Category: Observation

Ichabod’s Delight

I am very diligent about keeping my career isolated from the meanderings here at LifeIntrigued.  That will never change and besides this endeavor exists as a small break from that busy world.  With that stated, I will say today was one of the toughest days I’ve have ever had in that other world – one I will likely not forget.  But enough of that, let’s get to something far more entertaining – pumpkins, kerosene and toilet paper.  How  can you go wrong with that combination.. hint.. You Can’t!!
Halloween Trail 2015 - The Flaming Pumpkin

Unlike most of the posts on this blog, this particular one has very little direct influence by me.  I didn’t carve the pumpkin, I didn’t prep the pumpkin, I didn’t light the pumpkin and I didn’t even take the pictures you are going to see on this post.  Nope!  For those keeping score, I did do all the photo processing and banged out the words you are reading so at least there was some form of contribution.  A couple of weeks ago, the DoeRybarNerFler Haunted Trail was once again on display.  The details of this year’s epic endeavor will be coming at you soon – that annual post requires a lot of picture processing I have not been able to get to in these recent hectic weeks. A new feature for this year’s trail was The Flaming Pumpkin.  It was considered last year but fear of lighting up the woods scared me away.  This year a 10 page risk assessment was created, firefighters were brought in to assess the threat and a crew of highly trained forest fire jumpers were hired to stand watch over it.  My friend Paul was really the brains behind this fiery decoration based on a video he had seen on YouTube last year.  I must say, that video was amazing but still skeptical it worked as advertised – guess what – it works EXACTLY as advertised and man it is cool.

LifeIntrigued Disclaimer: NEVER DO THIS – NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER.  This is extremely dangerous and you WILL get hurt if you try it.  Are you thinking this might be good to try – WELL STOP THINKING IT NOW – I mean it – don’t make me come over there.

Okay, with the lawyers satisfied, back to the regularly scheduled programming.

There isn’t much too it – you carve a medium to large size real pumpkin – let me stress that again a REAL – DO NOT TRY THIS ON A FOAM PUMPKIN.  As a note, feel free to spend as much time on you carving as you want to, but do not get to attached to it – at the end of the night that pumpkin will be ready for the trash.  Carve the pumpkin in traditional fashion, you have to have a bottom in the pumpkin capable of holding liquid so don’t bother with any of those fancy pants methods that core out from the bottom.  Take it to a safe place free of flammable items and establish a safe zone with at least 4 large rolls of bright yellow caution tape.  Fill the bottom up with what appears to be about an inch or two of kerosene.  Take a full roll of toilet paper (your choice on the ply) and place it hole vertical in the center of the bottom.  Let it soak up some of the kerosene and then tell everyone to get like 40 feet or more away.  Find a large stick and then duct tape another long stick to that followed by another duct taped stick with a match on the end.  Anything less than 8 ft will jeopardize your eyebrows.

Once those steps are followed exactly, you can light the toilet paper – stand back and enjoy a flaming paradise for about the next 2 hrs.

So there you go, not much to it right?  Truth be told, I could watch fire for hours.  Something about the flames are mesmerizing to me and drives my imagination to new levels.  Much like clouds, the abstract and random shapes produced by the flames drive the mind to associate to physical representations.  Hoping this isn’t just me that has this experience – if so, please let me know so I can schedule an appointment and get checked out.  In the meantime, I thought I’d post some of Linda’s fine work and give you insights into what physical forms it takes in my strange  (straight from my 7th grade teacher – honest, ask my brother) mind.

Let’s start with my favorite one – for each I’ll let you view it and then I’ll give my perspective afterwards – interested in hearing how far off, close etc. we are in the comments

Halloween Trail 2015 - The Flaming Pumpkin

So this one to me looks like a ghostly figure at the top of the flames in a hood.  It is facing to the left and the hood and cloak are formed by the whiter parts of the flame.  The flame has two eyes and a nose set into the hood.  It has the left arm straight out towards you and the right one is hanging down closer to the side.  I’m probably going to have this one printed I like it so much.

