Monday, April 26, 2010

It's Been a Month

I notice it's been almost a month since I've posted anything on the blog and I don't feel all that guilty. We've been very busy, and doing things that are not the least bit interesting to write about. We took a quick trip to Montana to see some friends and we didn't do much beyond eat, drink and be merry.


We demolished our main bathroom and we've begun work on the new bath. Nancy is setting tile today and will be doing that for a few more days. We hauled out the old pink bathtub, a cast iron behemoth, and we got $12.50 for it at the metal recycling business in town. We hauled several other loads of crap to the dump. The plumbers were here for an entire day installing new pipes and vents. We are exhausted at the end of each day but we have a deadline to finish before my sister and family arrives in early June.



We made airline reservations; Denver, Frankfurt, Toulouse for August 5, and that's the biggest news I have to report.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

The Pelicans of Peurto Vallarta

The pelicans on the beaches in Peurto Vallarta were very comical, but they were also very efficient fishers. They would infest any boat or structure anywhere near the water, watching the activities like awkward old men. When they took to the air, they were transformed into more graceful objects and we watched them delicately float ten or twenty feet above the surface of the water until they spied a fish and then quickly dive into the water and come up with a meal.

Below, I caught a pelican just as it splashes into the water. It looks rather clumsy because rather than slicing cleanly into the water, they more or less plop onto the surface. All you can see are the wings. What you don't see is the long neck and long beak stretched out underwater to capture a fish. Click on the picture to embiggen it to see a little of the drama.

Although there were zillions of pelicans, no shortage to be sure, it was sad to see one dead on the beach. Why was it dead? It had got caught in fishing line. I saw this numerous times in Yellowstone, birds caught and drowned due to some careless fisherman who threw or abandoned his line in the water. No telling how many birds die every year due to being tangled in fishing line, but I'm sure it's a lot.