State of the Country

This is NOT a comment about politics, repeat, this is not a blog about politics..the election...IS OVER!  Yeah!  Stop talking about it, it IS Done.  No, I'm bringing up...something more important....as they said....Down goes...Rhode Island.....down goes Rhode Island...or was that Frasier?  I guess the "they" was Howard Cosell.

Anyhow, it took me 50 years, 7 months and 28 days to get my sorry bum to Rhode Island, lifer state number ...49.....In many ways a very very misguided trip.  I was supposed to go out tomorrow with the Brookline Birding Club from Hyannis MA, but it was cancelled, backup date...Sunday..cancelled, cancelled pelagic trip number 8 for the year...that plus 3 cancelled private boat trips....Olaf is NOT a man of the sea apparently, I may look like Hemingway, sometimes act like Hemingway but I neither drink like him, write like him, nor apparently have his gift of the ocean....it doesn't like me apparently.  I'm not sure why, either.

I was just down in Florida on another busted trip.  I'm usually pretty selective on chases, and know when to go, it has served me well, but with nothing else to do, I rolled the dice on a bird report...the dice came up snake eyes.....doubled whammed....escaped cage bird on private fenced property, with active security, I got stopped twice just looking ...nothing says no ticks more than that.  A dip is a dip even though there was nothing to dip on.

So, I went looking for a snail kite.

I jumped one, but it ended up being another great picture of the northside of a southbound bird...

I did get a photo of the correct side of this...

Not everything invoves birds, you know.

Well, my rental car blew a fuse and tiring of Florida, having no way to charge up anything, not a radio, I went up to a friends house in Jupiter for social hour, which lasted about two hours until I fell asleep, I make a lousy house guest, morning came and I bugged out....

I learned my pelagic trip was cancelled as my plane landed in Providence....trying to make jelly out of the apparent jellyfish...I did see an interesting bird posted just 11 miles from the airport so off I went...I had nothing else to do.  Some people would just love to see this bird....

Pink-footed goose....I needed it not for the year, but after a big dip and having seen this bird after some trouble in Montreal QC last winter, this is a new, lower 48 bird, I guess some consolation (it is really a great bird) and my previous lifer photo...which really was bad, borderline laugahble but just to remind you....

So I improved on that, you know, it was something, otherwise I really would have been disappointed, as I went out in Key West in much worse weather than the little wind they were having here...waves?  Come on after the Farallons?  Yea...scare me...

I would have gotten closer to this goose, but there was a major impediment to that plan...

I had to stand up upon a busy bridge the way it was to look down on the bird with the sun in my face, and avoid getting hit by cars, but I got it....then back to the airport...I stopped by the Slocum RI post office for a memory shot of the state, I don't think I want to be a person from Slocum...(picture top of article).  It may be awhile until I get back here...but it seemed nice enough.

So that was that, Rhode Island for 4 hours and that was that as they say is ALL the people need to know...maybe there is more...but you'll just have to wait on that.

This leaves me one state-ment place now....SOUTH CAROLINA.......hey palmetto state...I'm coming for you.  Beware of the fat man, bearing a camera

Olaf