Good Day For Baking

I can't ride my motorcycle.  My bird class was cancelled.  It's raining too hard to work in the garden. So it's a good day for baking lemon bars.

Ingredients: 1 C. butter, 1/2 C. powdered sugar, 1/4 tsp. salt, 2 1/4 C. flour (divided), 4 eggs, 2 C. sugar, 1/4 C. lemon juice

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Cream butter, powdered sugar and salt.  Add 2 cups of flour.  Press into 9x13 inch baking pan.  Bake for 25 minutes.  Combine eggs, sugar, 1/4 C flour, and lemon juice.  Spread on baked crust and bake an additional 30 minutes.  Sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar when cool.

Why My Eyes Are Red and Bleary

My eyes are red and bleary because I got up at 4 a.m. to watch the royal wedding this morning.  Well, not up exactly, but I did turn on the television and watch from the comfort of my bed.  I was only going to turn it on for a moment.  When I saw William and Harry arrive at Westminster Chapel I was hooked.  And why do I get so hooked on this royalty stuff?  I don't believe one person is better than any other.  So why was I awake at 4 in the blessed morning?  I think it's because I was there.  In 2002 I walked through Westminster Abbey and St. James Park.  I stood in front of Buckingham Palace on the Queen's 75th birthday.  I saw her sitting in her carriage with her lime green coat, lime green hat, and holding her lime green purse.  I saw that when the horses started to go, the Queen lost her balance and fell back hard on the back seat of her carriage.  Also Diana and I had some things in common.  We got married about the same time and had two children at about the same time.  And thirdly, I think William and Harry have more to teach us about civilized behavior than their elders.  And that is why my eyes are red and bleary.

Kelly is on Walkabout

Kelly is on walkabout.  She and her sisters were free ranging around the yard last night.  When it came to be bedtime, Meredith and Pamela came running to the coop but no Kelly.  I walked around the yard, through the woods, and on the street looking for her with no success.  Last night I dreamed I caught her in the lake where she was swimming with the loons and ducks.  I was hoping to see her this morning or when I got home from work but she's not there.  About 18 months ago Meredith went on a walkabout and wasn't found for 10 days.  Meredith crossed the road.  Why?  She chose a beautiful house on the Rum River to relocate and I really couldn't blame her.  If I were to choose a different house to move into, I would have chosen the same one.   I posted Kelly's absence on facebook.  I kept the "Lost Chicken" sign from last time and put it up in the same spot. That sign is how Meredith was found.  Lets hope it works for Kelly as well.

Speechless

A few weeks ago I was speechless.  Just for a moment no words came out.  And it wasn't that I didn't have words to say.  It was one of those moments when 17 different responses come to mind all at the same time.  While my brain was going through each one and deleting those that could get me into trouble, no words could come out.  By nature I am a sarcastic smart aleck which I cover up by keeping my trap shut at important moments.   Here was the scene: I was working at a public event handling the money box and selling raffle tickets and nuts.  An local elected official approached my table and asked, "What is going on here?"  

I responded, "I am selling raffle tickets and nuts."

He said, "You are selling tickets to who?"

That is when 17 smart aleck responses, all involving comparison of elected officials to nuts (ie edible seeds, crazy or bonkers, and male reproductive organs) floated through my mind.  While reviewing those 17 responses, I realized he was asking for it.  In the end. I resolved my speechlessness by simple repeating, "I am selling raffle tickets and nuts."

Better safe than sorry.



FOUR Vultures Sitting In A Tree

This morning I saw four turkey vultures sitting in the same tree about a block west of my house.  Once the leaves come out, those vultures will be invisible.  Maybe it's the lateness of the spring that accounts for my seeing them this year.  Or maybe, three years of birding classes has sharpened my senses and increased my knowledge so my eyes know where to look for birds now.  I just wonder, how many years have these vultures been coming to my lane?  I think these vultures are so cool.  I count myself lucky to live near their roosting spot.

Bird Class At Bunker Park

Tonight our class was near the Bunker Hills Activity Center. We started out on the oak savannah and ended up at a lake/marshy area.  Along the way we saw a Cooper's Hawk, a sharp-shinned hawk (photo), mallards, red winged blackbirds, robins, blue wing teal, sandhill crane, black capped chickadee and Canada geese.  The cold weather has really delayed migration this year.  We hope to see more variety of bird soon.
PS When we saw the hawks, we took turns guessing what kind of hawk we were seeing.  We are an accepting group and people are comfortable with making incorrect guesses.  One student suggested we were seeing a broadband hawk.  I knew that sounded wrong but could not figure out exactly why.  Someone else said, "You mean broad wing hawk?"  We all laughed and came up with more guesses like comcast hawk, Xfinity hawk and qwest hawk.

