Don't play with it

Holiday weekends make me apprehensive.

I love to make plans and write lists. I like to have a general idea of what I intend to do with my time and get frustrated if there's too much nothingness happening. Mind you, I still love my lazy days where I just laze around too...

However, there's something special about holiday weekends. Sometimes you get an extra day, be it Friday or Monday, or both, sometimes it merely falls on the weekend itself. But then you have a host of activities to choose from, or attempt to avoid... and figure out plans and stuff.

I'm trying to cut back on this compulsion I have to plan especially around these times. Minimizes all potential disappoints if you try not to build expectations.

I wanted to do something so badly Friday but I ended up in a Conservation of Wildlife Club meeting at school that finished around 6-ish. Sure that's early, but waiting an hour plus idly can be more exhaustive than actually doing something sometimes. By the time I got home, I was too tired to do anything but go in my bed.

Yesterday I went to a tea party. My third one for the year I believe. As usual, there were a bunch of activities such as little games with prize rewards and modeling. I was one of the models this time. After the tea party there were several parties going on around the island. Lack of transport...*sigh* I passed by Karma and it was so dead I refused to go inside. Instead I found myself waiting for another 5 hours on the Carenage for my mom to finish with her party...lol Life's little ironies. She went to an 80s party in Aquarium. Usually, she'd be harassing my phone line to go home.

The weekend up to that point was just an epic fail. I mean I did end up chatting with a friend while I waited and that was awesome... But I had wanted so badly to do something.

This morning I went to the Dove Sanctuary near Perseverance to observe a dove nest.

I didn't sleep when I got home from Karma, yet I managed to still arrive late to meet Dr. Rusk. However, we did get there early and it was still quite an experience.

We had a mini-hike to the location of the nest. Upon reaching, we sat down and set up the equipment, or rather I watched Dr. set up the equipment. I had a pair of binoculars so I could see the bird up close. It was a  pretty cool experience. There is always a bird on the nest. Initially, based on the consensus that only the male bird calls, the female was on the eggs. Then flew off and the male bird took up the position on the nest. With the aid of the binoculars, you could see the chest puff right before it coos. I think we heard about 5 males coo-ing.

I got some photos. They're not absolutely clear though because I had twigs and branches in my line of vision and despite the excellent zoom on my camera, it kept auto-focusing to the nearby branches in front of the dove.

The following photos are a combination of long overdue photos from the Mt. Hartman field trip and this last trip.

Mt. Hartman photos

The most interesting thing we got to see at the Mt. Hartman trip. It was breeding season so we weren't allowed to venture too far in. The doves are shy, and instinctively flee by flying to the ground and running upon seeing any threats.








That's the nest. I think that was the male bird at this point. I don't know how big that bird actually was... but I think they get as big as 12 inches.




















Dr. Rusk took these pics out.

So YAY, I saw the Grenada Dove.

There concludes my overdue post.
Deuces.