A Swainson’s Doubletake

Greetings from the snowy Midwest.  We are getting our first real dump of the year and it is a heavy one.  This is somewhat fitting being that this week has been heavy on the heart.  We lost our little buddy Kerby this week and it has left a mighty hole – he was a champion in the agility ring and more importantly in our lives.  I’ll never forget our time together.  Keeping busy always helps me through tough times so no better way than generating new +1’s for the birding checklist.  Today’s feature once again comes from our last September trip to Colorado.

Swainson's Hawk shot on Colorado trip September 2015

That, my friends, is a fine specimen of Swainson’s Hawk.  Normally Hawk identification is a herculean effort just short of trying to distinguish juvenile Sparrows.  It is fairly easy to figure out the easy ones like Red-Tails, but the rest bunch up in their characteristics to the point we end up having to flip a coin.  This was the case here where I really wasn’t sure what this one was until my brother Ron came to the rescue.  He has a really nice reference book to aid in Hawk IDs (sorry, can’t remember the name at the moment) and had recently found/joined a Facebook page specific to assisting in the ID process.  You will not find a better resource than a community devoted to a specific type of bird.  Ron offered to give it a try on a set of fuzzy pictures we had taken by the side of a road on the Colorado plains.  I’ll get to those pictures at the end – opted to go with a better set at the start for the bulk of the post.

Swainson's Hawk shot on Colorado trip September 2015

The pictures you are seeing here came from another observation at a filling station outside of Denver.  We had pulled in for a quick stop to give the dogs a break and top the tank off.  As we pulled into the pump area this  bird caught my eye.  It was literally hovering over a construction site between the station and the highway.  The fact it was just staying in one spot gave me an early impression it was a Harrier.  This changed once the Beast was on point and could make out the more distinctive features of the bird.  Turns out there was a healthy headwind it was leveraging to keep focus on a particular area alongside the construction.  After about a minute it dropped the daggers and dove for the ground.

Swainson's Hawk shot on Colorado trip September 2015

Hit the jump to read a bit more about this Hawk and view a few more shots.

Continue reading A Swainson’s Doubletake

From Creeps to Witches

Howdy everyone!  Just back from a fun day of birding at Weldon Springs near Clinton IL.  Fun mainly in the sense I got to hang out in a nice day with my brother and sister-in-law.  Unfortunately, the feathered variety we were after were fairly scarce.  A possible +1 for the day along with a juvi (I’m sure Ron will correct) Bald Eagle, a Great Heron, plus more Titmice (yes, I verified that usage) and Nuthatches than I could count.  Beyond that .. not so much.  If that +1 turns out to be verified you will likely see that hitting the pages oh, about this same time next year hehehe.

But all that is in the present – we here at LifeIntrigue tend to live in the past – something Ron is beginning to have a good understanding why now that his productivity is outrunning his processing.  For this post at least I am in the same year – hell less than two months ago.  Just doing what I can to get my +1’s out and counted to try and stay within sight of my competition.

Short-Billed Dowitcher shot in Colorado Sept 2015

I have to give a lot of credit to Ron for this particular ID. I had incorrectly come to the conclusion it was a Willet but during our review it became apparent that it is really a Short-Billed Dowitcher.  How fitting to have a Witch to go along with the recent Halloween theme.  Like Last post, this specimen was shot on our September trip to Colorado – this time at Barr Lake near Brighton.

Short-Billed Dowitcher shot in Colorado Sept 2015

Hit the jump to see and read more about this water forager.

Continue reading From Creeps to Witches

A Creep in the Woods

Time for the creeps to make their presence known here at LifeIntrigued!  No, I am not continuing the Halloween theme featured on the previous many posts.  Nope, today we are featuring the creep of the birding world.

Brown Creeper Shot our our Colorado trip 2015

That, my non-birding friends, is a fine specimen of the Brown Creeper.  This is pretty much a Winter bird here in the Midwest but more of a year round resident in the West.  Luckily, Linda and I were on our vacation to Colorado when I spotted this Creeper.  All in all the birding up to that point on the trip was .. how should I put .. let’s go with pathetic.  I could not find anything on numerous stops up to this point.  In fact, this discovery didn’t really happen until we were almost back to the car from a medium out and back hike.

