April’s been bugging me…

… and it needs to go now. But we have a consolation prize, in the form of a ladies’ Speidel watchband and a lovely month-end abstract to go along with it:


I’d like to say this was intentional and it wouldn’t have been hard to accomplish, but this is simply evidence that I accidentally hit the shutter release as I was finished taking a few frames of pre-sunrise read more

Prepare for the onslaught!

There – now that I’ve mimicked damn near every news source out there, I can now say, don’t bother, and there will be no onslaught.

But, the emergence of the 13 year perdiodical cicadas has begun around here.


This is (most likely, anyway) one of the Brood XIX, 13-year cicada species, from the genus Magicicada, but right now I don’t think I can narrow read more

Down another notch

While I don’t allow the numerous enthusiastic and complimentary comments on these posts to influence me too much, I admit that they’re a boost to my ego, and then something like this happens to bring me back into perspective. I present to you an image from early yesterday afternoon, once again on Walkabout Estates.


I was delighted to see this guy, because this is the read more

Just once, part 17


This one jumped into the lineup when I snagged photos of it only two days ago, and as such, it represents one of the few that you’ll see here that I uploaded photos for, rather than pulling them out of the media library from their previous usage. This also represents one that was a bitch to identify. You see, this is a yellow-rumped warbler (Setophaga coronata,) but read more

One more for Hubble


And so the Hubble Space Telescope was launched 34 years ago today as a joint venture between NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, USA) and ESA (European Space Agency,) and is still cranking out the classics, as seen here. Having a large telescope read more

Sorting finds n+8

Just two today – or is it three? How does one count these accurately? I don’t want to get in trouble with the IRS…


This one comes from the same session as these, but I didn’t notice this detail until I had brought the image up at full resolution to see if it retained read more

I forgot…

… that it was Earth Day, but I’d gone out to the neighborhood pond for the first time in weeks, just to see what was going on, and so I have some pics for it anyway.

The turtles were out of course, but it was more necessary this time, because yesterday and last night it had gotten pretty cold. So we have yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta):


I have a more read more

Trying to be sneaky

Was checking over the potted plants out front of Walkabout Estates this morning, and spotted this tiny guy.


Now, I have several mantis egg cases/oothecas scattered in various locations and have been keeping an eye on them, and saw no evidence of hatching, but obviously this one came from somewhere – I might have missed the hatching while away, and subsequent winds eradicated read more

And now, the ospreys

Plurals among the animal kingdom are always fun, and occasionally up for grabs. ‘Prey’ is a collective term, but bears no relation to ‘osprey,’ and so the plural of that is ‘ospreys,’ even though I’m probably none too consistent on that aspect myself. The plural of ‘ibis,’ as I recently checked, can be either ‘ibis’ or ‘ibises,’ read more

Too cool, part 53: Two comets

For reasons unknown, I never went looking for these after returning from the trip, but I also never had any such images pop up anywhere in my usual haunts, so I suspected that no one got anything worth keeping. Until now, that is.

Astronomy Picture of the Day features someone who actually got comet 12P/Pons-Brooks read more

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