If I was inclined to take a train in Spain, I would have given up on the idea after the first or second roadblock you ran into--certainly long before the fruitless, but humorous, AI fiasco. I have to admire your persistence. I hope it all works out in the end.

Sounds lovely. We started out at minus 7 or 8 today. At midday it has climbed all the way to plus 2. Yuucckk.

Yikes, so much information, it's hard to interpret from just the graphs. Also, unfortunate lack of info from prior to the dike removal. I wish there would be a simple expert summary, like "Yeah, there are more birds, but they are mostly geese", or somesuch. But my quick reaction is that I don't see a huge benefit to the removal. True?

Reading this today from one of our favourite coffee shops in LaPaz - it has been sunny and warm/hot our whole time here since December 16 but this morning it actually rained! For maybe 5 minutes, but still!!!! Now we are back to sunshine and warmth. 😎

We give a lot of the credit (blame?) to you for encouraging and mentoring us as we embarked on this fascinating, and fairly expensive, new hobby.

There was a similar situation at the mouth of the Nisqually River, between Tacoma and Olympia. Over a century ago a dairy farmer created a dike to dry up land. Fifteen years ago, after much planning, the dike was removed. There is a website with a great deal of information on the project, including a page showing bird counts. https://nisquallydeltarestoration.org/science_birds.php

Not just Arizona, but the Pima Air Museum in Tucson. I was hoping Scott Anderson could go out to take some "bird" photos there, but the aircraft landed on Lake Pleasant, near Phoenix, and will be disassembled and trucked to the museum for reassembly. That's going to be a long process. I dunno, feels like a duck out of water final location.

Most of the articles I've come across make me shake my head in embarrassment. Too many of your neighbors to the south think Vancouver = Vancouver Island. I'm hoping the one reference I saw to the Philippine Mars home, written as Sprout Lake, was an autocorrect error.

Nice write up, and a great gallery. I’m really happy for the two of you to have found this new interest at this time of life, and to discover something new about the amazing place that you live.

Good work with the Nikon!

Thank you. The large and heavy Nikon is realky great for bird photos.

Ironically this plane was featured in an article in my newspaper, The San Francisco Chronicle a day ago when it made a stop in Alameda and is on the way to AZ.

I thought you were using the words "float homes" and "houseboats" interchangeably until just now when I did some reading about the differences, their history, and the fact that they're connected to land-based utilities like electricity, water, and sewer... very interesting stuff.

The detail on those birds is fantastic. There are some great shots.

For some reason (size, location of on/off/zoom?) Dodie seems to find Susan's Canon easier to deal with than the Lumix, so she is sticking with it for now. It is still good to have a backup with us, especially on a long trip, so we will be carrying a few more cameras than might be thought strictly necessary. Ah well, it's only a couple extra ounces.

As the winter cold has set in we are finding it increasingly difficult to be up and moving in the early morning. We remain hopeful that Spain, even in the very early spring, will be warm enough to dress warmly and get out there.