Good morning and greetings, four-day work week fans. On Saturday afternoon a Red Sox fan and I ventured up the coast to check out the action at Four Mile Beach. Although it was cloudy, I was still photographically hopeful because there’s always something happening on the north coast. As usual, I was not disappointed. Cliff swallows were all over the place, having built their nests along the eroding walls at Four Mile. There were some areas of the cliffs that were as dry as Salt Lake City on a Saturday night, but other parts were wet and lush as the rain forests of Maui and New Jersey.

Cliff swallows build gourd shaped nests out of mud pellets that they carry in their mouths and fanny packs to a site protected by an overhang (in this case, the cliff.) They nest in colonies and will patrol an area up to four miles away from their cliffside condos looking for food, snacks and beverages. The last time we saw these swallows we were shooting the underhang of the lighthouse at Lighthouse Point. These birds like their homes with a view and the one at Four Mile is spectacular. That is, if you don’t mind sharing the remote with pelicans, gulls and harbor seals in your living room.

On to the news. The playground legal principle “Finders keepers, losers weepers” is being put to a test in an international dispute over what could be the richest sunken treasure ever found: 17 tons of silver coins brought up by a centuries-old shipwreck. A Florida treasure-hunting company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, found the wreck at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and argues that the age-old law of the high seas entitles the finders to most or all of the booty, said to be worth around $500 million. They later added that if this law doesn’t hold up, they want to go with the old standby “You snooze, you lose.”

But the government of Spain suspects the ship is Spanish and says it has never expressly abandoned any of its vessels lost at sea. The kingdom and Laker center Pau Gasol have made it very clear that if the treasure does have some connections to Spain, it wants every last coin and bottle returned for deposit. The case is being watched closely because there could be more disputes like it, now that sonar, remote-control submersible robots, deep-sea video and lightly breaded scallops are enabling treasure hunters like Odyssey to find ships that went to the bottom centuries ago. Back then they were written off as unrecoverable because no one could imagine finding anything so far beneath the waves except Atlantis records.

The question is, just because you’re the first one to get there to get it, should you get to keep it, especially if it belongs to someone else? For now, the spoils, about 500,000 coins are in Odyssey’s possession, tucked away in a warehouse somewhere in Tampa. Odyssey created a worldwide sensation with the announcement of the find last May but has so far declined to identify the wreck (not the Bush administration,) except to say it was in international waters. Soon after the discovery was made public, Spain’s attorney in Washington went to federal court in Tampa and slapped claims on three Atlantic wreck sites to which Odyssey had been granted exclusive rights under maritime law. When asked for his thoughts, the Spanish attorney said he could not comment on the on-going litigation but offered up this juicy nugget. “The rain in Spain falls gently on the plains.”

The ship is widely believed to be the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, a Spanish galleon sunk by a British warship off Portugal in October 1804. This discovery was timely for Odyssey, whose first big strike was the discovery in 2003 of a Civil War-era steamer of the Georgia coast that yielded 51,000 gold coins and artifacts valued at around $70 million. We’re talking major dinero. Personally, when I go to the beach, I’m happy if I come away with a rock, a few shells and no sunburn.

That’s our post Memorial Day report. Birthday greetings today go out to my Marin County based sister-in-law Wendi, who loves life, the arts and chocolate, and definitely not in that order. So enjoy the swallows (or their nests, anyway) and remember to move your feet and not reach on defense. Later, sports fans.

Good morning and greetings from this cold water paradise. Lately, a day hasn’t gone by when I haven’t seen a great blue heron. I spotted one this morning at the lagoon at Natural Bridges. They are beautiful birds with wing spans that would make both Yao Ming and a pelican jealous. I shot the first two photos this week right down the street from my lovely abode. I spied the next heron in the marshes at Four Mile Beach then it’s back to Natural Bridges. The yellow flower experience is from an open field on Delaware Avenue but it’s the last shot that’s the most unusual. I’ve only seen a great blue heron once in the ocean when this good looking fellow flew in very early one morning for a photo session at the arch at Its Beach. I paid him scale, he signed a release and we were both happy.

So on to the news of the day. Let’s play the Bush administration’s favorite game, “who wants to be average?” According to Time Magazine, the average U.S. household has 2.6 members not including pets, squatters and that friend who never knows when to leave. Our average age is 36.6 and while 17% of us exercise for well over one hour a day, the rest of us don’t even break a sweat. The vast majority of Americans believe in God and more than 90% own a bible. I don’t know what percentage own a gun but I’ll take a shot that it’s huge.

If you are an American at some point today you will say a prayer (perhaps at the free throw line,) use floss, and shower for 10 minutes. All you lovers of the outdoors will spend 95% of the day indoors and 2.5 hours online. You will also consume 20 teaspoons of added sugar and not save any money or souls. On weekends, people spend 1.5 hours reading while those aged 15 to 19 will spend seven minutes, much of which on instructions for iPods usage or text messaging.

On Thanksgiving, 88% will eat turkey but never visit the country. While most Americans prefer white meat the rest of the world (and yours truly) prefers dark. The average family has more televisions than people but we spend the same amount of time watching them as we did 40 years ago, just not laughing as much. Parents are both working harder and spending more time with their children, especially fathers, who spend 153% more time each week on child care then in 1965. Time with the wife (or husband) has dropped as pure spousal time is down 26% since 1975. On the other hand, time spent with mediators, lawyers and divorce proceeding is off the charts.

