PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

Recent entries july 4, 2018 - 2018-07-04 the triangle continues of courtney, boobear, & nyota - 2018-07-03 Cookie so cute telling, "Hello" to sparrows - 2018-07-01 lovebirb in love - 2018-06-30 wren with fluffffff - 2018-06-24 Read my new book, The 10 Best Things You Can Do For Your Bird at Amazon or at many other fine distributors like Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and more. 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 official fan site, Passages in the Void.. My Bird Lists -- My Louisiana State Life List, My Yard List and, tah dah, My World Life List. HEY! What happened to the Peachfront Conure Files? The world's only OFFICIAL Peachfront Conure site now features free peachfront conure coverage, including a magazine length Intro to Conures previously published in American Cage-Bird Magazine, now free on the web. I offer the best free Peachfront Conure information on the internet. If you have great Peachfront Conure info, stories, or photos to share, contact me so I can publicize your pet, your breeding success, your great photograph, etc. on my site. Thanks.

madder than a wet white morph adult female variable hawk 2013-01-23 - 7:22 a.m. Jan. 18, 20 It was raining cats and dogs, so our wine-inspired idea of the night before was the right one. We wouldn't have had any soaring raptors in this weather, and we'd seen the fast-flying Orange-breasted Falcon ranging over such a large area of forest that we could have never found it (except by blind luck) searching for a soaking wet perched bird. So we headed up to the Jujuy province, to our hotel in the highly atmospheric (and somewhat overrun by backpackers) town of Purmamarca. We had lunch in a place that served llama and live music. For that matter, we had dinner in the same place. New birds of the day: Collared Swifts Golden-rumped Euphonia -- a beautiful male Chiguanco Thrush White-tipped Plantcutter White-Banded Mockingbird Brown-backed Mockingbird Variable Hawk -- kiting at something of a distance Mountain Caracara -- a truly fine full adult who spun right over me, hoping for a tourist with a hand- out Rain, rain, rain, rain. When was the last time it rained in the high puna? I still don't know, but the guy at the hotel said it had been two years since it rained three days in a row. According to our friends at Google, it rains four inches a year at Purmamarca -- the same as Vegas. Since it manages to rain every time I visit Vegas, I don't know why I'm surprised by a little wet. In any event, let's cut to the chase. I am writing this after the fact in the Condor club, so I know that it did end up raining three days in a row, and probably four. Peachfront still gots it when it comes to the rain- making. Jan. 19, 2013 Peachfront brought the rain not just to a few isolated mountain valleys but to the entire region of Jujuy, Salta, and beyond. We studied the weather reports with some perplexity and figured out that we had nowhere left to run that you could get to in a car. Therefore, we had nothing left to lose by following the original plan. We drove the road from Purmamarca to the Argentine town on the Bolivian border, stopping in the Bolivian restaurant for an authentic Aymara lunch from an authentic Bolivian -- with our table being set up in an authentic storage room since the actual lunch room was completely overrun. Despite the rain, though, the food could not take center stage. We have raptors, Houston. Wet, dis-spirited peeved- off raptors wondering about the meaning of it all...but they were still raptors. We actually got two sightings of soaring Andean Condors between the raindrops. The first was a 4th year bird, which gave us wonderful long looks as it soared over the valley, flapping, soaring, and finally giving up to find a perch on the ridge. The second sighting was two beautiful full adult males flying together in all their splendor. Variable Hawks of the Puna subspecies (possible species?) earned their name by showing off a variety of plumages -- adult white morph female, third year juvenile, second year dark morph female, dark morph adult female, adult male light morph -- the list goes on but I got tired of scribbling them down. Suffice it to say that "variable" is a very good name for this species. The very first adult bird, a splendid white morph full adult female, with the wet rain somehow matting down the gray tips to her feathers and letting the white show through, giving her a very white crown on her head, may well be my favorite. The richly colored highland subspecies of the Aplomado Falcon put on a mind-boggling display of sheer physical beauty. The first bird (a male, if I remember correctly) was fine enough, but the female we found was truly splendid. What a beautiful creature. New trip birds of the day: Southern Martin -- feeding babies Screaming Cowbird -- first seen on a cow Golden-billed Saltator Puna Tinamou We all enjoyed the juvenile Mountain Caracara, who gave us the first look at the immature plumage. The herds (not flocks!) of llamas and vicu�as were also very attractive against the stunning Humahuasca scenery that reminded me somewhat of the American southwest, only with a lot more rain and a lot fewer crowds. We struggled in vain to find "wild" llamas, as opposed to those that appeared to have little red ribbons and bows to mark them as somebody's lovestock. Later, we were to learn that all llamas are domesticated, while vicu�a are a true natural species. So it was pre-destined that our search for wild vicu�a would be more successful than our search for wild llama. We ate again at the live music place, a little early to avoid the band. (I'm pretty sure they were pretty authentic though, to judge from the tears in the eyes of the Argentines in yesterday's crowd, who knew all the words and how to clap to all the tunes...) However, we had finally fixed the fuse in the car, allowing us to use the halogen light to scan the night fields for the puma (cougar) the hotel owner had seen the month before. Alas...no cougar. Just a lot of mud. However, an unexpected bonus from all the rain. The birds were unwilling to fly easily, so the big guns got plenty of great shots of multiple plumages. I have a sneak peak at the female Aplomado Falcon I mentioned above, and the photograph is indeed spectacular. Peachfront's note: A truly obnoxious number of cute photos will be posted sometime in the near future. Stay tuned. back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford