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I’ve moved my morning campsite recently, north a hundred meters from where I used to spend the predawn hour and the hour that follows, in an attempt to get a better connection. I’ve given up on the free WiFi altogether, as I’ve experienced nothing but frustration with it of late. I’m pretty sure it’s as a direct result of Nu Surge ™, as hundreds of troops are arriving daily and all of them need to update their Facebooks and video Skype their loved ones.

Further down the boardwalk puts me closer to the source of DutchNet, away from the crowds at Tim Hortons, and separated from those who feel obligated to ask when Tim Hortons opens. Every day, though, and it was starting to get annoying – the continued requests for opening hours, plus the queries into how I seem to have a connection while they are struggling with FreedomTel.


This is better. There’s half of a picnic table (someone sawed off the other bench and nailed what’s left to the interior Boardwalk handrail) and barely adequate light coming from one of the few working solar street lamps and the security lights from the Subway.

Ra makes his appearance from across the square, so I get a fresh sunrise every day. With all of the dust, you’d think they’d be more colorful, but you’d be mistaken. As the gloom departs, more of the little local birds start their day, picking up the orts and pieces of whatever that the humans deposit through their own cycle. I wouldn’t peck at the ground for these morsels, but the birds seem to enjoy it.

This morning, it’s mostly little sparrows, with mottled brown and tan feathers, light tan breasts, underbellies, and collars. They flock when there’s a particularly large cache of food, but they’re mostly loaners. There’s a few light brown doves this morning as well, and a couple of small, blue headed dudes who stay clear of the loudly typing human. Here and there are other species that look like black and white Jays, some smaller stilts, some high flying swallows and a few more that are hard to distinguish. In a brown desert, most of the birds are brown, and there’s not that many of them.

In the early dark, the songbirds hang in the few trees that survive at the KAF and make a ruckus. A nice ruckus, really, and besides my footfalls, the only sound I hear for my first long walk of the day.

In a meeting the other day, some blowhard consultant embedded into the Air Force instructed us very adamantly that we would need to enclose our solid waste tipping/sorting floor. Apparently, God himself spoke though him, and we would provide doors around the entire facility to control bird populations. He believed that huge flocks of little birds would flock to our recycling area, followed by vast numbers of crows, which would then draw raptors to feed upon this tremendous bird population. The raptors, in turn, would fly two miles from their new food source and get sucked through jet engines.

Maybe. It just occurred to me that perhaps the small number of birds already scavenging off of our largely unexposed dumpsters at every DFAC at the KAF would somehow be indicative of the current trend in bird populations, and that it really wouldn’t be much of a problem. At least, not much more of a problem than we currently have, which is on the slightly more than zero side.

So the other night, at a briefing about our proposed airfield work, I asked the Colonel who operates the US side of the airfield if he felt that this bird thing was going to be an issue. He laughed, which apparently did not sit well with the Major apologist to the blowhard consultant. He later huffed, “there’s lots of opinions out there.”

I thought of telling him that the only bird problem he had was sitting on the colonel’s lapel, but thought better of it. The Major still owes me some data and, although he may end up giving me the Heisman, I’ll try to behave for another day or two in hopes that he comes through.