6FPS V8#4: Spark Bird

6FPS
Written By Chuq Von Rospach

6FPS V8#5: May 11, 2026

E-mail: chuqvr@gmail.com • Site: https://chuq.me

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Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

It is definitely Spring: It looks like the rains have ended, and we had our first 80 degree days here in the Pacific Northwest. Of course, three days later it’s cloudy and in the 60’s again, which is nice. Earlier today, I was out on the deck watching a bright yellow Townsend’s Warbler flit through the trees as it stopped for a while on its migration north. 

I am happy to say that the two big (and expensive) house projects are complete: the new window coverings are in and I think they really open up the master bedroom, and it’s nice to have covers downstairs I can actually close off and have hopes they’ll open again later. A nice side benefit: much better energy efficiency in keeping the heat out, or perhaps in, depending on the season. 

And we finished off the irrigation system upgrades as well. All 15 circuits are now tied into the controller, where before almost half of them were pre-set and could only be tweaked by going out and opening up the valve box. We did this by upgrading to a new controller that can control there system via radio instead of through buried wiring. 

This wasn’t a cheap upgrade, but because we already had some wiring that was failing due to age, as well as a couple of added circuits where no wiring existed, it really improves our ability to manage the water, especially during really hot streaks. In talking to one of the co-owners of the group that did the work, he now feels that in new installation, this radio-based control network is very cost effective to traditional system that require trenches and buried wires, especially when the irrigation setup is installed over a few years in stages. 

We also upgraded the circuits along the driveway and in the shade garden, both places where it was using drip — and we were losing plants as emitters clogged and we didn’t know until the plant failed. Now both are using pop ups, and so I think the reliability has been massively improved. And we revamped the veggie garden area, tearing out all of the old (and buried) drip and installing new, surface based drip == we were pretty sure there was at least one leak in the system and with the piping buried debugging and fixing was effectively impossible. 

So, expensive to do, but we’ve futures proofed the system for when other wired circuits fail (right now, it’s 8 wired, 7 by radio) and the circuits that never quite worked reliably have been rebuilt, which makes me happy. 

I also added two new raised beds in the veggie garden, and hauled in 25 bags of soil to fill them, and one of them now has blueberries in them. Laurie has her tomatoes and a few other things in and is working on getting the rest of the garden started, and I pulled out the fuscias that didn’t survive the winter and got both new fucsias and my dahlias and got all of the pots and containers planted, so I’m well ahead of last year on this. 

One project I’ve had to put on hold for fall is a raised planter I put in last year downstairs in a place I now hate (and the dahlias didn’t do well in it for some reason), and I intended to clear it out and move it into the veggie area to become an herb planter. Well, it also turns out we have a Dark-eyes Junco nest literally 5 feet from it, as I found out when I scared the poor bird off her nest and into a tree to scold me, and so I’m staying well away from that area until I’m sure the chicks have fledged and the nest is empty. 

Joining Kitsap Audubon

The election is over (I was running unopposed, of course), so it’s official — in June I’ll join Kitsap Audubon’s team as Vice President for a one year term, and sit on the board. I talk about it a bit below in the Spark Bird piece, but it’s still too early to have any real detail on what projects I’ll take on.

Bird Boarding

One of those “I really need to figure this out one of these days” projects has been where to board the cats and Tatiana The Cockatoo. The cats are not a huge problem, but exotic birds? When we moved to Washington, we found a vet practice with an avian vet who also did birding, but, unfortunately, they shut down the boarding practice during covid, and about a year ago, the practice closed down completely. We’ve shifted to a very good vet in the Tacoma area, but that left where to board her as an open question; the best option I could find was 90 minutes away, again in the Tacoma area. 

Recently, though, Kitsap Humane Society was involved in a situation where they ended up getting over 50 animals of multiple species out of a nasty hoarding situation, and a number of other groups stepped up to help with the major influx of animals. One of them was a boarding company, which when I looked them up online, also advertised exotic boarding as well as cats and dogs. I contacted them, arranged to come over and talk to them and inspect facilities, and I came away feeling really good about the operation. As we speak, Tatiana is on a test run vacation for a few days, so everyone can get to know each other and I can see how well things go, but it looks like this problem is finally resolved, which means Laurie and I can finally plan to go somewhere together, something we haven’t done since pre-Covid, mostly because of the boarding issues. 

