Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No one could have predicted…

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

After roe, women are no longer free.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

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Tarangire National Park

On The Road – Albatrossity – Tarangire National Park – 5

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It’s Albatrossity Monday!  Get out your hiking shoes – for the rest of the week we will be in the Alps With BigJimSlade!

Albatrossity

Our last day in Tarangire before heading to Lake Manyara National Park and then on to the Ngorongoro Crater brought parrots, sandgrouse, gnus and warthogs in front of the camera. A good day!

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Tarangire National ParkMay 15, 2018

This is a Yellow-collared Lovebird (Agapornis personatus), a bird that is endemic to Tanzania. Some field guides treat this as a subspecies of Fischer’s Lovebird (A. fischeri), which is a more colorful bird, but recent observations indicate that these two species do not interbreed in parts of the range where they both occur. These cuties were abundant at the park HQ area, where this one was preparing to nest in a man-made site that seems just about perfect for it. Click here for larger image.

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On The Road – Albatrossity – Tarangire National Park – 4

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We’re back in Africa with Albatrossity today.  Then we are treated to 3 days of MollyS, who takes us to Lyon, France.  Then on Friday we have the final post of the French Basque Country series.  Maybe if we all ask nicely, Steve will do another series for us.

Albatrossity

After our domestic excursion to North Carolina last Monday, it’s back to Africa for a while!

Day 2 at Tarangire National Park did not include any rainstorms, but we saw a plethora of birds and some unique ecosystems. Many of these birds were already starting to seem familiar, but a new life bird might show up every time I raised my binoculars or camera. Drinking from a fire hose is the best analogy/cliché that I can think of to describe this feeling.

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Burunge Tented LodgeMay 15, 2018

On our way to the park that morning, after a lovely overnight stay at the nearby Burunge Tented Lodge (check out that swimming pool!), we watched zebras and wildebeest grazing along the roadside. This was our first encounter with the two most numerous hoofed herbivores of the Serengeti ecosystem. You can also see a Thomson’s Gazelle (aka cheetah box lunch) grazing in the background here. Click here for larger image.

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On The Road – Albatrossity – Tarangire National Park – 3

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We are world travelers this week.  We are in Tanzania with Albatrossity today, and then we will be in Kenya with way2blue for the rest of the week.  We will have the final 4 days of the Kenya trip with way2blue the week of 1/23.

Albatrossity

The rainstorm that was looming over us on the first day in Tarangire National Park moved in about mid-afternoon. Thus we got to see how the critters responded to a thunderstorm, and we also got to sit that storm out in a grove of trees along a small stream. So here are some before, during, and after the storm images.

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Tarangire National ParkMay 14, 2018

This Pin-tailed Whydah (Vidua macroura) is common in sub-Saharan Africa, but since it is also a common cage bird, it has also been accidentally introduced and established in various other locations, including Southern California and Puerto Rico. It is one of only about 100 species of birds that are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of another species. Whydahs usually choose finches as the host parents, including the firefinches seen in an earlier post in this series. For that reason, any introduction of this species is a cause for concern, since it could really harm native finch populations wherever it becomes established. Click here for larger image.

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On The Road – Albatrossity – Tarangire National Park – 2

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It’s the first week of the new year, and who better to usher us into 2023 than Albatrossity?

Strangely enough, we are all “B”s the rest of the week – Backcountry, Bagels, Basque Country, and Bleak Beauty.  Our submitters are ema, JanieM, Steve from Mendocino, and StringOnAStick.

I’ll let you guys figure out which person goes with with topic!  Names are listed in alphabetical order, so there are no clues in the ordering of the names.  Winner wins, well… something!   (with the something to be decided later).

More wildlife from my first full day in Tanzania in 2018.

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Tarangire National ParkMay 14, 2018

Last week I included a couple of giraffe pictures, and here’s another, just because these guys were so abundant in that park. This one has no obvious oxpecker pals, perhaps because he just looks sorta goofy. Click here for larger image.

 

On The Road – Albatrossity – Tarangire National Park – 2Post + Comments (12)

On The Road – Albatrossity – Tarangire National Park, Part 1

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It’s Albatrossity Monday, and the start of the last week of 2022.  We are treated to Antarctica with Dagaetch, followed by the Star Man who needs no introduction, then France with Steve from Mendocino and Maine with JanieM.

Albatrossity

Since I haven’t traveled to any exotic places in several years, and since it’s winter here with a relative paucity of birds to photograph, I was becoming concerned that I would not have photos to share on a weekly basis here. When I mentioned that to WaterGirl, she wondered if I had exhausted the trove of photos I got on a trip to Tanzania in 2018, before the plague years. I was skeptical, since I had already posted a lot of pics from that trip in the summer of 2018, and suspected that there would not be enough to fill out very many OTR posts.

I was wrong. Or at least I failed to consider the vast improvements in photo-processing software that have come down the pike since 2018. I had a lot of pics that were not up to my standards in 2018, over- or under-exposed, camera motion blur, subject too distant, etc. But in 2022 I can actually rescue some of those, and I have been doing that happily. So here’s the first batch, one of three that I rescued from the pics taken during my first half-day in Africa, at Tarangire National Park. Hope you enjoy these, and if some are repeats from my last batch of Africa photos, please accept my apologies.

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Tarangire National ParkMay 14, 2018

First you need to know the lay of the land, so landscape photos will start us out. Tarangire National Park is a jewel of a wildlife-watching refuge southwest of Arusha (where we arrived by plane from Amsterdam), and near Lake Manyara, one of the lakes of the Great Rift Valley. Additional water sources include the Tarangire River and the Silale Swamp, so it is a perennially lush place in a dry climate. This attracts many grazers, and Tarangire is especially well-known for the large number of elephants (Loxodonta africana), the largest animal walking the earth. In the dry season (June-October) there are an estimated 5000 elephants in the park. Here are some of them, in a typical Tarangire landscape with acacia and baobab trees. Click here for larger image.

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