Thursday, March 8, 2007

The birds are passing through!

As soon as I landed in Kuwait I was whisked away and put on duty on the border, and sent through a second iteration of a three day mounted exercise I had done before. I was impressed by the flowers in bloom, so I got on the internet and ordered a book on “Kuwaiti dicotyledoneae” (now I know there is a book on everything under the sun). I hope to get a chance to look for flowers on one or another of our upcoming missions.

As soon as the exercise was over, interesting birds started showing up. Corporal Goff found the first good migratory bird by almost stepping on an Egyptian nightjar as we were walking through the camp. The Egyptian nightjar looks more like a raptor than the other nightjars do, because it lacks any conspicuous wing or tail patches.

Today, on the border, I got to see three blue rock thrushes, one marsh harrier, eight hoopoes, one saker falcon, one orphean warbler, one great grey shrike, ten desert wheatears, one white wagtail, fourteen Phylloscopus warblers (mostly dark-legged subspecies of the willow warbler, I think), one pied wheatear, four stonechats, one northern wheatear, two or three isabelline wheatears and one redstart sp. (some eastern subspecies of the black redstart look disturbingly like the common redstart).

I was especially glad for the hoopoes, which I had never seen in flocks, and the orphean warbler since I had never seen one before.

Other recent events:

I finished Hija de la Fortuna by Isabel Allende in Spanish. I enjoyed it, and got around to finishing Cuentos de Eva Luna. Cuentos de Eva Luna had been a more difficult read because it is a collection of short stories. In short stories, the context is less firmly established and the vocabulary doesn't repeat itself often enough for me to learn it as I read.

I beat my 5 kilometer race record during a “fun run,” with eighteen minutes flat. Hooray me!

I did an over-the-phone interview with KCAW – Sitka’s very own excellent volunteer radio station.

I am no longer a platoon RTO (that is: radio operator)! I went to a regular infantry team leader job, which should be good.


This photo I took of 1LT Carson with a saker falcon was sent out by the battalion public affairs NCOIC, and was published by the Anchorage Daily News, some National Guard magazine, and the prestigious Sitka Sentinel:

No comments: