Category: Observation

The Ducks that Got Away – Drats

Greetings once again all. I gave you a slight reprieve from the Wisconsin Birds Series at the end of the last month, but there are a few more to get through before closing out this series and moving on to Wisconsin Birds Series II (yep, thanks to taking so long to get through the first series, we’ve been back to the Land of Cheese and now have even more shots to share). Unfortunately, this particular post is bittersweet. On one hand it does provide support for a new checkmark in the bird list, however (head hung low, eyes wandering) it is also an unfortunate highlight of the execution fail.  Having exhausted the ponds and lakes around Baraboo, we headed up further North about 45 minutes to a County Park.  Neither of us can remember the name of that park but I do remember parking near a large observation deck positioned in the a middle of a field surrounded by a forest .  The trees here were experiencing distress from some form of bug, blight or maybe a fire – tough to tell other than an earlier walk down another supposed observation deck uncovered large construction vehicles in the midst of bulldozing some of the larger trees down.

Signs indicated a trail to a pond so we grabbed the gear and headed out.  After about 15 minutes we came upon a lonely pond and immediately thought PERFECT! Nobody around, secluded, and a clear view to the pond… and there was water fowl taking a leisurely paddle. I set the tripod down and went for the customary far shots so I would have something to show for the effort.

and…. we have come upon the very rare fuzzy duck!   Okay, okay, so it was a poorly executed shot. I am not sure exactly what happened other than likely a bad compensation for the now very overcast afternoon (the downside of now shooting only in Manual Mode) or weakness in trying to hand stabilize The Beast. In either case it was my bad and I take full responsibility for it. On further thought, it might have just been excitement knowing this bird hadn’t made it into my tin as of yet. Even with the fuzziness, you can still tell it is a Ringed-Neck Duck – both a male and his mate.  Here is another shot of just the male (no, the images do not get any better) that confirms it.

Hit the jump to read more about this new duck to LifeIntrigued.

Continue reading The Ducks that Got Away – Drats

A Bittersweet Anniversary

It’s the number 6 post for the month and as the tradition goes for the month of July, the topic is the premier running race of the season.  There is one race I look forward to every year and probably the focal point of my yearly training program — that is the Bix7 held in Davenport, IA the last Saturday in July.  For those without a calendar handy, that means yesterday was the date of this year’s extravaganza.  Things were falling into place nicely this year, the training had been going really well and as decided from the Steamboat Race (link here), there was plenty of heat acclamation – a lot of 95 degree runs with a sprinkling of 105, 108 and 110 degree runs addressed that shortfall quite nicely.  The weight was perfect (153), the distance endurance was there and the injuries were in check for the most part which is generally the critical concern for this time of the year.  Life was good and expectations were high!  The three races ahead of this one were miraculously PRs so there was an outside chance I could go 4 for 4.  After the last taper on Wednesday all that was left was to keep from getting sick or hurt before lineup at 8:00am Saturday morning.  Piece of cake right… umm ..wrong.  Even though I tried my best to sequester myself from large masses of people (greater the people, the greater the chance of catching a bug is my philosophy) and watched my food intake for the week to prevent another Steamboat incident (link here) some contagion made it through.  Friday morning I woke up with the start of a sore throat followed immediately by concern and genuine fear.  If there is one thing I know well, it is when my body isn’t hitting on all cylinders and even though Linda was confident it was just my standard pre–race fretting (Linda’s words), there was little convincing me.  Immediately, my thoughts rocketed back to an emergency 3 hr meeting for work the previous Tuesday where one of the attendees coughed during the presentation – the spidey senses went in full riot mode the minute that happened.  Here it was Friday, a mere day before the race and panic was setting in.  If there was any sign of hope, it was the fact that the throat didn’t seem to get any worse from the travel, dinner, the packet pickup process (although for the first time I really had a lack of interest in checking out all the running booths) and the pre-race prep.  Just a constant annoyance in the throat and a slight forming of congestion.  Maybe it was just pointless worry.

The alarm went off Saturday morning at 5:30am and the answer to that quandary was apparent.  I was officially sick with a sore throat and some form of sinus congestion.  The heart sank and the confidence was shattered.  A lot of hard work and sweat was at jeopardy.  The thoughts of PR were quickly transformed into hopes of being able to just finish.  The only thing going for me was my body’s ability to bend to the will of the mind – a lifelong creed that has come in handy many times over the years.

Here is what your pre-race photo looks like when you are not on your game – hanging out in a hotel lobby!  (part of this is because a certain someone ..uhummm LINDA was complaining about being cold … let me repeat that … TOO COLD for a Bix day, now that is a shock.

Hit the jump to see how this turns out

Continue reading A Bittersweet Anniversary

Welcome to My Nightmare Anniversary Yeea-aae-ehh-ya

Like my clever liberal media trick there in the title.  Thanks to my use of the loaded word “Nightmare” you were probably sucked in thinking I had some bad experience on my Anniversary and was going to spill the beans on my blog.  I liken this to when a biased journalist uses the word “Slams” in an article header since it tends to elicit more emotion than say the literal truth of it being more of a “Beats” or “Betters” another.  For the record, a hard fast rule of mine is to NEVER read an article with that word in the title – or any equally purposefully charged word like “Lambaste”.  In contrast to what the title might indicate, I had a wonderful Anniversary with Linda … which just happened to take place here:

That’s right, we went to see the Alice Cooper concert in downtown Peoria.  What better way can you think of to celebrate a wonderful 21 years of marriage?  Okay, okay, a trip to Hawaii or maybe some romantic getaway might be a little better but we need to save something special for the 10’s.  This is our third Alice Cooper concert – twice now in Peoria and another one at the Mississippi Valley State Fair a few years back.  Some of you may not be aware of this band – actually, let’s pause a minute – AC used to be a band fronted by Vincent Furnier.  Over time, the band kind of disbanded per se, and Vincent eventually took on the moniker for himself.  Now when you see Alice Cooper people think of just Vincent and whatever band members he happens to be touring with at the moment.  Now corrected, I’ll restart with saying many of you may not be familiar with the band or the re-incarnated Vincent.  Let’s just say he tends to delve into the dark underbelly of society to deliver his brand of entertainment.  With ghoulish painted eyes and a wardrobe straight from 60’s horror movies, Alice (I’ll use this for the rest of the post) brings to life a Macabre theater based on a tortured soul.  Think of it as a masterful combination of solid rock music infused with shock imagery.  Take for example his opening act when he dons his spider outfit and commands the crowd for high atop his pulpit.

As you can tell we were actually sitting in first balcony of the theater.  These seats shielded us from the floor standers (as desired), but it next time we’ll try for a box a couple back.  The angle we had caused some slight stage clipping which wasn’t that big of an issue other than I couldn’t see the drummer as well as I wanted to – their songs have very difficult percussion arrangements and I was hoping to get some insights on how it’s done .    The other drawback from that is the stack of speakers on the right (yeah, that whole stack) was essentially blasting right at me.  By the end of the concert my ears were in full on concert ring.

Read more about our Anniversary Night Out after the jump

Continue reading Welcome to My Nightmare Anniversary Yeea-aae-ehh-ya

A New Warbler Addition

Since you patiently read through the last somewhat boring bird (the Mallard) post, I figured it would be prudent to now offer the latest new bird to my collection (the one I promised at the start of the Wisconsin Birds series).  With that…. drum roll … I’d like to introduce what I believe to be the Yellow-Rumped Warbler.

This male Warbler was shot at Devil’s Lake near Baraboo Wisconsin.  As with the rest of this series it was taken over last Easter Weekend.  We were actually up on the very picturesque cliffs overlooking the glacier formed lake when this bird flew over my head and landed in a nearby tree.  At the time I trying my best to capture Turkey Vultures which were circling the cliffs.  The frustration levels were mounting trying to get The Beast zeroed in and focused on those birds which, due to the height of the cliffs, were actually speeding by below us.  The yellow markings on this Warbler were pretty unique which caught my attention immediately.  Screw the Vultures, we’ve got a new bird to track down.  One thing that became painfully clear with this Warbler (and likely generalized to all of these Warblers) is it did not want to stay in one place very long at all.  It would land, give me about 3 seconds to get the big glass in position, get the exposure settings right and finally take one shot.

