Got to be birds flying higher

Hubs just has the WORST post-vacation cold. I feel so badly for him because it was settling in the last couple days we were in Ontario.

My guess is that he picked up something on the plane and just couldn't fight it off. I tagged this post aging because our immune systems aren't as robust sometimes, plus hubs is asthmatic. It's been horrible to watch him gasp for air :-(

My free advice for today is to mask up on planes. I was the only person masking at the airport and on the plane. On the return trip, I was one of a few people masking at the airport and at least one of two people masking on the plane.

There were so many people with nasty ass coughs, and, not to channel my germophobe Dad, but being trapped in a metal and plastic tube for hours with 100 other people is not going to end well ;-D I always resist wiping things down, yet...Dad is not entirely wrong either. On the return flight, there was a family with two little girls who crushed crackers and put their bare feet everywhere o.O People just trash the area around their seats, and it's like, ugggggghhhhhh...

Anyway, our trip had a grim beginning as a sick passenger was actually taken off the plane. The flight crew asked for any medical personnel to identify themselves, and two men did. The passenger sat at the back and was carried out by the volunteers. He coughed up blood on himself. I hope he's all right--we checked local news, but there was no mention of him. One of the volunteers sat near us, and he received gold-star service from the crew--their profuse thanks, a whole can of pop, and a free meal.

We arrived back from a week in Perth, Ontario on Friday and my birdwatching this year was much more successful. You would think Merlin would detect and prompt you to download the bird pack for your location--which is kinda does--but not when you visit a completely new location.

Here are the birds I mostly heard, thanks to Merlin. I wanted to sight the last two on the list, but we were in a rural area and the deerflies were fierce! One got trapped in my hair, ugh! Just as well anyway--I didn't bring the binoculars or camera.

House sparrows
Rock doves
European starlings
American robins
Canada geese
Grackles (Uncle Mike is feeding them)
Ravens
Blue jay
Song sparrows
Chipping sparrows
Chimney swifts
House finches
American goldfinches
Yellow warblers
Red-winged blackbirds
Ring-billed gulls (Merlin ID for sure! They were flocking at the railway museum)
Black-capped chickadees
Cedar waxwing
Osprey (by the side of the highway--saw the giant nest first!)
Red-eyed vireos
Eastern phoebes

Forgot how fun Map Loco is--hopefully I'll get to more places in the coming years!



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The best way to start off this travel diary is mentioning travel itself. We quickly realized how rusty we were at vacation planning back in February. This was our first vacation since 2019 and the first time I’ve flown internationally in 40 years. 36 years for hubs. Frequent flyers we’re not.

I bought a crossbody bag for all my essentials since I was paranoid about losing my wallet/phone/passport/credit card and a TURTL neck pillow which I didn’t get to use much on our nine hour flight from YYC to LHR. We’d only flown to the US in previous years, which always seemed to require extra layers of screening.

The fight itself was miserable as most nine hour flights go. I sat in the dreaded middle seat. We left in the evening with the idea that we would nap on the plane. Wrong! Although we had a nice meal and a snack on Air Canada, people would just not turn the brightness down on their seat back screens! I micro-napped but every time something flashed on the screen to my left in front of me I thought we were encountering lightning. The passenger on my right had a hard time getting comfortable and stole part of the blanket I brought for myself :-D The last three hours was marked by a crying toddler who couldn’t settle down. After a while my husband and I were laughing because he was fake crying for attention kind of like our cockatiel used to. We later saw the mom carrying her son over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes through the airport. If premium economy wasn’t an extra $2000 we might have splurged on it :-D

The same thing happened on the return flight, except the toddler scream cried most of the way except during brief naps. At the very end of the flight he tuckered himself out and his dad carried him out asleep. I felt bad for the parents because the kid had so much energy and banged on his dad. At one point the dad covered his hands in his face and that's what I tried entertaining the kid with every little kid song I remembered whenever he looked over the seat. It was such a relief to get back home, I tell you!

Okay, so back to Heathrow, because we held Canadian passports, we breezed through security easy peasy. There were self-serve gates where we just had our faces and passports scanned and it was on to the luggage carousel. It was weirdly simple, almost too simple. From there we caught a cab and it was so neat to just load up with our luggage with us in the cab. The driver is protected by a plastic cage. There’s no need for any interaction at all as you can pay from the back seat.

We were also amazed by how frequently buses and Tube trains arrived, even in little Milton Keynes, which is under 300k people. Buses were coming every 7 to 10 minutes, whereas here you can wait 15 minutes to half an hour, or sometimes an hour for your bus to come. Same for the Tube. It was a little confusing to figure out which platform we were on at first. Now here's the crazy thing--we took the train from London to Milton Keynes for 36 pounds round trip. And it got us there in half an hour. We don't have inter city trains and we barely have inter city buses because cars are king in Alberta.

It would open so much in the way of opportunity if we had some kind of linked rail system. Below is the speed my husband clocked the Avanti train at. It's hard to come back home after a trip like this and see how people get around so effortlessly. It feels like they're living in the future and we're living in horse and buggy days!

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We took some extra days off around Canada Day, and because my husband works for an American company now, he also had July 4th off. The weekend weather forecast wasn't looking too great--chances of rain or high temperatures--but we played it by ear and managed to get a lot of fun stuff done.

We road tripped down to the Alberta Birds of Prey Center in Coaldale, about 2 hours south of Calgary. My last visit was in 2007 and so much has changed in 15 years. For example, now there's a duck pond, full of domestic and wild ducks and, of course, Canada geese. Baggies of duck chow are $2 and unfortunately, the ducks weren't too hungry as there were also a lot of little kids there, all with their own baggies. I filled the bird feeder with the leftovers, and the house sparrows, who usually eat anything, weren't too impressed. There was also a wetland, which was new to me.

Other improvements include a classroom building with windows to a large eagle aviary, new shelters for the hawks, eagles, and owls so visitors could see them up close, and an improved flying area. The flying area used to just have logs for seating. Now they have comfortable benches. We watched a bald eagle named Jefferson fly back and forth while the handler talked about bald eagle facts. I took my zoom lens and it was worth lugging it around because I got some really nice photos of Jefferson.

I had my picture taken with a burrowing owl named Sage and I looked like such a dork! You'd think I never saw a bird before 😄 Fortunately Sage was up to the task of looking majestic:

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Lots of birds are on display although sadly, most of them are injured and can't be released. The centre also does rescue and rehab, so there's always hope when a bird is injured.

It's been ages since we went for a good long country drive, and although we lunch at McDonald's, it was still a nice trip. Hubs and I enjoy long car trips. We talk about lots of things and there's no interruptions. Overall, it was a satisfying day, despite arriving home at 9pm--we paid my MIL a visit on the way home. It was still the kind of day that heralds the beginning of summer :-)

Originally posted by calzephyr77 at Unfinished ferris wheel, Las Vegas

kittymink has probably been here :-D

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