Category: Observation

Adding Another Teal to the Collection

Congratulations, we are in BONUS time this month thanks to getting on top of the posts earlier than usual. I’m off today and relaxing a bit after spending the morning taking down on the exterior Christmas decorations – before you comment that it is a little late for that, I technically had them turned off as of the 12th which is my Christmas is officially over date. The two big snows of the year still have not dissipated much so it was quite the task to get this done – need to get all the extension cords thawed out so they can actually be looped. I also decided to shovel off Serenity (link here) in effort to keep the stress off the span. That was work just getting down and back on the big hills – next time taking the snowboard! Enough bantering, on with the featured bird of the day.

Figured I would go ahead and make another check in the Bird List today thanks to a surprise capture while up at Chain O’ Lakes State Park. This has become one of my favorite parks not only for the multitude of birds shot up there, but the trails are also long and hilly – perfect for the 1/2 marathon training which is usually in flight whenever we get the opportunity to head up there (typically for dog shows). While looking through the bounty from that trip I noticed this image and decided to investigate a little more.

Blue-Winged Teal

These were taken at one of the back (often mucky) marshes off the main campground road. We always make a point to hit this particular spot since it seems to always have some interesting wildlife hanging out – deer, ducks, snak… umm forget that last part.  The wildlife tends to keep at the back edge of the pond making it pretty difficult to get anything beyond bird list shots.  These were heavily zoomed in just so you could make out the bird at the cost of quality.  The feature that immediately caught my eye was the long white stripe.

Blue-Winged Teal

Hit the jump to find out what this bird is and read up a little bit on its background.

Continue reading Adding Another Teal to the Collection

Orange You Glad You Snapped

Kind of on a bird roll at the moment so figured I’d go ahead and crank one out while I had a few minutes to spare. Today’s bird was originally featured back during the Project Chekov days (link here). Back then I was actually focused on the male species of the Baltimore Oriole and if you will allow me the courtesy to say … utilizing some fairly crappy shots. Those were desperate times and if you recall what the project was all about (26 birds in 26 days in alphabetical order) beggars can’t be choosers. These shots of the less flashy gender are thankfully a little better.
Female Baltimore Oriole

As revealed by the line and loop, these shots were taken at one of my bird feeders. That feeder typically serves quite the collection of Golden Finches, Chickadees, Nuthatches and Cardinals. Every day I take a glance out the window to see if there are any new feathers taking a moment to fuel up (the feeders are positioned right outside my master bedroom so I can wake up and immediately see my feathered friends – it’s the little things in life that keeps me going). This particular specimen caught my attention. My eyes tried to dismiss it as a Finch, but the brian (sorry, running joke based on the large number of emails that come addressed as such) … correcting .. but the brain kept nagging at me. Not sure what the problem was at the time, I obeyed my birding principles and grabbed the Beast.

Female Baltimore Oriole

With it in the tin, I put the camera down and went about my business… for a year (he types apologetically). At least they eventually made their way to the digital darkroom. It became immediately apparent that this was no Finch based on the stature alone coming in at almost the twice the size of those small in size creatures. The yellow was off as well with this specimen having a darker/oranger (my blog, I get to make up words whenever I want to) variant of the bright yellow the Golden’s boast. A quick look at the references didn’t come up with a definitive match but had some leanings to a Meadowlark, which sports a similar dagger of a beak.

Hit the jump to see and read more about this sunshine bird.

Continue reading Orange You Glad You Snapped

A Blue Devil

A while back my brother asked me an innocent question that has stuck with me ever since.  That question was “are there any common (translated local) birds you haven’t been able to photograph yet?”.  At the time I think I said there were a few especially in the smaller bird category since I have trouble distinguishing the Sparrows from each other and some of those Wrens are just so damn hyper I can’t get a bead on them.  Frequently, I come back to that question when I’m looking through a bird reference our even while out in the field and trying to decide if I want to make the effort to shoot what appears to be a common bird – “do I have that checked off the list or not?”  There is usually some doubt after the internal debate since I don’t actually carry my list with me.  Turns out there is one bird that fits this category and that is this one.
Blue Jay

Yep, the uber common Blue Jay that inhabits almost anywhere you look here in the Midwest.  I was going through my backlog and saw this set of shots taken in our woods one particularly dreary day.  I was about to skip over the shots when I remembered the question.  Might as well check just in case.  To my surprise I did not have it checked off (remember that I do not officially give myself the mark until the shots appear on the blog).  Apparently I had overlooked this common bird!

