May your travels be safe and your family and friendships be strong
Sorry for the slightly soft pictures – only Turkey shots I had that were processed and haven’t already been featured on the blog. These were taken by my feeders back in August 2015. The mother hen would bring her offspring over for a morning snack. To her credit, she kept a close eye on them and would hurry them to safety whenever she saw my camera pointed at them.
Happy Holidays!
Welcome back everyone and since it is like an hour before midnight .. Happy Thanksgiving.; Now that I am thinking about it, it might have been more appropriate to feature a post on those that probably don’t see the “Happy” of that day… the Turkey, but I’ve already featured them back in September (link here). Instead, I’m going with Mr. and Mrs. Blotchy
While processing the pictures from our Texas birding trip back in November 2013, I came across these shots. At first I wrote them off as female Mallards … well, because just about all ducks with drab female coloring look like… female Mallards. It can be as painful as trying to identify juvenile Sparrows if you do not get lucky enough to capture a nearby male. While processing them in the digital darkroom I became quite intrigued. For some reason they just didn’t look like the standard Mallard or any other female brown duck that has made their way through the darkroom in the past. I guess for starters, they didn’t have the classic colored stripe on the wing. Then there was that small black splotch on the base of the bill.
That prompted a visit to the reference bookcase. Confirmed the wing stripe on the Mallard and sure enough no black splotch on the base of the bill ladies and gentlemen, this just might be a new check mark in the bird list! It just so happens my brother Ron had recently brought up the topic of the Mottled Duck. Unfortunately, the reason escapes me – he might have gotten one in the tin on his trip to Ft Myers (went back in my emails and couldn’t locate a reference – Ron, if you remember please let us know in the comments). Either way, I was super stoked to potentially have one of my own so sent them off to Ron for validation. He is a great reference whenever there are difficulties on the ID phase. His assessment was a confirmation giving me another +1 for my list and ANOTHER +1 from my Texas trip. That birding excursion is turning out to be a gold mine for new birds. Sorry about taking so long to get these processed.
Unfortunately, these were the only shots of these two Mottled Ducks in the lot. This means we need to get to the facts like right now hehehe. The Mottled is a dull relative of the Mallard which attributes to the similarities and my original incorrect ID assumption. There really isn’t much else of interest on the Cornell site beyond the fact they typically pair up in November which is earlier than most ducks. Seeing as how we were there in mid-November, these two must have been embarking on their honeymoon. Lastly, if you are curious, Mottled simply means having different blotches of color.
Well, that’s all folks – hope you enjoyed my new addition to my bird list. Now be safe on the roads if you are out and about on the big T-Day. I can’t afford to lose any loyal readers.
Welcome back safe and sound! I was a little worried there for a bit. Based on the crying all the pundits, pollsters and biased talking heads were apparently doing last night you would have to assume the end of the world was at hand. Now, I say apparently because I chose to spare myself all the hoopla of a Hillary win based on the all the information coming at me around noon yesterday – the last time I bothered to check the news. Instead, I worked on wiring my garage and watched a pretty good movie – fittingly, Purge the Election Year. I gave strict orders for no one to give me any updates and to their credit they stuck to their word (even my wife who I know must have been dying to tell me by the time she went to bed). At 5:40 this morning, Linda gave me the news and to say I was shocked is a huge understatement. I would put it more in the lightning strike to the head level made up of 50% jolt and 50% uncontrolled happiness. Don’t get me wrong, Trump wasn’t my guy, but compared to the most corrupt candidate to ever run for the highest office in the land … he’s a godsend. I have to give President Elect Trump credit. He took on a boat load of challengers, fought back against the establishment (of both parties), paved his own path and came out the end a winner. Flyover country has awakened (link here) and they are taking their country back. Note, to all the hack celebrities, comedians and singers that promised to leave the country should the election turn out the way it did, your names are all on a list sitting next to my desk and recommend you order your U-Haul pronto – Cher might need a rocket to go where she promised.
Time will tell how this turns out, but in honor of Trump’s tenacity I give you today’s featured bird.
Some birds have an air about them that exudes confidence. Eagles, Hawks, Falcons and of course Owls all leave you with the expression that they command the skies and can rain down death on whatever prey they happen upon. They are built to kill and their features and capabilities are all perfectly constructed to be extremely efficient in that line of business. Now, let’s contrast that with this rather cute looking songbird. From afar, they simply look like a smallish but stockier bird
However, when you get a little closer..
Hit the jump to learn a bit more about this bird .. and, of course, a few more shots.
Greetings everyone! Decided I would give my loyal readers a break from all the Halloween posts as of late and bring you something new and refreshing. Part of this is to buy myself a little bit of time because there is an upcoming Halloween post to cover the Haunted Trail night walkthrough – can you say a butt load of pictures!?! It took forever to get those images processed and queued up for publishing. While those are aging properly in wooden barrels, feast your eyes on this intriguing bird.