No idea where we’ll go yet, any suggestions? 

Oh, and Laurie just came back from her annual spring trip to Cannon Beach, and in ten days or so, I’ll go out on my spring birding trip, which I’ve decided will be out to the Gray’s Harbor area for some shorebird chasing. These are both times to allow us to unplug and do whatever we want for a few days, which might just be sleep. I think it’s nice for both of us to be able to have a chance to do our own thing, but I’m also looking forward to getting out on a shared journey again. 

Weird Dreams

I am generally not someone who remembers dreams and the best way to define the ones I do is “weird”, but this month I had one that stuck with me, and definitely hits the top of the weird-o-meter. It seems pretty clearly tied into my reading of David Pogue’s Apple at 50 book (highly recommended). 

In the dream, I’m in a crowd, in a club, in Hamburg. Watching the Beatles perform Love Me Do — and the dream, no less, is in Black and White. And their drummer is a mid-30’s Steve Jobs having a great old time.

Why? Don’t ask me to explain my brain, I just live in it. 

Why Not Sawstop?

I had a reader ask me this question after my shop turned last month — why did I know buy a Sawstop tables and instead went with the DeWalt?

Sawstops are really good saws and I appreciate the safety factor they have built in, but they are also a lot more expensive than many other alternatives. At the time I bought the DeWalt, Sawstop had not yet announced their contractor saw, so it wasn’t an option for me, since I knew I didn’t want a larger, non-mobile cabinet saw (a very good decision on my part). 

One thing people need to realize is that one reason they see Sawstop saws all over the YouTube woodworking channels is that Sawstop is very good at giving discounts (or in some cases the entire saw) to influencers, so they can be a good value if you qualify for that. They understand the positive results of the marketing they get having the Sawstop saw (and logo) so visible on so many channels. 

But I don’t want folks to think they’re not also quality machines: they are. And if I were buying a saw today, I would seriously consider one, although the price is about twice that of the DeWalt. But at the time I did buy mine, I felt it was better to save the money to put into the lathe (which I have not yet bought, of course, but I think sometime this year that’ll finally happen, although I still don’t know what I’m buying)

Sawstop is definitely a good option, but for me, the DeWalt made more sense and as long as it’s used with some care, I think it’s a good option as well. It all depends on your shop needs and budget.

Shifting listening priorities

One of the things I did this month was start re-arrainging my watching and listening priority. Way back in 2019 I wrote a piece called Killing Your Mentor, which talked about part of your growth over time is realizing that you are no longer learning from those you’ve chosen as teachers/mentors, and of the need to move on to continue that growth. It’s easy to get into a habit of just listening or watching the same voices, and slide into idle where you’re more or less reinforcing what you already know, and not really pushing yourself into new territory. 

Which is — perfectly all right, honestly. I think all of us need to be able to relax and spend time idling; an un-ending, relentless push forward can easily lead to burnout. 

But I was starting to feel like I wanted to put more time into book reading again, and that I’d hit a point where my podcast listening was weeks backed up, and that set me into thinking about where I was putting my time and whether that was where I wanted that time to be spent. 

And I ended up deciding the answer was “no”. There were some YouTube channels that I was following that had basically become background noise while I was doing other things, and some podcasts that just weren’t as interesting to me as they used to be. 

So I did some spring cleaning of my incoming content feeds, and as I was doing that, I realized it was also time to shift around some of my patreon activities. I unsubscribed to four YouTube channels and two podcasts, and I’ve ended my patronage of three, while I’ve added in patronage to two others, and I think this better reflects my current wishes and interests. I’m still kind of looking around for some new Photography voices to plug into and follow, but overall, I fill like these tweaks shift around what I’m doing to better reflect my interests today, as opposed to what they were three or four years ago. 