Blue Jay

Hit the jump to read more about the notorious Blue Jay

Continue reading A Blue Devil

There’s Love in the Marsh

Drum roll please… no really, let’s hear it … drum roll…. Welcome to the first bird post of 2015 .. explosions, streamer, ticker tapes, applause and drunken anarchy in the streets. Or, maybe not.  Well, at least not the anarchy part since this isn’t a new bird to the blog.  We featured the Mute Swan previously in a two parter back in February ’14 (link here and here).
Mute Swans at Banner Marsh

The previous posts were from the Banner Marsh in Banner IL.  This shoot is also from Banner and for all I know are the exact same Swans.  They don’t wear clothes so it is really hard to tell them apart.  When I have to go through the painful process of talking about my hobbies and interests (a common activity as a result of numerous reorgs at work as of late) I always mention that my favorite part of photography is when I can get wildlife behavior in the tin.  Stoic shots are nice to have in the portfolio, but I personally prefer shots that have some form of emotion or expression that tells a little bit more.  Today’s featured shots do just that.  We were out at Banner on a rather cool day when things in the water began to heat up.  The Swan above came strolling by and spotted something of interest.  Up went the charm wings as it moved in for a closer look.

P

Hit the jump to see what all the excitement was on the marsh

Continue reading There’s Love in the Marsh

Project Posey: A Coupler of Enhancements

Hi all, it’s a new year but we have some unfinished business from a year ago….last Wednesday – sorry, old joke but I went with it since I actually heard it no less than three times while out in Vegas last week – maybe it’s making a comeback (likely not).  As you can tell from the title, in today’s post we focus on an upgrade to Project Posey – specifically, version 5.0 which brings with it a major design change thanks to an idea that came while hanging out one day in the PVC aisle at Menards  (almost for an entire day hehehe).  Here is a shot of the finished product, but I’ll take you through the key details.
Posey Version 5.0

There were a few issues with the previous designs that I was hoping to address.  The first of these was how to allow for changing the joint to any angle I wanted and still making the connection point strong enough to bear the weight of the configuration.  Up to now I’ve had to either lock the joint in a specific angle (as in V1.0) or leave the pipes free to move in the couplers but then they tended to give out on certain poses.  The other issue was to improve the storage aspect – the Posey’s were getting up in size and started taking up too much space in the storage area – The locked in version required me to basically rebuild them each season and the loose version required me to pop the pipes out of the couplers which basically started wearing down the connections making them even weaker.  Both of these issues ended up being addressed by a new twist coupler.

Posey Version 5.0

Hit the jump to see how this upgraded version comes together.

Continue reading Project Posey: A Coupler of Enhancements

Project Chiro: Posey Gets a New Spine

Time for another update on the Posey Project.  If you recall form the last post on version 3.0 (link here), the big change was to introduce the new joint made out of chain link fence caps.  That was definitely a break through moment in the project and my gratitude still goes to the individual that was referenced in that post as the spark.  To be honest, the modification that became version 3.1 was really a result of designing and building this latest version which I refer to as V4.0.  Here is the latest version all dressed to kill!

Posey V4.0

Of course you can’t tell the details with the costume on, so let’s take that off and see what tweaks we have to show in this version.  First off you will see that I stuck with the same chain link fence cap joint model detailed in V3.0.  That is the go to joint for now due to being sturdy and easy to position – thanks again to the individual that sparked the concept.  I do keep my eyes open every time I’m in a hardware store just in case something else will catch my eye – if I could shrink the overall length of the joint down it would be beneficial for a number of reasons.  One area that is completely different is the backbone design.

Posey V4.0

Hit the jump to see the design details and a few more shots

Continue reading Project Chiro: Posey Gets a New Spine

On the Trail of Oregon

Ahhhh, my first day of the holiday season vacation!   Of course, this just means I swap career work items for honey do work items but it sure feels great to be able to sleep in a bit.  Knowing all the things I have to get done over this break, figured it would be prudent to get some December posts out of the way.  So, I bring you today’s featured feathered friend.
Oregon Junco - Nevada

I took this while out hiking the Red Rock Canyon in Nevada (outside of Las Vegas).  We’ve been there a couple of times now and based on the previous posts and some that are still in the hopper, I must say it has produced a surprising number of checks in the bird list – add in the marks gained from Henderson and Nevada has been very very good to me – they obviously have better wildlife than they do politicians.   For those not aware, this particular specimen comes from the Dark-Eyed Junco family.  Their long black hood is pretty distinctive in the birding arena.  The Dark-Eyed Juncos have been featured on the blog a number of times now (links here, here and here).  Because of they are relatively common (they show up in droves here every Winter).  I usually don’t get too excited about capturing them but as a rule, “never pass up a bird shot”.  Once again this principle has likely led to a new mark in the bird list.

Oregon Junco - Nevada

If you look at the specimens in the links above or live in the Midwest you are familiar with one variation of the Dark-Eyed Junco – the Slate Colored group.  They are aptly named in that they are pretty much dark gray colored from head and top feathering through to the tail. Typically they have a white underbelly with some variation in gender.  There is a White-Winged group, a Gray-Headed group and a Pink-Sided group to name a few, but none of those variations have the distinctive executioner hood.  It is this specific feature that led me to the determination that this is an Oregon group Dark-Eyed Junco.

Hit the jump to see a couple more pictures of the Junco (a different one to be specific) and learn a few facts about this little bird.

Continue reading On the Trail of Oregon

Project Bob Marley: Posey Gets a Better Joint

I hoped you like the previous Kestrel posts – always exciting when I can add a mark to the bird list.  It is also exciting when I can talk about a new revision in the Posey project.  The last time we delved into this addiction.. I mean project we were discussing the desire to add flexibility to the PVC structure (link here).  That resulted in revision V2.0 of the PVC Halloween Decoration Project.  If you recall, we leveraged eye bolts to create the joints in V2.0.  That achieved the desired ability to move the arms and legs into just about any position I wanted.  The issue is the structural stability of the eye bolts .. as in .. not that stable.  One long night on Pinterest (yeah, I said it) looking through board after board on the home haunting groups I discovered an excellent idea from someone that goes by Beelce on the Haunt Forums website (link here).  That idea looked like the perfect answer to my stability problem and immediately rushed out to Menards the next day.  Sure enough, they had 1″ chain link fence caps that matched the ones shown on the forum so bought every one they had – like 30 of them. After some trials and errors I am proud to present V3.0 of Posey!

NOTE: I did make some late updates to this model which I added to the end – please check that out since the modification uses less materials – that version is now being referred to as V3.1
Posey 3.0

This version is 100% more stable than the eye bolt approach and the joints work exactly the way I was hoping.  As with all my projects, let’s give some details.  Again, thanks to Beelce for providing the catalyst and the basis for even more versions – my  motto: embrace and extend.  First off, the hardware list.   Note, this version was built with chain link fence caps from Menards.  They hold a much better tolerance on their 1″ dimension but their connecting hole is 1/2″.  I recommend getting the fence caps from Home Depot instead.  They are a penny cheaper and have 3/8″ connecting holes instead so you save on hardware.  They do have a lot of variance in their 1″ dimension which oddly enough turns out to be an advantage in upcoming versions (more later on that).

