3.1

3.1 books read.

1st up, "Usurpation" by Sue Burke, 2024, 314 pages, 97k words. Book 3 of the Semiosis series. I enjoyed the other 2 OK, with some reservations. This 1 was a bit slow starting, then once it got moving, a 15 year jump to the future. The author says the pacing is odd due to the main narrator being a very long-lived, immobile, intelligent plant.

Next, our 0.1 book: "The Wood at Midwinter" by Susanna Clarke, 2024, 64 pages, 3k words, illustrated. A tiny, cute little story about a saintly girl whose best friends are dogs, a pig, and a woods. A very simple story, I completely forgot how it ended. So i took 10 minutes & read it again. At $10.99 for the eBook, not much of an entertainment value.

3rdly, "The Mercy of Gods" by James S. A. Corey, 2024, 385 pages, 119k words. Book 1 of The Captive's War series. Incredibly powerful aliens with various client races show up and overrun a human world, taking prisoners to see if a use can be found for humanity.

These guys write well, but I must take exception with some of the chapter endings early on.

Chapter 1:

Later, when he stood in the eye of a storm that burned a thousand worlds, he’d remember how it all started with Else Yannin’s hand on his arm and his need to give her a reason to keep it there.

Chapter 4:

Later, it would seem like a premonition.

I would characterize this as cheesy, heavy-handed foreshadowing. These guys are better writers than this. This is an editing failure. Both those sentences could be deleted & everyone would be better off for it.

Lastly, a novella set in the world of the previous story: "Livesuits" by James S. A. Corey, 2024, 70 pages, 21k words. A different take than the novel, with humans fighting back. It has a very "Starship Troopers" kind of feel. Kind of an "Oh no!" ending. I liked how these authors used these shorter works to flesh out their universe in The Expanse, I think this is a good technique.

Well as short as that last 1 was, the post title probably should have been "2.4" instead of "3.1".

IslandWalk Birds, 2023-2024 Season

The wood stork flew in, landed ~15' from the great egret, &
started walking toward it.
The great egret didn't want to hang & flew off.

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.

This is my 4th report, here are the 1st 3:

1. 2020-2021;
2. 2021-2022 - the 1st post chronologically, it contains discussions of things I found interesting about a lot of the species - 10 seasons worth;
3. 2022-2023.

For the 2023-2024 season, I was in IslandWalk October thru April, less 1 week in Martinique in February, & 2 weeks in KY in March.

I manually entered this season's data, 32 bird lists, in this spreadsheet. It doesn't take that long, and it gives me a good review of the data.

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.

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 1334; avg 41.7; max 85.
• muscovy duck: % days 100; tot 169; avg 5.3; max 10.
• common gallinule: % days 100; tot 622; avg 19.4; max 31. After 1st being counted in IW by me 2020-04-02, their #s continue to grow. In the 32 bird lists, there were 5 where the gallinules outnumbered the mottled ducks. The gallinule seem to like the more numerous reeds we have now.
• american coot: % days 75; tot 146; avg 6.1; max 15. From a total count of 3 the prior season to 146 this season.

Divers

• pie-billed grebe: % days 88; tot 148; avg 5.3; max 14.
• hooded merganser: % days 31; tot 147; avg 14.7; max 36. They were here from late November to early February.
• lesser scaup: % days 31; tot 547; avg 54.7; max 94. We had quite a flock of these. They were on Lake #22 for quite a while, then spread to Lakes 24-29 for their last couple of weeks. They were here from the new year to early March.
• ring-necked duck: % days 6; tot 14; avg 7.0; max 10. 10 in early December, 4 in late January???
• double-crested cormorant: % days 91; tot 140; avg 4.8; max 12. No sign of a Cormorant Menace, yay!
• anhinga: % days 81; tot 93; avg 3.6; max 10.
• brown pelican: % days 41; tot 28; avg 2.2; max 4.
• belted kingfisher: % days 31; tot 10; avg 1.0; max 1. Their distinctive chitter is easy to recognize.

Waders

Wader numbers seem to be down in general. 1 theory I have is that the lakes have been so full. I think the waders prefer things more marshy.

• great egret: % days 97; tot 77; avg 2.5; max 4. No longer our most numerous wader.
• great blue heron: % days 41; tot 19; avg 1.5; max 2. Down from last season.
• snowy egret: % days 59; tot 54; avg 2.5; max 7. Down from last season. I last counted a snowy egret on 3/12.
• cattle egret: % days 0.
• tricolored heron: % days 91; tot 82; avg 2.8; max 7. Down from last season, but our most numerous wader this season.
• little blue heron: % days 88; tot 79; avg 2.8; max 11. Down slightly from last season.
• green heron: % days 16; tot 5; avg 1.0; max 1.
• wood stork: % days 6; tot 2; avg 1.0; max 1.
• white ibis: % days 97; tot 423; avg 13.6; max 41.
• glossy ibis: % days 72; tot 210; avg 9.1; max 44.
• limpkin: % days 22; tot 8; avg 1.1; max 2. Considerably fewer than last season.

Beach Birds

• killdeer: % days 0.
• black skimmer: % days 0.