None of this is any criticism of and of the creators I’ve dropped patronage on — it’s literally me shifting my priorities as my own interests as goals have shifted. And yes, I feel a bit guilty dropping patronage because they did nothing to deserve being dropped, but it was time to shift things around for me personally. 

Sometimes it’s good to just let inertia take you forward. And sometimes, it’s time to shake things up a bit and re-think what you’re doing. I seem to be headed out of the former and into the latter un a lot of ways, and these changes reflect that.

Taking Stock

Last August I decided it was time to get serious about losing weight again. I evaluated my diet (using the time honored food diary), and made some changes, taking about 600 calories a day out of what I was eating. 

Here we are at the beginning of May, and I thought it was a good time to check in on what’s happened since then and what I’ve learned along the way. It;s time to take stock on where things stand.

The TL/DR is that things have gone really well so far. In August I weighed 335 pounds. As of May 1, I weigh 303, over 30 pounds gone. That’s an average loss of a bit more than 4 pounds a month. 

Things have slowed down a bit the last two months, where I only lose 2 pounds each. There are a few reasons for this: my California doctor always told me to expect things to plateau around 30 pounds, and it turns out he’s correct — my body seems to have decided to try to stabilize my weight here, and I have found it’s been a bit more insistent on my ingesting calories. I, also, decided it was a good time to loosen the leash a bit and take a bit of a break — so my daily calories are up about 200 a day (for now). 

This loss is almost 10% of my body weight, which is kind of amazing to me, but when I started looking at these numbers, I realized that I have also passed a notable milestone — my max weight ever was 412 pounds, and so I am now well past losing 100 pounds from that max — literally, 25% of me no longer exists, which on some philosophical level has me wondering how I’m still me. 

This is wonderful, but the job is not done — my current goal weight is 280, which is both what I weighed when I as 30, and also the weight where I start to qualify for knee replacement surgery with my doctors. Whether I will actually look into that I haven’t decided yet (more on that in a bit). If I can maintain 3 pounds a month, I’ll hit that by the end of the year.

There were some expected as well as unexpected side effects that came with the weight loss. Expected: I lost a size in my clothes, from 3XL to 2XL, which not only was great for my self-image, it opened me up to more clothing brands, and I’ve been experimenting with some; so far, Carhart seems to be my favorite new brand. 

Unexpected: I reduced the amount of insulin I take every day by a third. I also found that it improved the thing that was most annoying to me most days, my knees.

In retrospect, both of these changes should have been obvious: the reduced calories reduces the amount of insulin needed, and the reduce weight takes stress off the knees, making things a lot happier for them. And the change has been kind of stunning. 

Where in June and July I finally was able to average 5000 steps a day two months in a row — and then more or less have to take ten days off to let the knees and legs heal up, in December I found myself averaging 5,400 steps a day without even noticing. March and April I averaged 5,700 steps a day and for the first week of May I’m averaging 6,400 steps. I’ve been slowly adding 100 steps to my goal any month I beat the goal, and I’m up to 5,200 steps — and I recently ended a 24 day streak when I needed a rest day, and I’m now on a 9 day streak. 

The change in how my legs are able to carry me I amazing and positive (and not something I’d thought about, but in retrospect, fully understandable). I’ve had a few days of 8,000 steps, where even a few months ago, 6,000 steps was a real stretch. It’s been a great and wonderful development that is helping me maintain motivation to keep the weight loss going. 

My current goal is 280 pounds, what I weighed at age 30. I’m trying not to look much past that, because for all the progress so far, there’s still a lot of work (and intimidating work) to do. Crossing the border below 300 will be a notable milestone, hopefully this month, and I hope to reach 280 this year. 

After that? We’ll see. My current calorie goal is 2,400 calories a day. I’m a bit above that right now and my food diary has gotten a bit sloppy, but I’m working to get back on track more completely again. I now I’ll need to reduce the calories again to maintain weight loss, and I have the next 200 calorie reduction mapped out. To get more towards a normal weight I’ll need to get closer to 2,000 calories a day, and I need to think that through, but I don’t have to worry about it for a while. I expect I’ll want to be under 250 as an ultimate goal, but how much under? I have no clue. I’ll figure that out when figuring it out is a relevant decision..

