HOT

This is a broad-tailed hummingbird that is hanging out outside the hotel.

By the way, when people tell you that it will be hot but it's a dry heat so it won't be so bad, they are full of crap. It's hot, just plain hot. I have sweated in places that I shouldn't sweat. I was worried that I was leaving a trail.

I have found my crowd, birders who drink and like a surly joke every now and then. I'm sitting currently with a rowdy group and would you believe that Amy Hooper the editor of WildBird Magazine and Bill Thompson of Bird Watchers Digest and they are as wild as all get out. Rumor has it they are going to pants a binocular rep. Tighten the belts lads.

I met Debra Shearwater today. If you haven't been on one of her pelagic trips you may have read about her in various birding magazines or her part in the book Big Year. Anyway, she ws showing Amy and me photos of gray whales and then she points to a large pink oblong thing. She asks if we can identify the object, we both quickly realized it was a whale tallywacker. Debra proudly announced that it was over six feet long (that's longer than me--my body that is). That's my kind of woman.