Bird Watching
It's tough to enjoy the natural beauty of Iraq when our driver insists on, for our own safety, driving 80 mph on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic. Improvised explosives along the roads are a constant danger here and every trip is taken very seriously. I none-the-less did manage to do some bird watching today while out inspecting work we are getting done rebuilding schools about an hour from "home." This helped to distract me so I wouldn't have to look out the windshield. I was thrilled to see a pair of Pied Kingfishers Ceryle rudis, sitting on a wire above a narrow irrigation canal in a small patch of date palms. Back home, I hear them long before I see them. Usually barreling along over a stream in search of small fish they grab with their disproportionately large bills. These looked just like their New England cousins, but slightly smaller and entirely black and white, no blue.
There are some patches of green in the landscape, it is after all springtime in Iraq. I saw the usual "herd" of a dozen camels again today along the road west of Al Nasiriyah. There are major league puddles everywhere along the roads, in town, and around the walled villages. The water doesn't drain through this silty clay soil, and the water table is so high that if it did drain, it wouldn't have anywhere to go. These puddles host a variety of birds I've never seen before, many of which I had to look up on http://birdingbabylon.blogspot.com . There was a Black Winged Stilt wading along in one puddle along side of the rode. I got really excited about this, talking it up to my fellow passengers, until I realized the driver was getting interested in looking for birds too, when he should be concentrating on oncoming gasoline tankers. I thereafter kept my observations to myself. There were, speaking of gas tankers, shorter lines than usual at the gas stations here today. Hopefully, more gas is getting through and the days-long gas lines are going to be a thing of the past soon. Iraqi oil production and refining are still not close to pre-war levels.
I'm not really much of a birder, I mean to say, I don't get up before the sun to add birds to my life list as a rule, but birds are one of the few connections to wildlife I have available to me here. I did spend 6 years as a Park Ranger in Connecticut back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I haven't entirely lost my connection to the natural world. This desolate landscape has me looking for any connection I can find. Today I salvaged some packages of gorp from the trash, the only unsalted food the mess hall gives us by the way, an gave it to the security guy at the door who feeds the birds out front. I was rewarded by a visit by a White Tail Wag when I went by later. The bread crumbs he usually leaves only attract English sparrows and doves.
My trips to the perpetually burning dump were curtailed by the elections and 40 pounds of extra battle gear I would have had to wear for a bike ride out there. My last trip out before election day I saw another first for me, a pair of Crested Larks feeding along with a hundred starlings at the fringes of the dump.
There are some patches of green in the landscape, it is after all springtime in Iraq. I saw the usual "herd" of a dozen camels again today along the road west of Al Nasiriyah. There are major league puddles everywhere along the roads, in town, and around the walled villages. The water doesn't drain through this silty clay soil, and the water table is so high that if it did drain, it wouldn't have anywhere to go. These puddles host a variety of birds I've never seen before, many of which I had to look up on http://birdingbabylon.blogspot.com . There was a Black Winged Stilt wading along in one puddle along side of the rode. I got really excited about this, talking it up to my fellow passengers, until I realized the driver was getting interested in looking for birds too, when he should be concentrating on oncoming gasoline tankers. I thereafter kept my observations to myself. There were, speaking of gas tankers, shorter lines than usual at the gas stations here today. Hopefully, more gas is getting through and the days-long gas lines are going to be a thing of the past soon. Iraqi oil production and refining are still not close to pre-war levels.
I'm not really much of a birder, I mean to say, I don't get up before the sun to add birds to my life list as a rule, but birds are one of the few connections to wildlife I have available to me here. I did spend 6 years as a Park Ranger in Connecticut back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I haven't entirely lost my connection to the natural world. This desolate landscape has me looking for any connection I can find. Today I salvaged some packages of gorp from the trash, the only unsalted food the mess hall gives us by the way, an gave it to the security guy at the door who feeds the birds out front. I was rewarded by a visit by a White Tail Wag when I went by later. The bread crumbs he usually leaves only attract English sparrows and doves.
My trips to the perpetually burning dump were curtailed by the elections and 40 pounds of extra battle gear I would have had to wear for a bike ride out there. My last trip out before election day I saw another first for me, a pair of Crested Larks feeding along with a hundred starlings at the fringes of the dump.
posted by Bob at 11:36 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home