My Current Shop Project

Here’s a glance of my current shop project, the first one I’ve done that wasn’t for the shop. It’s a coat rack, with the wood being maple. The metal rack I found from a vendor on Etsy and is heavy, so I’ve put a fair bit of thought into how to hang this securely; it’ll be attached with five connectors into the wall, which will be covered by the rack itself. The wood work isn’t perfect, but I’m happy with the result. As I write this, I’ve finished with the finishing work — a layer of wax and oil to amber the wood and bring out its character, and a clear coat of a few layers of lacquer to give it some toughness, so it should be installed and the project finished in the next week (the screws to attach the rack have been epoxied into the rack and are drying as we speak). 

Next two projects are lined up and all of the supplies acquired, and it’s nice to be getting things done

See you next issue!


What’s New From Chuq

  • Nothing this month

Spark Bird

I have been a member of the American Birding Association for a number of years and enjoy its weekly Podcast, which is an interesting window into the diversity of things that make up the world of birding. 

A recent episode had host Nate Swick talking to Jenn Lodi-Smith about her Spark Bird Project. A Spark Bird is the bird, or bird-related situation, that caught your attention and started you down the path towards becoming a birdwatcher or birder. It’s a great discussion (and honestly, Nate is a great interviewer and conversationalist, and every one of his podcasts is a great listen) and I recommend it to you. 

It got me thinking back to my own Spark Bird experience. To some degree birds have always been a part of my life, and I’ve lived with Tatiana the Cockatoo for over 30 years now, and my history of sharing a house with a bird of some sort stretches back almost 40 years.

But there are a couple of birds that directly tie me into my path towards defining myself as a birder. The first goes back to the mid 1990’s, when I was out on vacation with a camera. We stopped at the harbor in Arcata, California to explore, and out in the harbor were Brown Pelicans and they were plunge diving for fish. I just stood there for a while watching these huge birds plunge into the water with grace and skill, and glorying in seeing this activity. 

My interest in birds simmered for a long time. It took a step forward in the mid-2000’s because I wanted to spend more time outside, and if I was going to go out and walk, I might as well do so with binoculars and see what I can see.

In 2005, I filed my first eBird listing — 21 freaking years ago. They were very sparse and sporadic for a while, and some of them are very clearly wrong (I was, early on, very enthusiastic and not very good at this) — in fact, in looking back and them, one was so clearly wrong I deleted it. That was also the year I took my first bird-centric trip, down to Morro Bay, as a test of whether I really wanted to get more serious about this birdwatching thing (TL/DR: yes, yes I did)

Along the way I discovered the local Audubon group, and in 2007, I went on my first outing with them, to a place called Merced National Wildlife Refuge, and that blew me away completely. Merced became a place I loved to visit and got to know very well. It also exposed me to some very good birders that became friends and mentors and nudged me down the path towards becoming a better birder.

And it was in late 2007 when I made my first trip up into the Sacramento area to a place called Consumes River Preserve, where for the first time I ran into a species that would transform me into a serious birder: Sandhill Cranes. Since them I’ve spent a lot of time watching and photographing those birds. I’ve been lucky enough to watch them dance for each other as the birds attract mates and pair off, and to sit and watch a family pair with chicks feeding and protecting them, and I always find them fascinating and mesmerizing. One of my minor regrets to having moved to Washington is that Merced is too far away to easily visit, but I still am able to find some Sandhills a few times a winter while they’re in the region. 

And since then I’ve seen 317 species of birds, filed 1900+ eBird checklists, taken thousands of photos of hundreds of species, and I’ve written a few eBooks about birding and my love of birds and the environments they live in. As a way of paying forward to those birders who took me under their wing and helped me grow and mature, I got involved with Santa Clara County Bird Alliance and the San Francisco Bay Bird Organization and logged 2000+ hours with them before my move to Washington, including leading tours to Merced NWR that helped me share my love of that location with other birders.

