I have maintained that the Utah landscape just isn’t ugly. Maine is giving Utah a run for its money. Doesn't the above photo just make you want to break out into Barry Manilow's Weekend in New England?
Okay, the start to the ABA Convention his still a little wonky for me. Apparently, we had the hottest day in Maine in recent memory—it was 90 degrees yesterday and the Civic Center wasn’t prepared for that kind heat, so the air conditioning didn’t get kicked on in time. My boxes weren’t at the Civic Center for set up, because they were clearing out the Legionnaires' stuff (those guys are just causing problems all over the place). And one top of that, the power chord for my G4 broke and no one in nearby Maine carries Mac products and the soonest I can get one is on Tuesday. Blog entries may not be as frequent until I get the power adaptor.
I won’t be a complete whiny pants, my optimistic nature is kicking in. Even if the Legionnaire’s hadn’t caused a gum up with boxes being brought over, it would have been too hot to function in the Civic Center, so that was kind of good. And my power adaptor broke right where it connects to the Powerbook, at least it didn’t get stuck inside. I’ve also had some iPod issues the last week and the wonderful folks at birdPod are helping me out until I get my warranty repair squared away—they do have GREAT customer service. The birdPod program I'm using this week is different than the one I have--this one has photos. When I get more power for the computer, I'll describe it in more detail. It's pretty nifty.
Since set up couldn’t happen, I spent time at Acadia National Park. I did get two new birds yesterday! This funky looking duck: a common eider (that's the male on the left and if you look close in front of herring gull you should see three females laying ont the vegetation) and a black guillemot. Sweet! Acadia is a beautiful park, but I must say that places like North Dakota, Utah and northern Minnesota have completely spoiled me rotten. I'm so used to being the only person around. Acadia was jam packed with people on Sunday, and that irritated me. Didn’t they know that I wanted to listen to all those black-throated green warblers in peace? If I ever do that park again, it will be on a weekday. It reminded me so much of Duluth, only instead of having Lake Superior, it has the Atlantic Ocean.
Could this view get any better? It actually did, while I was taking it in, I heard the call of a wood thrush echoing up followed periodically by a winter wren. Nice.
This is a cliff with a peregrine falcon aerie. Some of the young birds were fledging that day. They are in the photo, just so high up, you can't see them. Really, trust me, they are there.
Not much to report gossip wise yet—although, during dinner at a fine establishment called Captain Nick’s I noticed two birders sit at a table diagonally behind us. One of them had a shirt that showed a trogon—that’s how I knew it was a birder. Mr. Trogon Shirt was trying to get his paper wrapping off his straw. He kept blowing and blowing but the paper wouldn’t budge. He finally blew with all his might and it sailed off the straw and narrowly missed hitting a boy in the back of the head at a neighboring table. He and his dinner companion giggled and he looked to see if anyone noticed. He caught my eye and I gave him a thumbs up.