  • Drill Press (technically optional, but highly recommended) if not, can uses a standard drill)
  • 1/8″ Drill Bit or whatever size fits the screws you are going to use to affix the chain link cap to the PVC
  • Pilot hole drill bit – smaller the better
  • Screwdriver – manual or electric to put the caps in
  • (16) Chain link fence cross bar caps w/ 3/8″ hole ($0.88)
  • (8) 3/8″ Large Washers ($3.78 – 100)
  • (8) 3/8″ x 1″ Bolts ($4.21)
  • (8) 3/8″ Nuts ($2.28)
  • (8) 3/8″ Split Washers ($2.00)
  • (32) 1″ cabinet, drywall or round head screws (use whatever you laying around that is in the 1″ long range)
  • Two Socket Sets
  • PVC Cement (optional)
  • Duct tape – preferably white
  • Hand PVC Cutter (optional, but highly recommended)

Next the materials list:

  • (3) 1″ PVC Cross ($2.15)
  • (4) 1″ PVC Caps  ($0.45)
  • (9) 1″ PVC T’s ($0.59)
  • (4) 1″ PVC Couplers ($0.41)
  • (10) 1″ PVC Elbows ($0.50)
  • (1)  3/4″ PVC Cross  ($2.37)
  • (1) 3/4″ PVC T’s ($0.45)
  • (5) 3/4″ PVC Elbows ($0.25)
  • (1) 3/4″ PVC Cap ($0.19)
  • (1) 1″ to 3/4″ Reducer  ($0.77)
  • (1) 10′ x 1″ PVC Pipe (depends on size but by two, if you are like me you’ll be making a lot of them) ($2.48)
  • (1) 3′ 3/4″ PVC Pipe (basically just enough to build the head) ($1.50)

Hit the jump to see how to build this version of Posey!

Continue reading Project Bob Marley: Posey Gets a Better Joint

Reaching for a Kestrel

Hope your holidays season is going well for those who take part in the festivities.  Things are winding down at work, well, let’s put it in a more accurate manner – my workdays are coming to a close this year but work is definitely not winding down and 2015 is looking to be back on the SAP roller coaster once again.  As for now, I’m enjoying taking the last of my vacation days and thought I’d spend a bit of that working on the blog quota.  As mentioned previously, I have a number of posts in the queue in the Halloween decoration arena and thanks to an awesome recent gift from my brother looks like I’ll be adding additional chapters to that project – more to come!  I try to keep a variety around here, and therefore weaving in other topics among Posey posts.  In that vein I give you a bird that has a history of taunting me.

K

This bird of prey may be small in stature, but what it makes up for in size is more than compensated by its elusiveness.  For those not familiar with this ornately colored bird it is the American Kestrel.  Living out in the country I have the benefit putting eyes on these cool birds fairly often.  Typically they are spotted hanging out on a high overhead wire or on top of a tall sign.  Whenever I’m driving I’ll routinely scan those areas looking for a solitary bird staring intently at the ground.

Kestrel

Hit the jump to see and read more about the Kestrel.

Continue reading Reaching for a Kestrel

Project Steve Austin: Taking It To The Next Level

Since I was called out last month for getting such a late start on posts, figured I would try to crank one out a little earlier this month.  Besides, it is Dog Show weekend which means I have plenty of spare time for a change.  Today’s topic is really a multi-parter chronicling a slight obsession (as Linda puts it – I refer to it as enthusiasm) with a Project I documented around Halloween (link here).  If you recall, the topic at hand was a new idea for decorations based on putting costumes on a PVC structure.

Killer Clown

This was another effort focused on bringing more scare into the Haunted Trail.  I now call this Posey V1.0 which essentially consists of a fixed posture.  If wanted to change the pose I would have to break the existing connections and make another pose by using different connectors.  The drawback being the pose was limited to what I could create with a limited number of angles (90 and 45 being the core angles available).  Granted you can do a lot depending on how you combine those but just seemed limiting.  This deficiency got me thinking and when I get to thinking… interesting things can happen.  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you …. drum roll … Posey V2.0.
Posey 2.0

Hit the jump to see how to make this version of Posey!

Continue reading Project Steve Austin: Taking It To The Next Level