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Goldfinch vervet turaco pazzani swaziland hyena. American Goldfinch. The American Goldfinch is a stunning bird this time of year. No wonder he is the state bird of New Jersey. They are always at the nyjer feeder.
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American Goldfinch • The American Goldfinch is a stunning bird this time of year. No wonder he is the state bird of New Jersey. They are always at the nyjer feeder. • The goldfinches are starting to look more colorful this time of year. Like many birds, the male bird has more brilliant colors than the female. We put out the birdcamto photograph birds on the nyjer feeder. The bottom photo also got a house finch. It looks like we need to get a larger bird feeder. • Here are some photos from last spring. We are tired of the winter weather, the snow and the rain. We are looking forward to spring when the orioles return, the goldfinches are brighter, and there are baby birds around.
It was hard to leave the vervet • We came across a big family group of vervet monkeys of all ages even down to several little babies. They were so entertaining jumping in and out of trees and wrestling each other, et cetera. Mike was good to warn me any time he turned the camera to video setting so we don't wind up with more silly narratives that I can't help but make when watching monkeys. I know many people say monkeys are quite naughty, but they sure are fun to watch. These vervet monkeys are silly like the squirrel monkeys we've seen other places, and I think now I can say the white faced cappuchin monkeys have been the least silly of the monkeys we've encountered so far. Oh, and the oddest thing about the vervet monkey is the male genitalia, bright robin's egg blue! I think our guide Max from Thonga explained where the blue comes from, but I could be wrong. • And our walk turned into more fun than a barrel of vervet monkeys!
Two Turacoes and a change of plans • Our chartered flight on Friday from Thonga to Londolozi was canceled due to bad weather. Instead, we have hired a car to drive us. It's about 8 hours, but we'll get to see more of this beautiful country with turacoes. • Our chartered flight on Friday from Thonga to Londolozi was canceled due to bad weather. Instead, we have hired a car to drive us. It's about 8 hours, but we'll get to see more of this beautiful country.
Pazzani, Ph.D. • Dr. Pazzani is a Professor II of Computer Science at Rutgers, and a member of the Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science. He also holds a courtesy appointment in Library and Information Science. He has published over 150 papers on machine learning, knowledge discovery from databases, internet search, and recommendation systems. He serves on the Editorial Board of Machine Learning. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. He has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, DARPA, AFOSR, ARO, and several companies including SAIC, Hughes Aircraft, Qualcomm, NYNEX, Websense, and Touchstone Software. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA and was an assistant, associate and full professor at the University of California, Irvine, where he also served as Chair of Information and Computer Science.
An unexpected trip to Swaziland • The best part though is that the most direct route from Thonga to Kruger is through Swaziland. I'm impressed at the efforts our travel agent and driver made to adjust our plans. We never use travel agents but it was the only way to book Londolozi and we are glad to have him helping us. He found a driver who lives in Swaziland who was willing to pick us up at 7. We didn't know it at the time, but he had to leave Thursday night and stay in a hotel to pick us up. Another extra effort was made for Mike's reading glasses. He leaves them everywhere so he brought three pairs. He left one on the plane to Thonga and 3 days later they arrived in the mail at Thonga. It took about 3 hours to get through Swaziland.
Story of a Hyena • We have some pictures of this little lion cub up already, but we never told his amazing story. You can see from the pictures that he lacks good muscle condition even though his belly is quite full. In the video his sister walks past him and she is noticeably larger. His detailed story is told in full by the wonderful rangers at Londolozi in their blogs. In short, he was separated from the pride during a hyena attack and survived for five weeks alone. He stole our hearts, and he was so adorable to watch with his little tough guy persona. We subscribe to the Londolozi blogs and get nice updates and pictures, so we looked forward to watching this little wonder of nature grow up. Sadly, that is not going to be the case as he was killed by one of the four big male lion brothers the other day. This has been much more difficult for us to accept than all the other hunting and killing we saw while we were there. I guess that's the downside of getting up close and personal with wildlife. • The title says it all; right? It didn't take long for the hyena cubs to come around checking us out. Our guide today, Talley, knows where the den is. We birded a bit along the way to the den, and then we had wonderful birding opportunities just while waiting for the hyena cubs to appear. It turned out that the hyena cubs were out of the den when we got there, which we didn't realize, and then we watched them making their way back home and feeling comfortable and curious about our presense. It was funny that they seemed insulted when our attention was drawn away from them by a stunning bird, and they gave us the, "Hey, we're the entertainment here" looks.
