I’ve been a bit under the weather the past few days, but I still managed to have a nice, relaxing weekend. I stayed home and rested Saturday morning while Mary was out hiking. In the afternoon we visited Don Edwards to see some wildlife. There are a lot of nesting shorebirds there again, which is really great. We really enjoy seeing the American avocets and black-necked stilts. We’re hoping to see some chicks running around there soon. We have seen quite a few duckling and gosling and some killdeer eggs. There are also at least a couple of barn owlets in the next box near the education center. We saw this fairly bold squirrel (picture on right) on the boardwalk around Chicago Marsh.

In our explorations near by Don Edwards, we’ve encountered numerous burrowing owls, especially at the so-called “magic fence”. Click the picture on the right for more pictures of the burrowing owls. Yesterday we made a very odd discovery near the “magic fence”. While watching the owls, we notices a pure white bunny that was obviously out of place. Apparently it has escaped from its home and is making a living here. We saw it again on Sunday. We were thinking about trying to catch it, but Sunday evening we saw some people out there trying to get it back home. Hopefully they were successful.

The climax of the weekend was learning about a pair of bald eagles nesting near the Calaveras Reservoir. We went to investigate and it turned out to be true. They have a huge nest up in a transmission tower right next to the reservoir. Mary and I watched them for nearly two hours, and met some really nice people there to see the eagles as well. Mary and I always think we have to go way up to Northern California to see bald eagles. It was quite a nice surprise to learn of a pair nesting successfully so near by. Hopefully we’ll have an opportunity to witness the eaglets before they get too big and fly off to parts unknown.

The San Jose peregrines are doing well. Only three of the four eggs hatched, but so far those three are doing quite well. They and their parents, Clara and Carlos, are bringing much joy to the hundreds of people watching their web cam. I’m looking forward to watching them fledge and explore downtown San Jose in a month or so.

It’s Earth Day 2008, and there will be a celebration at the San Jose City Plaza. Even more importantly, the peregrine falcon eggs at the City Hall nest have started to hatch!. Three of the four have hatched so far. Breakfast was served at 7am (see the photo on the right from the SCPBRG’s Flickr page). The hatching even made the news this morning, with coverage by KPIX CBS5 and KGO ABC7. As always, you can watch the live action on the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group’s Nest Cam- San Jose. Hopefully egg number four will hatch soon and we’ll have four lovely white fluff balls to enjoy for a while.

Every once in a while, I find myself lying awake well into the night thinking about a wide variety of crap and just not falling asleep. This is one of those nights. So rather than lie in bed waiting for Morpheus to take me into the world of slumber, I decided to blog for a while. I’m not sure this will help me sleep, but there’s a very good chance that if someone happens upon this post in a similar state, it should put them right out!

Earth Day is tomorrow. Well, not the “tomorrow” that starts in a couple hours when the sun rises, but the tomorrow after that, namely April 22. As usual, it has crept up on me and I have not made any plans. I suppose there will be some events in the area on Earth Day, and perhaps on the weekend to follow, but I’ll just have to take it as it comes. Maybe when I finish with this blog I’ll search the net for useful stuff to do for Earth Day, though I would prefer to go to sleep.

Even though I haven’t been blogging regularly, I did make a few posts on my green blog. One post was about the California Clean Tech Open 2008 Launch event and the other was a video I ran across from Al Gore: How Dare We Be Optimistic. The video is Mr. Gore’s latest presentation on climate change which runs about 30 minutes.

The San Jose peregrine falcon eggs (from Carlos and Clara on City Hall) haven’t hatched yet. It’s getting to the point where a few people are starting to worry, but I think they’ll pip soon (if they haven’t already). I waited until the last minute to do taxes, but with my recent income record (or lack there of), they were pretty quick to complete. I was also on call for jury duty for the US District Court, even though I had just been on call for Santa Clara County in February. Apparently since I was never called in for the county, I could not get out of the US District Court duty. Fortunately, I wasn’t called in for that either. Of course that just means I’ll get another summons in a month or two.

As advertised, I’m really not saying much of anything here. I guess that’s not so different from any of my other posts. At least I usually try to post a few pictures, but I haven’t uploaded any recently. Oh well, maybe next time. Good night (I hope)!

It sounds like Earth Hour last week was fairly successful. As I understand, some cities had more than double the electricity reduction as they were hoping for. As for Mary and I , we turned out the lights at 8pm sharp. We had a rechargeable battery powered fluorescent lantern, but we just sat and chatted in the dark for about 15 minutes. Eventually we cheated and went out to eat. Hopefully this event managed to raise some awareness that will start to carry over in to every day life.

On Saturday, Mary and I started the day with our usual: I played hoops and Mary went hiking. For lunch we made some chicken with Jamaican jerk marinade. It was pretty good. In the evening we went to an event called The Gospel Zone at a church in downtown San Jose. The event was a combined concert of the Hope of Glory Mass Choir (picture on left) from the Maranatha Christian Center and the Low Ding Zone from the Bay Bells (a handbell ensemble). I have seen the Hope of Glory choir before, and I enjoy them very much. They sing with such power and control. I had never seen a handbell ensemble before, though it is pretty much what you would expect, a group of people ringing bells by hand and playing music together. Low Ding Zone is interesting in that they only play the “big bells” of middle-C and lower (see the picture on the right showing Mary and one of the larger bells). They were interesting, but over-powered by the choir.

On Sunday Mary went for another hike and I did a bit of work. In the afternoon we headed towards downtown for lunch and coffee. In the evening we went to see a professional lacrosse match between the San Jose Stealth and the Portland LumberJax of the National Lacrosse League. I had heard about the Stealth a while ago, but had never been to a game (nor had I been to any lacrosse match before). This league is indoor (the Stealth play at the HP Pavilion). There is also an outdoor league called Major League Lacrosse. The game was pretty entertaining, but in the end the Stealth lost to the Jax 12-10.