Next up!

Halloween Trail 2015 - The Flaming Pumpkin

Once again I see a ghastly figure rising up out of the flames.  The head is dropped down a bit into the body with the main column with two arms raised up in a scare posture.  It also kind of looks like a small head in the upper right part of the flame with the hair outlined in white and the eyes and skull face in the darker orange.  Keeping with that theme, there is actually a pumpkin then in the air above it turned to the right – you can see one eye and a smiling mouth – contrasting nicely with the grumpy cat carving on the pumpkin itself.

Hit the jump to see a few more shots of this year’s scary Haunted Trail addition

Continue reading Ichabod’s Delight

Rud[dy] Can’t Fail

As promised, I’m back and as foreshadowed it’s another post featuring a bird.  If it is any consolation I promise this will be the last bird post … for the month.  If you recall, I was looking through the Ft. Myers’ collection when I spotted the Black-Bellied Plover featured a couple of posts ago.  This happens to be the bird I was actually looking for at the time.

Ruddy Turnstone shot at Fort Meyers

I wanted to make sure my crappy shots at the Emiquon floodle were not of a Ruddy Turnstone – which is the bird for today’s post.  I was sure it was in the tin already and just wanted to double back and confirm my latest shot wasn’t a morphing Ruddy.  It checked out against these Ruddy specimens, but in that same set found the perfect match I used in the Plover post.  Since I was already in there, figured it would be a good time to go ahead and post it and more importantly get my official +1 for the Birding Life List.

Ruddy Turnstone shot at Fort Meyers

Hit the jump to read a bit more about this stunning shorebird.

Continue reading Rud[dy] Can’t Fail

The 1100 Payoff

In the final week and three posts to go!  Thought it was good time to give a break on the bird posts – a short break, but still, some relief for those out there that prefer their birds on a plate.  Today’s post was prompted by last Sunday’s big step in my running career.  For the first time ever, I finally crested the 20 mile mark on a training run.  Damn near killed me, but a notch is a notch.  One of the things that keep me going on long runs is thinking about blog posts.  This particular one was helping to motivate me through the hell my body was going through!
2015 Peoria Half Marathon

For the second Sunday in a row I was breaking personal running records.  Yesterday was a distance record, the previous Sunday was a speed record.  As you can tell from the swag above, I ran the Peoria Half Marathon a week ago.  This was supposed to be a final warm up before tackling a much bigger endeavor planned for the end of the month. The intent was to go out at a comfortable pace and simply relax to the end – slow and steady and more importantly, not cause injury to anything that would jeopardize a bigger goal.  Well, that was the plan.  The morning started off as an answer to a runner’s prayers – it was downright cold out.  We left the house at 29 degrees!

2015 Peoria Half Marathon

No worries about overheating that day.  I even decided to pull out the tights knowing it wasn’t supposed to break 40 until after my expected finish time.  My training partner Ryan was toeing the line that day as well – he prefers to run a lot cooler than I do as you can tell by his attire.  A hat and long sleeves means it is definitely cold out for normal people.  Linda was complaining I was not smiling in this pre-race shot.  Wanna know why –  I WAS SHIVERING.   Luckily my grimace was countered by the happy photobomber hehehe.

Hit the jump to see how the frigid start turned out!

Continue reading The 1100 Payoff

Floodle Camouflage

Howdy everyone!  I’m back with another post in another desperate attempt to hit my quota this month.  To give a little insight into the workflow that occurs around here at LifeIntrigued, there are times when I panic and times when I’m just acutely aware that my output needs to be ramped up.  Panic is reserved for those times I have nothing in the hopper, no pictures processed and worse of all – no content ideas.  Contrasting that with the much lower entry on the concern scale where I know I’m late but most of the pictures are processed already and best of all, there’s a topic already earmarked for at least the quota amount.

