We here at Intrigued just wanted to take a quick moment to extend our best wishes for a very Merry Christmas (or related holiday event) to all or wonderful readers!
It’s that time of year when we shut the lights off and close the office doors for a few days so we can enjoy this special holiday with family and friends. Hit the jump to see a few more warm tidings from our staff!
Continue reading Merry Christmas and Warm TidingsEvery four years we are granted and extra calendar day to attempt getting all the crap done we’ve procrastinated on since the previous gift of 24 hours. We’ve come to that charity point and I sit here staring at all the things on my to-do list wondering just how long ago each of those items were added. Each comes with a progression of analysis honed over the many years in the corporate grind – does it really need to be done, does it actually have to be done now, is there something more important that delivers greater benefit, is it still as critical as it was when the item was added, is it really independent or it is preceded by another task on the list (or worse, not even there), is it too daunting and needs to be broken into subtasks and more important than all, what kind of trouble will I get into from Linda if I delay any longer. Scan the list, re-prioritize, rearrange, prune some, add some, stare at it, flip some coins…screw it, let’s have some fun and write a post!
Want to give Brad a little bit more time to process all the tins from his recent adventure, so spent some time going through the recently processed shots from our Texas 2023 snowbird migration- you have probably noticed the heavy emphasis on that January trip as of late. What could we feature in celebration of this Leap Year. Then I jumped over to see Jet’s latest post and she absolutely Caarussshed it (link here)! All of my Bunny shots have been used and the only other good option was a Leopard Frog I took several years back – pretty lame. Maybe I could get “close”
Ladies and gentlemen, would you accept Jeep Year!?! Unfortunately, I should have been working on this years in advance to have a nice collection of shots to use (like it says right there on my to-do list ha). As a substitute we are going with a Free-For-All clear out of the (mostly) Texas one-offs. Put your seatbelts on and hit the jump for a joy ride.
Continue reading Leaps, Jeeps and MisfitsEveryone here in the Intrigued family would like to extend a hearty Merry Christmas to each and all! We have had a wonderful year here and that is entirely due to all our wonderful readers.
Hit the jump for some more merry good cheer!
Continue reading The Intrigued Family Wishes You a Very Merry ChristmasI have to feel a bit sorrow for all the SoaRs out there (Spouse of a Runner) or more specific SoaIRs – Spouse of an Injured Runner. Clearly we can be a difficult lot as Linda continues to remind me daily. Beginning to think my full name is really “Don’t You Dare”, purely based on the number of times that is proclaimed lately and as far as I can tell..always directed at … well, ME. She caught me heading out to a pile of concrete with a sledgehammer the other day (we had some new concrete poured and the contractors left huge slabs for me to deal with). My excuse that it couldn’t be any worse than what the therapists were going to do me apparently didn’t hold water. The good news is Doc says the elbow is healing nicely, but wants to re-xray it in three weeks. Obligatory head nod while inner Bri goes postal “THREE WEEKS, is he crazy!?! I have a road race this Saturday and an ultra in October to train for – where did she hide that sledgehammer, I need to get on with building my strength back up …when Linda is away, of course”. While my accelerated recover plan germinates, thought I would see if I could get a quick post out. Brad was kind enough to take us along on his Huntington bird walk last we met. Unfortunately, my birding days are put on hold for some time – even decided to send The Beast in for some spa recovery time at a local Nikon repair shop – so, how about we take a walk of a different kind.
This adventure will be from the comfort (and safety) of my den. Yep, it is time for a hodgepodge of images that either didn’t make the first cut, one-offs or in some cases just some fun images that have been perpetually stuck in 5 o’clock traffic.
Hit the jump for a walk for those of us with no particular place to go.
Continue reading HodgepodgeFor the last two weeks I’ve woken up, looked at the day’s to-do list, covered my dog’s ears and let out a string of colorful words. In big bold letters is the word “POST”. Although that probably is obvious but it is short for “Get your lazy butt into the den and get a post out you lily-livered, bow-legged, flea-bitten varmint”. Yes, I’m retired, yes, I still have to-do lists and yes, my to-do list entries mock me. This month it isn’t so much procrastination, just too much stuff going on, but today we are going to take another bite out of the self-imposed monthly post quota.
Going to start with another brag introduction. I previously mentioned Raven did well in the TDAA National competition held last week in Minnesota. He is starting to slow down a bit, but he is getting the job done qualifying in 4 out of his 6 runs. I’d be sleeping on the couch if I didn’t give some of that credit to Linda ha!
I think Raven is starting to feel the pressure from the newest member of the agility family. A long way from the steady runs of his brother, Ruger is just starting out, but showing amazing talent – Linda just needs to get him focused. We laughed at this shot of him “doing” his first ever weave poles. By “doing” we mean running right through them to get to his favorite obstacle the teeter-totter. “That isn’t how it’s done Ruger!” Raven was absolutely embarrassed and went and hid in his crate after that fiasco.
As they Say’s, hit the jump to see today’s featured feathered friend!
Continue reading It Say’s I’m the BestI just might have to go back to formally working as I can’t for the life of me figure out how I can be busier now that when I was spending over 40 hours a week fighting the ghosts in the machine. Those hours are being sucked up into the vortex somehow and it isn’t a result of naps! (truth is I have NEVER been able to take a nap since they stopped giving me a carton a milk and a carpet square in kindergarten). Admittedly, part of the time consumption is a slew of national and local dog competitions that have had us traveling to compete. Time for a proud pappa to do some quick bragging. Ruger had his very first agility ring showing last weekend. Now that he’s finally had his first birthday, he is ready to impress.