Brown Creeper Shot our our Colorado trip 2015

Hit the jump to read and see more of this distinctive bird.

Continue reading A Creep in the Woods

Project Hot Knife 2015

It is time to officially close out the 2015 Halloween season.  As a last tribute to my favorite holiday I bring you this year’s pumpkin carving.

Halloween Pumpkin Carving 2015

Unlike most years, this one didn’t utilize half cuts due to two key reasons.  The first reason is basically time.  I’ve been revving on high for a while now to get through the party and now back to finishing up Project Auurrrnnoooollld.  I am so close now I can taste it – only two real tasks to go and I can finally bring you the fruits of that multi-year labor.  The other limitation was a poor crop of images to select from.  If you’ve seen my other pumpkin posts you know that I mine every source  I can find looking for a high contrast images to use as a basis for my carvings.  My favorite web resources are Tattoo sites and, of course, Google Images – this year … not much turned up.  Luckily this popped up while looking at a Pinterest board for Halloween props.

Finally something to work with – before I go any further, the rights for this image remain with the owner (unfortunately not sure who that actually is).  Okay, back to your regularly scheduled programming.  This image has the perfect combination of creepiness and … CONTRAST which is essential for a good transfer to a pumpkin.  For a quick test you can simply bring it up in your favorite graphics program and reduce the color count to 3 or 4.

Hit the jump to see how this turned out in pumpkin form!

Continue reading Project Hot Knife 2015

The Trail Haunts Awaken Again – Part 2 of 2

Well, now that you know how much work goes into building our haunted trail, let’s focus on the fruits of that labor for today’s topic. The full trail experience is too much for a post, so I am only going to feature a few of the shots here. If you want t0 experience the entire trail both from a day and a night walkthrough, please check out or web gallery on Smugmug (Eddiesoft.Smugmug.com). Even with the condensed version, this post is full to the brim with pictures. Rather than type a lot, I’ll just try to point out a few things along the way starting with the daylight shots

As mentioned previously, we try to start the trail off with more family friendly decorations.

Haunted Trail 2015

These are Pauls’ air Frankenstein’s. Think this is the first time he has put them together – a family that scares together stays together.

Haunted Trail 2015

More blowups further down the path. Paul had another nice touch putting the thin ghost in between the other ghost themed items. That thing never wants to say up so he fixed that problem by tying it to the larger blowups on the sides.

Haunted Trail 2015

Hit the jump to see the rest of the trail pictures .. including the walk in the dark!

Continue reading The Trail Haunts Awaken Again – Part 2 of 2

The 2015 Haunted Trail – Part 1 of 2 – The Build

It is a sad day in the LifeIntrigued household today – Some consider it the start of the Black Friday month, but around here it signals the end of my favorite month.  Why is that our favorite month … because it has Halloween of course!  To be more specific, it is the month we get to transform our house and woods into a celebration of the darker side.  The Haunted Trail was built once again for the enjoyment of our Annual Halloween Cookout.  Like previous years, the trail will be featured in an upcoming post.  Unlike the past, there’s a special treat this year.  Thanks to my brother we have pictures of the build process for the first time ever!

Haunted Trail 2015

Every year we strive to make the trail a little better – a little more scarier, a little more to experience.  Those new items are generally purchased during the  previous year’s Halloween markdowns (pretty sure I’ve not paid full price for most of my items – hit Menards, Spirit, Halloween City the week after Halloween and you can find some nice deals – just have to wait a year to enjoy them).  This year we rolled out all the new Posey’s that were constructed during the Winter months (link here).  – by rolled, I literally mean rolled hehehe. Ron thought the pile of dead guys in the cart looked spooky on their own – luckily we didn’t have to explain ourselves to any strangers.

The entire process of building the trail takes about 6 days.  The first day involves cleaning up the trails themselves.  Wandering branches are pruned, obstacles like hedge apples removed for the safety of our guests and probably most appreciative is the thorn bushes are cut back to prevent any unwanted bleeding.  The second day is trimming all the weeds on the trail themselves (the trails is too steep in some locations to get a mower in so that is all done by hand with a gas powered weed trimmer – this takes 6 to 7 hours to complete.

Haunted Trail 2015

Hit the jump to see how the rest of the days fall out.

Continue reading The 2015 Haunted Trail – Part 1 of 2 – The Build

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