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.

we hike mount livermore 2009-01-25 - 7:50 p.m. all photos © 2009 by elaine radford skyline returning in afternoon on angel island ferry Today we hopped up and it was a beautiful sunny cloudless fogfree day, so we decided to do the hike of Angel Island. First we strolled over to the Hollywood Diner, where DH had a responsible low carb sausage side plate and I coulda, woulda, DID-a have a V8, but we could see from the people eating around us, that if you had a decent appetite instead of a jet-lagged appetite, then this is the place to go for cheap GOOD food fast at a great price. We're hoping we'll get a chance to visit again. impossible to capture the 360 degrees view from the peak of angel island, of various islands around, and of oakland, sausolito, tiburon, san francisco, and so on, almost many many sailboats playing in the breeze As we hung around Pier 41 waiting for the ferry, I noticed a handsome adult Heerman's Gull who will make a good-looking addition to the bird list. It really must be the low season, because I was starting to get a little worried that we were in the wrong place, but eventually some folks did show up, and we caught the ferry the Angel Island -- most folks except for a small number of twentysomething hikers were actually going onward to Tiburon or Sausolito. Once we landed, we allowed the young people to hike ahead of us and then we had the trail and the beautiful views almost entirely to ourselves. We hiked up Mt. Livermore -- a towering 788 feet -- on the Northridge Trail and hiked down on the Sunset Trail, a round-trip of 4 miles. We had our picnic lunch at the top while inspecting Oakland, San Francisco, and God only knows how many inhabited islands all around us. As far as mammals, there were no squirrels, nor did we see the pan-handling racccoons that they warned you about on the signs, but we did get close to a couple of vaguely concerned-looking deer. (Not concerned enough to run away from us or anything, it IS an island and a California State Park after all. For all I know, the last time someone cooked and ate a deer on that island was approximately 1918.) The views from the top were wonderful 360 degrees of the Bay Area, but the fabled fog was nowhere to be seen, so we had splendid visibility. I tried to take a few pictures, but photos don't do justice to a 360, do they? I heard a buteo calling, and then DH spotted him -- them. Three fine Red-Tailed Hawks, perhaps a breeding pair and an interloper because the presumptive pair soared up and then dropped and briefly clasped claws. A most inspiring sight. We found a ratty-looking grayish (juvenile?) Western Scrub-Jay and later some handsome adults. We stumbled into a shockingly large flock of Bushtits, the coastal variety with the noticeable brown heads. A very odd finding was a slug with a banana -- not you understand, a banana slug, but a very large brown slug that had captured a large chunk of banana. Indeed, it looked as if someone had carefully placed the chunks of banana along the trail, but I can't imagine that they did this for the benefit of hungry slugs. we never did solve the mystery of how the wily slug caught the banana What else? Canada Goose, American Crow, Turkey Vultures with their red faces shining in the sun, Oregon Junco, Black Phoebe, Brandt's Cormorant, and curious Brewer's Blackbirds who inspected the ferry at Tiburon but who flew away as soon as the boat departed that dock. Lots and lots of grebes, some Western, some Clark's. We got back to the hotel in time to enjoy the wine social, although I took my second glass of wine and vanished upstairs to anti-socially sip wine in the tub whilst washing my hair. DH hung out by the fireplace and talked to some tourists from Liverpool who doubtless got a kick out of hearing about his trip to Morecambe. We wandered a bit at random and ate at the bar cocktail tables at the Franciscan Crab House, so that we could enjoy the lights of the city while sipping a cocktail and sharing an entire 2 pound Dungeness Crab. My cocktail was an irresponsible Blueberry Margarita, but oh well. Blueberry is good for the brain, and alcohol good for the heart, so I will no doubt live forever. skyline from morning ferry, with sun rising behind city back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford