The other day (well, eight days ago) when The Girlfriend and I were out doing various property tasks, she came across three nearly identical finds that remain a small mystery, one I may be attempting to solve as I find the means to do so. To wit:
Right in one of the paths through the less-traveled sections of the property, she came up with this, the carapace of, most likely, a common
The thick snow and the frozen pond caused a near=total cessation of involvement at the pond edge – no ducks, no geese, no nutrias, no beavers. Just some grackles and blackbirds. We dropped some corn on the edges and across the ice a little, just in case, but even the trail that someone had blazed through the ice had refrozen completely over.
I witnessed a quick pass yesterday around midday,
After the predictions that continued all day yesterday, we expected to wake up to noticeable snow this morning, and we did, kinda, but not at all what we expected, just a bare dusting of scattered flakes that, even at this latitude, they’d be embarrassed to call, “snow.” I went out to capture what I could, since I needed to do the month-end pics anyway, and spent
I like this title, because if you try to pronounce it correctly, you’re mispronouncing it. Which is because it’s time (finally!) for the annual tag roundup! Tags are those little reference words at the bottom of the post to help you know what the content is and save you the trouble of actually reading the post, unless you have a poster of a certain nature, in which case they
As promised, we’re now getting back to World Waterfowl Day, which we spent a significant portion of over at Sylvan Heights Bird Park in Scotland Neck, NC – seems appropriate, since the folks there were responsible for actually creating the holiday. We’d been meaning to get back, simply trying to find
I’m sitting here reflecting on perspectives, somehow believing that something profound will be produced by it and yet not really finding anything that isn’t trite, and the reason for this is, this marks the end of the seventeenth year of the old blogoblob. Reaching the age of seventeen, personally I mean, seemed interminable, and now I’ve been posting for that
As we come to the penultimate Estate Find for the year, I have to admit that, while a few of them were punted or downright skipped, there was still a surprising amount of new finds, observations, behaviors, and so on. And here we add another new species, at least to me and to the blog:
My exposure to the varied duck species of North America has been fairly limited, and so I wasn’t in the habit
Just a quick shot from this morning’s frenzy, snapped in the middle of a video clip. There are two things of minor interest within, the reasons I’m posting this. The first is, this was a little before sunrise, or perhaps right at astronomical sunrise (actually, the timestamp is pretty damn close to this mark,) but well before the sun would peek through the trees. However,
Credit for this one goes to The Girlfriend, a discovery made while she was distributing the thrice-daily ration of corn for the various critters that come to partake we now have (at least) two more:
But we’re not letting it go at that, because I have still images too.
When she came to get me, I knew the camera and long lens was still affixed to the tripod in the upstairs bathroom
I’ve been in the middle of two video projects, trying to find the opportunities to finish them, so naturally I add a third. But I got a handful of photos today as well, so here’s what’s been happening here (except for the other things which you’ll see eventually.)
First off, I noticed something slightly odd-looking about a few of the wood ducks (Aix sponsa) this morning,
