Thursday, June 17, 2010

Birds I Saw in Kaua'i

Hi again!

So there's a book that's really informative, it's called "The Birds of Kaua'i" by Jim Denny and it has all kinds of information and is very easy to carry. Here are my birds:

Birds of the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge (and the awesomest lighthouse/red-footed booby combination picture):
  • Nēnē (Hawaiian Goose) - Like a canadian goose but hawaiian
  • 'Ā (Red-Footed Booby) - Awesome fliers, intensely graceful in the air. On the floor: boobies.
  • 'A'o (Newell Shearwater) - Injured at the foot of the lighthouse! terrible!
  • 'Iwa (Great Frigatebird) - INSANIQUARIUM OF A BIRD these things have a 7-ft wingspan and weigh about 3 lbs. They fly up to about 500 ft, and they scare other birds into dropping their food and they swoop down and steal it from them (hence the name 'Iwa)
  • Koa'e Kea (White-Tailed Tropicbird) and Koa'e 'Ula (Red-Tailed Tropicbird) - These birds are clown-birds. You would figure because they have such pretty long elegant tails they would be equally elegant, but no, they spent the whole time hitting on each other and flying around and being generally disagreeable. And they steer themselves in the air with their tails, so they keep whipping around over and over, apparently getting their mates dizzy is a good way to mate. gargl.
Waimea Canyon Sightings:
  • Either the 'Anianiau or the 'Akeke'e, I can't tell for sure because they are about 4 inches long, they are fast and were at the top of a tree. Can't see any beaks at that distance.
  • 'Apapane - it actually was an 'apapane! I thought it was a northern cardinal.
  • Northern Cardinal - Did not expect this one up there. But there he was, maybe it feels like Boston in the summer up there.
  • Chukar - I think. It was pretty fast in the car and it was kind of just standing there.
Random Location Sightings (These come with Degrees of Everywhere-ness, or D.E. due to their frequent presence in urbanized areas, rated 1-10):
  • 'Auku'u (Black-Crowned Night Heron) - D.E. 1/10. Hanging out outside next to the valet parking and then hunting around the garden outside my room.
  • Cattle Egret - D.E.: 4/10. Floridian import, it hangs out at any man-kept lawn (kind of like human floridians, maybe it likes pink flamingoes)
  • Common Myna - D.E.: 8/10. Friggin' everywhere! These birds are social and they're mean! As soon as we got there, we saw these two birds ganging up on another one, and that one bird that was losing was upside down in the middle of a road, and a truck came over and ran it over a little, the other two birds flew off just in time but the other one kinda flopped, kinda skipped over to the side of the road, where the other two birds promptly continued the feathered-butt kicking.
  • Domestic Chicken and Moa (Red Junglefowl)D.E.: 8/10. Imagine a McDonalds where, instead of having pigeons chasing after your french fries, there's chickens. And hens. And roosters getting territorial on each other. That was fun.
  • House Finch D.E.: 8/10 and House Sparrow D.E.: 1/10. Very similar but not to be confused, the sparrows were hanging out at the airport, and the finches (a.k.a. "Swoopers") ate the bread out of the baskets at the breakfast buffet. They are abusing little meanies. The colors are less intense than in the mainland.
  • Red Crested Cardinal D.E.: 4/10. Imagine a gray cardinal that got its head dunked in bright red ink.
  • Spotted Dove and Zebra Dove D.E.: 2/10. Sometimes around the hotel.
  • White-Rumped Shama - No D.E. on this one, just saw one at the fern grotto, and it was exciting! They're apparently hard to find and approach.
  • Rock Dove D.E.: 1/10. Saw them in a shopping mall. It actually make me wonder if they come with the cinder blocks or the Hot Topic merchandise, I did not see any other of these anywhere else.
(btw right underneath the amazon post for the book there's a Paradise Found Jungle Bird Red Tom Selleck Magnum PI Hawaiian Aloha Shirt).

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

grr

I hate being antsy. I never know what to do when I get like this. I have a pretty busy day tomorrow with important things to do and I don't want to go. I want to stay home and not go. Not going would be a great idea. I'm nervous for nothing, if you asked me what was going on I'd say oh it's nothing, I'm just really antsy right now. And it would be the truth. grr. I hate being antsy.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Trader Joe's

The closest food purveyor I've had for the past few years has been Trader Joe's. If you've been there, you know they're usually small locations with a lot of store-brand products (they are actually good products, not those bunny-cereal generic ones at Safeway), these products tend to be slightly off the regular path and change fairly often (which is my theory of why they give out samples all day, every day).

I usually walk in the store and, unless I'm extremely pressed for time (read: I have three minutes to purchase something), I go straight to the samples counter. They usually give out fun stuff, sometimes really weird stuff, but usually they'll get you to try something new and buy it. Once, they even offered to open a package of mango mochi ice cream just so I could try it (it worked, I love them). They have coffee every day, and sometimes english or irish breakfast tea (tasty!). That's why this video made me laugh:



A list of associated By The Ways:
- The sugar that won't pour is the Turbinado sugar, it's wetter than regular sugar, more like wet coarse sand. It's a bad idea to put it in diner sugar containers.
- I've been to their store for days straight at a time, usually just an excuse to get a tiny cup of tasty (free) coffee and a cookie (ooooh peppermint joe-joes). And yes, they do have the same sample five days in a row.
- The song is a version of a duet that Maria Creuza sang. It's a childhood song, it makes me think of people visiting the house and dressing up and sitting with the adults having serious conversations and then being told to go play something. :).

I really like this video.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Here's Johnny!

The wonders of editing and purpose:

The Shining:


Shining:

Star Wars Retold by a Non Believer

I couldn't stop laughing when I first watched this, more because I know someone whose story of Star Wars is similar to this one.


Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

(The original site has a bigger video size)

Attack of the 80's Videos (sorry)

omg I love this video, I'm not sure if I already put it up but if I did then you know I really like it:

Men at Work - Land Down Under


Taking advantage of that, let's go to some related videos:
Toto - Africa


Dead or Alive - You Spin me Round


Men without Hats - Safety Dance (omg)


This one's for ale lela lila!

Youtube Channels

There's a few Youtube channels I've found recently, one of them is whitehouse, it has existed since 2006 apparently, kind of adorable. Another one is failblog, of course, they keep a tab on fail videos and sometimes epic wins. Finally, there's liamkylesullivan, it's mostly NSFW and there's an odd video on his main page right now. He has a character called Kelly, and they write dance-type songs and she sings them and stuff. The best are:

Shoes


Let me borrow that top


Text Message Breakup


No booty calls


let me borrow that top
let me borrow that top
let me borrow that top
I wanna borrow that top, betch

:) hi mom!