Three Egg Day

What a lovely day to spend with family and to be outside. My menu was shrimp, manicotti, salad greens, vegetable crudites, corn on the cob and apple pie.  These were all "do ahead" items so we spent the day sitting in the yard burning cherrywood, black spruce, one Christmas tree, and lots of buckthorn.  The buckthorn was cut late last fall and was not so easy to burn compared to the other branches.  The chickens spent the day free ranging around the yard. We noticed they were making a lot of noise before lunch.  Later I found three eggs in the coop so that explained all the clucking.  My chickens lay eggs that are green and blue in color so they don't need dying.  Some people refer to Americauna chickens as the Easter egg chicken.  After lunch, we got into a food coma state.  We could hardly move off the lawn chairs.  At one point the chickens went onto the deck.  From my chair across the yard I yelled, "Chickens!  Get off the deck."  Strangely enough they listened to me and complied with my request.  We saw lots of birds in the yard including chickadees, nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, red bellied woodpeckers, pileated woodpecker, crow, purple finch, red shouldered hawk, phoebe, bluebirds, cardinals, blue jay, and chipping sparrow.  Today was a wonderful day to spend outside. Now, please excuse me, I must return to the jelly beans.

Steak

Most people who know me know I am a vegetarian.  I have been avoiding meat for the past 15-20 years. I avoid meat not because it's a "greener" option (although it is), and not because I think animals have the right not be eaten.  I avoid meat not for any philosophical or moral reasons.  I think chewing muscle is gross so I don't eat meat.  I am fine if others eat meat.  I even cook meat for guests and family.   But the other night, I ate a steak in my dreams.  I think it was a flank steak.  It was flat and dry and I ate it with my bare hands by biting off chunks, chewing and swallowing.  And while I was eating this steak, I had the awareness that this was an unusual act for me.  I knew I was doing something significantly out of the ordinary but I couldn't quite put my finger on why this was different. Even though I knew this was out of character for me, I did it anyway.  The steak had no flavor, no smell, and left no residue in my mouth.  But it was chewy - chewier than the other foods I eat.  I don't remember many of my dreams and they usually don't keep coming back to my mind like this dream did.  I tried to interpret the dream.  Do I want to return to "carnivoroscity?"  I don't think so. I don't miss meat.  Do I feel deprived as a vegetarian?  Again, no, I don't think so.   Does this dream mean I an open to new experiences?  Yeah, that explanation sounds the best.  I'll go with that.

Happy Earth Day

Wolf Talk

Last night at my Master Naturalist meeting, our speaker was Peggy Callahan from the Wildlife Science Center. This was her second time speaking to us.  The first time she started late and didn't finish.  She is a lively and engaging speaker.  She speaks quickly and she uses acronyms I am not familiar with.  I think she must have ADHD.  Before I can raise my hand to ask what a particular acronym is, she is five topics beyond that already.  She was full of facts. She spoke about the current legislation.  She is not happy with Amy and Al's (Kloubachar and Franken)decisions on wolves.  I doubt I caught everything she was trying to say.  One thing that stuck with me is that as far as predators of the white tail deer, wolves eat fewer Minnesota deer than black bears and coyotes.  They have studied the physiology of wolves asleep, at rest, eating, playing, chasing, and being chased.  It was amazing how high the heart rate and temperature of a wolf go up when they are being chased.  Another fact that surprised me is the high percentage of wolf on wolf mortality.  Wolves have a tough life.  It's no wonder they howl at the moon.

Half The Sky

I think you should read Half the Sky by  Nickolas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.  I think everyone should read it.  I am definitely adding this book to the list of books I will present to my book club.  It's nonfiction and riveting.  The title comes from an old Chinese proverb that women hold up half the sky.  And women do.  The book says it is time to stop the injustices that plague the female half of the people holding up the sky; injustices like sex trafficking, prostitution, mutilation, rape, and lack of maternal health care.  These are horrifying topics but the authors write in an empowering and hopeful light.  I think this book is so powerful that you can't be the same person you were before you read it.  Good change can happen.  An example given in the book is the end of slavery.  Britian took the lead on this issue.  As a nation, they decided to end slavery.  Other countries continued to use slaves.  Using slaves to raise and harvest sugar and other crops when Britian wasn't using slaves was a huge economic bonus for the slave owning countries.  And a huge cost to Britian.  But they ate the cost. They thought it was worth it.  And although I am sure there are still pockets of slavery that exist, it has been eliminated for the most part.  Hats off to Britian for taking the lead on this issue. I am telling you-read it.  Read Half the Sky; the sooner the better.

