Ramadan mubarak!

I haven't had much time to do anything lately, thanks to a soldier who made a mistake while I was supposed to supervise him. The specialist - who shall remain unnamed of course - fired his rifle while attempting to clear the ammunition out of it.

Happens from time to time? It's okay, he was tired? I was just distracted? There's no such thing in the army. In fact, losing control of one's weapon in any form is the infantryman's capital sin.

So far we've both had about thirty hours of extra, which really isn't so bad but enough to deprive us of a bunch of sleep, and the final punishment hasn't yet been decided but it's looking like it will be unusually light (normally, rank and pay are taken away).

I haven't been bringing my camera most days, but I did get a few pictures anyways.

The birds have stopped dying off. It was fun walking around and pulling dead warblers, shrikes, egrets, quails, etc. , but it was also starting to get a little depressing. Now I see a lot of hawks, including a black-shouldered kite Elanus caeruleus, but mostly it is the same warblers, buntings, shrikes and wheatears as in the spring except that the numbers are lower. Also I made the mistake of shipping my field guide out with a bunch of gear. So the buzzards, pitpits, brown warblers, and eagles are all sp. I couldn't even put a name on the dozens of redstarts that showed up one day. Julien - do you know if this is just a colorful subspecies of the black redstart?

And I am pretty sure that this is a juvenile red-backed shrike Lanius collurio.

In other news, it is now Ramadan. I though about trying to observe Sawm for a few days, but it would be really dificult because I work a really long shift and the breaking of the fast (iftar) is right in the middle of my already insufficient sleep. Also, we don't get breakfast until after sunrise. Maybe after we're off mission. After all, it'll still be Ramadan until well into October.

The Kuwaitis are generally okay with us eating and drinking in the middle of the day while they themselves gradually fade away in the heat, but we try to eat and drink only when we are away from them. Public violations of Ramadan are explicitly prohibited by military regulations and Kuwaiti civil law, but most of us don't care about those ridiculous rules. It's usually better to informally enforce sensible conduct instead.

Thankfully, the temperatures have been going a little further down and the days are a little bit shorter, so this year's Ramadan isn't as bad as it will be in, for example, 2010 (in August!). My best Ramadan experience, so far, is chasing and catching the terrified ewe in this picture. She was later killed and cooked, but sadly I wasn't there for iftar so I missed the resulting meal.