Handyman and Blackout 63

Yesterday, a certain lucky ovate added some cheap SAKS to his collection.  These Saks were confiscated from their owners, leaving their former owners defenseless, possibly in an unfamiliar urban environment, where for want of any protection they were brutally assaulted maybe.  Tough luck.  But finders keepers, losers weepers.

These twain are a 2002-2005 Handyman and a Blackout 63; basically a Wenger El Mesero Negro.  The Blackouts, according to hearsay, had their origin in 2010.  However, Crumby has not seen them in a catalog dated prior to 2012.  So the longest they were in production was, potentially, 2010-2013.

Crumby also acquired a Vic Explorer with the plastic 5x magnifier.  The 5x is Crumby's favorite magnifier due to its relatively low magnification.  Crumby is fixing to remove the magnifier/Phillips layer from the Explorer, then insert that into a Compact, thus fabricating a Yeoman.

Zonotrichia querula

Crumby does not see Harris sparrows every Romish year.  This year he saw them barely.  Like with only three days to go.  These pictures were selected for the head angles.

Addendum:  Today, January 2, 2015 of the Julian,  we also had a Harris sparrow at the CB.  A first for the yard list.

Winter Solstice

My window view is of the Shell refinery in Pasadena, Tx.  A great many gasoline trucks come empty, yet leave full.  Mourning or morning doves fly by.  Big egrets circle, then disappear behind the tanks.  Luckily, on this shortest day, one sees less, maybe.

Grasshopper Sparrow

Once upon a time, Crumby was paying perhaps the first of many spring visits to Camp Bowie, a big national guard facility located southeast of semi-beautiful Brownwood, Texas.  Somewhere on that vast post was then a grassy sward that featured a great many grasshoppers sparrows.  An average ornithologist like Crumby had only to stop his great vehicle, roll down the window and easily observe the grasshopper sparrows singing their semi-beautiful songs from exposed grass stalk perches.  Initially Crumby was miffed by those grasshopper sparrows because they apparently chose that particular grassy sward based on habitat structure rather than plant species composition.  Indeed, the dominant grass species was KR bluestem.  Crumby felt like grasshopper sparrows needed to be in a habitat dominated by native tall and mid grasses.  Yet Crumby got over it because that place reliably had grasshopper sparrows.

Now Crumby has just traveled through his 67th birthday still upon Planet Earth instead of in Planet Earth.  Yet this turn around Ogma Sunface is starting out badly.  Very badly.  So badly that the best event of  Crumby's new year so far is this crumby picture of a grasshopper sparrow.  However crumby, Crumby was glad to get this picture, in winter, in mostly native coastal prairie.