Dam Bird Class

Tonight our bird class was at the Coon Rapids Dam.  The weather was brisk when we started at 5:30 but downright cold by the time we left at 7:30.  We saw great blue heron, osprey, mallards, rock doves, yellow rumped warblers (my first this year), herring gulls, tree swallows, Canadian geese, crows, a flock of comoronts, a pileated woodpecker, and robins.

PS the pair of vultures were sitting in the same tree on my block this morning.

In The Newspaper

I was at an event on Saturday night. A woman I know came up to me, smiled, and said, "I saw you in the newspaper." 

I answered, "You are kidding." 

"No,"  she says, "You have a bunch of stuff in your arms and you are looking at some artwork."

"How was my hair?" I ask.

A week earlier I had gone to the master gardeners landscaping classes.  I remember a photographer taking my picture and name but I didn't think he was going to really use it.  Perhaps it was my flowered sweater that caught his eye.  Anyway, yep, she was right.  I bought a copy of the Anoka Union today and there I am.  In color.  The hair looks good too.  My photo is not in the on-line version of the article.  I didn't do anything to deserve a  photo in the paper.  I committed no crime.  I did not perform any good deeds or heroic acts.  All I did was admire some artwork. 

I Am So Popular

This morning as I read the Sunday paper, I heard a bird noise I hadn't heard in a long time.  I looked up to see a violent riot in my picture window.  Four male bluebirds were aeronotically duking it out right in front of the window.  Two of them almost hit the window in the heat of battle.  Guys.  I know my yard is popular for birds but look around - you will see four bluebird houses. One for each of them.  If the houses are too close together for comfort, find another yard to live.  I am pleased that bluebirds want to live here though.  And I like the throaty sound they make.  I also saw a couple chipping sparrows eating left over canary seed on the deck.  Their reddish caps, round bodies, and plucky attitudes are a welcome sight.  And on a drive in Roseville, I saw 4 great egrets in a slough.  One thing about keeping a bird list - it makes seeing the FOY (first of the year) birds more thrilling.

Saturday Morning

What the heck?

Birds In The Morning

Although it has been cardinals singing in the spruce tree outside my bedroom window that wake me up in the morning, today it was phoebes.  The male phoebe calls it's name, "Fee-Bee," in a sing song voice, resembling the bully, Nelson, from the Simpsons saying, "Haw-Haw."  Phoebes are one of those little brown birds that don't attract a lot of attention by their looks.  Tomorrow snow is expected and my 7 a.m. bird class has already been cancelled.  Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow morning, if the phoebes don't wake me up?

Freedom

I just finished the novel, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.  This book had several aspects that made it fun to read for me.  First off, much of it was set in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Second, nature played a huge role in the story; specifically cerulean warblers.  I've never seen a cerulean warbler but I really want to now. I don't think they nest here but they do fly through.  Third, the story was about a family.  With three generations explained, we can see why people act out their craziness on each other and why they make so many self-defeating decisions. I found myself liking Walter, Patty,  Joey, Connie, and Jessica.  As the story went on, one by one, I didn't like Walter, Patty, Joey, Connie or Jessica. By the end, I admired them again.  The author mocks the Prius driving, green liberals along with the Republicans with the SUV's.   Franzen is an equal opportunity mocker.  I think I will look for more of his novels.

The Most Interesting Social Worker In The World

I went to a retirement party tonight for a friend of mine, Bill.  The agenda was the man, the myth, the legend.  The celebration was at Serum's in Anoka.  This event was worthy of the man who retired.  One segment was especially funny.  The message was Bill is the most interesting social worker in the world.  Bill is so charming, a mugger gave Bill his wallet.  Bill is so talented, he considers any practice to be cheating.  Bill is so good at paperwork, the state department of Human Services asks him to audit their files.  Bill had only one awkward moment in his life; he set it up so he could know how what it felt like.  Bill knows six languages; and three of those languages only he knows how to speak.  I left after Bill's coworkers sang him a song.  I was glad to be a part of a retirement party for such a great guy.