Black-Bellied Plover shot at Fort Meyers

Fortunately for me, this month falls into the latter.  The pictures for this post and the next are already processed and the other topics have at least the theme identified with the raw shots already taken.  The best thing about having the picture processing done for the post is I can write it up from just about anywhere there is an Internet connection.  Take for example today where I’m coming to  you from a lonely road near Alton IL.  We were down here doing some errands and a little birding.  Thanks to Linda agreeing to drive – we get to spend the travel time cranking posts out – yeah!

Black-Bellied Plover shot at Fort Meyers

Continue reading Floodle Camouflage

Another Find in the Flooded Flats

Well, today I was accused of not having any October posts out (by my wife mind you).  Obviously my loyal readers know that was absolutely WRONG. Hey, I may be running a little late this month, but at least give me some credit for getting something out there.  The good news is I’m in the process of doubling my October output with tonight’s featured bird.
Red-Necked Phalarope shot at Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge

If you recall, the last post was about a late recognition of a productive bird outing with my brother.  That bird (the Wilson’s Phalarope) was enshrined in the Birding Life List thanks to one of my golden rules of wildlife photography – “Shoot Anything That Moves”.  I cannot count the number of times that principle has produced a +1.  If the Wilson’s is considered lucky, this find came with Leprechauns.   I know for a fact that I noticed the Wilson since there were multiple shots with that Phalarope being in the center focus position – that, of course, translates into much better shots than these.

Red-Necked Phalarope shot at Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge

It has been a while since I processed these specific shots, but pretty sure not a single one of them were in the center focus region meaning it didn’t catch our attention during the outing.  Nope, it didn’t even come up until we noticed fellow birders posting about how they found a Red-Necked Phalarope in the exact same floodle area.  That prompted another look through the hundreds of shots we took there.

Red-Necked Phalarope shot at Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge

Continue reading Another Find in the Flooded Flats

A Missed Phalarope Fallacy

Greetings all… welcome to October posting.  About time I got around to this, but I was hoping at least one comment would come in, but alas I’m like a month out now and nada, zip, chirp chirp chirp.  Oh well, I guess life will go on.  Truth be told I’ve been horribly busy as of late and just now getting over the brunt of it.  There are plenty of posts coming up to highlight all the interesting activities, but as a foreshadowing, this month brought about another long race and our annual Halloween Cookout.  Jumping back to the now, let me introduce you to my little friend.
Wilson's Phalarope shot at Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge

On a bit of confession here. I must admit that I was not actively aware I had this specific bird in the tin.  In fact, the opinion was just the opposite – total disappointment over having missed a great opportunity to get a +1 for the day’s birding efforts.  At least a month or so back I was birding with my brother at one of my favorite spots – Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge.  Ron had come down the night before in hopes of scouting out some large floodles that had formed in the area.

Wilson's Phalarope shot at Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge

There were a number of posts out on IBET documenting interesting shorebirds that were frequenting the area.  With the general bird watching opportunities turning quite dull, the chance to add some Pipers and like to the birding list was an exciting opportunity.  We arrived at the area (on the Dickson Mounds road believe it is Rt 9) fairly early in the morning.  In our first pass we noticed a tremendous amount of activity out in the fields to the left.  On our way back we ended up pulling into a wide spot and walking back to see what we could shoot.

Wilson's Phalarope shot at Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge

Continue reading A Missed Phalarope Fallacy

A Birder’s Answer to Go Fly a Kite

Damn, this has been a rough month! Whoever decided to short us a day in September had zero concept of what it takes to keep a blog greased and running. Otherwise, they would have put like 45 days in each month … maybe 31 in February. The good news is the last post put me at 5 which was a comforting position knowing I had a super cool post waiting in the blocks. By super cool I mean THIS BIRD!

Swallow-Tailed Kite Shot in Champaign September 6th, 2015

How awesome is that!?! I realize that non-birders out there may be untying their shoe about now in order to violently fling at their monitors, but those that enjoy the world of aviary are surely intrigued. Those individuals not lucky enough to live in or travel to the Florida costs or better yet to the heart of South America probably have no idea what this particular bird is. Actually, I have traveled to the Florida coat but never spotted one of these magnificent gliders. To save you hours of looking through reference books, this specimen is called a Swallow-Tailed Kite.
Swallow-Tailed Kite Shot in Champaign September 6th, 2015

Hit the jump to read more about this majestic bird!

Continue reading A Birder’s Answer to Go Fly a Kite

Something to Crow About

So, I’m back with another less than crispy post.  Well, actually the last two are far from stellar.  This one from the Denver Botanical Gardens isn’t too bad but I probably could have taken a little more sheen off of it in the digital darkroom.
American Crow taken at Denver Botanical Gardens

If you are not familiar with this particular bird you have probably been living under a rock.  With the exception of Central America and some shoots up into the Western states, this bird pretty much has North America covered.   The intriguing thing about this particular species is their well practiced ability to prevent me from getting a picture of them.  With the exception of the Botanical Gardens above, this bird has managed to evade my glass at every turn.  I’ll try sneaking up on them and they’ll spot me somehow and tear out of the area along with all their friends.  This will cause such a racket with their squawking that all the other birds in the area will take flight as well.  Every once in awhile one will fly by insuring that they are between my glass in the sun essentially torching the shot.  They also appear to have some allies in the field.

American Crow taken at Denver Botanical Gardens

Twice I’ve had the perfect opportunity to take beautiful pictures of them.  The first time I was with my brother heading to Allerton park to go birding.  As we were going down the entrance lane there were at least two American Crows sitting in perfect light 10 or 20 feet off the road.  I immediately announced the presence of that bird and my need to still get in the tin.  At the same time I was bringing The Beast up to get a bead on them as soon as the car would come to a stop… only problem is the car never came to a stop.  There is a theory out there that the car might have even sped up.  Before the glass made it to my eye those Crows were a spot on the horizon.  Has it been mentioned on this blog yet just how competitive my brother is!?!  Their other accomplice is Linda.  Once again we were driving by some Crows in perfect light.  Think I used our special code word for “stop the vehicle immediately, there’s something cool to photograph”.  Clearly that is too much to get out before the moment passes so we have a special one word code (which will not be revealed because of the nature of it – not for the kiddies or easily offended).  Out came the word and once again prepping the glass to get the shot.  Well, that was the plan but once again the CAR DID NOT STOP.  Just kept going in complete contradiction to the coded expectations.  Sure enough the Crows decided to move on to better grounds leaving me empty handed once again.  For the record, Linda’s comment was “It’s just a Crow”.  “Yes, I am fully aware of that but I do not have one in the tin yet!”  Sigh.  Luckily a few flew by while birding at Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge.  Not the best shots in the world but enough to count it – thinking we might have to amend our birding rules a bit.  This “no count without a post” is putting some serious stress on me – meanwhile Mr. Competitive is racking up +1’s after +1’s.

American Crow taken at Denver Botanical Gardens

Guess I better get to some quick facts.  My apologies for the short post.  You already know how clever they are from the information above, but they are a very intelligent bird.  They are actually quite deft at problem solving and have the rare ability to figure out clever ways to get access to their food.  They are also fairly aggressive birds having no hesitation to drive larger birds from their area – this includes Hawks, Herons and even Owls according to Cornell’s website.  Crows do not breed until at least 2 yrs old and more often in the 4 year range.  They share social responsibilities helping their parents to raise their young.  I was surprise to see they really are not much of a carrion bird.  Seems like I’m always seeing them in the middle of the road holding vigil over some dead form or another.  Apparently this is due to a wimpy bill that can’t even break through the skin of small animals requiring them to rely on other more skilled hunters to open the skin up or wait until it decomposes enough to get that large, but apparently useless beak into the juicy parts.  And my favorite fact about the American Crow.  A gathering of Crows is considered a “murder of Crows”.  There appears to be a number of different explanations of this naming.  One being that there is a folktale that Crows will gather and collectively decide the fate of another Crow – sounds similar to Obamacare death panels.  Another reason is again their scavenger inclination – basically people often see them next to dead things and may associate it with the explanation they did the dirty deed themselves.  Then, of course, there are movies like Hitchcock’s The Birds that managed to collectively give all black birds a bad rap – pretty sure that was a mixture of Crows and Ravens, but it has been awhile since I saw that particular horror.  I will say that “The Crow” is one of my favorite movies which again perpetuates the association with the dead.

