Friday, April 18, 2014

Birding Weekend



Last year, while birding, we were discussing  collective nouns and how funny they are.  Especially when it comes to the animal kingdom/birds.
A Murder of Crows?
A Gaggle of Geese?
  A Hedge of Herons?
An Exaltation of Larks?

We got a kick out of them all.

So this year, our friend Jolina (fellow bird nerd extraordinaire!  and apparently an artist too)  made these shirts for us.  (T shirts with this drawing on them)
She drew the Quail.  
We see them in our backyards around here every day. 
We love them.
They are our backyard birds.  (even tho they are California Quail, we here in Northern Nevada claim them as our own)
And in this drawing she put collective nouns of some of our favorite birds.
Plus... a collective noun to describe us:
A Gamble of Nevadans. 

[oops!!  This just in from Jolina:]
Hey Debbie - our collective noun is "gambol of Nevadans" which I was worried that I'd misspelled it - but I had copied it from the book!!  But the definition of gambol is "to leap about playfully; frolic"
Yup, that's what we do. 

It is beautiful! 
We will treasure it always!

At one of the dinners on our birding weekend, a woman asked here she could buy our shirts.
Jolina won't sell them... but she could.

We LOVE our Quail bird nerd herd shirts!!!

And now, a few pictures from our birding weekend.
and then later, a recap on it . 


We saw  10,000 geese.
These are Ross's Geese.  
With a few Snow Geese mixed in.
On their way back to Canada.




The Sandhill Cranes are flying in.
This would be the "lesser' Sandhill Crane, because the 'greater' is not at the peak of their migration. 
????







Birding British Style!
Our tour guide, Duncan.
He served us tea (with milk) and toast with Marmite.  (he's a big fan...as I'm sure you can tell)


YES,  you can really find birds here.  Lots of them!!


And here too!





a familiar sight---every year on all my birding trips with these girls!




I almost forgot the Pintail!!  Duck that is.
Isn't he beautiful?   Photo taken by our friend Gina's husband, Mark.  
He has a great scope and camera lens.


2 comments:

Karen said...

Fun! I like Gamble of Nevadans!

Tina said...

What a trip! I love birds and have a few photos I was going to share but none that compare to what you've posted. Beautiful!

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