Music In, 2023, Batch 2

Apparently I was slacking this quarter, only 7 albums. Getting old ...

• Werkha, "All Werk Is Play", 2022, 14 tracks, bandcamp. Werkha is apparently 1 guy, out of Manchester, UK. A lot of good music out of Manchester, UK, now. Really catchy grooves, catchy tracks. Kudos! 4 stars! I actually would like to include 3-4 tracks from this album, here's the 1 that was on the sampler I found them on.

• Beach House, "Become", 2023, 5 tracks, bandcamp. Their Wikipedia page sez they (2 members out of Baltimore) are dream pop. I concur. Good tunes, but maybe too dreamy? I might have gone down to 3 stars, but it is only 5 tracks, so they get the benefit of a doubt. 4 stars. Here's "Black Magic".

• Sophia Hansen-Knarhoi, "Wildflowers", 2022, 4 tracks, bandcamp. Perth, OZ. Really laid back stuff, "Celtic" popped to mind listening to it. So tentative, but pretty voices & harmonies. Ha ha, like the last 1, I'd prolly go 3 stars, but, it's only 4 tracks, so I'll listen to it some more. 4 stars. Here's "Disguise".

• Half Moon Run, "Salt", 2023, 11 tracks, bandcamp. This is a great album. Out of Montreal, this band is killing it. So many great songs. 4 stars. Here's "Alco".

• Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, "Weathervanes", 2023, 13 tracks, bandcamp. Isbell is completely an inspiration to me. He is our Bard of the South. Steve & Chris performed "White Man's World", "Something More Than Free", and "Hudson Commodore".

  This latest album, what great tunes! Maybe he will figure out a way to bring the rednecks back to ... Reality? Joy? 4 stars. Here's "King of Oklahoma". What great vocal harmonies! Southern rock / Americana seems to totally rule in that regard.

• Guy Clark, "The Essential Guy Clark", 1997, 20 tracks. Steve & Chris performed "Hemingway's Whiskey". Nice song. I'd been meaning to check out more Guy Clark, so I asked my friend & fellow music buff Josh Brown (also since its opening GM of J. Render's Southern Table & Bar) for a recommendation. He suggested this album. "Hemingway's Whiskey" is not on it, but there are a whole bunch of other great tunes.

  Clark was a great songwriter. Born 1941, died 2016, age 74. And, revisiting what was said for the last album, the vocal harmonies on this album are outstanding. I play lead, rhythm, & bass guitar, sing lead, harmony, & backup, have led up to a 12 pc band, my favorite thing of all is singing harmony. 4 stars. Here's "Desperados Waiting For a Train".

• Ella Fitzgerald, "Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Johnny Mercer Songbook", 1964, 13 tracks. I've gotten to be kind of a Johnny Mercer fanboy lately. I ordered this biography in paper from Carmichael's. I am a bit daunted by the font size. I looked for it as an ebook, no go. Actually a couple of other bios are available as ebooks, but the 1 I bought is looking like the definitive 1 - the author is a history professor at Georgia State U, which holds Mercer's papers, and it came out in 2016.

  So, of course, I greatly enjoy my favorite vocalist doing these songs.

  Already in the Jaz Dumoz songbook:

  • "Too Marvelous For Words"
  • "Day In Day Out"
  • "Skylark"
  • "I Remember You"

  "Midnight Sun" is in the work list. Most of these are with Nelson Riddle & His Orchestra, so fairly heavy orchestration. 4 stars. Here's "I Remember You", which Mercer wrote about Judy Garland after they had a love affair.

_unrated songlist is currently 10 albums, 117 tracks.

Last Exit / Battle of the Linguist Mages

As you can see from the title, something new for book blogging - only 2 books.

1st, "Last Exit", by Max Gladstone, 2022, 642 pages, 199k words. This came out over a year ago. The backlog of books on my iPad indicates that I will be reading books more and more after the fact.

