1 Day, 2 Planes, 3 States, 4 Airports

Left Portland today. I'm always sad when I leave the city I call home, but especially leaving my love and cats for such a long time again too. However, with sad departures there are also happy and exciting adventures, new sights to see and new friends to make! I can only be positive about leaving to make the time I am gone go by more quickly.

I'm leaving, on a jet plane. From Anchorage since Portland was all icky and rainy today.

Flying away from Anchorage.

Mountains!

Lots of snowy mountains!

So, the adventure begins! Again! What a beginning it was. I traveled to and from three different states and four different airports, on two planes, all in one day! Portland->Seattle->Anchorage->Fairbanks I think my itinerary flying back is quite similar.  So after being cramped in close quarters with friendly, not-so friendly and often times smelly strangers, I have made it to Fairbanks. I'm not too sure if there will be too many new areas to explore, but I will do my best to find them and report here. Round two, here we go! 

Last Huzzah!

Last Saturday, Joey and I had a little get-together at our place as a sort of "going away" party.  It was wonderful to have so many caring and generous friends join us.  A special shout-out to our friends Josh and Gloria for bringing not just one, but two grills over for the food!  You two are amazing people!  Of course, thanks to all that attended as well!

One of the highlights of the evening was when we had a visit from Walter Cronkite, the cat.  Walter is one of the neighbors cats and he is adorable and sweet, but he decided, since we had our door open, he could just waltz right in and join the party too.  He was shortly chased out after he was making moves to spray... bad kitty.  We played "Pin the Mandy-Face on Alaska,"  and much like "Pin the tail on the Donkey," atendees had to take a Mandy-Face and tape it as close to Prudhoe Bay as possible after being spun in circles whilst wearing a blindfold.  The winners received a Sports Illustrated calendar, with a Joey and Mandy "twist."  Congratulations to Matt and Eli for winning, we hope that you enjoy your prizes.  We sure had fun making them!

I set up the Reconyx camera that will be part of our research in Alaska, in the house to try to get some candid shots of friends.  I figured this would be a fun way to use it, especially since I will not be allowed to share pictures in the field as they belong to WCS.  I told most people that we had a "Robot Photographer" in the room and did not tell (most) where it was hidden.  The truth is, all those candid shots were pretty boring, and the more interesting ones were when people noticed the camera and made faces at it.  Below are a few of the ones I really liked. (Click images to enlarge!)  More will be on Facebook.

Joey in action! 

Misech playing it up for the camera. 

Talking about how Walter Cronkite attacked Matt. 

Gloria making kissy-face at the camera. 

Gloria playing with my goggles. 

Drew with a turtle on his head. 

Matt sneer. 

Cute Dan, real cute...

Skyra and I dancing it up for the camera. 

More dancing. 

Skyra and Dan cute before they left. 

What's on the ceiling Chris? 

Matt cuddles Dee Dee. 

I tried making this gif for Matt of him dancing but it didn't work out too well...

It was either too fast, or too slow...

Here are a few cute ones of the cats, and some that were outside, to demonstrate the difference between normal and infrared.

It is so sensitive that it even picked up a crow across the way.

The elusive Joey monster. 

Neko!

Dee Dee!

Dee Dee monster. 

Aaaaahhhh! She found the camera!

Well, I fly out tomorrow.  Today was pretty emotional.  The realization of leaving didn't really hit me until yesterday, and I will miss all of you!  Keep an eye out here for all the adventures (as much as I can post at least) and see you in August!

Project FeederWatch

Starting in November I became a member of the Project FeederWatch project from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Basically, it entails watching my bird feeders for two days at a time and counting the highest number of birds of different species I see at one time.  For example, if I have five Pine Siskins on the feeder and one flies off and two return, I only count the six individuals at that one time rather than seven total.  This prevents from counting the same individual more than once.  Doing this I have seen a lot of the same birds I have seen frequently at the feeders but have had a few exciting finds, including a juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawk and a Bewick's Wren.  The most interesting to me has been one little common bird, a Dark-eyed Junco.  Juncos are very common in Oregon and in fact the subspecies that is most common here is called an "Oregon" Junco because of it. 

"Oregon" Dark-eyed Junco courtesy of All About Birds

However, the exciting thing about this little Junco is that it is not a typical "Oregon" Junco and is in fact of the "Slate-colored" subspecies.  I have seen this little Junco almost everyday that I do my counts, so I reported it and took some pictures of it to send to the FeederWatch folks.  This is the reply I got back today from the FeederWatch project leader:

Thank you for the report and photo of the Dark-eyed Junco (slate-colored race) at your feeders. Nice find! We receive quite a few reports of “Oregon” race juncos in the east, but few reports of the slate-colored race in the west. I will soon add your report and a photo to the list of confirmed rare birds on the FeederWatch web site.

And here is the link to the rare bird report with my picture on it!
http://watch.birds.cornell.edu/PFW/ExploreData?cmd=rareBirds&speciesGroup=ID3894544&period=PFW_2012

Below are the pictures I took.  Not the best, but they certainly show off the different coloration compared to the typical "Oregon" Junco.

Slate-colored on right, Oregon on left

Slate-colored Junco in our yard

Slate-colored Junco in our yard

Those last two were on the day that the "sharpie" (hawk) was in our yard.  I figured it was hiding from it as it spent a good 20 minutes in the same spot.  It was also very windy that day so that is a possibility too.