I really, really wonder* who comes up with these holidays. I mean, seriously – this one is far too much of a FaceBlerk kind of thing, and I don’t blame anyone for ignoring it, because it accomplishes nothing**. That said, I’m in the rare position to address/celebrate it, so we’ll grudgingly recognize What Were You Doing A Decade Ago? Because exactly a decade ago***, I was obtaining this shot:
I was down at Falls of the Neuse, the head of the Neuse River just north of Raleigh where it exited Falls Lake – initially, I believe, it had actually done so as a waterfall, or at least a cascade, since the rock face was still there, but now it is a controlled water source, which means it exits the lake through a dam spillway that, on occasion, is opened quite far to manage the excess water and thus the river erodes the hell out of the banks immediately downstream. Seriously, I’ve seen more than a few trees that simply lost all their supporting soil and toppled into the water in the nearly three decades that I’ve been visiting.
Anyway, it was an extremely hot day, and this poor great blue heron was feeling it. The bird isn’t calling, or even swallowing a fish, but simply sitting motionless in a treetop, panting. I had lined up this photo for a post to be made soon afterward, but that never happened, and so it’s been sitting in the blog folder since that time. When the holiday reared its ugly head, I was set to ignore it and then thought****, Why not check just to see if you have something that fits the bill? Behold and lo, I actually had something. What are the chances?
This was not, by the way, the oldest image in the folder – and neither is this (it’s close,) but I figure, while I’m here…
Just a grab shot of a pair of unidentified hoverflies, partially because they were engaged (well, beyond engaged I guess) in the naughty-naughty not just right out in the open, which would have horrified most of middle America, but in midair like total perverts. And also because I actually got a sharp-ish photo of a pair of flies hovering. These guys are typically no more than 15mm in length, usually less, though I admit I neglected any attempt to get a more specific measurement – I was far more slack in my youth. And young I was, this being thirteen years ago instead. That’s the era of the old Canon DReb! Well, okay, it was well after the era of the first generation of Digital Rebel, but that was when I was using one.
I briefly went into BugGuide to try and identify the species, but got guides such as this:
T4 with two pale oblique stripes in exotica and obliqua (completely dark in Fazia micrura); male obliqua has pale crescent-shaped band on third abdominal tergite; in female exotica the band is only slightly curved and is flattened along base
… and you know, I’m not gonna go nuts just for this holiday, of which this image doesn’t even qualify anyway. They’re Syrphidae – be happy with that.
So, what were you doing a decade ago?
.
* No I don’t
** Unlike most of the other holidays found herein
*** Seriously – I set this to post exactly on the time from the EXIF info of the image, because I’m me. So as long as you’re right on top of the new posts appearing…
**** No I didn’t
*+ It is absolutely, patently untrue that I make up holidays as excuses to dump old photos and run up the upload count for the month, and I deeply resemble resent the implication…