This novel was not a page turner. I like the writing and the pacing. The characters are all strong. A lot of the book is dialogues between most if not all of the combinations of the books 6 main characters. The world building is very good. This book, and the next as well, both deal with fighting against basically The Nothing out of The Neverending Story. At the end of this one, the good guys win, although I'm not sure how. Still, I enjoyed the read.

The 2nd book I really enjoyed. I'm going to include the cover here:

"Battle of the Linguist Mages", by Scotto Moore, 2022, 550 pages, 149k words.

I really liked the earlier novella by fairly new author, playwright Scotto Moore, "Your Favorite Rock Band Will Not Save You". "Battle" has lots of pop culture including video gaming and DJing references, and a writing style which I think is similar to mine: an amalgam of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (the movie), "Bill and Ted", and "MST3K". Again The Nothing is defeated, this time in a clear and hilarious manner. This book was really a lot of fun, Joe Bob sez check it out.

IslandWalk Birds, 2022-2023 Season

My overall birdwatching strategy for IslandWalk is posted here. I have made that post kind of the home page for my Birdwatching in IslandWalk project, and will update it whenever I do a new post on IW Birding.

My 1st ever "IW state of the birds" post was for the 2021-2022 season. My 2nd was for 2020-2021 season. I am cloning this post from that post. The 2021-2022 post contains discussions of things I found interesting about a lot of the species - 10 years worth.

I manually entered this data in this spreadsheet.

I will be reporting for all observed species the following 4 datapoints:

1. % of days seen;
2. total birds counted;
3. average;
4. max.

Here's the link to the IslandWalk hotspot at eBird.org.

Each bird name listed below is linked to its IslandWalk activity page in eBird.org. So click on the name, you will get a picture & all the data eBird has on that bird in IslandWalk.

Updates for the 2022-2023 season: I am spending more time in IslandWalk this year: 9 months vs 5 months (trying to score music gigs). I included counts for May: 7 lists! They didn't seem that different from March/April. That made a total of 26 bird lists. The passerine bird counts, like the mockingbird, go way up around March 1, which I would guess is the start of mating season when they become much more vocal. So I think they are still exhibiting mating season behavior through May.

I was in KY June 5 - July 11. I have started counting birds again since I have returned. The #s look different than the in-season #s. So I will not include them in the 2023-2023 Season report. I may do a separate off-season report. But, the in-season #s have a few different periods:

• December & January when the migrating diving ducks are here: ring-necked duck, hooded merganser, lesser scaup. The pie-billed grebe mostly leave by April 1, but it seems like there is always 1 straggler who doesn't get the memo.
• The palm warblers leave by April 1 as well.
• Cormorants seem to be mostly gone by April 1. The Cormorant Menace I was keeping an eye on was a non-event, yay! After a blip last season, #s are back to prior years.

Swimmers

I guess all are dabbling "ducks"? "Dabbling" === "stick your bill down in the water & swish it around & eat what you get from that" - as opposed to diving ducks.

• mottled duck: % days 100; tot 565; avg 21.7; max 53.
• muscovy duck: % days 96; tot 171; avg 6.8; max 20. These #s are way down, I suspect they are trapping & removing these as was discussed before COVID.
• common gallinule: % days 100; tot 382; avg 14.7; max 13. After 1st being counted in IW by me 2020-04-02, their #s continue to grow. Sometimes they seem to be overtaking the mottled ducks.
• american coot: % days 12; tot 3; avg 1.0; max 1. NEW! They look pretty identical to the gallinule, but their bill is white.

Divers

• pie-billed grebe: % days 73; tot 59; avg 3.1; max 7.
• hooded merganser: % days 12; tot 8; avg 2.7; max 4.
• lesser scaup: % days 0.
• ring-necked duck: % days 4; tot 4; avg 4.0; max 4. Back for the 1st time in a few years.
• double-crested cormorant: % days 81; tot 100; avg 4.8; max 12. I'm relieved that the Cormorant Menace was a non-event.
• anhinga: % days 85; tot 51; avg 2.3; max 7.
• brown pelican: % days 46; tot 36; avg 3.0; max 9. Numbers up a little. For a while there were 3 fishing on Lake #9 for the entertainment of the people on the stationary bikes in the weight room.
• belted kingfisher: % days 27; tot 9; avg 1.3; max 2.