Plague of Doves

My book club read A Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich, one of my favorite authors.  For me, this was my second reading. And I figured out things in the second reading that I never got in the first reading.  The book is a symphonic blending of stories told from different points of view.  The story is set is a very small town in North Dakota, on the prairie.  The stories, much like life in a small town, are inter-connected and they cover a span of about 80 years.  Some of the stories are based on real events - a lynching of American Indians falsely accused of murder for example.  A character named "Holy Track" had wooden sticks nailed to the sole of his shoes was also based on a real person.  But the stories are complicated.  Each narrator has a great story which, standing alone, make for great reading.  But even an entire book club, with all of us thinking this book through, could not make sense of all the connections. We figured out a lot. Together we noticed who was some one's uncle or grandfather.  I think if we all read it one more time, we would have gotten even more out of it.  But how many times do you want to read a single book?  There is so much great literature out there.  I think twice was enough for me.  I enjoyed the stories even if I didn't get all the connections.

Being Watched

This morning, on my way to work, I saw something unusual high in a tree a block east of my house.  Two turkey vultures perched in the branches in a tree right next to the road.  I could see through the leafless boughs at their red heads.  I drove slowly, peering up at them through my windshield.  And I could see their heads turning to watch the progress of my car.  I've seen turkey vultures 10 miles north of here but never in my neighborhood before.  This was a really cool way to start the day.

Emerald Pond Bird Class

Tonight my bird class met at Emerald Pond Park in Ramsey, right off Bunker Boulevard and Magnesium.  This shallow pond is getting filled in with more cattails each year we go there.  The coolest bird we saw was a belted kingfisher.  It flew by us three times chattering away.  The kingfisher makes a sound like people in my family make when a young child is about to do something wrong.  We make a repeated warning sound in the back of our throats - Eh eh eh eh eh eh which means, "Don't do it."  We also saw tree swallows (first of the year), red tailed hawks, red winged blackbirds, robins, great blue heron, killdeer, grackle, buffle head ducks (first of the year), mourning doves, ring necked ducks (first of the year), a sandhill crane, and, last but definitely not least, a bald eagle.  What a nice evening to spend outside!

Gardening

After my bird class yesterday, I hurried over to Bunker Hills where I had signed up for classes at the Home Landscaping and Garden Fair put on by the Master Gardeners.  I was late for the first speaker, Dr. Bud Markhart, who presented the topic of why we should grow, buy and support organic foods.  I was sorry to be late for this speaker because he was engaging, lively and a little like a 12 year old trapped in a grown up body.  He basically said the current agriculture system we have now is not sustainable.  The soil has depleted greatly in the last 100 years.  Even genetically modified foods, pesticides, and fertilizer is not going to be enough in the future because we're sterilizing acres upon acres of land.  Those acres and acres of corn and soybeans we admire when we drive into the country are barren of any insects or reptiles.  He showed charts connecting pesticides and cancers.  He had another chart showing the pesticide residue in the urine of children who ate regular food for a week, organic food for the second week, and regular food for the third week.  Wow, that chart was scary. He had me convinced.  I need to buck up; pay the extra dollar and buy organic.  My next class on was luscious ferns and sensuous shade plants. That class consisted mostly of a power point presentation of plants.  My third class was a hands on class.  I made a fairy garden.  My little garden in a 12 inch shallow dish has a fairy stone path, a fairy arbor, a fairy street light, a fairy birdbath, and fairy gazing ball, and a fairy. I have a fairy tree (sheffelara) and some fairy vine and a fairy bush.  For $20, this was a great deal.  Our third class was named "Mosquito Control" but it was a hands-on building of a bat house.  I got 8 pieces of wood and a supply of screws.  We  helped each other hold wood pieces while we screwed them together with hand held portable drills.  I am supposed to hang this on the east side of a tree right now.  The bats are looking for houses at this time.  My problem is that it needs to be 12 to 16 feet from the ground and I don't have a ladder that goes that high.  I could nail it to the east side of the house by putting a ladder on the deck but I'm not sure if I want to do that.  Bats eat 3,000 to 7,000 mosquitoes per day.  That is a lot of mosquitoes that I will not have to swat.  So I want bats around but not in the house and maybe not right next to the house either. If only I was a better tree climber.  Sigh.  Our last class was a presentation by Arla Carmichael on "Garden Through the Seasons."  She helped design the Noeremburg Gardens, a Three Rivers Park district formal garden on the shores of Lake Minnetonka.  She showed us slides and asked us to change our vision and focus on the beauty of a garden year round.  It's true that gardens are lovely in July when the annuals and perennials are blooming.  But there is beauty in the bloom of a snow drop in the spring, the frost tinted foliage of bushes in the fall, and the snow on interesting seed heads in the winter as well.  We had time in between classes to visit the exhibit fair.  My friend won a door prize from Waldoch Farms - a lovely 6 inch glass star.  I got a free sweet potato vine from Green Valley Nursery.  That same nursery had beautiful pink or white azalea pots, two for $5.  I should have bought a couple.  Some exhibitors sold jewelry, metal flower statues, bird feeding accessories, perennials, pansy pots, hand made soaps, gardening gloves, tools, and fertilizer.  A fellow from Miltona sold plant kandy - fertilizer made from fish.  After resisting all kinds of temptation, I splurged and bought myself a little garden figure on a stick - a fairy riding a bird.  She is my avatar.  I try to post a picture.  All in all, I had a great day at the garden fair and will definitely go again.