Hit the jump to see more pictures of this new Warbler

Continue reading A New Warbler Addition

Mallard Slumber

It occurred to me that as of late, I’ve been doing a bashing of the Mallard and thought it was time to ease up a bit.  If you recall there has been some assumptions regarding just how promiscuous this bird is – for reference, check out the muta.. I mean interesting specimens here and here.  The little known but powerful Mallard Urban Transgressions and Neglect Tracking Society has contacted me with a cease and desist.  Trust me, you do not want to stay on their bad side.  As an act of restitution, today’s featured bird is the Mallard.  Unless you live under a rock or in The City (sorry, inside college joke) you have seen one of these at your local river, lake, pond or for that matter the roadside ditch.  They are indeed the most abundant duck in North America and the male markings make it very easy to spot – note, this is not true of the female mallard which is about as common looking as you can get with the exception of the blue teal patch on their wings.  On our way back home from Wisconsin, we stopped in downtown Dells to see what was playing in the river that runs through the middle of it.  After walking a ways down the nice path they have for pedestrians I noticed this Mallard catching some Z’s under a bridge.  It must be nice to be able to carry your pillow with you wherever you go.

Due to the bridge supports and an outcropping of brush and trees, there was a limited viewing angle (I’m sure that was his intention when selecting this spot).  For about 20 minutes I wrestled with foot compositioning in a futile attempt to clear the shot of branches but still capture all the rock pedestal.  At one point in this effort, I banged the bridge beam with my knee and my yelp woke it up.  He gave a quick look around before eventually settling back into his slumber.

Eventually some of the rock had to be sacrificed to get most of the other distractions out (looks like my cropping effort on the right side was just a wee bit short but guessing it would matte out in a print anyway.  After all that work none of the shots would make my gallery list, but I’m finally starting to concentrate more on the in camera composition which results in an easier time in post processing.

I will say the subject in the above picture isn’t that exciting, but I really like the texture that came out in the water.  It kind of looks like molten glass.

Hit the jump to see some additional shots of the Mallard along with a composition discussion.

Continue reading Mallard Slumber

A Majestic Domestic Spotted in Baraboo

Once again, we are back in Baraboo, Wisconsin but this time with specimens from the Goose family.  First off, an apology.  The title of this post really doesn’t fit based on a crap load of Internet research.  After frying a bunch of synapse coming up with a clever title I hated to give it up so we are going with it.  This series of pictures was taken on our way home from our Easter stay at Chula Vista Resort.  just outside the Dells.  Our trek home took us through the city of Baraboo which always makes me shudder in fright  … who in their right mind would take the effort to make a Circus Museum?!?  I’ll answer that, a DERANGED CLOWN LOVER that’s who.  Give me a second to get the heart calmed down..

beatbeatbeatbe atbe atb e atb e atb e a tbe e a t b e a t b e a t   ahhhh that was close

Continuing on, there is a nice stream that runs through that city which can be seen from the main thoroughfare (as it heads to Devil’s Head if you are curious).  On that day we spotted a couple of birds hanging out along the shore.  Not wanting to pass up a shot opportunity I had Linda turn onto a side road for some in vehicle shots – the Beast was on the camera so there was plenty of reach.  Turns out we were stopped right next to a No Parking sign and some cars were giving us disproving looks.  Not wanting to ruffle the locals, Linda dropped me off and started cruising around while I took some more shots from the banks.  Turns out the final product had a nice surprise.

It was high day which put up a pretty good fight on the exposure effort.  Admittedly, there is some blowout just below the neck, but was able to recover a lot of the feature detail outside that (embrace the RAW).  At the time, the small LCD screen was not able to really show a unique feature of the bird, but once in the digital darkroom it came out crystal clear.  Let’s move in a bit so you can see for yourself.

That eye is just plain gorgeous.  The orange eyelids really make it pop against the white coloring.  The sun angle even gave the highly desired glint.  To do it again I would have backed the exposure off one or two stops and then brought the light back in post processing.  Recovery restored a lot of the detail around the head, so a tighter crop would take out some of the blow outs, but there needs to be some of it left – otherwise it would look like someone took an ax to it (eesh).  As an example, here is another tight crop which gives even a better view of the eye but again, a less appealing crop from an overall composition perspective… and yes, I needed to apply some additional recovery on this version to get the detail back in the head feathering.