And in June, I’ll be joining the team of Kitsap Audubon, where I will be joining the board and spending a term as Vice President of the organization. My goal in getting involved? I have no real agenda, I want to see how I can help the organization move forward and succeed at what it’s already doing. I do intend to find ways to get involved in their conservation efforts, but at this point, I don’t really know what that means. 

But all of this, in its way, ties back to that day when I stood there watching Pelicans dropping like rocks into the water and wondering how they did that without injuring themselves. That set me on a journey of exploring and learning that continues today, and of me looking for ways to both expand my knowledge of birds, and to share that knowledge and joy with others. 

I have long been a huge fan of Adam Savage, and he talks a lot about his role as a science communicator, and it was only recently that I realize in my own small way that’s what I’ve tried to be as well. And now I’m wondering how I can expand that and perhaps reach wider audiences down the road, all with the goal of helping others find that Spark Bird and start their own journey down their own version of the path I’ve found myself on.

Birders vs Birdwatchers

I’ve been using the terms Birder and Birdwatcher more or less interchangeably here, and I thought I ought to define them for people who aren’t yet tied into the culture. 

In practice, the two terms ARE both identifying the same people, but I think there’s a nuanced difference: to me Birdwatchers are people who enjoy watching birds, while Birders are those people who also enjoy the process of birdwatching — in some ways, birders are the nerds within birdwatching, just like there are people who use computers, and there are people who also dive into the computers to understand and poke at their innards to make them dance. 

One is not better than the other, it’s all about how each person likes to integrate their interests into their life. 

Recent Photography

As I create new images and re-process older ones, I post them on my site in the Recent Work area. 

Busy month. I did three birding trips with the camera and took no photos. But the Daffodils and Tulips have been outstanding this year.


For Your Consideration

Birds and Birding

Photography

Science and Technology

Interesting Stuff

Free Wallpapers just for Subscribers

New Wallpapers (January, 2026). A new set of 12 wallpapers are now available. 

You can download this new set from the 6FPS Secret Wallpaper. The previous set of wallpapers are now with the full public set at Public Wallpaper page.

These are available only to you, my favorite people who happen to be subscribers to 6FPS. The previous set of images I released here are now available to the general public.

 

Download an E-book

I have eight e-books available. All are free for you to download and read with no obligation. You can download them from my e-book page on the web site. 

These are the books that are available:

  • Birding 101: Hints and Tips for the New Birder

  • Merced National Wildlife Refuge

  • And the Geese Exploded: A Life With Birds

  • Birds of Santa Clara County

  • 2021.1: A Year of Transitions

  • 2020.1: Images from the year when Covid changed everything

  • 2019 (1)

  • 2019 (2)

 

About 6FPS

6FPS (Six Frames Per Second) is a newsletter of interesting things and commentary from Chuq Von Rospach (chuqvr@gmail.com). 6FPS is Copyright © 2025 by Chuq Von Rospach. All Rights Reserved.

Coming out monthly on the 2nd Monday of the month, I will place in your inbox a few things I hope will inform and delight you. There is too much mediocre, forgettable stuff attacking your eyeballs every day you're online; this is my little way to help you cut through the noise to some interesting things you might otherwise not find. 

And with that, I'll see you in the next issue. I'd love feedback on this, what you like, what you want more of, what you want less of. And if you have something interesting you think I might want to talk about, please pass it along. Until then, take care, and have fun. 

Where to Find Chuq

Copyright

All content is Copyright © 2026 by Chuq Von Rospach. These images are not public domain. Please contact me if you are interested in licensing an image for use. Commercial use is prohibited without explicit permission.

All of my images are copyrighted and are not public domain. They may not be used without permission. Commercial use of this content is prohibited without explicit permission from Chuq Von Rospach.

Chuq Von Rospach

Birder, Nature and Wildlife Photography in Silicon Valley

http://www.chuq.me
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6FPS V8#4: Shop Tour