Today is Darwin Day, and unlike last year, I actually have something for the day – just not much. Again, the reminders have been coming up in my calendar for the past week, and that hasn’t been enough to inspire something meaningful, but I do have a handful of observations that have provoked some
Category: Nature
Now we’re talking
The saga of the red-shouldered hawks (Buteo lineatus) continues apace, as The Girlfriend spotted something specific when one landed in the backyard trees, two mornings ago, confirmed with careful examination with the binoculars. Unfortunately, it didn’t persist long enough for me to bring the camera out and didn’t repeat its behavior later that day, or anytime
What the hell?
Stepped out last night and caught this noise coming from someplace across the pond, but centered in a couple of different regions. It surged and faded, at times going completely silent, so I’m sure it was critters of some kind, but I’m just not sure what. Take a listen before we go any further:
Noises in the night
I had to increase this by 10db and it’s still quiet – headphones
MMM boy, another Estate Find!
First off, as the title hints, this is the three-thousandth post on the old Walkabout Exercise in Thinly-Veiled Narcissism I really had planned to do something bigger, but nothing was coming to mind or hand, and now I’ve got this schedule to keep. Note that I formerly had a goal to reach this by the third week in September of last year, because reasons, but
Up too early
One of the cats making a lot of noise this morning woke me up far earlier than I ever should have been, given the time that I went to sleep last night/earlier this morning, but once up, I noticed the nice pall of fog out over the pond and went exploring. One set of photos is going to wait until Friday’s Estate Find, unless I get something even better before then, but we can have these now:
Estate Find V
If you’re seeing this, it means I failed in finding something newer or unique or somehow more exotic like I think the Estate Finds should be, when I went out looking yesterday, and so kept this fallback image. It is of course another Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis,) but curiously, one from just a few days ago as soon as the temperature peaked above 10°c
Ta ta, January
And as January vents its last shuddering gasps, we dance happily on what will be its grave (just so it can see us do it) with the month-end abstract. . Plural, actually, and they all have a theme, though they didn’t have to, but such is the nature of nature abstracts. Sometimes.
During the first of the cold days, we’d get some patches of ice on the pond here and there,
No more nights like that
You certainly recall a few months back when I awoke quite anxious that my business cards needed updating, and I’m happy to report that this has now been taken care of.
This takes a surprisingly long time, even longer this time around. Part of that is, I have multiple designs for the cards, all example photos of mine, so I don’t change one, I change several. And part of it is due to routine
A figment of imagination
Photography has been a little slow for the past few days, though this is also due to my own lack of effort. Still, things occasionally pop up.
Take, for instance, the conditions on the pond a week ago today:
… versus today:
Seriously.
These guys (which would be yellow-bellied sliders, Trachemys scripta scripta, and eastern painted turtles, Chrysemys picta picta,) wasted no time
Estate Find IV
Yeah, it’s liable to be birds for a while, though I missed my chance at some deer the other morning. I try to keep variety in mind, but at this time of year? Ya got birds.
The morning after the overnight snow storm, the sun broke out (which usually happens in NC, so credit for that at least,) and I was out using the light. The birds were extremely happy with the new selection of feeders that