Birding Trip To Round Lake in Andover

Last night we got skunked on our owl survey.  We heard zero owls.  I almost thought I had one but it turned out to be a dog with an owlish woooof woooof.  Our route though East Bethel had an outrageous amount of traffic noise.  In one five minute period we had 66 cars go by.  I could have had an owl perched on my shoulder and might not have been able to hear it at the intersection of Highway 65 and Klondike.  We did hear lot of chorus frogs, a few spring peepers, and several mink frogs. So today it was nice to go on a bird hike and see actual birds.  I made a list of everything we saw and promptly lost the list.  So this is from memory:  Osprey (trying to hunt fish around the edges of an ice covered lake), a pair of Trumpeter Swans, robins, song sparrows, red winged blackbirds, turkey vultures, a pair of bluebirds (checking out a wood duck house), wood ducks (we saw the pair fly to the house.  The female slammed inside and the male patiently waited in the water while she laid an an egg and off they went together again), mallards, Canadian geese, ring billed gull, herring gull, killdeer, crow, pied billed grebe, and scaup.  This was a great way to start a Saturday.

Owl Survey

We're completing an owl monitoring survey tonight in East Bethel.  This is a citizen science project for Hawk Ridge.  Lets hope we hear some.  Last year all we heard were frogs.

Bird Class

I signed up for ornithology class again and the first meeting was Monday.  This is my third year taking this same class.  The first meeting was like a reunion because at least ten of the students have taken the class before.  One woman has taken it six or seven times.  The lessons don't change much.  The field trips are the same.  And it's not that we are slow learners. We're just a group of people who enjoy being outside and discussing nature while looking for birds.  And different birds show up each year.  We have two teachers and they are both top notch educators. I was just looking over our handout.  Hidden in all the words are some great tidbits.  Tidbit #1 Birds are great to improve minds, senses and bodies.  Tidbit #2 70% of bird species in the world are declining.  Tidbit #3 Birds are great indicator of worldwide environments.  Tidbit #4 Birds are good to enhance travel and add quality to our backyards.  I agree with all those tidbits.  So I will be busy Monday nights and early on Saturday mornings and I might even complain about not being able to sleep in on Saturday but I'll be improving my mind, my body, and my senses.



Welcome Back Helmet Hair

I didn't plan on a motorcycle ride today.  A change in plans resulted in me getting home earlier than usual.  I put something delicious into the oven and thought, "How am I going to take my mind off being hungry for 45 minutes?"  Bingo!  A motorcycle ride will take your mind off anything.  I usually wait for the streets to be swept so I don't have to worry about slipping on the sand.  This year I couldn't wait.  I put on jeans and boots and my jacket and helmet.  I put the key into the switch.  I had to pull out the choke to get the six month old gas to ignite.  Adrenalin surged as the motor sputtered to life.  My motorcycle doesn't rumble the pipes like some bikes.  Mine sounds more like a giant mosquito.  I thought I would just drive around the neighborhood a few times.  I did go through the neighborhood and then thought I'd cross the highway and try another neighborhood before I came back to the garage.  I got onto 167th and thought I'd try that curvy, hilly road near Mork Well Digging.  That road took me to Cleary Road and from there I went south on Hwy. 47. I love the part of the road that crosses over Trott Creek.  I handled the curve down to the brook just fine but the best part is the "S" curve going back up the hill.  I knew I had to head home because I had something cooking in the oven.  The most difficult part of the ride was my driveway.  I'm just not used to handling the motorcycle in a couple inches of squishy mud.  Don't want to go too fast but don't want to stop either because I'd have to put my feet down in that mud. I managed just fine.  The odometer read 2650 at the beginning of the 2011 season. My first ride was amazing.  My legs are cold but it was still an amazing ride.