Pretty cool eh? Kind of a cross between that spoonbill you saw previously (link here) and a Stork. Wait… did that say Stork – that reminds me I have some Georgia surprises coming hehehe. But I digress. This colorfully paletted bird is a White Ibis. Your probably could have guessed the first part of that name, but the second part might be a bit more difficult to pull out of the air.
Hit the jump to read a bit more about this bird and maybe learn a few interesting facts.
Just sitting here yelling at my TV thanks to an Indian’s let down so far – someone wake up that damn goat!! To help myself cool down, figured I would pop out another post. For the record, you are in bonus time this month – life is so much easier when all I have to do is write the post as opposed to having to process all the pictures, get them linked into the post and then start adding witty banter for the enjoyment of my loyal readers. Thanks to doing all the hard work while on vacation, I can simply jump in and get right too it. As I have mentioned previously, we held our annual Haunted Trail at the beginning of this month. Keeping with tradition, thought I would help give you a perspective of what it takes to actually put that together – This is what my basement looked like two weeks before the event.
Basically a total mess thanks to having to deal with finishing up all the trim work while trying to get a head start on the Halloween props. This year I was able to start a little earlier than usual thanks to an accelerated running schedule (my two half marathon races were earlier in September and my third one was a couple of weeks after the party date). This allowed me to get the crap load of boxes and tubs out of storage way early. I was also able to get my partner in haunt to come over and my brother Ron was even able to come down and help build out all the new sensor triggers we deployed this year. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of Ron from that day, but he did send me a bunch of pictures he took to help chronicle the work (big thanks).
Here Paul and I are putting together all the Posey frames and getting them costumed up.
Hit the jump to get a feel for all the work that goes in for one night of haunting fun.
Continue reading They Sense Your Fear Haunted Trail 2016 Pt 1 – The Build
In case you are tired of Halloween posts, figured it would be a good time to throw in something different. Don’t get me wrong, you have more posts coming about our Halloween Haunted Trail than examples of corrupt establishment career politicians coming out of Wikileaks on a daily basis – well, maybe not that many, but I had no idea how bad our representatives had become. To help temper my disgust on this topic, let’s focus on a topic that always brings a smile to my face – a new check mark in my North American Birding List!
This fine specimen is what they call a Roseate Spoonbill. I led with this image because it can be a bit deceptive when viewed from this angle. If you are not familiar with this particular bird, you might not suspect that it has Spoonbill in its name. In fact you might just think it was a Flamingo that saved up enough money to get that giant curve taken out of its bill. Now, if you were to see it from a different angle, you would have no problem in the identification process. An angle more like this one would definitely do the trick.
Now that is a schnoz. For some strange reason I have an affinity for this pink hued beauty – not sure why, maybe it’s the cool feet hehehe. This particular Spoonbill was shot on the Texas cost in Galveston. We took a birding trip down there back in November to capture the very rare Whooping Crane in the wild (link here).
Hit the jump to see a read a bit more about the Roseate.
I swear this last month has lasted at least three months! Since middle of September, I’ve ran three half marathons, held our annual Halloween party, finished like 8 posts, made it through a crap load of work on my real job and now trying to get some badly needed rest which consists of me hiking up and down mountains. Since November seems like it is never going to get here, decided to break out some of the Halloween posts early this year. Let’s start on the decorations front. Remember those Posies from last year (link here). Well, this year they are getting an upgrade.
Although these have not been put together yet, you can definitely tell they’ve been put on a weight training regimen… and they kind of got gendered. Focus in on the one on the far right. It took a bit to get the process all figured out and that one is the result of finally getting everything right. The other two I’ll talk about as a memory points for me and as a cautionary tale for those of you interested in trying this out for yourself. Starting at the beginning, the key element in the new Posey configuration is this.
Hit the jump to get details on the latest of the Posey improvement projects.
Well, today I completed the last race of the 2016 season (well, at least of the ones that were planned). In light of that, figured it would be a good time to get a previous race posted. I hate it when I get too far behind on the race posts mainly due to how hard it is to remember everything about the race once another one is in the books. The runs are stressful enough without that added task of trying to remember what the hell I was thinking in between big gulps of air. Getting right to it, One week after running the IVS Half Marathon (link here), I headed down to Springfield IL to participate in the Oak Ridge Cemetery Moonlight Marathon.
This year the race coordinators decided to cancel the prediction element of the marathon and instead simply added a half marathon and a quarter marathon. This meant we didn’t need to form a team which turned out to be a good thing since Ryan got hurt and Sung forgot to sign up (Sung also ended up getting injured as well not soon after that). So, it was just me this year. Linda ended up having a conflict with a dog show so it was me by my lonesome to take on the half marathon. I wasn’t too worried about it since I knew the course and I knew I was trained up for the distance based on the results of the previous week. However, little did I know at the time that this race was going to be a major gut check. Race day prep was pretty uneventful. The predicted rain had moved out and the early temps were in norm for that time of year. Lining up for the race everything still felt fine. First loop would be in the light and the second loop would require the head lamp. All good and even reminded myself to stay in control having already experienced the treacherous hills in the cemetery.
