The Good News Thread: I'm So Excited! And I Just Can't Hide It!

[A Budgie she/her]

2 hours ago, Queen Elsa Steelheart said:

I'm halfway through 12th grade and tomorrow is my day of term! WOOHOO! 

Nice one getting this far! It's end of term tomorrow for me as well and I am excited.

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

As do I XD time to do alot of writing and drawing

Made this today in a boring History lesson (ikr is it even possible?) with a long chull strip of paper.

For once I'm glad it posted sideways XD

[Sunbird she/her]

=O That paper sword is so cool, @Darkness Ascendant!!

My good news: My birding field trip starts tomorrow!! My ornithology class (~60 students, plus 2 TAs and our professor) will be spending most of Thursday driving to a remote ranch in southern Utah's desert, stopping at multiple hotspots along the way to birdwatch. We'll spend all of Friday on the ranch chasing birds and drive back on Saturday, possibly stopping to bird some more on the way back, depending on how exhausted everyone is. I am unbelievably excited about this trip. Like, all of these at once:

The only downside is that the ranch has no Internet, so I'll be offline for the vast majority of the next three days. I might find some Wi-Fi when we stop for meals during the drive there and back, but no guarantees. But hopefully I'll have lots of photos of cool birds to share when I get back!

Edited April 6, 2017 by Sunbird

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

2 minutes ago, Sunbird said:

 

=O That paper sword is so cool, @Darkness Ascendant!!

My good news: My birding field trip starts tomorrow!! My ornithology class (~60 students, plus 2 TAs and our professor) will be spending most of Thursday driving to a remote ranch in southern Utah's desert, stopping at multiple hotspots along the way to birdwatch. We'll spend all of Friday on the ranch chasing birds and drive back on Saturday, possibly stopping to bird some more on the way back, depending on how exhausted everyone is. I am unbelievably excited about this trip. Like, all of these at once:

 

Thanks  

That sounds like an awesome field trip!!!!!!  BLEEH I wanna go too XD

[A Budgie she/her]

@Sunbird wow, that sounds amazing! Definitely post the bird pics when you get back.

[Queen Elsa Steelheart she/her]

17 hours ago, A Budgie said:

Nice one getting this far! It's end of term tomorrow for me as well and I am excited.

Thank you and well done!

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

And it's over. Holidays...yay!

[A Budgie she/her]

2 hours ago, Darkness Ascendant said:

And it's over. Holidays...yay!

YES
To celebrate, I went with my friends into the city and got bubble tea. It was fun.

[Tristan]

I just realized that I have a brother from another mother AND a sister from another mister. (Step-brother and half-sister.) This revelation counts as good news, right? 

[Erandeni he/him]

I just found out that there are a new Teen Titans movie, I was going to study today buuuut nightwing is in the movie so, movie win.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

I am so stoked for this and if I can't stream it somewhere, I am going to cry. 

Spoiler

 

 

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

that's sounds awesome @Tristan

@TwiLyghtSansSparkles Aw sweet, invader zim

[Briar King]

Been watching Rogue One with Jace and he is loving it.

[AngelEy3 he/him]

22 minutes ago, Briar King said:

Been watching Rogue One with Jace and he is loving it.

Man, that one hit me right in the feels. By the 2nd half of the movie, I was crying the whole way through. Only thing to do was to go home and immediately start A New Hope. 

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

I Got this mad book about how Tolkien basically worldbuilt Middle Earth. I find the concept of a Myth Time absolutely fascinating, and I'm planning on doing something similar in this technomythology book series I'm making, except instead of magic going out, technology gets a massive setback, putting people back to "modern" times.

[A Budgie she/her]

Just finished watching Moana.
It was so good.

[Sunbird she/her]

I got back from my 3-day birdwatching field trip yesterday, and it was AMAZING! Before the trip, I had 104 species on my semester list for my ornithology class, and after the trip, I now have 142 =D That includes 18 new kinds of birds that I'd never seen before in my life, so I am a very happy camper.

