My eyes have seen the glory....

Kim writes: Some of you may be wondering why--outside of a few random photos and thoughts--I haven't really attempted to describe the Antarctic experience. In fact, I've been wondering about it myself. Certainly time is a factor. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. In the Kaufman Universe, life moves at warp speed. But, time (or lack thereof) is not the real problem. It's the trip itself.

Unlike Kenn, I was not born with the "travelin' bone." I grew up on a farm in rural Ohio and throughout most of my childhood no one I knew ever went anywhere, to speak of. If someone actually went someplace that required a SUITCASE it was a really big deal! Funny story---When I graduated from High School one of my Aunts got me a set of luggage. Of course I accepted the gift graciously, but inside I was thinking, "You gotta be freakin kidding me with the luggage, right?" (Sorry Aunt Connie! You're the best.)

Now, you might think that marrying someone like Kenn, I must have had some idea that travel would be part of my life. But to be honest, it wasn't something I really even thought about. I mean, yeah, I knew that Kenn had worked for many years as a bird tour leader--traveling all over the world. But, by the time we met, he had moved on from tour leading to work on his field guide series. I guess on some level I assumed that far-flung travel was a thing of the past. Kenn is an amazing person and he fills my life with so much adventure that I would be perfectly content if we never left home. But, traveling with him is like the ultimate bonus. And now--that girl who laughed at the idea of owning a suitcase--has been to some pretty astounding places.

Antarctica....

Now, be honest...If you were asked to make a list of the top 10 places in the world that you wanted to travel to, would your list include Antarctica? For me, the thought of going someplace like that was just too far outside the scope of my imagination. For good reason. It was a totally mind-blowing, life-altering experience. Nothing could have prepared me for it. No books. No pictures. No videos on U-Tube. Nothing does it justice.

But now I have been there. And I have struggled for weeks to find a way to tell you what it was like. I will try. But I must tell you that I will fail. Until your eyes have sparkled with tears at the sight of an iceberg peppered with penguins. Until a flock of Cape Petrels dances for you. Until the bow of your ship has moved in close enough to kiss the edge of a glacier. Until your senses have been exercised to their ultimate limits by a colony of Adelie Penguins. Until your heart has practically thumped its way out of your chest as you stared straight into the eyes of a Leopard Seal. ----- Until you've walked where ice is magnificent enough be a place on the map.....It is truly hard to imagine.

But we will do our best....

See the black lumps in this photo? EVERY BLACK LUMP IS AN ADELIE PENGUIN!

Now, imagine that you are standing a few feet from the edge of this astounding scene. Waves crash and stir bits of ice against the rocky shoreline like rhythmic music...your ears ring with the sound of it. Adelies are before you in numbers that are nearly incomprehensible...your nose wrinkles with the smell of it. The rough and tumble rocks of the island--and the occasional Adelie at your feet--make you aware of every footstep. And your soul weeps with the joy of it.

Elizabeth Nude, Semi-Nude and on Bed Photos

ELIZABETH HURLEY

ELIZABETH SHUE

SHANNON ELIZABETH

Save Sandakan from Musa Aman

For people interested in the latest goings on by SESB and its attempt to turn Sandakan from the Nature City into a smog heap - check out. http://www.savesandakan.com/

From the Save Sandakan site - it seems to be a forgone conclusion we will be getting the powers station. It appears that the contract to build it was signed in Feb 2008 - so probably means they are committed to a Coal-power plant. I wonder who is getting the kick-back from the China National Electric Equipment Corporation for this project. The only question was where it was going to be. From the looks of the photo's http://www.savesandakan.com/the-site-photos/ - it appears that Sandakan has next to no choice - they have already started the earth-works.

Approximate coordinate of this Sandakan Coal fired power plant site:
N 5* 48' 03”, E 118* 01' 00"

Coal will be imported from Indonesia - cost of scow + transport cost + storage cost = % of income for who?

When Indonesia doesn’t want to sell or increase the price -- what happen? Shut down the coal plant?

In Sabah at Maliau basin and danum valley has vast deposit of coal reserved but they can’t dig it now because they will be destroying those “special” environment in both the areas but once the coal plant its build they will start digging, as they can come up with excuses that Indonesia isn’t selling coal or etc.

Before they start digging, deforestation start, logging, transport and digging income for whom?

I read about the Musa Aman's comments also in the star news online portal posted today. It's just dumb how he's trying so hard to emphasize the need of having this bloody coal plant.

Hope the efforts by the savesdk committee will at the very least leave a scratch to his dumb brain (which I think must be infested with maggots, judging by his ignorance of the whole dam plant).

GBBC!

This White-throated Sparrow is just waiting patiently to be counted ...

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: Here's a shout out to ace birder Rob Fergus, who writes the very popular blog over at The Birdchaser and who is also one of the principal organizers of the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). The GBBC is going on right now, through Monday the 16th (Presidents' Day), and it's easy for anyone to get involved. You can count birds from the comfort of your kitchen window, or you can trek out into the wilderness, and your results will help to give a valuable snapshot of what's happening with birds all over the North American continent this weekend. It's the second-most-fun thing you can do on Valentine's Day (and it may be THE most fun thing you can do on Presidents' Day). It's a great activity for families -- if you're a parent with kids who are lukewarm on birds, get them involved in helping to count and then let them enter the data online and explore all the interactive stuff on the GBBC site. You can find all the info on the Great Backyard Bird Count right here and you can get Rob's own perspective on it by going to the Birdchaser Blog here.

