2007 is drawing to a close, but still things remain the same. Mary and I worked Wednesday through Friday after Christmas. I worked from home since my partner is on holiday. Friday night we went to see National Treasure: Book of Secrets. It’s a pretty fun movie, though quite similar to the first one. On Saturday we did the usual, basketball for me and hiking for Mary, followed by a walk around Don Edwards. On Sunday we went downtown looking for falcons, but no luck. On our way to Don Edwards we decided to drive by a building where people have been regularly spotting a falcon dubbed Taylor (because it is often spotted on a building at Taylor and First). We had stopped there a few times before, but this was the first time we spotted the falcon. We stayed for about an hour taking pictures using the digiscope setup. There are more pictures of Taylor in my gallery.

Last week Mary and I went to downtown San Jose to walk around Christmas in the Park (see above). They have a lot of the same decorations each year, but the trees are all different. It was pretty chilly so we both really enjoyed a Mexican hot chocolate. It’s kind of like hot horchata with chocolate in it. It’s pretty yummy. For more pictures see Christmas in the Park 2007.

The rest of last week was rather uneventful. I went up to Berkeley nearly every day to work with Nate since he’s heading out of town for the holidays. I did have lunch with Ron and Steve in Mountain View on Wednesday. After lunch Ron and I went to Tide House to check out some Yuletide brew. THey don’t seem to make it anymore. I tried their current holiday brew, but it wasn’t very good. Saturday was pretty normal. I played basketball and Mary hiked Mission.

On Sunday, Mary and I went to Pinnacles National Monument. We hiked a loop starting at the Bear Gulch Visitor Center which included Condor Gulch Trail, High Peaks Trail (Steep and Narrow section), Rim Trail, Bear Gulch Cave Trail, Moses Spring Trail and Bear Gulch Trail. The total loop is about 6.1 miles. We saw a couple condors in the distance while hiking up the Condor Gulch Trail. We stopped for lunch on the Steep and Narrow section of the High Peaks Trail. While we were there, we had a really nice fly-by from a condor. For more pictures, see the Pinnacles and Condor galleries.

On Monday, Christmas Eve, Mary and I took a drive up to Berkeley. I needed to get a PC from the office so we decided to make a day of it. We planned to eat at a New Orleans restaurant there, but it was closed. We ended up at I. B.’s Cheesesteak. After lunch we walked along a street fair on Telegraph Ave. After our walk, we hit Cafe Strada for some coffee, then headed out. Before driving home we stopped in Emeryville to look for Espie, one of the falcons born in San Jose this past spring. She had been spotted there for the last couple weeks. We managed to find her and had a nice visit. More pictures in San Jose Peregrines 2007. We had a nice Christmas Eve dinner at Mary’s parents.

For Christmas Day we went looking for falcons in San Jose. We tried a couple new locations, such as the Five Wounds Church. We didn’t find any falcons, but we did see a nice red-tailed hawk on top of the church (picture left). After striking out downtown, we headed to Don Edwards. We were checking out a burrowing owl when a large bird flew by. We’re pretty sure it was a golden eagle, but I didn’t manage to get a picture. The park gate was closed, so we walked out and around the boardwalk. We saw a white-tailed kite at the bend in the road and a black-tailed jackrabbit along the boardwalk. Now we’re ready for a nice, quiet dinner at home.

Happy Holidays!

Sometime in November I mentioned that I had purchased a spotting scope for Mary’s birthday. I have also mentioned digiscoping before, so I thought I’d talk a little bit about digiscoping and what I’m doing.

There are two primary components needed for digiscoping, a digital camera (digi) and a spotting scope (scoping). After a lot of research, I ended up buying the Pentax PF-80ED-A with a 20-60x zoom eyepiece from Eagle Optics. You can read a bit about it on Eagle Optics’ blog entry: Spotting Scopes for Birding. For the digital camera, I have been using Mary’s Casio Exilim EX-S500. It’s not the best combination, but I’ve managed to get some decent results.

Some things to consider are the camera’s zoom (4x is supposed to be about the best) and the scopes eye relief (distance your eye or the camera lens can be from the scope eyepiece and still see the image). These factors combine to determine the amount of vignetting you will have in the picture (black ring around your image). You can see an extreme example of vignetting in the picture to the right, which was my first attempt at digiscoping with the Pentax and Casio setup. Zooming the camera to 4x and zooming the scope eyepiece to 40x pretty much eliminates the vignetting for me.

One of the main difficulties with digiscoping is getting the camera lens lined up with the scope eyepiece. So far I’ve been doing this mostly by hand, and occasionally set up a second tripod with the Casio, but lining up the two instruments on two separate scopes is not so easy, and it is definitely not very adjustable. I did manage to get a decent picture of a peregrine falcon atop a power line tower (picture on left). There are many mounts and adapters available to connect the camera to the scope, but none that I have found work with the huge eyepiece on the Pentax scope. I’ll have to figure something out to solve this problem.

