bigger birds

Here's Booger! (That should be a Johnny-Carson announcing "Here.")

Her foot is in focus, but the rest of her is moving very fast, coming to see what that shiny thing I've got in my hand can be. Booger's an Amazon who is a permanent resident at my second job. We all refer to her as she, but she has not, as far as anyone knows, laid an egg.

I've realized that I get such good expressions from the birds because the back of the iPod is shiny.

Shiny, I tell you!

The two macaws also find it fascinating.

They examine the shiny...

...from several angles.

I find the large birds more and more fascinating, but at my age I have no intention of getting too interested in creatures with lifespans averaging greater than forty years. (Aside from the feather allergy.)

orchids again

I must think of more distinguishable orchid titles, because I think there will be a lot of them.

You don't usually think of brown as a possible flower color, but these carry it off beautifully. I love the shape of the buds.

Here, the red is almost brown.

And for a color change, a white from springtime.

surprise at work

This bird, a boarder, has an unmistakably masculine name from Lord of the Rings.

Yesterday at work, I found this.

Since this bird lives quite alone, there's no chance of it hatching.

orchids, et cetera

This is a new and fascinating one:

These pink ones frustrate me; they face out from the balcony across a lot of open space (you can see them in the distance behind the star attraction above), and there's no way to get close to them from the front unless you're sixteen feet tall.

This shot was an accidental brush of the finger, and I was surprised by how much I like the composition.

Another orchid that hasn't bloomed since I started working here:

Notice the banana leaf that has had an encounter with the ceiling fan. Nature, red in tooth and claw even indoors.

I'm not even sure that  this is an orchid, but it probably is:

I love the way the yellow ones catch the sun:

I tried a tabata

Cranky Fitness has awesome powers. When I read about tabatas in Crabby's post here I thought they sounded horrible. My whole approach to exercise is can be summed up as "just keep moving." But I went to the gym today, and while I was on the elliptical, I noticed the man next to me doing intervals, and I thought, what the heck. So I tried one. I counted seconds in my head instead of looking at my watch, which would have required removing one hand from my death-grip on the elliptical, and I almost fell off as it was. I also suspect my version of "all-out effort" isn't as out as all that. But I tried one, and I might do it again. I was near the end of my mile, so I went straight into cool down, since I had actually broken a sweat. 
This post is without illustration, since getting the iPod out of my pocket and trying to take a picture of my rapidly moving feet would have resulted in injury or death.

the little birds

In addition to the macaws and amazon parrot that live at my second job, there are several small birds who don't interest me as much. They are pretty, though.

This fellow is rather shy, but the camera interested him.

These two posed in perfect imitation of their leaf-substitute.

Here, the lovebirds, the only ones I know the species of, were strangely hard to get into a single shot.

the coffee fairy

The coffee fairy visited me yesterday. I came home from work to find a large box on my doorstep.

It says "Happy Birthday" on the shipping not-invoice (no prices), and it is my birth month, although not near the day, but there's no clue to the giver. What a lot of coffee.