23 June 2010

Rumble, Grumble, Flash and Trouble

We awoke yesterday morning to the sound of thunder.
The sky North of us was black. There was lightning in cloud, cloud to cloud, and cloud to ground.
Computers are wonderful things... we dragged this thing out and took a look at several sites to get a feel for what was going on.
North was impossible and gonna stay that way for a while.
There were other storms popping up all around us.
We took off and headed South, hoping to be able to dodge the "popping up" stuff.
Ha.
We moved one bunch of about 75 birds and were enroute to our next location when God said "NO!"
Viz went to less than two miles and we landed. The convoy chase crowd caught up with us and we sat waiting in the rain.
And sat.
And sat.
For almost two hours.
One helicopter, one pilot, one observer, thirty biologists and bird handlers, sitting, waiting for the rain to end and the lightning to go away.
And when it finally did we found a flock of 200 birds, rounded them up and banded those that weren't already wearing a band.

We finally broke for lunch 90 minutes late, and after lunch things didn't go much better...
We found one group of about 200 birds that was on property owned by someone worried about the liability of allowing our group to come do the job we wanted to do. They have that right, and we drove away thinking "maybe next year".
We closed up shop at 4 P.M. and headed for home. It was then I found that somewhere along the line I had lost my cell phone.
I had to laugh.
If you don't have a sense of humor about such things you go crazy.
Come to think of it, maybe that's my problem!

More gooses tomorrow.

6 comments:

CJ said...

So... why are you harassing those poor Canada Geese?

cary said...

Don't you hate that pit-of-the-stomach feeling when you lose something that, ten or twelve years ago, you didn't know you needed so badly?

Greybeard said...

'Cause they're from Canada!
There, I said it, and now I feel so much better.
(Except these birds are mostly what they call "resident" birds...
they don't migrate at all.)

Cary, I hate my cell phone...
Consider it a constant annoyance.
But about once a year it more than pays for itself, and I know I gotta have it. (Got my "loaner" yesterday and my replacement will be in on Friday.)

Bloviating Zeppelin said...

So did you ever find the cell?

BZ

Greybeard said...

I didn't even try to find it BZ.
I know when I had it. I know I had used it, then needed my hands for something else and probably put it down on the bed rails of the truck. So I'm not absolutely sure where I even lost it.

Expensive mistake...
It was a nice phone and I had added a micro-SD chip to it so I could take a bunch of photos.
(I still hate the things.)

Timothy Frazier said...

I must start reading your articles in the order they are posted. I was halfway through this when I finally figured out "birds" were real fowl and not some massive array of helicopters you were helping move to new state-of-the-art heliport.

Then I thought you might be helping out down in gulf.

They asked me to help clean the pelicans, but made me go home after I gutted 'em, too. By the way, pelican tastes a lot like snow owl.