Waders

• great egret: % days 100; tot 148; avg 5.7; max 12. This seems to be our most numerous wader, replacing the snowy egret or the tricolored heron. There could be selection effect involved - you can ID a great egret 200 yards up the lake.
• great blue heron: % days 62; tot 31; avg 1.9; max 5.
• snowy egret: % days 100; tot 126; avg 4.8; max 21.
• cattle egret: % days 0.
• tricolored heron: % days 96; tot 115; avg 4.6; max 8.
• little blue heron: % days 96; tot 73; avg 2.9; max 6. Their #s are up, used to only occasionally see 1.
• green heron: % days 50; tot 25; avg 1.5; max 5. 1st counted in IW by Eric Thom 2017-02-20, I am now seeing 1-2 fairly consistently.
• wood stork: % days 15; tot 6; avg 1.5; max 2.
• white ibis: % days 85; tot 170; avg 7.7; max 19.
• glossy ibis: % days 65; tot 45; avg 2.6; max 21. Normally far fewer of these than white ibis, but 1 day there was a flock of 21 of them?!?!? When they are onesy they commonly hang out with the white ibis.
• limpkin: % days 63; tot 28; avg 1.8; max 4. More common this season than prior.

Beach Birds

• killdeer: % days 27; tot 7; avg 1.0; max 1.
• black skimmer: % days 0.

Raptors

• osprey: % days 46; tot 15; avg 1.3; max 3.
• bald eagle: % days 0.
• cooper's hawk: % days 0.
• red-shouldered hawk: % days 4; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• broad-winged hawk: % days 0.
• swallow-tailed kite: % days 0.
• loggerhead shrike: % days 88; tot 104; avg 4.5; max 11. Shrike numbers seem to be trending up. We had a pair nest in the Clusia bush behind our cage.
• black vulture: % days 8; tot 10; avg 5.0; max 8.
• turkey vulture: % days 23; tot 23; avg 3.8; max 11.

Corvids

• fish crow: % days 100; tot 331; avg 12.7; max 23.
• blue jay: % days 96; tot 241; avg 9.6; max 19.

Perching Birds (Passerines)

• mourning dove: % days 100; tot 186; avg 7.2; max 16.
• eurasian collared dove: % days 65; tot 54; avg 3.2; max 8.
• common ground dove: % days 0.
• rock pigeon: % days 4; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1. NEW! 1 plain old pigeon, white with black splotches, at the west end of Lake #9.
• common grackle: % days 96; tot 968; avg 38.7; max 70.
• boat-tailed grackle: % days 81; tot 97; avg 4.6; max 11. I think I have started counting more boat-tailed because of 2 secondary ID methods: size and foraging on the lake shore. The sure-fire IDs for this bird are the "shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop" call and the brown color of the females.
• red-winged blackbird: % days 19; tot 6; avg 1.2; max 2.
• european starling: % days 50; tot 148; avg 11.4; max 70. It doesn't seem like you see these that often. They are sometimes in a mixed flock with grackles and crows; there are sometimes a whole bunch of them together in 1 flock.
• northern mockingbird: % days 100; tot 917; avg 35.3; max 67.
• brown thrasher: % days 35; tot 23; avg 2.5; max 5. I seemed to be seeing these on a more regular basis.
• northern cardinal: % days 46; tot 12; avg 1.0; max 1.
• red-bellied woodpecker: % days 96, tot 203, avg 8.1, max 17.
• pileated woodpecker: % days 8; tot 2; avg 1.0; max 1.
• downy woodpecker: % days 4; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• northern flicker: % days 0.
• palm warbler: % days 54; tot 315; avg 22.5; max 36.
• black-and-white warbler: % days 0.
• yellow-throated warbler: % days 0.
• prairie warbler: % days 0.
• blue-gray gnatcatcher: % days 4; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• gray catbird: % days 4; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1. NEW! I don't remember the details but I think I felt pretty good about the ID.