Hey folks... please have a look at...
World's Window, Gallon Jug High School Scholarship Fund US tax deductible charity option. That's right. You simply give dollars to the US charity, in any of the easy, usual ways... even PayPal... but a check direct to the charity probably avoids a service charge to the charity... and you can claim the usual deduction on your US income taxes... and one of the Chan Chich / Gallon Jug families can be helped.
And this is no limp wristed "welfare" program... the kids have to maintain academic achievement, etc, to continue to receive the scholarship. Explained at site above.
Cautious about these things? I am. Which is why I always check the http://www.irs.gov/app/pub-78/. At 4/11, two "Worlds Window" (no apostrophe) charities are listed, if you manage to convince the search engine to reveal them (search on "world window" (no s)). The webpage for "our" World's Window, above, gives, at 4/11, a postal address of World's Window, Inc., 49 Par Circle, Albany, NY 12208, which matches one of the listings in the IRS database.
A bunch of pages where I've just "dumped" a bunch of great photos Gary DeLong provided. New 28 Feb 2011.
A bunch of photos awaiting transfer to more sensible places within the site... but new (28 Feb 2011) ones, all in one place.
There are also one or two fairly new things at the bottom of this page... the sleeping shark, the aerial photo of the reef
Apologies to the many others who have ALSO submitted Good Stuff... Gary's came in a "batch" that was most easily processed as a batch... I WILL get the other things up... someday.
The Belize Band were obviously Above Average, even for a CAU group... or is it the march of technology? In any case, I've never had such a generous response to my offer to coordinate a joint "photo album".
... and here's the detail of where we went in Belize. We started at the upper right, went counter-clockwise....
For a much better, interactive, map of where we went, with comments, go to.....http://tinyurl.com/CauBelize ... which will take you (or any friend) to a Google User-Created Map giving an overview of our trip. (It will open in a new tab or window.)
This is not well organized yet, nor much text written... but I'm working on it!
If you have pictures you'd be willing to contribute to this page, please click here for a message about that. Send them ANY way you wish to. Alternatively, consider a Flickr.com page. It is easy to set up, easy to upload pictures, and your first 200 are free, forever. If you do that, please send me the link, so I can post it here? If you havescenery pictures, post them at Panoramio.com... again free, and well organized... and your photos may end up as part of Google maps and Earth.
Links here to external pages will usually open in new tabs or windows, because of the way I've written the page. In addition, my power browsing guide may be with worth a visit!
These pages written on an "old fashioned", non- widescreen system. It may enhance your enjoyment to view the pages in a window that doesn't use the full width of a widescreen or netbook display.
© TK Boyd 2/11
The fearless adventurers
© TK Boyd 2/11
© TK Boyd 2/11
© TK Boyd 2/11
© TK Boyd 2/11
© Stewart Greisman 2/11
© Stewart Greisman 2/11
Gilberto records the exciting margay sighting.
© TK Boyd 2/11
There should be a black and white picture below... if the device you are reading this on supports "Flash". On an iPad I was shown recently, the picture was Just Missing. No B&W picture? Try http://www.flickr.com/photos/71061137@N00/5428613455/ However, if you do have the picture....
If you click on the arrow in the middle of the picture, a short video clip should play on your screen. (Click the "full screen" button at the lower right first, for a better result.) The clip shows three ocelots. It was taken by my Bushnell "Trophy Cam" (model 119435C- not too expensive, via eBay) on our last night at Chan Chich. I'd moved the camera up to the lodge area... it was about 50' from one of the cabins (at the SW corner of the plaza area)... You can see a light from the cabin in the video's background.
One of the lodge's support staff pointed out to us the little gem of a bird shown below. It was high in some trees, eating lunch. I think the prey was a warbler, which begins to tell you how tiny this owl was. I believe it is a Central American Pygmy-owl (Glaucidium griseiceps). If that's right, it should have been 14-16 cm high. I would have thought it was even smaller than that, but these things are hard to judge when you're in an unfamiliar ecosystem. The American robin and the English blackbird are listed in Wikipedia as being about the same size, and by that measure too, I think that the owl we saw was smaller. Anyway, whatever it is called, however big it is, it was a treat to see it, especially just as it was feeding. The curious position of the owl's wing is probably some minor "mantling"- many carnivorous birds use their wings to hide what they have caught from any other avian meat-eaters who may pass overhead.
Latin name Glaucidium griseiceps, which is apt, as the picture is by Stewart Griesman!
© Stewart Greisman 2/11
© TK Boyd 2/11
Person who showed us the owl... Thank you!
From Chan Chich, we spent a fun day moving on to our next "main event", with some valuable "extras" along the way. We flew to near Xunantunich, an excavated Maya site, (see Wikipedia article for more information), had an excellent guided tour, then lunch in a local open air restaurant with (prosperous) locals, then drove through stunning scenery to the coast. It was a day of seeing a bit of the everyday people of Belize, as opposed to our delightfully isolated experiences in the rainforest and the tropical paradise.
I've split most of the material from this day out into it's own page, (if you haven't seen the scrollable panoramas, give the page a try?). Here are some highlights for you...
© TK Boyd 2/11
© TK Boyd 2/11
The Belize rainforest from the air... and there were miles and miles like this. Care to propose a way to estimate the number of trees?
© TK Boyd 2/11
© TK Boyd 2/11
text
© TK Boyd 2/11
© TK Boyd 2/11
(Pentax repaired my camera quickly, without fuss, by the way.)
© TK Boyd 2/11
© TK Boyd 2/11
At Blue Marlin Lodge there were various interesting activities. I was lucky enough that the scuba certification I had obtained at Cornell long ago was enough to enable me to join several other participants, and a delightful German lady we met, on scuba dives. We dove on the face of the barrier reef, just south of the island we were staying on. We tended to swim at about 50'... with the water to the east of us dropping to 2500 feet, and the water the mystical deep blue/ black that cannot be described. On my first dive, alone with the instructor, I had a good view of some eagle rays, 6' feet or so across, swimming away from us out of sight into the depths... You've seen pictures of mantas? That's what they looked like.
Here's a Google Maps image of the area.... the pale areas which you might confuse for oil slicks on the water are where there is white sand on the bottom, as opposed to the widespread healthy carpets and humps of corals and sponges.
Now... I know you think you get the idea... but let's just see. Notice the little white mark, near the bottom center above? In the next image, I've enlarged it. It is a boat. Now do you see how amazing the locale was?
This is a harmless five foot nurse shark, which was trying to have a quiet snooze in a crevice in the coral. (They are nocturnal hunters.) Photo taken by our new friend.
© G Hoffmann 2/11
Morning has broken...
© Wm Ferry 2/11
This page © TK Boyd 2/11. Click here to contact him.
(Participants: Use eddress on CAU list, please- better!)
You are also invited to Tom Boyd's homepage, including software for schools, kids, and others.
Page tested for compliance with INDUSTRY (not MS-only) standards, using the free, publicly accessible validator at validator.w3.org. An early draft of the page was valid apart from several things inside the code to embed the video clip of the ocelots.
- - - Page ends - - -