Recent First-Timer Birds

Do I pretty much only talk about birds, food, and gardening now? The answer is probably yes, but these simple pleasures are more than pulling their weight this year.

As a relatively new birder, I still have lots and lots of relatively common birds around me that I haven't noticed/ID'd yet. Pretty much every time I go out for a walk, especially to the retention pond, I see something new and it is a wonderful and exciting rush. Here are a few of my latest "first timers" (or at least the first photo evidence I've gotten of said birds).

I've been waiting a long time to see another American Avocet after noticing one at the side of the road a couple years ago. I know they are common and there are places I can go to find them in the city, but I've been stubborn and trying to stay birding at my own neighbourhood pond. Finally found this one just standing around last week on a very windy day! This is such a cool bird. Blue legs!

I have mixed up common grackles and Brewer's blackbirds in the past, but the blue head very clearly identifies this guy as a grackle!

Eared grebe! This bird was so far away in person that I assumed it was a red-necked grebe, and was pleasantly surprised to find out what it was through my telephoto lens!

I am pretty sure this is a Forster's tern due to the lighter outer wings, but correct me if this is a common tern! I think we've got both around and they are hard to tell apart.

I snapped a bunch of pictures of these two, assuming they were mallards from afar but upon looking closer realized they were gorgeous northern shovelers! Look at those giant bills!

Yesterday I was booking it home after the scary clouds rolled in, had put away my camera, and suddenly saw a yellow headed blackbird right in front of me in the grass! I had to take my camera back out to get this (admittedly terrible) photo, but still made it back home before the rain. I felt like a true Pokemon master after this, because I had seen five different types of blackbirds in a one-hour span (yellow headed, red winged, Brewer's, grackle, and brown-headed cowbird).

My favourite backyard birding experience lately! I saw a white throated sparrow (left) for the first time a couple weeks ago at the pond, and then the next day one was hanging around in my backyard! Then later, it had brought a white crowned sparrow (right) friend! They have not been back much but this was such a cool thing to see.

Pandemic Takeout Part 2

More suggestions for places to order takeout from, and a fun option for mixing it up a bit!

Since I last posted about ordering takeout during the era of social distancing, we have ordered food from a few more of our favourite restaurants. We have also been doing the pickups ourselves to ensure that the restaurants do not have to pay a commission to a delivery app, and had one especially bittersweet reaction to this which I'll describe in a bit.

We have ordered pickup beer from Shelter a couple of times, once for Brahm's birthday and another time when we were downtown anyway to pick up food from Number One Noodle House (call directly instead of using an app and get 10% off). If you have not tried Number One Noodle House yet, this is something you need to get on ASAP. My favourite shared meal for two consists of the smashed cucumber salad and the cumin egg noodles, but everything we've had here has been amazing.

Since the weather is finally not terrible, it's bike riding season once again! We don't live near a ton of independent restaurants but we have a couple favourites in the area. Angeethi Flame is close enough that we can bike over for pickup and get home in time to enjoy hot food.

My favourite takeout experience so far though was this Tuesday. We called October Asian Cuisine for an order, biked over to pick it up and then ate our food in the park across the street from the restaurant. This was such a fun "date night" type of activity! Picnics are highly underrated, and I plan to make them more of a habit this summer. (Normally I can't say no to October's dan dan ramen but didn't want to eat soup in a park, so we stuck to rolls and dumplings.)

I added a $10 tip over the phone to which the employee responded "Are you sure!?" When we picked up our food, we found an extra order of specialty sushi in the bag (a $10 value from the menu), with a note:

This was so lovely, but says a lot about how much the delivery apps take in commission, if a restaurant is willing to essentially comp our tip in free food as a thank you for ordering directly. So please if you have the time and ability to pick up your own order, skip Skip, and call restaurants directly.

On the note of riding bikes, it is SO nice to ride in minimal traffic lately. I hate a lot of things about what this pandemic is doing, but the traffic reduction is one silver lining. If you've been uneasy about riding your bike on the streets of Saskatoon, now is definitely the time to try it out. If you stick to residential side streets it's almost like the streets are totally closed to cars!

Our Lucky Last Week of Normalcy

It's Cinco de Mayo, and I'm going to write about our last "normal" week before Life with COVID - our 2020 Mexican vacation, and likely the last vacation we'll have for quite some time.

This was our fourth year going to Mexico and we have continued to return to the Ixtapa-Zihuatenejo area (yes, THAT Zihuatenejo). The previous three years we have stayed at all-inclusives through Sunwing vacation packages, and absolutely loved the Azul Grand at Playa Linda just outside of Ixtapa. During our first visit, we went on a countryside tour that stopped in the extremely charming fishing village of Barra de Potosi. Last year, we went on a walking tour of Zihuatenejo. Both tours made me want to spend more time in these areas, so we booked half a week in each this year and had the most wonderful time.

Barra de Potosi is part of the Playa Blanca area, on the opposite side of the airport as Ixtapa and Zihuatenejo. We stayed at a small resort about 15 minutes down the beach from the village, which meant before we sat at a seaside enramada to ingest copious amounts of camarones al coco and guacamole, we had to get a bit of exercise. Playa Blanca is without a doubt the most wonderful beach I've ever been to. We truly did not want to leave! The whole area was extremely quiet, a mix of Canadian, American, and Mexican tourists and locals, and had an insanely relaxing vibe.

A highlight was renting kayaks to go wildlife viewing in the saltwater lagoon, something I'd been dreaming about since we took a short boat tour of the lagoon during our visit four years ago.

We spent the second half of the week in Zihuatenejo, which was a totally different vibe - a little more interesting and lively, not super relaxing, but not overactive either. The Mercado Municipal was a lot of fun, a great place to buy consumable souvenirs like coffee and vanilla, and also to find a very cheap and delicious lunch. Our favourite activity in Zihua though was probably just wandering around, finding people to sell us snacks and agua fresca on the street (which just seems an impossible idea, not even two months later - we had a feeling this could be a last hurrah of the sort, and admit that we ate the street churros with a little extra gusto).

As you know if you've read this blog for a while, I've been working my way through the Duolingo Spanish tree, and when taking this vacation a bit more "off the beaten path" it was highly beneficial to know a bit of Spanish, especially in tiny Barra de Potosi. I did notice that most Canadian/American tourists in these areas appeared to know at least a small amount of Spanish. I have no idea when (if?? :*( ) we'll ever get to go back again, but I'm still working away at it so I can be ready.

The last day of our vacation wasn't exactly "ruined" but was definitely stressful as we were getting news of the COVID-19 shutdowns starting at home. We feel extremely lucky, and a little bit reckless, that we traveled during the last week it was somewhat acceptable to do so. Likely we never would have gone had we realized what was to come, which makes me a bit uneasy, but nonetheless we made it home safe and I sure hope that we'll be able to return to this beautiful area of the world again sometime, though I know it'll never quite be the same.