Hit the jump to see more pictures from this post

Continue reading A Majestic Domestic Spotted in Baraboo

The X-Ducks of Wisconsin

Howdy all, I was recently reminded that we are half way through the steamy month of July and there is yet to be a post on the blog. You would think with how hot it has been in the last two weeks I’d be cranking out post after post in the comfort of my air conditioned den. On the contrary, I’ve been swamped with activities as of late which has included wrapping up phase one of my summer project (literally put the last piece in that phase a mere two hours ago) and a healthy (or not) dose of heat running conditioning needed for the Bix race at the end of the month. I do not want a repeat of the Steamboat race and it looks like there has been some improvement based on my recent Bix@6 training run (93-95 out when the training race started last Thursday and it went quite well). The good news is all the post processing work on this month’s series of posts is already complete!   …and just what is the topic this month…

After much thought and contemplation I’m going with the birds captured during our photo shoot taken  in Wisconsin over Easter. Tragically, this means another month (at least) will pass before getting to the Indy Zoo pictures and the birds of Banner Marsh.

It’s quiz time.  Any guesses as to what that water fowl is (note, these are all non-shopped)?

If you can identify it, please feel free to let me know.  As far as I can tell this is another mutant specimen.  If you recall, this is not the first mutant to grace these pages.  The mallard derivative from the Emoquon series certainly fits this category (link here).    This strange bird has more of the duck features than the goose characteristics in that previous one.  It was also easier to pick out the main ingredients that made that bird.

This on the other hand doesn’t really match anything.  The dominant white and the the black tail feathers would put it somewhere in the Snow Goose realm (or just the white neck and orange beak has traits of an Embden Goose), but it took the stature of a smaller duck.

it that wasn’t fun enough, let’s move on to mutant specimen number 2 and 3.  The one on the right looks like someone sawed the head off the one above and slapped a better Mallard head on it.  Those Mallards must really like to sow their oats.

Shifting to the one of the left.  They were hanging together so the assumption is they were mates.  The left is likely the female due to the dominant male Mallard coloring on the right one.  It looks closer to an Eskimo Sandwich than it does a duck.  The breast feathering almost has a turkey composition and nothing in the reference books really showed markings that chocolaty.

Hit the jump to see even more strange waterfowl.

Continue reading The X-Ducks of Wisconsin

Life’s Toolbox – The Voltmeter

Once again, I’m on the road and taking the opportunity to close out the post quota for the month. I must congratulate myself for making it through the entire month without a single bird picture. Just a little relief from the barrage last month… and a break since next month will once again be all about our feathered friends – not sure yet if it will be from our Banner Marsh outing our vacation up in Wisconsin over Easter. I can tell you are already filled with excitement. Today is actually a new topic to the blog and one I’ve been kicking around for awhile. There are tools/devices that have been around for the ages yet still play a pivotal roll in our life (well, at least mine). The ones I wanted to focus on are those that really have not changed in functionality or operation. For example, I’m ruling out the cell phone – granted it really hasn’t been around all that long – but the sexy smartphones of today are far cry from the bag phones of yesteryear. So, the guidelines are it has to have the same basic functionality that it had when I became aware of it and still providing value today.

The inaugural entry in what I am referring to as Life’s Toolbox is … drum roll….the Voltmeter. One of the reasons for this choice is due to recently having to employ it to fix my tractor. My brother originally showed me how to use this device when I was growing up and we were geeking it up modifying the Commodore 64 and testing out other circuit boards – by the way, the Radio Shack experiment set should be mandatory for ALL grade schoolers. I had a number of circuit logic classes in college and oh, there was that electronic circuit class I took just for fun one summer back – I was driving over there for some Psych classes and figured I’d just stay an extra hour and compliment my human wiring classes.

Since those days tinkering with breadboards, the voltmeter has never been far -nor has the voltmeter changed one iota. I have the same one I acquired in college and used exactly the same way I did back then. Whenever something electrical breaks around the house our need to figure out what the hell our electricians did while building our house (looooong story there), I start slapping the probes on any wires I can find. This was the case when my old John Deere decided to become stubborn. I have a 316 that was built in 1985 and a 212 built in 1975 which are used as brush and trail mowers in order to keep the wear off our X500. Nothing can stop that 212 even though its used as a trail blazer in the woods. The 316 can be a little finicky and this time it wouldn’t turn over. Alright, into the garage it went and out came the voltmeter.

