Avian news, bad and good.

Awwww.

I have had a very long week at work. Our business manager resigned and the 4 of us remaining in our immediate division have had to pick up her work until we get a replacement. She'd been with the company for 12 years. She took with her quite a store of knowledge - but she did attempt to transfer as much as she could. She did stick around to finish next year's budget but now we are going into our first month-end close without her, plus none of her day to day stuff is the sort of thing that can wait for her replacement (invoices from vendors & T&E reports were the bits I got). I have had to learn a LOT over the last 2 weeks, culminating today with a trip to the accounting office in New Jersey for training on the Hyperion Enterprise system. Sadly, that's not a spaceship, just sounds like one. It's an accounting system which I need to know. I also need to get proficient in Access - the one piece of your basic Microsoft Office suite that I've never used anywhere - pronto.

You know how they produce the foie gras for pate de foie gras? They take a goose, they shove a funnel down it's gullet, and dump corn down it. Well, my brain feels like I imagine a foie gras goose must feel after feeding time. Ugh.

What this has to do with bird news good & bad is that I had not had a chance to check up on Pale Male & Lola, the 5th Avenue Redtails, lately. Within a day or two after my marvelous visit to see them, I had seen the pictures of Lola mantling, spreading her wings over their nest as though shading a newborn from the sun (a sign of a possible hatching) on palemale.com - but then the pace at the office started to pick up to the point that I didn't check for a while. Next time I looked...well, it had been a false alarm. I almost said something but I got feeling superstitious about it. Lincoln, the gentleman who maintains palemale.com, hadn't given up yet, but today I saw this as I was reading the Times on the bus on the way to New Jersey.

That's so sad. And she just keeps sitting those eggs.

The good news was also in the Times - and it was really cool - seems that the extinct Ivory-Billed Woodpecker isn't so awfully extinct after all!

To continue yesterday's theme - that's cool!