A Sure Sign of Spring!

Coming out of work on Monday, I heard a chorus frog singing his song of reptile love.  Snow is still piled on the ground yet this frog is singing.  He sounds like a person slowly rubbing their finger on the teeth of a comb. 

Syrup

I boiled maple sap on Saturday.  I had about 7 gallons collected from my two red maple trees.  I had taps in a couple box elder trees but I never got any sap from those trees.  So this was purely red maple sap.  My two largest kettles weren't big enough to hold all the sap so I added more as the quantity boiled down.  Saturday was a nice day so I opened my kitchen window and my deck door to air the sweet humidity out of the room.  I set a fan to blow right at the stove to move the humid air around.  I wonder if some sugar didn't get into the air.  The ceiling might be sticky.  I don't know.  My kitchen has a vaulted ceiling so I can't reach it anyway.  I started boiling the sap at 9:30 a.m. and finished about 7 p.m.  I probably could have stopped about 6:30 and had a little more syrup.  It's hard to know exactly when to quit.  I don't like the really thick syrup.  I know they say it's done when the thermometer reads 219 degrees F. but after dropping my candy thermometer into the boiling sap twice, I gave up on that and just called it done.  I tasted it.  It tastes really good.  This was a fun project.  I will definitely do it again. 

Project Feederwatch Update

Junco-3, Black capped Chickadee-5, White Breasted Nuthatch-3, Downy Woodpecker-2, Red Bellied Woodpecker-1, Pileated Woodpecker-1, Blue Jay-2, Cardinal - 2, Crow - 2, Robin-1
I'm going to miss those chubby junco's when they leave for the artic circle.

Plasma

Earlier this week I donated plasma.  This was a first for me.  I've donated whole blood many times but never plasma. I knew blood was removed and I knew some parts of the blood were returned to me but I didn't know how.  Turns out they use only one needle.  The blood they take goes into a machine that spins the plasma out.  The red and white blood cells are returned after each cycle.  Giving  plasma takes 7 or 8 cycles.  When you give blood you squeeze your hand.  When they return blood to you, you stop squeezing.  As they return the blood to you, they add an anti-coagulant.  After the second cycle, I had a strong taste appear suddenly in my mouth. I tasted soap.  Yuck.  The attendant gave me a caramel viactive chew and that got rid of the soapy taste.  When I was finished, I had produced a large bag of yellowish fluid; AB+ fluid.  Then they gave me a dose of saline to replenish my fluids.  I felt like a patient instead of a volunteer.  I think I prefer to give whole blood.  I don't like to feel like a patient, I don't like to be given drugs and saline, and I didn't like that the process took an extra 45 minutes.

Ornithologist Alert

Long thought to be either extinct or quite possibly imaginary, it was first described by Sir Reginald Smith-Smythe-Smith, O.B.E. in 1893 in a seedy bar in Quito, Ecuador, as he regaled indifferent listeners with tales of his travels around the Horn, etc. Apparently the bar was so filled with hookah smoke that nearly everyone passed out in the course of the evening, and doubt was cast upon the bird’s existence.

Decades later, however, a team of scientists with high-powered binoculars claimed to have spotted the peculiar variant high on a rocky ledge on Wolf Island. Unfortunately dissension arose amongst the team, all of them academic glory hounds and keen birders, and much was made of a tiny fleck of purple paint found on the lens of the binoculars.






This new photo has touched off a firestorm of controversy, naturally, and the Royal Booby Society, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, has offered a prize (to be known as “The Booby Prize”) of $10,000,000 (which they do not presently have) to the first sportsman who delivers a properly stuffed and mounted specimen of this magnificent bird.
 

*This was posted on Facebook by the Galapagos Conservancy.  I totally fell for it. I am so gullible. How can I be so gullible when I know I am gullible?  You'd think sef-awareness about a defect would help.  But no, I went for it hook, line, and sinker.  I had a tinge of doubt when I read about the seedy bar and the fleck of purple paint.  I guess I read what I hope to read; not always what is actually printed.  And I was dumbfounded when they asked for a stuffed specimen because why would they kill a rare bird such as the purple booby? In my defense, the sky blue feet of the boobies I saw there are unreal and unnatural in color.  And I knew they had red footed boobies.  That made purple footed boobies less of a stretch for me I guess.

 

I love April Fool's Day.