What a cool weekend!

Collyn is in Bellingham doing girls stuff with her sisters as one of them is having a child soon. They had the baby shower and what not. You can understand why I didn't go. While Collyn says she is having a lot of fun, she missed out on a couple of great things here.

Last night was the annual "Singing on the Promenade" in Anaheim. It's a free, outdoor street concert and dance. I performed at it 2 years ago when Royal Crown Revue played. I missed it last year as I was in Seattle at the time. This year, the Jonathon Stout Orchestra played. They are a favorite of the swing scene as they specifically play authentic swing music geared toward dancers. The weather was perfect, the music was great. The only down side was that the dance floor was packed pretty much the entire 3 hours the band played.

This afternoon I participated in a bird release run by the Orange County Bird of Prey center. The rehabilitate injured raptors. If you sponsor a bird, when they do a release you get to handle and let one of them go. As one of my Christmas presents, Collyn sponsored a great horned owl for me. They released 45 birds in three different areas. There were kestrels, cooper hawks, red shoulder hawks, red tail hawks, barn owls, great horned owls and even a buzzard. Raptors freak me out a little, because they look cold and calculating. I'm always expecting a sneak attack. The barn owls have almost no body. Most of what looks like body is actually their legs covered by feathers. Their head is as long as their body, which again, is mostly feathers. Most of the birds were pretty calm once they had been held for a second. The great horned owls did the most flapping trying to get free. The hawks would often start calling as soon as they were released. The last bird we released, a barn owl, screeched from the time it came out of the box until it was released and it's screech was pretty hellish sounding, certainly not the typical "hoo, hoo" associated with owls, although it's pretty much just the great horned owl that hoot. At their final release spot there were a couple of crows hanging out. When we added 6 barn owls, a red tailed hawk and two great horned owls to the mix the crows were not very happy. They were dive bombing and chasing the others, who would then swoop around and chase after them. As we were leaving the crows were flapping out of the area.