Species / Count

Canada Goose - 105
Gadwall - 2
Bufflehead - 2
Ruby-throated Hummingbird - 1
Great Blue Heron - 1
Black Vulture - 1
Bald Eagle - 1
Downy Woodpecker - 1
Carolina Chickadee - 1
White-breasted Nuthatch - 1
Carolina Wren - 1
Chipping Sparrow - 8
White-throated Sparrow - 16
Song Sparrow - 3
Swamp Sparrow - 2
Northern Cardinal - 1

22 species observed on a crisp fall morning.

Mourning Dove - 3
Turkey Vulture - 2
Bald Eagle - 2
Red-tailed Hawk - 3
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker - 2
Red-bellied Woodpecker - 1
Northern Flicker - 1
Blue Jay - 2
Carolina Chickadee - 1
Tufted Titmouse - 2
Ruby-crowned Kinglet - 1
White-breasted Nuthatch - 1
Carolina Wren - 2
European Starling - 2
Northern Mockingbird - 2
Eastern Bluebird - 3
House Finch - 3
House/Purple Finch - 2
American Goldfinch - 2
Chipping Sparrow - 3
White-throated Sparrow - 4
Yellow-rumped Warbler - 7
Northern Cardinal - 2

In Animal House, the Deltas took a road trip for some live music when faced with the loss of their house. I did the same when faced with the loss of my country.

Okay...that might be a bit overstated above. This trip has been planned for months.

Back in 2012 I bought this book as a $1.99 Kindle special. It's the story of the band Watershed, a band that you've never heard of that is better than most bands that you have heard of. The book is great. The music is even better. However, the band members had to start adulting, so they have non-music careers now, only playing the occasional live show. Yesterday was one of those live shows, in Myrtle Beach, SC. We drove 12 hours RT in a 36 hour period for a 90 minute no cover charge concert in a beach bar where we may have been the only 2 people in the crowd that didn't have a personal connection to somebody in the band.

I regret nothing.

I had always heard that Watershed was one of those bands that is better live than recorded, and I 100% support that idea after my first Watershed show. There is something magical about a very tight rock band on stage that no recording medium will ever convey, and last night was absolute proof of that. More proof, my wife is a bigger fan after seeing them live.

So anyway, go out and support original rock and roll. In times of darkness and stress, art becomes even more important.

I successfully avoided publishing an ill considered and profane rant here on Wednesday. I'll take that as a sign of my growing maturity. I'm never going to be able to write a clear and organized essay about the events of this week. So we are going with the unstructured bullet points format.

• A lot of people that fucked around voting on Tuesday are going to be very unhappy with the find out phase of their actions.

• MAGA thinks they won, but in fact we all lost. Well, not the billionaires.

• Billionaires are a policy failure.

• Spare me the 5000 word essays on economic insecurity. Over half of the country can't deal with a black woman in charge. It really is that simple.

• If I want to be generous a lot of people that aren't racist or sexist are okay with endorsing that as a policy if it saves them a few bucks on their taxes.

• I don't want to be generous. Not with them.

• After running for President twice and being President once, Trump has absolutely no idea how government runs. I'm looking forward to the MAGA Congressional contingent from Kansas and Iowa telling him to go fuck himself when Musk tries to eliminate or cut farm subsidies. All politics are local, so all cutbacks have to affect only other people. With any luck , the gridlock will lock up Congress for 4 years. This assumes Democrats don't eek out a victory in the House.

• It is perfectly acceptable to believe that your Trump voting family member doesn't give a fuck about LBGTQ people. This sadly holds if you are LBGTQ. When somebody shows you who they are, believe them. If any LBGTQ folks reading this need to talk, or vent, or whatever, shoot me an email. I'll be happy to commiserate, or just listen.

• Don't trust anyone that might be a fascist supporter. There will be (or maybe already is) a snitch line.

• Several states voted to protect access to abortion and also voted for the guy promising to eliminate abortion.¯\(?)/¯

• North Carolina punished the black Nazi but not the white Nazi.¯\(?)/¯

• On second thought, the NC thing makes perfect sense.

• It's not my place to tell anybody how to grieve, but at some point we all need to go from anger and grief to anger and action. I'm not qualified to tell anybody how to help. I'd suggest talking to the marginalized folks in your life and ask them what you can do to help. Lots of organizations are going to need your money and your time as they work to counteract the fascist regime and help protect those that get targeted.

• If your first thought about Trump's election was "Praise Jesus," you don't know a damn thing about Christianity.

• Posting on Facebook is not activism.

• Mark Zuckerburg was an active participant in the election results. Assume everything you've ever posted on FB, regardless of your privacy settings, will be available to MAGA persecution squads. I don't know that deleting anything on FB actually removes it from the database, but you should think about mass deleting everything you've ever put on Facebook and then use it very carefully going forward, if at all.

• Twitter is a Nazi bar. Stop fooling yourself that you are making a difference there and close your account, yesterday.

• The first Europeans that set foot in what is now America were Christian, racist, and sexist. Over 1/2 the county has failed to evolve beyond it.

• In Animal House, faced with the loss of Delta House, the Deltas went on a road trip. I'm doing the same.

Social Media preview image from the always entertaining and insightful Clay Jones.

Trip:49
Nights: 170-172

So we've hit the planning vacations around birds stage of life. Wings Over Water is a bird and wildlife festival held on the Outer Banks every year in October. We booked a dry campsite at Oregon Inlet, which is a National Park campground at the north side of the bridge between Bode Island and Pea Island.

We got in late Thursday afternoon (the 24th) and just hung out at the campsite that evening. There was a stiff wind coming out of the North which kept it cool and chased us into the camper. No wood fires are allowed at the campground, not that I would have started one in that wind. We did take advantage of the clear skies and lack of light pollution to do some star gazing that evening, but otherwise played games in the camper and hit the hay early as we had a birding tour scheduled at sunrise on Friday.

We spent Friday morning on Roanoke Island, birding at the wildlife refuge and grounds of Fort Raleigh. After a lunch break we explored Fort Raleigh and the history behind the lost colony, and went back over to the NWR visitor center. After that we headed down Hwy 12 to the Pea Island NWR visitor center, where we timed it perfectly as there was a tremendous number of ducks on the ponds there. I had non-existent duck ID skills, but a very nice local birder generously let us tag along and pepper her with questions for about an hour, and we learned a lot in that hour. That evening we had dinner at a local seafood place, and called it an early night as we had a repeat day planned for Saturday.

On Saturday morning we started at the Bode Island lighthouse and spent the morning observing birds in the marsh around the lighthouse and the surrounding pine forests. That afternoon we went back to Pea Island but the 10s of thousands of ducks that were there on Friday had taken advantage of the strong winds from the north to continue their trips south. We ended up lounging at the campsite in the late afternoon before grilling burgers for dinner. We ended up identifying 85 species over the weekend, 19 of which were life birds.

The trip home on Sunday was uneventful.

Oregon Inlet is a nice NPS campground. There are W/E sites but you'll need to book 11 months in advance to get one. The dry sites are fine in the shoulder seasons, but in high summer you'd be camping on sand with absolutely no shade. There bathhouses are fine, and the showers are enclosed outdoor shows. Fine in July, not so much in late October. There is a marina store directly across the street for snacks and the normal camp store kind of stuff.