Hit the jump to read more about Ruger’s debut and to see the latest add to my birding life list – hint, he’s a beauty!
Continue reading Burning in the Dirt and the TreesHello everybody. For those wondering, we have been a bit out of pocket for the last week or so. It all started when I woke up to my wife looking at her phone in absolute joy. All my groggy ears could make out was garble that sounded like someone meeting a new baby for the first time.. “how cute”, “adorable”, “oh my” .. the usual fare. I had a moment of “my god what have I done” until she showed me her screen with a YouTube video playing of a puppy. Apparently she had just been alerted by a friend that they were looking for a qualifying home for … well, THIS!
We had been looking for a new addition to the family now that our youngest, Raven, had recently turned seven (link here). While finally getting the sleep removed from the eyes, Linda explained how the puppy I was looking at was a performance bred toy Poodle and they were looking for a home where he could continue his champion line in the performance sports – agility, dock diving etc. To be honest, it sounded too good to be true. This puppy was going to be slightly bigger than Raven which is what Linda wanted due to the difficulty our Raven has with the teeter being so light. The video included scenes of him already doing introductory apparatus familiarization, treat awareness and a number of other skills which he already excelled at – far earlier than our other agility champions.
Hit the jump to read more about our new addition.
Continue reading Say Hello to Our Little FriendFinally getting around to processing the rest of the shots form our birding trip to Georgia back in (looking down in shame) May of 2015. You at least have to give me some credit for trying to muscle through the incredible backlog. Truthfully, there is a reason I’ve been actively hesitant – is that a thing, let’s go with intentionally slow to get to this trip. One of the main reasons is I f’d up while out in the field there and almost got myself seriously injured. I’ve had a few experiences where I’ve skipped a few heartbeats due to something unexpected happening. One of those times was seeing Ron’s head almost smashed with a steel door. On a personal front, I came way to close to dangerous wildlife in the swamps of Georgia thanks to looking down my glass while walking and not watching the created void in front of me. I’ll get to that in a future post, but thought I’d start with a picture I took while I was heading out into the swamp.
That’s our youngest, Raven. I laughed to myself when I saw this image come through the digital darkroom. He’s as cute as it gets, but has a serious attitude: “Hey, do you really think you are going to leave me here while you go off and play in the woods!?! Get your ass back here now.” Good thing that cockiness serves him well while competing in the agility ring – he also knows I’m a pushover for ear licks.
Guess I better get to the featured bird for today’s post. My shots are a bit weak for this series, but it is a +1 so I have to go with what I was able to get in the tin.
Hit the jump to see a few more mediocre shots if a bird I thought Ron didn’t have yet.
The boys wanted to show off their costumes to everyone!
Although, Raven doesn’t seem to be very happy about it
Things I am thankful for at the moment:
I am going to close out this month’s set of posts with a bird that posed a challenge for me in a couple of ways. While out on our Yellowstone vacation, we took a short hike up a trail. While taking in the beautiful scenery, I heard an interesting bird song coming from a set of trees. It was a rather unique sound, but the point of origin was difficult to pinpoint. Slowly the sound was vectored in and it slowly revealed itself. What was this sneaky bird? Well, it was this one:
The challenge of actually seeing this bird was matched by the difficulties in actually identifying it in my multiple bird books. Turns out there are at least 6 variations of this Junco with varying coloring contrasts. Some have a darker head, some have a larger brown spot on their back. To be honest, at the time it looked like a shrunken robin without the bright orange belly. Based on the picture above, it is obvious he had no trouble locating me.
This shot gives a better perspective of the side and belly feathers. The belly t is a dull orange which lead to the robin reference. From a photo perspective, I do like how these close up shots came out. The coloring of the bird coordinated well with the bark of the back trees and the wisps of greenery give a nice depth perspective. Here is another one that I probably like the best of all of them. To his credit, even though I was moving around to get different angles he did not get concerned enough to seek safety in the deeper brush.
I hate the fact I have to reduce and compress the images for this website. The full size raws look significantly better than the smaller versions used for the blog posts. I might actually look into leveraging a photo service website to use as a repository for the larger images. That way I could provide links to the full versions if you wanted to see those.
Unlike our friend the Mountain Bluebird the Junco blends in quite nicely with their habitat. Based on the various pictures of the 6+ variations they all look like the colorings would hide it nicely among the limbs and brush common in the forest. To demonstrate this, here are a couple of examples consisting of full scenes (reduced for space). Try your hand at Where’s Waldo.
Now that you know what you are looking for it makes it a tad easier compared my struggle trying pinpoint the source of the chirp. In case you did have some problems, here is a zoom of it:
I pulled a slight switcharoo on you. This is actually one of the other variations that has a slightly lighter brown patch on the back. How about another try:
It’s there, trust me.
Let’s hope they don’t figure out how to use that stealth trait against us. They would probably team up with the Ravens and wreak considerable havoc. I recommend not making them angry!
Whew, that was a close one. Wiping the sweat from my brow, I close out the 6th and final post of the month.
Life Intrigued 