OK, and my next camera will have movement stabilization.  My old Kodak 7590 is still hanging in there, tape and all.  Sorry for the shaky-ness!
The Osprey of Hilton, NY - 8/16/11

A little OT, but I finally broke down a month ago and got a new camera...my first non-Kodak digital.  My Kodak 7590 was still mostly hanging in as well, with a few minor problems.  But the Grand Canyon trip with my sisters convinced me to upgrade.  One sister carries a Canon digital SLR, and that just confirmed my opinion that despite the possibility of some really nice photos, it's much heavier and less flexible in the moment (she never had the right lens on when she wanted it, and didn't want to carry the weight of her big zoom, so the two of us with point-and-shoot cameras had more zoom potential).  An SLR just doesn't seem like something I want to carry on my hiking trips.  Middle sister, however, shot photos with a Panasonic Lumix (a version with 18x magnification).  It was an interesting experiment because in many cases we were all shooting the same scenes in the same light from roughly the same angle, and the majority of the time, once I'd ruled out general artistic differences from the photographer, her photos were better than mine...more colorful, sharper, etc.  So...I'm now the owner of a Panasonic Lumix.  So far I'm really happy with it.  I think the Kodak is more intuitive to use, and I like its user interface better, but I like the photos that I'm getting from the Panasonic.

Rich will be very envious, Paul!   

I'm very envious!

I remember on my first trip to Rochester (2004), on my first full day of falcon watching it was one of those smoking hot days (even I was hot) where the falcons are either so hot they don't move, or if they do take to the air, they ride the thermals into the atmosphere and quickly become tiny specs.  But I just knew that as soon as I left there would be an awesome display of talon tag, so, determined not to miss any opportunities, I stuck it out all day long, didn't take lunch or dinner breaks...ate energy bars and snacks and whatever the locals carried out to the bridge to share...and almost nothing happened all day!  Joyce spent a lot of the afternoon with me, so that helped!

I still enjoyed myself in spite of nothing happening, but I'm fairly good at just enjoying my own thoughts (or not thinking at all).

And yet another ear-worm... let's see if I can remember the words without looking them up...

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
merry, merry king of the bush is he
Laugh, kookabura, laugh, kookabura
Gay your life must be

And another verse:

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Countin' all the monkeys he can see
Stop, kookabura, stop, kookabura
That's not a monkey, that's me.

See, Girl Scouts were useful for something...

Well, you all know me after all these years...excessive anthropomorphizing tends to get my hackles up...
I cannot find it in me to feel sorry for Beauty, Archer or Unity because I don't believe they feel sorry for themselves....
I feel very sorry for US that there weren't any fluffballs this year...

What she said!

Seriously, I'm pretty much with Ei on this...it's too bad there weren't young peregrines in Rochester to watch, both for the sake of the local watchers and the remote ones, but I don't feel comfortable projecting my feelings on Beauty, Archer, or Unity.  Also like Ei, it's been hard-going lately, I've lost both parents and a job in the last two years and my worry list is full enough.

Patti

It's entirely possible that I'm losing my mind, but didn't Paul post a video some years back of an Osprey with a fish so big it was struggling to get airborne a second time?    Presumably it had made it from the water to shore initially.

That was pretty astounding!  Thanks!

Without even looking, I BETCHA she hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, right, Patti? Do I win something??

Yep, you're right...that's what made it appropriate for a 50th birthday trip -- I wanted to prove to myself that I'm still fit!  I'm not sure what you win, but you're certainly deserving of glory!

p.s How was the prickly cactus stir-fry?    Thanks

Jeremy actually added the prickly pear cactus to the rest of the vegetables he'd brought for a stir-fry, so I can't say that I was able to distinguish them very well.  He said they usually pick up the flavors of the sauce or whatever they're cooked in/with.  The texture was a bit cucumber-ish...kind of slippery but they had some crunch.

The place on Airport Mesa in Sedona where you saw the sunset is just a short walk from where we stayed on our trips.