Raptors

• osprey: % days 47; tot 16; avg 1.1; max 2.
• bald eagle: % days 3; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• cooper's hawk: % days 3; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• red-shouldered hawk: % days 3; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• broad-winged hawk: % days 0.
• swallow-tailed kite: % days 0.
• loggerhead shrike: % days 88; tot 69; avg 2.5; max 7. 1 of my fav birds. Down a bit from last season.
• black vulture: % days 6; tot 2; avg 1.0; max 1.
• turkey vulture: % days 50; tot 31; avg 1.9; max 6.

Corvids

• fish crow: % days 81; tot 632; avg 24.3; max 76. I am increasingly thinking it is pointless to count crows. The proper caw goes out, 100 crows can gather in 30 seconds or so. Similarly, the vultures will show up in large numbers depending on the size of the fish kill. I created a formula column in the spreadsheet, = # birds - fish crows - black vultures - turkey vultures, I may play with that some.
• blue jay: % days 94; tot 376; avg 12.5; max 30.

Perching Birds (Passerines)

• mourning dove: % days 94; tot 198; avg 6.6; max 21.
• eurasian collared dove: % days 75; tot 75; avg 3.1; max 9.
• common ground dove: % days 0.
• rock pigeon: % days 0.
• common grackle: % days 96; tot 968; avg 38.7; max 70. Once again our most common passerine.
• boat-tailed grackle: % days 78; tot 86; avg 3.4; max 8.
• red-winged blackbird: % days 9; tot 7; avg 2.3; max 3.
• european starling: % days 9; tot 37; avg 12.3; max 32.
• northern mockingbird: % days 100; tot 744; avg 23.3; max 52.
• brown thrasher: % days 13; tot 5; avg 1.3; max 2. Quite a bit fewer than last season, but not a lot regardless.
• northern cardinal: % days 25; tot 10; avg 1.3; max 2.
• red-bellied woodpecker: % days 100, tot 303, avg 9.5, max 23. Up a little from last season.
• pileated woodpecker: % days 3; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• downy woodpecker: % days 3; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• northern flicker: % days 0.
• palm warbler: % days 81; tot 289; avg 11.1; max 35.
• black-and-white warbler: % days 0.
• yellow-throated warbler: % days 0.
• prairie warbler: % days 0.
• blue-gray gnatcatcher: % days 3; tot 2; avg 2.0; max 2.
• gray catbird: % days 0.
• american redstart: % days 0. NEW! I saw 2 of these 1 morning walking to town center. The orange patches made the ID easy.

Or Not

I really was intending to starting blogging books on a onesy basis. But, I'm in a period of serious baby-sitting, and after I finished novel #1, it was inconvenient to blog it. Versus, it was very easy to start another book. So, 3 novels and a novella, all very good.

1. "Polostan", by Neal Stephenson, 2024, 320 pages, 111k words. This is Volume 1 of "Bomb Light". I think we're going to get Stephenson's version of "Oppenheimer". This is totally a setup book - the origin story is 1st, rather than get us sucked in & then tell it as a flashback. The heroine of the story mostly grew up in Big Sky Country, working on a ranch that bred polo ponies - that was her mom's side of the family. Her dad meanwhile is a dedicated commie. Nothing says "dedicated commie" like

   For Papa was busy translating the Twenty-One Theses of the Second Congress of the Third International into English, to inform the proceedings of the Red International of Labor Unions, which was preparing an ideological offensive to cleanse its ranks of naïve anarcho-syndicalism.

   The family moves to Russia when she is ~5YO, when grown she speaks fluent, accentless English & Russian. Heading into the race to the A-bomb, & the following cold war, which side will she be on? We'll find out, I guess.

   We get Neils Bohr early on in the story, & our heroine's 1st lover in 1933 is a young New York Jew named Dick - Feynman maybe?

2. "Alien Clay", by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2024, 375 pages, 116k words. Tchaikovsky likes prison novels - this is his 2nd or 3rd. Interesting interstellar travel technique, some very, very novel biology on the target prison planet - totally different system of "evolution". As always, a great read.

3. "Spill", by Cory Doctorow, 2024, 103 pages, 31k words. The Bard of the Revolution delivers, as always. This is at least the 4th Doctorow story featuring Marcus Yallow, gifted hacker. These stories are all about civil resistance to the powers that be, & are somewhat reference manuals on how to fight back against police brutality crowd suppression methods.

   Our heroes of the revolution in this story are Water Protectors, trying to stop the latest zombie revival of the Keystone Pipeline. A lot of them are Native Americans. I did not know this:

   Native people serve in the armed forces at five times the rate of the general population.

   Lots of false flag operations, lots of subversion of local law enforcement by corporate $$$, Capitalism FTL!

   The emotional content of this story is outstanding, I gave it 5 stars.

4. "The Naming Song", by Jedediah Berry, 2024, 501 pages, 155k words. This is only Berry's 2nd novel. I enjoyed the 1st, which came out in 2014. He also did a deck of cards telling a story of generations of a weird family living in a weird house, with associated audio with 52 different people reading each card's excerpt - it's surprisingly enjoyable.
   

   This latest I really enjoyed. Post-apocalyptic, but the apocalypse has done some strange things. Very much a story about words. A most excellent read! Interesting characters, cards come into it, lots of action, great conclusion. I actually gave this story 5 stars, 2 in a row!

Still babysitting, ready to forge ahead ...