade. They had that lean and hungry look that Cheetahs do so well. A young Martial Eagle gave us a nice fly-by. Finally, at the Munro waterhole, we got the wonderful life bird of the day, Red-Necked Falcon. This splendid little bird was hunting from a green tree, where he could overlook the waterhole. Only problem was, he kept missing. Dives at a dove, dove gets away, dives at a finch, finch gets away, picks up a drongo harasser, increases his speed and now he's chasing the drongo instead of the other which way but the drongo still gets lucky and gets away, and so on. I knew he was off his game when he missed a bird and then chased a cabbage white butterfly instead. Missed the butterfly too. In disgust, he lands on the road and picks up an insect, so at least he has a snack to sustain him. Then he takes off again. When last we see him, he's chasing over the sand dunes after a wily dove. We had arranged for a night drive, and I walked over a bit early in hopes of looking at the magnificent sky. It worked for awhile but then the prompt Germans showed up complete with halogen flashlights and they cut into the viewing considerably. There are two prompt Germans, although I think the neuro-surgeon is by far the prompt-est. I always consider it the five minute warning to GET THERE if I see him emerge. Anyhoo, as we're milling, the obnoxious middle seat German comes over and tells me what a good sport I was. This guy is completely focused on photographs, and I really don't think he has much awareness of other people when he's in the drunken state of bird photography. I strongly suspect that someone else (the Eagle guy maybe?) told him to apologize for sitting on me and that's as good as it gets. To be honest, it's more than I expected. The other American guy told me, "We have only two days left. You don't have to be polite any more," but why not? The guy is allegedly 67. He ain't gonna change just because Peachfront yells at him. So why bother? The night tour itself was pretty much a failure. If the tour guide was an old guy, you'd say he was Retired in Place. I don't know what to say about it when it's a guy in his twenties. He strictly did the minimum. He was just a driver, with a halogen lamp that didn't work at all. "Springhare, springhare, honey, it's springhares all the way down." Actually, I made up that quote. He wasn't that creative. He just called springhare, time after time, for an entire two hour tour. Well, once in awhile, we had a Scrub Hare. I have to admit that the springhare was a new animal to me, and it was interesting enough the first five times I saw it. But I came for bigger game. Best of the night drive was the Cape Fox that ran across the road and the two Spotted Eagle-Owls, probably a male and a female, considering the second bird was a full adult yet substantially smaller than the first one. I was happy to get re-acquainted with this fine species again but the rest of the group was bitching fairly heavily. Desert animals are active at night and, if the halogen lamp had actually been working, we should have seen scads of them. I came for the Owls but if I'd come for cat, I'd be way bitter. A terrible night. I slept maybe half an hour and then I awoke with an awful Charley horse. Terrible to be alone and not know how to unbend my leg. Of course, it righted itself in time, as Charley horses always do, but then I was still worried about what I would do in the morning. I simply couldn't be in a cramped seat again. I'm already taking all the Ibuprofen a woman my size can handle. Yet I didn't want to miss anything. What to say? What to do? I was sleeping as I thought about all this and I could come to no conclusion. back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright © 2002-2011 by Elaine Radford