Paul

I remembered, from your Sedona album, that you stayed somewhere up on Airport Mesa.  Your Sedona album actually inspired me to consider Sedona when I was trying to figure out what to do with the couple of extra vacation days we had to tack on after the Grand Canyon hike.

[534 pics!!!]

534 pics!!! This will take me until Saturday!

Yeah...it's a bit excessive, but I took about 1000 pictures, and both of my sisters (some of whose photos I included) each took about 1000 pictures, so I really did trim down considerably from 3000 to 534.  Quite the nightmare weeding through that many, cropping and captioning!

After only three months, I've finally finished my Grand Canyon Photo Album.  It's REALLY big, so if you're interested, you might open the link in a new browser tab and come back to it on a rainy day. 

I dragged Jeane, both my sisters and one brother-in-law along on this trip; it was a 50th birthday challenge for me and everybody helped me celebrate.  We've done some tough hikes in our lives, but this was a REALLY tough one, but spectacularly beautiful, and everyone emerged with intact joints!

Anyway, here is the "navigate using the thumbnails" version (but note that there are multiple pages of thumbnails):
http://photos.bellhanley.com/Trips/Hiking/Grand-Canyon-2011

Within there you can click the slideshow button if you prefer a slideshow format, or click the main photo to view it in a larger size.

If you really don't feel like viewing the whole thing and are just interested in birds, here's a link (generated using keywords) to the birds of the trip:
http://photos.bellhanley.com/keyword/arizona-2011-bird

Patti

Margaret...we really had good luck with hummingbirds once we started having a colorful flower garden easily seen from the air, but it sounds like you've already tried that.  One particular plant my hummers go gaga over is called Black and Blue Salvia (Salvia guaranitica).  The flowers seem to bring them in and the feeder gives them a bonus.  They carry this plant at all our local nurseries, though it comes in later than our usual spring annuals (here we start seeing it in the garden shops about May 12th or so, when most Kentuckians have already done their spring planting by the first weekend of May).

Word from the experts is that plain sugar water is healthier...or at least it works just as well and the scientists just aren't sure that the red food coloring is harmless.

We use this HummZinger feeder: http://www.hummzinger.com/mini.htm
It's extremely easy to keep clean; I keep two of them that I rotate daily...I bring one in from outside that goes in the dishwasher and hang the new one.  It's been really hot here, and my feeder's in the sun, so I really have to change the nectar every day during the summer.  I mix up about a 10-day supply of sugar water, keep it in the fridge, and pour about 4 ounces or so into the fresh, clean feeder every night.

I've attached a photo of one of my birds on the Salvia Guaranitica:

And it is said that if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, the Empire will fall. Thanks for the info, Dale.

On a nature show I saw a couple of years ago, and my memory is fuzzy on this now, they were working hard to protect the Tower of London Ravens from the possibility of getting West Nile Virus...maybe by keeping them indoors...I can't remember the details.  But it was related to that superstition and the national need to know that the tower's Ravens are safe.

Every night I sit and watch these crazy little birds. Sometime I get a shot and other times they are just too fast for me. No need to sign in to look. Enjoy!!

ginha

http://tinyurl.com/3dx6y2c

Very nice...I've had one single female all summer, so I'm assuming she's a nesting female, but I'm excited for the flurry of migration activity to start soon.  BTW, I also have the upside-down niger feeder...keeps the daggone House Sparrows away.

The periods for public comment are underway for the proposal by KY Dept Fish and Wildlife Resources to begin hunting and killing 400+ Sandhill Cranes every year.  Kentucky is the only state in North America to propose hunting the Eastern population of Sandhill cranes, not hunted in nearly 100 years.

If you haven't already sent letters or emails, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will receive written comments online until August 5 on the KY crane hunt proposal. 

To post a comment online, go here:
http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FWS-R9-MB-2011-0014-0204

Points to consider in your correspondence are available at the KY Coalition for Sandhill Cranes' website at:  http://kyc4sandhillcranes.wordpress.com/

I loved the final caption...sounds very much like a stranded whining juvie!