Persistent illusion

Every once in a while, as I’m perusing old posts (because the ego knows no bounds,) I come across this image and, just about every time, I interpret it entirely incorrectly – which is bonkers because not only am I the one who photographed it, I had the subject right in hand and know exactly how it looks. The last two times, I reminded myself I should revisit it as an optical read more

Just before dark

It’s now this scattered occasion when we see a mother wood duck (Aix sponsa) visit with her brood, and it’s routinely been at a time when I’m unprepared this is because they can see us easily even when we’re in the house watching out the windows, which are too distorting to actually shoot through. The options are, a) be outside but someplace read more

Tempestuous

Last night the lightning alert was going off madly, and the maps showed a couple of massive cells passing through, but not quite getting to us – they looked to be missing us by a small margin off to the west. Encouraged by this, I headed down to the waterfront because that afforded the best views east and west (actually, more west-northwest and east-southeast, but you take what you can get.) read more

Sidetracking (literally)

Just throwing this down for giggles. As I was sitting down to do a few of the in situ shots of the last Estate Find, I heard a rustling in the taller grasses/weeds very close behind me. It wasn’t a deer as expected, and wasn’t showing above the grasses at all, but was easy enough to find. So while I was there, I shot a quick video clip.

That’s all – nothing elaborate, just read more

Another attempt

I’d found the website transit-finder.com last year, which takes a given location and lists the upcoming transits of the sun and moon for the International Space Station (as well as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Tiangong Space Station.) Last September I’d read more

Estate Find XX

This one goes back a little too far, certainly not counting as this past week in any way, but I didn’t want it back-to-back with XIIX. Once again, I was out exploring at night by headlamp, but really, I was standing just outside the front door when I spotted a dark spot in the yard not far from the greenhouse. It was easily identified just by getting a little closer.


That’s read more

So, didja?

Did I observe World Migratory Bird Day, you’re asking? Did I even complete the goal I set out for myself in an earlier post? Well, yes, though I actually had two, and one remains only half-completed.

First off, two days before the holiday, I was surprised to suddenly see a female wood duck shoot into the nest box without warning, revealing that it was currently in use, and so one of the goals read more

They do own the property, after all


While trying to catch up with the backlog, naturally enough I went out yesterday and added quite a few photos to the queue, under a couple of different topics – one step forward, two back and all that. This post may help alleviate it a bit though, because it had more photos (and some brief video) dedicated to it than any other topic until yesterday, and so we return to the read more

Estate Find XIX

This one was exactly a week ago, but I already had the Estate Find posted, plus in the late morning we lost internet. However, we’re going to build to this one a little.

I’ve mentioned before about the subspecies of Canada goose that’s been hanging around, a dusky Canada goose (Branta read more

Blameless

Yes, we’re back on the wood ducks again, but let’s be real – they’re the coolest birds and right here on the property not even god is gonna blame me for posting about them *


Anyway, after doing the nighttime photos of the mother and ducklings on Turtle Island, I kept watching for them, getting some more shots and then, one evening, spotting the mother just read more

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