We left Thursday morning from Provo and spent most of the day driving, stopping along the way to look at birds. Our destination was Lytle Ranch in southwestern Utah. I'm told the drive takes about 5 hours if you do it nonstop, but we stretched it out with birding breaks and food breaks so that we arrived at about 7pm. We slept there Thursday night, spent all of Friday on the ranch birding, slept there again Friday night, and began the drive back to Provo on Saturday morning after a little more birding, breakfast, and cleanup. We stopped a few places on the drive back too.

Here are some of my favorite birds from the trip (not my photos, since I haven't had time to process mine yet):

Black-necked Stilt:

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(Can you see why he's called a stilt?? XD)

Peregrine Falcon:

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I've seen one before, but that doesn't mean it's not still super cool!

Long-billed Curlew:

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Bell's Vireo and Warbling Vireo (Check out how similar they look):

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Bell's Vireo above, Warbling Vireo below

Thankfully their songs are noticeably different, and both of them sang for me. (In fact, I didn't even see the Bell's Vireo at all and spent all Friday morning frustrated before I managed to match my video recording of his song to recordings in my field guide app.)

Phainopepla (pronounced FAY-no-pep-luh):

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These little cuties were EVERYWHERE on the ranch. They're a little smaller than a robin and like to sit in the very tops of trees whistling.

Lucy's Warbler:

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These little guys were singing pretty much nonstop everywhere I went on the ranch, but I didn't realize what I was hearing until one popped out of the brush where I could see him. New life bird!

Ladder-backed Woodpecker:

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This is a small woodpecker, only about 7 inches (17.5 cm) long, and she looks and sounds a lot like a more common and widespread bird called a Downy Woodpecker (below).

(I'm referring to the birds as "she" because the Ladder-backed Woodpecker I saw was a female. Males of both species have red on their heads.)

Verdin:

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This little guy was super special for me for several reasons: 1) I'd never ever seen one before. 2) I spotted him myself, when I was birding alone early in the morning before breakfast on Saturday. 3) They're "desert specialty" birds; you won't find them in urban/suburban areas. 4) Isn't he just gorgeous??

Costa's Hummingbird:

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I found the Costa's Hummingbird barely a minute after the Verdin. He zoomed past me and hovered at some flowers to drink, giving me just enough time to get my binoculars up and get a good look to see his brilliant iridescent purple before he zoomed away again.

Abert's Towhee:

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We found this guy at a park in St George where someone had previously reported spotting one, and almost as soon I got out of the van I spotted him running around on the other side of the parking lot, acting like a roadrunner. XD It was pretty funny, and I was proud of myself for spotting him first out of like 60 people in my class.

 

[StrikerEZ he/him]

@Sunbird 

All of those birds are so cool! And quite a few of them are really cute as well!

[A Budgie she/her]

@Sunbird they were so beautiful! You're so lucky to get to go on a trip like that.

[Sunbird she/her]

1 minute ago, A Budgie said:

@Sunbird they were so beautiful! You're so lucky to get to go on a trip like that.

I definitely feel very blessed to have been able to go. I've made so many friends with the other students in my ornithology class. =)

[A Budgie she/her]

@Silverblade5 oh nice, I'll definitely be joining.

[Silverblade5 he/him]

Just now, A Budgie said:

@Silverblade5 oh nice, I'll definitely be joining.

This was posted in the wrong thread. I'll be hiding here and reposting in random stuff.

[Jondesu he/him]

3 minutes ago, Silverblade5 said:

Will be launching a CAH game in one hour. The game link is here

http://pyx-2.pretendyoure.xyz/zy/game.jsp#game=56

Password is 17Shard

If you want to talk during the game, I'll be in the Discord voice chat here

https://discord.gg/YYTrqy5

I've never used that, is there anything I need to be able to play other than the password?

[Sunbird she/her]

5 minutes ago, Jondesu said:

I've never used that, is there anything I need to be able to play other than the password?

Nope!

[Delightful]

I just got paid, and paid my rent for the month. It's a good feeling.

#adultingwin