Jumping ahead, the first loop went as planned. Pace was right at where I wanted to be. The quarter marathon was going off an hour after we had started the half so they were lining up to get their leg started as I completed my first lap. Oh, almost forgot, like the previous year, after 4 miles into the race, it was as if I was on a solo training run. There was no one visible in front or behind me with the exception of some union points in the course where the various routes came together. Just me, the road and gravestones wherever I looked. The second loop was a completely different story. As I hit the first hill back out something started to feel wrong. A dull pain was starting to build in my gut, but my pace was holding so it didn’t cause much concern. By mile 8 that dull pain had turned into a serious pain in the stomach and a serious concern was swirling in my head. By mile 10 it couldn’t be ignored anymore, forcing me stop running to walk up a large hill as I contemplated whether I needed to throw up to relieve the problem. It also became apparent that the night air was not cooling as expected and the reality of overheating was a possible cause. Walking during a race is like a swift kick to the nuts after training so hard to make it to the starting line. At the top of the hill my mind told my body to suck it up – we were running again… but not for long. At 11 the body shut down again and another walk was needed to calm the stomach again. This was not good and the only thing that kept playing in my head was how mad Linda was going to be. Taking advantage of a lull in the stomach pain, I was able to start running again and closed out the race (thankfully there is a long downhill in mile 12 that help out tremendously). Short of the Marathon run (link here), this might have been the most relieved I’ve been to see the finish line. Too exhausted to reach down and take the timing chip off, I headed over to a nearby wall to rest – race officials were busy running after me to get my chip but that was the last thing on my mind (they eventually got it off of me ha).
Hit the jump to see how this ordeal turned out!
Greetings everyone! We are at the end of Summer now which translates to a mixture of sadness and stress. Sadness in the sense that like every year I wonder where in the hell all the time went. Each year my objectives list get longer and longer yet every year it seems like a huge struggle to get anywhere close to getting through the list. It is this time of the year it really hits home because the finality of the limited number of days until Christmas is a blunt object trauma to the head. The stress part comes knowing there is only one week left before our annual Halloween party. The goal is to give our guests the best possible experience I can and by standards better than the year before. Upping the game this year, we are adding more electronics into the show which means huge assistance from my EE/Physics/genius/cat friendly/birding brother Ron. As I type he is busy building new heat sensors for my decorations. While he is doing that, I am in a full throttle battle with my basement and other tasks that need to be completed before then. It is really quite the epic battle every year to get all the decorations stuff done while getting the house prepped for guests. A labor of love at a cost of sleep deprivation. Add in this month’s blog quota and you have one groggy Bri. That, however, has never been sufficient excuse to let my blog readers down so on to the meat.
Today’s featured feathered friend is the American Turkey. Due to the time compression, pretty much locked into whatever images I already have processed. Thank god I worked up a ton of shots from our Texas trip we took back in November 2013. Hmmm 1, 2, holy crap I’m almost a solid three years behind now. Cleansing breath, cleansing breath, breath in, breath out ahhhhh… much better. Note, I find it quite amusing that Ron is now experiencing the joys of a backlog now that he has started his bird blogging (shhhhh don’t say anything, it’s my decoration work that is probably the cause of his delays). I’ll give credit to Linda for spotting this specific group of Turkeys while driving in a park. They were just meandering around enjoying the beautiful day like the rest of us
Hit the jump to see a few more pictures
Thought I would pull out a post today that represents how my run went Saturday night. I’ll post in detail on the Midnight Half Marathon race I mentioned in the previous post. Let’s just say for a tease that it was bitter sweet. There was a high moment and a whole lot of BAAAAD that happened that night to the point that Linda brought out full scorn and I didn’t even switch to the full marathon (and thank god I didn’t!). It was “black” out for the second loop and that is the loop I felt like “death” was calling me from the graves as I passed. This all pales in comparison to the trip home but more on that later when I can stomach the recollection.
Based on that, I cannot think of a better post topic.
That my friends is what I believe to be a Black Vulture! More importantly, that would be a Black Vulture that gives me a plus one on the birding list. I actually had to spend some time looking at this particular bird to really determine if it was a Black Vulture or rather just an immature Turkey. Based on the reference books, the Turkey Vulture is like everywhere in the US more Northern in the summer and more Southern in the winter. In fact, I’d be tempted to bet you no matter where you happen to be in the US, you will likely see one tomorrow soaring overhead. Note, if there are bunch of them circling over just your head… you might consider checking your pulse or do and immediate safety check.
Hit the jump to read a bit more about the Black Turkey.
Life Intrigued 