For you all brewski lovers, North Dakota ranks first in average beer consumption per person (they had to be first in something) while Utah is last. Large families are vanishing: only 10% of American households have five or more people. In 1970, 21% did. On the average, Americans sit in traffic 38 hours a year, wasting an estimated 26 gallons of gas per person. That’s life in the slow lane. I’m just glad that we’re not being held captive by the oil producing countries and that they money we’re paying for this black crude isn’t being funneled to terrorist groups that want to kill Americans. I was almost going to make a comment here about the Bush administration and the spiraling cost of gasoline but why spoil a good paragraph?

71% of American households have an internet connection, up from 50% in 2001. That still leaves about 31 million homes offline not reading this blog. Americans go to an average of 5 to 8 movies a year, spending 10 times more at theaters than all all major professional sports combined, which includes beach volleyball, roller derby and women’s professional wrestling.

The U.S. has 612,020 fast-food cooks but only 392,850 full-time farmers. Americans spend more in restaurants ($390 billion) than they do in grocery stores ($364 billion.) And finally, your fellow Americans spent $155 billion of alcoholic beverages last year, buying enough for every person to down 7 bottles of liquor, 12 bottles of wine, 230 cans of beer and a bag of pretzels. That may sound like a lot, but one-third of American adults don’t drink as the U.S. ranks 40th in the world in alcoholic consumption per person. For whatever reason, Luxembourg (who even knew they were a country?) is number one, followed by the Czech Republic and Ireland. So now we know why Irish eyes are smiling.

What does this all mean? I’m not really sure, just that I may have pumped out an average blog, which I do on the average of three times a week. That’s my batting average. So get ready for game one tonight of the western conference finals between the Spurs and Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. We’ll catch you for good Friday. Enjoy the herons and remember to play your man straight up. Aloha.

Good morning and welcome to the happiest place on the earth. On Tuesday morning I decided to take a trip to Four Mile Beach. I figured what the heck, even if the clouds weren’t that exotic, there would still be hundreds of gulls for me to Barry bonds with. When I crossed the railroad tracks and headed down the path to the beach I immediately spotted a big cat (photo #1) about 50 yards away. Now, I’ve seen a bobcat before at Four Mile but when it saw me it ran into the brush faster than an Exxon executive leaving an Earth Day picnic. But this fellow didn’t run and hide like a Bush spokesman, instead he rambled along the path with me in hot pursuit. And since I had downed my Wheaties that morning, I was feeling fresh and excited, like Kool and the Gang at the Grammys.

I followed this nocturnal hunter for a couple of hundred yards. He headed down the beach and onto the sand before heading back into the brush. As you can tell by my shots, I was close enough to observe his spots, his distinctive color pattern and count his freckles. Much like myself, bobcats are shy, solitary, generally elusive animals. The name comes from the short, bobbed tail or from the surname Robert. They are members of the cat family along with lions, leopards, pumas, lynxes, jaguars, cheetahs, tigers and white sox.

Throughout this tracking experience this wild animal would stop and stare at me. I thought, it’s just a bobcat, not a mountain lion, he’s not going to attack me. As we headed up the slope of the cliff above the ocean he stopped and turned. I was shooting away like Ansel Adams on meth. I had him perfectly framed in my view finder and was already thinking up the subject title for the blog. All of a sudden, he starts to move in my direction. I’m thinking, uh, oh, did I miss this episode of “When Animals Attack? I’m not a outdoorsman, I’m a blogger, dammit. All of a sudden, I’m getting Marlon Perkins flashbacks. Fortunately, this wildcat stopped in his tracks as he may have been intimidated by my Docker shorts and Hillary Duff sweatshirt.

After seeing my life flash before my eyes I scooted out of there faster than a lawyer on a duck hunt with Dick Cheney and made my way back to the beach. It was low tide and the harbor seals were basking and robbins on the sea shelfs by the sea shore. The last shot is actually from an earlier visit but I thought I’d throw it in to celebrate the fact that I’m not writing this from a hospital bed. As you can see from the photos whenever I come in contact with harbor seals, they never take their eyes off me. It reminded me of my hand modeling days. But here’s the kicker. One of my Arizona-based field scouts emailed an article about a rabid bobcat attacking two hikers yesterday in the Santa Rita mountains. Wow. I don’t know about you, but I always find that series of deep puncture wounds always spoils my day. But maybe that’s just me.

The bottom line is that while I was shooting away like Chuck Connors in “The Rifleman” all those shots of the cat were actually out of focus. My camera instead was zooming in on the the flowers and brush in front of Miss Kitty. I was excited as a schoolgirl when I came home and downloaded these shots. I already had National Geographic on the speed dial. I was disappointed, kind of like when I saw my SAT scores. But in the words of Chelsea Clinton and Fleetwood Mac, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow, it’ll be here, better than before, yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.” Or in the words of yours truly, don’t put off today what you can put off tomorrow.

So have a tremendous sports weekend, enjoy the final matzo brei filled days of Passover and we’ll catch you for sunrise Monday. As for me, I’ll be hunting the big cats. Either that or watching enough NBA playoff basketball to make your eyes bleed. Catch you down low. Aloha.