My Quilt

My cousin is an award-winning quilter. When I was a little girl, she made me a beautiful pastel quilt, which went to my younger cousins eventually. To replace it, this summer she made a gorgeous fall-colored quilt with nature motifs. I wanted to share it here since it's stunning, and will be appreciated by nature people because of the patterns she chose =)

Here's the finished product!

See the birds that were sewn in by her friend who stitches the layers together?

Here's another close up showing the stitching as well as the beautiful fabrics she chose

So this is what I was thankful for this holiday season - enjoy!

Election Day!

I voted! Did you?

Birding @ UCI

It finally feels like fall on campus. It's cloudy and overcast today, there's a cool breeze, and yellow-rumped warbler's drippy calls fill the air. I sat in Aldrich Park for a few minutes since I got on campus early for class. I heard an Anna's hummingbird, a house wren calling, and a black phoebe flitting to and from the trees above me.

Leaves littered the park, and swirled around in the wind. Students walked by wearing sweaters and scarves (65 is cold for Orange county! hehe) I had to get up eventually and head into my classroom, but it was nice to spend a moment enjoying the subtle change of seasons in Southern California (finally).

Environmental Internship

Quick post - I have confirmed my internship for the Winter Quarter 2009. It will be with the Irvine Ranch Conservancy. I'm going to be reporting on and helping with their environmental outreach programs, found here. I'll be updating a bunch as I begin to get involved =)

Update from UCI

I promise I'm still here! I have been quite busy - it's my final year as an undergraduate at the University of California, Irvine. I have been writing a column for the school paper, here's a link to my second article. My first was in the post previous to this. I also joined the Environmental Law Society on campus.

I'm currently interviewing for internships with environmental education and advocacy groups, more information to come on that. I am on the UCI mock trial team, because a good understanding of the process of litigation never hurt a budding environmental lawyer ;)

I haven't had a moment to relax and get out birding, but things should slow down a little at some point, or it better soon - my camera's gathering dust and my bins are squeaking tiny protests from their shelf. Hope all is well, and I will hopefully have some birding escapades to report in the near future!

School Paper Goes Green

Hello all, the UC Irvine student newspaper, the New University has added a new "green" writer - me! Here's a link to my first article, complete with photo also by yours truly. Let's hope this becomes a weekly column educating Irvine's students about the beautiful places in Orange County.

Back in California

I birded today with a friend from the East Coast, Ben. He needed to track down Cal gnatcatcher for his lifelist, so we met at Upper Newport Bay. After three hours of hearing them without a good view, we finally got on one calling nearby and once we had our fill of looking at it, gnatcatchers were everywhere. A blue-grey even popped up and gave us some good looks, typical, once we've seen them, they're everywhere.

(Click me!)

We headed up to the coast to Bolsa Chica, which was a strangely quiet place, in between the shorebirds departure and the fall ducks arrival. The weather was incredible, sunny and breezy, and I even managed to burn my face, ugh. I was surprised to see a large number of belted kingfishers on the far end of Bolsa Chica in the eucalyptus grove. We walked around and back to the parking lot, where we parted ways.

In some ways, I'm very glad to be home, but I sure do miss Cambridge. The scenery, the birding, the ambiance - it truly was a wonderful place and I plan to go back in the future. Now it's time to buckle down and enter my last year at UCI (!) already - wow. 

Goodbye Cambridge

My last birding trip in Cambridge was to Milton Country Park with Richard. We grabbed a bus over and walked around for a few hours. I finally got good looks at Kingfisher - they are SO cute! We got caught out in the rain, but then the sun broke through again for the last bit of our birding. We tried really hard to get me good looks at Bullfinch - but they're incredibly timid, and all I got were flybys, lots of calls, and glimpses of them through the bushes. Oh well.

Mute Swan looking for handouts

My trip to Cambridge has been amazing, and I am definitely sad to be leaving this charming place. The birding on my trip was amazing, thanks to Richard Hall, Torcuil Grant, and Ilya MacLean. I got somewhere around 65 lifers - I'll do the final tally when I'm home and over my inevitable jetlag.

Train tracks

I leave England Monday, I will be spending the weekend in London with a college friend. I am definitely planning to come back to England in the future - perhaps for a higher degree or just for pleasure.

Milton Country Park

Weekend in Paris

I had the most incredible weekend in Paris, France. We left Saturday morning at 3:45am (ughh) and took a train to King's Cross in London, where we caught the Eurostar to Paris. We arrived to have brunch around 10:30am - I of course had a chocolate banana crepe to get into the spirit of things. We went to the hotel to freshen up and ditch our luggage, then it was off in smaller groups to explore. My group went to the Monmarte District and the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur. I bought my incredibly tourist-y "I 'heart' Paris" shirt of course.

Eiffel Tower from the top of the Arc De Triomphe

From Sacre-Coeur, we headed to the Notre Dame to meet with the other groups and walk through the famous cathedral. We grabbed some over-priced baguettes nearby then headed to the park behind the Notre Dame to have a wine and baguette picnic, which was fun. After a few glasses of wine, we began a leisurely 4 mile, hour+ long walk along the River Seine to the Eiffel Tower. It grew darker as we walked, and by the time we saw the tower it was glowing blue and sparkling for the hourly lightshow.