It’s pretty fun stuff. Once I find a good adapter solution, it should be much easier to set up and track birds. So far I’ve captured a white-tailed kite, red-tailed hawk and a peregrine falcon.

Today was my mom’s birthday. She would have been 79. Sometimes I forget she’s gone. Once in a while I think about how I’m going to call her on Sunday and tell her all about my week’s events, but then I remember. I had given her a small stuffed panda from the World Wildlife Fund when she was in the hospital. She had named him Andy. He’s with me now, watching over me and helping me remember all the great things about my mother.

The picture on the right is from a trip to Hawaii. We were in Maui, taking the picture with my camera on a timer. I had the timer set too short and it kept taking the picture before I was in place. My mom and Mary were cracking up the whole time. I took quite a few tries to get one decent picture. At least my mom had a genuine smile for this one!

Whenever I would visit my mom, one of the things we would do is eat at a Chinese buffet. We tried a few different places around town, but the last few times were at the Jade Garden. We would usually try to make it to another buffet places called the Golden Corral, sometimes getting much of the family to join us. My mom would call the place the Golden Goose. She wasn’t always good with names, but I always knew what she was talking about. I still call the place the Golden Goose.

Today, Mary and I took Mary’s parents to dinner at a Chinese buffet, in remembrance of my mom. The place is called Pacific Buffet and had a lot of seafood. I’m not sure my mom would have liked it because it had a bit of a seafood smell, though they did have something pretty similar to the lo mein she liked so much. I had taken her to a place near my house when she came out to visit, but unfortunately that place closed down a couple years ago. I miss her.

The rest of my week was pretty typical. I went to the office in Berkeley a few times and worked from home a couple times. I started going to the gym again 2 weeks ago. I’m going to try to go 4-5 times a week. I’m starting slow and building my way up. Mary and I often go out to look for raptors on the weekend. Now we takeout the Pentax scope I got for her birthday. I managed to get a picture through the scope using Mary’s digital camera. People call this digiscoping. I got a couple decent pictures of a white-tailed kite at Don Edwards. The pictures are in my gallery. I also have one of a red-tailed hawk and some regular pictures of black-tailed rabbits.

Today, as an extension of Mary’s birthday, since she had not had a chance to celebrate it with her family yet, we went to the Scharffen Berger factory in Berkeley. Joining us were Mary’s mom, dad and brother. We had a 10:30 AM appointment for Scharffen Berger’s factory tour.

If you are not familiar with Scharffen Berger, and you like dark chocolate, you should really check them out. The company was started by Robert Steinberg and John Scharffenberger in 1996. Robert was a family physician, who was exploring new interest after a run-in with Leukemia. John had been an organic grower and wine maker, with a successful sparkling wine label, Scharffenberger Cellars, which he had sold in 1995. Together they started making chocolate in Robert’s kitchen using a toaster oven, coffee grinder, mortar and pestle, an electric mixer. They eventually opened a factory in South San Francisco, making chocolate with vintage European machinery and selling it locally. Eventually they moved to the larger facility in Berkeley. [Sources: Factory tour and Scharffen Berger — Our History]

The tour started with a brief history of the company similar to the previous paragraph. The guide also mentioned that Scharffen Berger was acquired by Hershey in 2005, and was not part of Hershey’s Artisan Confections Company (which also includes Joseph Schmidt Confections and Dagoba Organic Chocolate). To many, this may seem like a total sell-out, and in fact I have seen articles suggesting it is (see Hershey’s “White Sheep” Brand–Scharffen Berger on BusinessWeek). However, as pointed out in the tour, the Scharffen Berger operations are quite independent, and they still make chocolate the same way they have for the past decade, but now they have more money for expansion and greater distribution.

In any case, the tour was great. In addition to the company history, we learned all about the cacao plant, it’s history and variations, and how it is used to make chocolate. During this discussion, we had the chance to sample their 3 main chocolates: 70% Cacao Bittersweet, 62% Cacao Semi Sweet and 41% Cacao Rick Milk Chocolate. We also got to try some cacao nibs, which are simply cleaned, roasted, and lightly crushed cacao beans. We took a tour of the factory, though being Sunday, nothing was actually running. It was still pretty interesting to see the equipment, which is rather quaint compared to the bulk chocolate manufacturing facilities. The tour ended in the store, where we had an opportunity to sample a few more varieties, including Nibby (with cacao nibs), Mocha (with Sumatran coffee beans), and Milk Sea Salt Almond. There were also samples of their hot chocolate and ganache. As an added bonus, we got to wear some really stylish hairnets.

After the tour, we had lunch in their cafe, Cafe Cacao. They have a variety of breakfast and lunch dishes. The food was good. I had a ham omelette and we all shared some yummy sweet potato fries. Mary had a pork sandwich which was pretty good, but nothing special. After lunch we went back to the Scharffen Berger store to pick up a few items to try later. We even got a Dagoba chocolate bar with dark chocolate (74%) chiles and nibs in it. That should be interesting…