Just once, part 44


This one’s kind of curious, not because of its appearance, since it only looks like this because it’s newly fledged, just out of the nest. No, it’s because I can’t imagine why the species has only been seen here once. This is a white-breasted nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis,) and as such, is common everywhere I’ve lived, and usually not too hard read more

Another milestone in photography

Or to be more specific, another milestone to photographers, because it doesn’t really impact photography in any significant way. But today is the birthday of Patois Ferndiddler. known far and wide (for a given definition of those, anyway,) as the inventor of the neck strap.

Ferndiddler’s innovation came along in that crucial time period between photographers no longer being able to afford read more

What’s the right thing?

So it was a bit of an amphibious day yesterday, meaning that’s what I was finding around Walkabout Estates Plus. We’ll start with the greenhouse:


While, as I said before, the property is absolutely overrun with anoles, they tend to be dry and not leave any evidence of their passing, so while I have found nothing conclusive within these strange, faintly muddy markings read more

Just once, part 43

I find it a little amusing right now that, during the house closing thing when I knew we’d be busy, I set up several posts ahead of time to prevent any noticeable lapses in my posting “schedule,” but for the past month or so have had almost nothing to continue filling in, naively (or is that naïvely?) thinking that I’d be able to fill in here and there. It is to laugh. Seriously, read more

Just once, part 42

It’s been a while since we’ve had a mammal, hasn’t it? That’s because I have very few candidate mammals in the Just Once list, and too few mammals overall, really. But since the posts have been lean, we’ll have a video for this one.

Those are Asian small-clawed otters (Aonyx cinereus,) and were found at the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher, a new brood that had hatched read more

Just once, part 41

Hmmmm, what do we have here? I was just about to do this week’s Just Once post and decided on the specimen below, in honor of Halloween (which is when it originally posted nine years ago):


… which you gotta admit is a nice, ominous image, and as I said then, I wanted to do this in the yard some Halloween, or perhaps up on the rooftop. I never did get around to it, mostly read more

Don’t move!

Seriously, don’t move it’s a pain in the ass, takes forever, and results in far too many aches and pains. We’ve still got far too much to go, and Walkabout Studios is going to take a while to be in proper shape. So I haven’t much time to devote to posting, but I’ll slip in here and there as I have a few moments. And in like vein, I snag the occasional read more

Just once, part 40


While this week’s image was taken back in 2010, it wasn’t actually used until last year for one of the Profiles of Nature posts, which was actually the weekly topic for the previous year – I was just throwing more down as I felt like it. This is a cownose ray (Rhinoptera bonasus,) photographed at the NC Aquarium in Fort Fisher I believe read more

September toddles off

And so, we reach the end of September, or at least will in about 23 hours. This means we must, by tradition, leave it with an abstract image, though tradition has nothing to say about how abstract or what the exact definition of that word is, thank dog. Because that allows us to use things like this:


Obtained just two days ago, this was one of two contenders for this vaunted position read more

Slow, but progress


The function of getting established at the new Walkabout Estates is going much slower than intended, primarily not our fault – we’re still waiting for the truck with most of our belongings to arrive. Until that time, we’re bouncing back and forth between minor repairs/improvements and exploring the area, but this has included going down to the waterfront soon after read more

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