New Year's Day walk (3/3)

 Not all of the walk was about urban monuments or urban art. One of the delights of river walks is the edge between the built landscape and the wild. There were quite a few mallards swimming upstream.

 Between the path and the river, scrubby banks with wildflowers.

 One of my favorite flowers in the area (una malva).

 Parrots are an invasive species here, but the are just as charming as the ones in San Francisco.

 I saw quite a few cormorants--Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo)--flying and swimming. This one dove several times, and always emerged upstream.

Looking back from the Stone Bridge, you can see the kind of vegetation on the banks. 

An encounter that included vigorous sniffing.

Remedy for the sads

Yesterday I faced one of the tougher situations I've ever had to deal with as a teacher. I won't go into the details because I don't talk about my students on this blog, but let's just say that I think I handled it OK, but it left me feeling profoundly sad for all involved and really disappointed in myself for not having seen the warning signs more clearly. I did the best I could yesterday, but I'm spending some time in the next few weeks trying to figure out what I could have done differently or better, even though I recognize that when people behave badly, sometimes there is nothing I can do to prevent it.

To cheer myself up as I head into my grading marathon, I'm sharing with you these amazing parrot videos. The bird is Lolita, and her friend peachy525 has clearly taught her well, starting with the simplest of songs, and building up to more complicated ones. ("you forgot "gently down the stream!") Lolita even freestyles at the end, clearly a happy and well-loved bird.

Then.. there is this: Lolita's rendition of the alternative metal band Drowning Pool's "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor"-- a song that gets used for a lot of youtube remixes. The vocal is by Dave Williams, the band's first singer, who died of heart disease after the first album was released. Lolita's version is going viral even as we speak. my favorite part? the way "nothing's wrong with me" seems to change to "nothing cockatoo" LOL!

There. I feel better now.