Hit the jump to see how the voltmeter recently came in quite handy

Continue reading Life’s Toolbox – The Voltmeter

Our Prehistoric Visitor

Wow, I thought last month was a lot of work to meet my quota, but this month has not been ANY easier.  It would probably be simpler if I started a little earlier in the month (or actually pre-wrote the posts, but I’m not going there!)  Today’s entry is coming to you from the road as were on our way to Lincoln to meet the parents.  Since there isn’t much else to do in the car I’ve cranked up the laptop along with the Verizon hotspot and  here we are.  Before you panic, Linda is driving.  If you recall from yesterday, we recently had a unique visitor to the homestead (link here).  Turns out this was not the only interesting creature to find its way to our place.  As some background, I had spent a significant amount of time reworking our landscaping.  This included removing the crappy mulch we had used previously, putting down all new fabric and back filling with all new mulch (about 3 tons of it).  To be honest, it looked pretty awesome when it was all done – a nice reward for all the hard work.  Unfortunately, that lasted less than a week.  One night something decided to dig holes all over the mulch pulling up sections of fabric in various places.  I was pissed and spent a significant amount of time hurling insults (my mother would not be proud) at the raccoons that were clearly responsible for this vandalism.  This started an annoying loop of fixing the holes, waking up to more holes the next day, hurling insults, fixing holes… you get the picture.  One Saturday night we came home around 1am and sure enough the mulch was torn up again.  The fabric was ripped up more than usual this time with what appeared to be a new sense of vigor.  Our youngest poodle (and largest at 10 pounds) made its way from the car and made a beeline to one of our bushes.  To my surprise it wasn’t for the reason I expected – he started sniffing around in a cautious manner that caught my attention.  On closer investigation I noticed THIS!

I have seen a lot of turtles in my lifetime but this has to be the largest specimen I have ever seen outside of captivity.  I did make a quick apology to the raccoons in the area.  This moment was not going to be wasted so I dashed off for the camera .. after, of course, getting our dogs safely inside.  To be honest I have never really engaged turtles before.  I’ve moved a boxer turtle off the road before but I was very naive when it came to this creature.  Want to know how naive?  Well, the first thing I thought of was to provide a size reference so all my readers would have a good understanding of the situation.

Be sure and hit the jump to see how this turned out (I think you’ll get a few chuckles

Continue reading Our Prehistoric Visitor

A Giant Leopard Came By My House Today

It was a little bit scary around here last week.  Linda came back into the house and informed me there was something worth checking out on the porch.  To her credit, she is usually dead on when it comes to knowing what types of things intrigue me enough to go and take a gander.  This was no exception.  Before you jump to any conclusions, Linda is not out there really looking for fodder for my blog.  The truth is she is out there keeping an eagle eye out for anything that might be slithering around.  It is a relief when she comes back in and calmly tells me to go check out something, otherwise all hell breaks loose and off I go to get the hoe.  Otherwise it’s a quick trip to the kitchen to get the macro mounted camera to capture the moment.  This was one of those times.  Turns out a Leopard had made its way to our humble dwelling.  This was not just any old leopard, this was a GIANT leopard.

Okay, so it wasn’t one of the cats… otherwise that might have been the end of this blog unless I was able to make it back to the AR in time.  Nope, this was actually the Giant Leopard Moth and to the best of my recollection the first time I’ve ever witnessed one around here.  When it comes to moths, these have to rank right up there with the coolest.  As you can tell, they are predominantly snow white with the traditional leopard print dominating their markings.  What turned out to be difficult to capture was the brilliant blue detail in the legs and along their undersides. After taking a number of pictures from its resting spot under our porch, I decided to delicately try to relocate it for some better angles.  I usually hate to mess with insects out of fear of injuring them and I know that even small contact with their delicate wings can lead to loss of flight causing an imminent demise.  In this case I spent 15 minutes slowly bringing a piece of mulch in contact with the legs and worked the stick into place whenever it shifted its legs.  Slowly it made its way onto the stick and I lifted it out to a resting place on top of the stoop.  To the moth’s credit it was pretty docile and really didn’t mind all the hoopla with the camera.  It basically just sat there and twiddled the antennas (is that the right plural?.. might be antennae).   In the new position, I could capture the top markings much better.

Hit the jump to see a few more shots of our visitor

Continue reading A Giant Leopard Came By My House Today