Well, that’s a rap on the Crow.  Quick and easy for the count but tried to make it worth your read.  See ya’ all real soon now.

Soft Hens

Back home now which means back to work on Project Auurnollllddd.  Good news is the ceiling grid is completely done now along with all the full panels installed.  Just need to cut all the edge pieces and get the lights installed and I’ll be good to go for the upcoming party.  If all this gets done before then it will be a huge miracle since in the midst of this we have to prep for a new shed and then there is that whole training thingy which will have me pounding pavement for hours and hours at a time.  This, of course, doesn’t get me out of my posting duties so let’s just get to that.

Common Gallinule/Moorhen taken at Emiquon Wildife Refuge

Today’s post is brought to you  by Mr. Softie.  Not sure what my problem was with these pictures other than just plain poor execution.  I’d be willing to accept failure a little better if it didn’t happen on TWO different occasions  at Emiquon National Wildlife Refuge.  This bird is becoming a nemesis at the level of Wild Turkeys.  Not matter what I do, my Turkey shots are never up to par.  There are some more recent ones in the tin from a backyard encounter and a couple more while out on shoots that hopefully came out better (fingers crossed).  Rather than wait  until I get better shots of this particular bird, figured it was time to add it to my bird count.

Common Gallinule/Moorhen taken at Emiquon Wildife Refuge

Hit the jump to find out what this bird is

Continue reading Soft Hens

Celebrating 26 and 25 and 24

Time for another post from the road, but unlike last time, this time from a muuuuuch lower elevation.  Our mountain portion of the trip is over now and I should be back to work on Project Auuurrrrnnnnooold very soon.  The Annual Halloween Cookout date is approaching fast and so much to do before then.  My ambitions of animated decorations may be in jeopardy but at least all the Posey’s (link here) will be able to make their debut!

Living in the moment, let’s get to today’s topic.  Here’s a hint

AC/DC Concert Sept 15th at Wrigley Field

All classic rock fans out there should have just flashed up their devil horns!  That’s right, Linda and I had the opportunity to see one of our favorite bands in concert … again.  We had the privilege of seeing them in St. Louis a number of years back and we both consider that one of the best concerts we have seen (yes, that one equals if not tops the Stones concerts we have been too – sorry Jagger but your concerts are slightly tainted due to the price gouging you have to go through to be able to see them.  This time we went North to see them in a place that makes all Cardinal fans shudder.

AC/DC Concert Sept 15th at Wrigley Field

Thanks to Linda being on the ball and reserving early, we were able to get a hotel room less than 10 blocks from the field.  This took a lot of the pre-concert stress out of the equation by not having to deal with the Wrigley area parking.  The seats were not as close as they were in St. Louis, but still not too bad.  We opted for the outfield seats which were covered – rain wasn’t going to dampen our night.  This is the shot from our seats.

AC/DC Concert Sept 15th at Wrigley Field

I left the ladies arm in the shot at the bottom to remind me to mention how drunk this woman was in front of us.  There were two couples seated two rows down from us.  Both ladies had been drinking long before arriving – one lady (the owner of the arm above) was totally smashed and kept falling all over the place.  When she wasn’t picking herself off the ground she was dancing to the music in her head… and only in her head.  The lush was pretty much the jester for everyone that could see her.  People were even walking by specifically to take a picture of her on their phones.  It got so bad during the concert that her husband (I think) was continually yelling at her to sit – pulling her belt down into her seat when she didn’t comply.. didn’t matter, she would pop up 3 minutes later to continue dancing to her inner song.

Hit the jump to read more about this awesome concert!

Continue reading Celebrating 26 and 25 and 24