Antarctica, Day Two: I.D. At Sea

From home base, Kenn writes: (now that I've been so cutely interrupted by Kim's last post ... That's the thing about Kimmer, I can't stay mad at her for more than a few seconds at a time.) On January 8, when I got out on deck around 5 a.m., we had left the Beagle Channel itself but the islands of Tierra del Fuego were still visible off the stern. Dozens of Sooty Shearwaters and Greater Shearwaters, plus various other seabirds, were around the ship. The last of the land soon disappeared behind us but we would continue to see large numbers of seabirds all day. Most seabirds are beautiful creatures and amazing masters of flight, and in addition, many of them present fascinating challenges in identification.

Check this out. I know you can’t see much detail, but this is an unaltered photo taken from the rail of the upper back deck of the ship, with six seabirds captured in the same frame. From left, they’re a young Wandering Albatross, a Brown Skua, three Greater Shearwaters, and a Northern Giant-Petrel. I’m not saying every moment was like this, but it was common to have 30 or 40 individual birds visible at once.

Watching birds here was good practice for identifying them back in North America. This Wilson’s Storm-Petrel nests only on islands in the far southern oceans, but it’s common in the northern summer off the Atlantic Coast of the U.S. and Canada, and scarce off the coast of California.

Greater Shearwater is another bird we can see close to home in the northern summer. At that season it’s common off the Atlantic Coast of the U.S. and Canada, but it nests only on islands in the South Atlantic.

Identifying seabirds can be tough, partly because the viewing conditions at sea can be challenging, partly because the differences can be subtle. Even on very large seabirds, the best field marks can involve small differences. Take a look at this Southern Giant-Petrel ...

... and then at this Northern Giant-Petrel. Both species are variable in plumage, and the best way to tell them apart is by the color of the tip of the bill: green on the Southern, red on the Northern. Those who are red/green color-blind, as some excellent birders are, might note that the Northern's bill tip looks darker than that of the Southern. (These are poor names, incidentally, since both species live only in the Southern Hemisphere and their ranges overlap extensively.)

Variation reaches an extreme in the beautiful Wandering Albatross. It has five distinct populations, nesting on different island groups, that are thought by some to be separate species. All of them vary at least a little with age, so there are a vast number of different plumages possible on these birds. Add to that the fact that Royal Albatross can be very similar to Wandering, it has two distinct populations that also might be separate species, and it also varies with age. The richly colored brown bird above is one of the youngest Wandering Albatrosses.

This bird, extensively white above, is an older Wandering Albatross and may be an adult male, although some old males can become even whiter than this (and some adult females might duplicate the appearance of the bird in the photo).

This partially brown bird is in the Wandering Albatross complex and is almost certainly a young bird, although there are a few populations in which even the adults show a lot of brown. We saw many such variations today, and enjoyed discussing the identification of all of them.

Fortunately, we often got to look at Wandering Albatross individuals from very close range!

For this voyage, Victor Emanuel Nature Tours (VENT) had filled 85 of the 110 spaces on the Clipper Adventurer. You can’t have 85 participants and only one or two leaders, so VENT had recruited a team of leaders, all of them long-time friends of mine, starting with Victor Emanuel himself. Victor has been a friend of mine since the mid-1970s, when I was a teenager and he hadn’t yet started his tour company. Also along as leaders were Barry Lyon, a seasoned world birder and one of the professionals in the VENT office; Louise Zemaitis, great all-around naturalist, teacher, and nature artist; Michael O’Brien, a bird identification expert and lead author of The Shorebird Guide; and Lars Jonsson, from Sweden, probably the most renowned bird painter in the world today, and a leading authority on bird identification as well. Dr. John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, was supposed to have been a leader on this trip, and at the last minute he was unable to go. In his place, he sent Brian Sullivan, head of Project e-Bird for the lab, and another expert on bird identification, especially seabirds. Finally, the ship’s ornithologist, Geoff Carpentier from Canada, was also on deck, taking part in the discussions of identification from the perspective of his experience in these waters.

So a day at sea, looking at challenging or tricky seabirds, turned into a wonderful ongoing discussion and series of impromptu seminars in birding. For me, with my long-time interest in advanced bird identification, and for Kim, who is interested in all of these things and who was seeing some of these southern seabirds for the first time, this was a day of total fascination. Some people might imagine that all those hours on the open ocean could become boring, but for a birder, nothing could be further from the truth.

Kurup Corrupted?

The federal high court yet to decide when to announce the Kurup's appeal case even, after a full hearing today .

Why????

SPR will be holding a meeting tomorrow for kedah and perak by election, they could be held simultaneously. It is such a coincident that all three cases have fall within a week after Perak government was hijacked by Najib. If the high court should announce the result today which means there will be three by election within a week.

So now its the judge turn to be control by BN? Or, is the judge too stupid to decide here and now.

KK Street Boys

Kota Kinabalu is full of street boys, I am not sure if they are locals or foreigners. If they are locals that mean they are entitle for all the benefits of bumiputra but if they are not, what should we do with them?

I am strongly against giving these foreigner street boys any assistant as they are lot of Sabah locals kids who needs help especially in the rural area. Some local kids in the rural areas don’t even have the chances and funds to attend school. Why should we help those foreigners’ kids?

Nobody know where these street kids came from but they are involve in lot of illegal activities like selling pirated CD, ciggrates, robs and others pain in the ass in KK.

Bury them alive!