The Eiffel Tower lit at night

The evening ended late - 1am, as we attempted to get off the tower through masses of summer tourists. Sunday morning we headed to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and the other great works of art held there. We enjoyed about 3.5 hours of wandering around the Louvre - I spent most of my time in the Greek, Roman, and Etruscan sculture rooms. After our museum walk, we grabbed more baguette sandwiches and headed across the street to Tuileries Gardens where we had a picnic and napped in the sunshine on the lawns.

On the hour they do a 10 minute light show

After lunch and a nap, we again split into groups. Mine headed up the Camps-Elysees to shop and head to the Arc de Triomphe, which after sitting under to people-watch, we climbed the seemingly never-ending spiral staircase to the top to get breathtaking 360* views of Paris in the daylight to compliment our nighttime Eiffel view. We headed back to the hotel to freshen up before going back out -this time to the Latin Quarter, where we had a French dinner at Chez Clement. After a leisurely dinner, we headed up to a Piano Bar where we sipped wine and listened to the French and English songs played/sung. We called it a night after midnight and were up bright and early again this morning to catch trains back to Cambridge - which feels like home now, I have mixed feelings to think about the fact I go home in less than a week....

The Louvre

The Venus de Milo

The Mona Lisa

The Arc de Triomphe

Basilique du Sacre-Coeur

Notre Dame

Notre Dame and the River Seine

Walk to Grantchester with Richard

I met up with Richard Hall again today to bird for a few hours between classes. We walked to Grantchester, where we had lunch at The Orchard, a sort of tea and sandwich place, with cute little lounge chairs placed around an orchard. The walk there, we had a good little flock of long-tailed tits, chiffchaffs, blue tits, and a blackcap. A goldcrest was in a nearby treee, and a common treecreeper called.

Teasel

We walked along open fields, hoping for some skylarks and other open farmland loving birds. No dice, but we did have a chaffinch that I managed to snap a photo of as we sat and ate our sandwiches.

Chaffinch

The walk back was incredibly peaceful, the sun came out, warming our backs as we made our way toward Cambridge along the river. We stopped occasionally to look at dragonflies or listen to a call coming from the trees and bushes around the river. People were jumping in the water, laughing, and generally enjoying the sunshine. I really do enjoy birding here - the birds don't respond to pishing, which annoys me to no end - but besides that, I find the birds here quite charming.

Mute Swan

Banded Demoiselle

Mating Dragonflies

You can see how he's hooked in behind her eyes

Wicken Fen

Today I went birding at Wicken Fen with a birder friend who works at Cambridge University. We drove out to the Fens and walked around for a few hours. It was windy and overcast, and the birding was fairly slow - we did manage to pick up some birds, kestrel, buzzard, green sanpiper, Eurasian teals were a lifer for me, and a female marsh harrier was exciting. The wildlife and scenery was a welcome change, sometimes you just need to get out away from even the most beautiful cityscapes...

Fungi on tree stump

Small tortoiseshell

Water lilies

Swan with cygnets

Mating small(?) whites

Flowers

Skipper spp. on thistle

Meadow brown

Bug from the blackberry plant

Kings College Chapel Roof!

So today was amazing. We got a tour guide to take us up onto the roof of the Kings College Chapel (not usually allowed for the public). It was spine-tingling and hair raising - but so incredibly worth it. The view was phenomenal, but I didn't know we were going up there before hand, so I didn't bring my fancy camera *drat* - I do have some video uploaded at the end of the post though =)

The view from the roof!

The roof itself is vaulted, so we were scrambling up the sides to stand at the peak in the center, which still makes me a bit dizzy thinking back on it - but offered without a doubt the best views of the city available.

Looking down to King's lawn

Graffiti on the walls - amazing!

Not quite sure what was meant here - but quite an important year for America!

Video I took from the rooftop - sorry the quality sucks...

Ely Cathedral

Today we took a short train ride to Ely, the smallest city in England (it's a city because it has a cathedral). The cathedral was one of the prettiest we've seen yet, and I got some very cool photos there.

Candles for prayer

I'm becoming a fan of stained glass

The view from the center of the cathedral (or as close as I could get)

This guy's tomb was a crack-up

Stratford-upon-Avon and London

I visited the birthplace of William Shakespeare today. Stratford-upon-Avon is a quaint, if touristy, place with lots of cute shop fronts along it's high street. The River Avon runs along side the city, and is covered in boats.

Holy Trinity Church - where Shakespeare was baptized and buried.

We saw a modern interpretation production of a Midsummer Night's Dream, which is a great Shakespeare play, but not my favorite version. I tend to prefer traditional style plays rather than these stylized modern things - that being said, the theater was great and the lighting really made the show.

The Shakespeare Hotel - typical storefront in Stratford.

We did a walking tour which gave us a quick and dirty Shakespeare history, then had dinner at the Garrick Inn, which had a delicious vegetarian risotto! I enjoyed Stratford-upon-Avon, but I think all this gorgeous scenery we've encountered in England is starting to overstimulate me - I'm beginning to take it all for granted, "oh what's that? another gorgeous church circa 1200? ho hum..."

LONDON:

So I didn't manage to get a post in about our day trip to London, so I'll tag in on the end of this post.

The Tower Bridge in London (NOT the London Bridge)

Wesminister Abbey

The Globe Theater

Weekend in Cambridge

Beer brewed specially for the British Birdfair by Langton Brewery

People punting on the River Cam along the Backs behind Kings College

Kings College

Pembroke from the library entrance looking in

Pembroke College

Pembroke looking into the courtyard where I live