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.

never any shortage of vervet monkeys hustling the tourists in this world 2012-01-16 - 12:57 p.m. all photos � 2012 by elaine radford the pale-chanting goshawk juvenile, white-eyed kestrel, and kite that we banded Jan. 9, 2012, the road to Polokwane Trying to type in the van at dusk, so I'll make mistakes. Will try to err on the side of adding birds I've already seen, instead of failing to mention birds I have seen. But I'm aiming to list only new birds seen, instead of a complete list. First stop, the ever-popular gas station, where House Sparrow joins the trip list. We follow the road to Polokwane, stopping short to meet our bird ringer at around 9 AM. We got scoffed at by several birds who sniffed out our clever trap, but over the course of the day the bander got a large female Black Shouldered Kite, a young Pale Chanting Goshawk, and a fiery Greated "White-Eyed" Kestrel in the hand for weighing, measuring, and photographs. I have to say that my heart went out to the Kestrel. As he was inspecting the trap, there was this huge crack of lightning, and the poor bird stumbled right in, was caught, tried to fly, and flapped madly across the road. I thought at first that he'd been shot. Actually, he was perfectly fine, but he took his revenge by biting several times at the bird bander. Ouch. "He lost some feathers," said one of our tour members, perhaps a tad unnecessarily. "I lost some blood," replied the ringer. Six species of eagle, included a very fine BOOTED EAGLE clutching its prey in its claw as it flew. Lesser Eagle and Steppe Eagles were pretty high silhouettes, but we had great views of Brown Snake Eagle, Black Chested Snake Eagle, and African Fish Eagle as well. Well it's too dark to see my scribble so I'll have to update my list of new birds later...OK, it's "later" now, the next morning, as I type this. Excitements of the day: The local guide drove his car off the road but got off with minor fender damage. We got lost and drove in circles until, oh, I'll say around 8:30 PM or so. But we're here, and we had a big day for raptors. We're starting to see lots of wildlife. However, for the wild animal spotter, it's frustrating that we're in a highly touristed area filled with game ranches. We saw a huge variety of mammal species but how many were natural and how many were "stock?" I know that the tortoise I photographed in the road was "real," and we saw a large flock of Kudu jump the fence, so we know that they were "real," and pesky Vervet Monkeys sitting on telephone wires and whatnot are assuredly "real," and we could easily eliminate the huge mixed mammal herd of everything from a few Zebra to a few Eland as "stock," but what about that nice herd of Blue Gnu? I dunno... Random points worth mentioning: A huge tornado of Amur Falcons that we found near the meeting point in the morning at 9 AM -- but there were large gatherings of Amur Falcons many places Wonderful view of the flying Black-Chested Snake-Eagle circling above us, not too high, in perfect light, to show the perfection of the black and white markings A Two Year old Fish Eagle with its juvenile plumage on fine display in the setting sunlight Will try to put a more or less correct list of the NEW birds added today, which will fall in the order I saw them, rather than any semblance of the correct taxanomic order: House Sparrow Jacobin Cuckoo Greater "White Eye" Kestrel Lanner Falcon Lesser Kestrel Brown Snake Eagle Black-Chested Snake Eagle Lesser Grey-Shrike BOOTED EAGLE White-Winged Widowbird Eurasian Bee-Eater Southern Ant-Eating Chat Red-Backed Shrike Pale Chanting Goshawk -- one juvenile Lesser Spotted Eagle Black Kite Steppe Eagle Magpie Shrike Red-Billed Hornbill Burchells Starling Grey Hornbill African Fish Eagle Long Tailed aka Reed Cormorant African Stonechat Great Egret Purple Heron Purple Roller Cape Vulture Pied Crow Woodland Kingfisher Greater Striped Swallow Abdim Stork Southern Masked Weaver Jan. 10, 2012, the road to Punta Maria Again, in the interest of time, I'm trying to post only the NEW trip birds seen this day. We got a rather late start after yesterday's excitement, but we eventually hit the road, heading first for the pig farm where Ovampo's Sparrowhawks have bred. Alas, we saw the nest with its interesting weave that