A note on what doesn't belong

Not a bird.  A bear.  Technically, and although deceptively brown, a Black Bear.  Also an example of what won't be going up here. 

This weekend we went boating on a little electric Duffy around Long Beach harbor.  It was fun, and I got some pictures of a few marine birds along the way.  My friend Tim (who reads this blog to my infinite delight) remarked that Long Beach harbor near (but not quite past) the Queen Mary, was not really in my El Dorado Park neighborhood.  I haven't lost sleep over it or anything, but I've been thinking about that.  What should go up here?  This blog is supposed to be about my experiences as I try to photograph and identify the birds I see in my neighborhood.  It is "El Dorado Birder" and not "Birds Within Camera Range of Charlie" after all.  But I came down on the side of posting them.  If I can get a half-way decent picture of a bird - that's blog material.  If the birds are a little out of my neighborhood I'll let you know. That seems fair.

Pictures of the squirrels in my backyard? Not so much.  I love them and they have their own feeder, but unless there's a Mourning Dove in the shot sharing the corn with them, my backyard squirrels won't be going up here.  The bear pictured above knocked down a bird feeder that was very difficult to hang initially and equally difficult to re-hang after it was knocked down.  But even so, no bears.  Plus it was in Colorado.   

Besides pictures of non-birds, there are some terms and subjects I'm trying to avoid.  I don't have much use for collective nouns to describe groups of birds and so I try not to use them.  If it's more specific than "flock," it won't make the blog.  So no gaggles or skeins of geese.  No coverts of coots or murmurations of starlings. When I get to crows I will not be referring to more than one of them as a murder.  "Some" crows should do nicely. Seriously, if you refer to a collection of ravens as an unkindness, aren't you saying more about you than the ravens?

So tomorrow, pelicans.