incorporates orange plastic fibers into the structure...but no Ovampos. Here I saw my first Warthog of the trip, in addition to my first juvenile Fork-Tailed Drongo, African Paradise Flycatchers, Walberg's Eagle, White Stork, Marabou Stork. A cute fly-by by a slow, lazy Cape Vulture with a full crop. After it became obvious that the O'S weren't around, we went up to the hilltop where the farmers had created the so-called Vulture's Restaurant. They could get rid of scrap from the pig farm, and the various Vulture species and Marabou Storks (honorary raptors!) had a feast. Oh, and lots of Yellow-Billed Black Kite also. Can't believe I forgot to mention the Black Kite. We also got Lappet Faced Vulture but they were way out-numbered by the Capes...one of whom posed for us beautifully to show off his lovely blue neck. We had to make tracks to our next destination, the home of the Bat Hawk. On the way, we added our first two Long Crested Eagles of the trip, both close to the road. This foppish aristocrat with his rakish, almost drunken crest never fails to raise a smile from me. Proof that Eagles don't always have to be heavy and serious! The Bat Hawk likes to feast on the bats that nest in the leaves of the banana tree, so they like to have a forest with very tall trees near a banana plantation. A helpful guide led us to the nest near such a plantation, where a young one (about six months old now) had been successfully raised. The adults were still there, since it was proven to be a good territory, and we'd hardly fallen out of the van before we found them. These birds are a hoot. They sleep all day and hunt/eat bats all night, but they still sleep right out on a bare tree limb. They have glittering yellow eyes, and their little trick is that when they fall asleep and close their eyes, their eyelids are powder white so that it looks as if their eyes are still open. I believe they knew that we were there, because they kept jerking awake from their snooze to glare at us and then their eyes would hang heavy again and they'd go back to a brief nap. Pretty hilarious. Having been told that they would close the gates of Punda Maria at 6 PM whether we got there in time or not, we now had to drive like hell to make the deadline. "We are not stopping for ANYTHING," B. informed us. "Anything" is a limited category that excludes such things as our first Osprey, numerous Steppe Buzzards, a Black-Chested Snake-Eagle in (I thought) rather poor light, and a completely splendid adult Lizzard Buzzard in fine feather who was so intent on hunting near the road that he put on a fine show. If we'd had time to stay a few moments longer, I believe we would have witnessed a kill. That bird was determined. We somehow reached the gate with 20 minutes to spare, although I suspect that a few of the cattle and goats on the road wondered about us. Once inside the gates, we immediately spotted a huge, rather grumpy looking Cape Buffalo, not to mention a very large herd of Impala with young that I didn't have to wonder whether or not they were real. What else for new trip birds? Lilac Breasted Roller and Gabar Goshawk for sure. Before dinner, we took a quick hike to the Little Swift roost area. They seemed to have moved their roosting site, but the European Hobby still zipped past overhead on their way, so we added one last raptor to the list before it got too dark. As it happened, there were a great many Vervet Monkeys with youngsters loitering about the park, hoping to hustle the tourists. (One of them promptly stole one of the German guy's candy...right out of the van.) I wanted to snap a photo of a cute family scene, so I made this feeding the ducks gesture, that sometimes makes the less suspicious animals believe I might have food. The adults scorned the trick, but the baby came running up and then stopped cold as he realized that he'd been fooled. He looked oh-so-sad as he turned away, so I put him down as the travel agent for guilt trips. Anyway, I now had nothing but "butts" in the camera, so I turned away. Immediately, the angry father came running up to charge me from behind. He came right up on me and bared his teeth and snarled. I guess that'll show me to play dirty tricks on his baby. To continue to part 6, click right here. back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford