Monthly Archives: May 2022

Memorial Day, Creature Feature

First off, let me wish my US readers an enjoyable and significant Memorial Day Holiday, and ask that everyone keep in mind that “memorial” means “remembering”, and today is all about remembering something Very Important: all those who gave up their lives in service to this country. Regardless of what you may think about the circumstances that lead to these sacrifices, you have to respect that these people did what was asked of them and gave it everything they had, literally. So let’s take a moment here to reflect on that.
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Ok, back to today’s creature feature, which is 2022’s #2 if you’re keeping count.

First I’ll start close to home. Or office. Well, really those are the same thing these days, but at the time I was using my back porch as my Big Conference Room when this guy came by to zoom-bomb us. However, he didn’t seem much interested in what we were doing in the data center, so he moved along.

Now out onto the lake. By the way, if anyone is curious, the track is on Strava. This link might get you there, but you’ll need an account, which is free, except for the hassle of creating Yet Another “free” account. I wondered if by posting there I’ll be giving away all my secret favorite little places, but, heck, you’re not getting into them with a bass boat.

I found where these little blue dragon flies were busy. Unfortunately they’re really small and hard to even see, much less get a picture of. This is the best I could get:

Back out on the main part of the lake, the geese and their geeselets were enjoying a family outing:

The Osprey were making good use of the platform the humans put up for them near the dam. Don’t worry, I’m not getting any closer…

while your partner is out hunting…

um, I’m not a fish.

Neat how the landing gear stows away so neatly:

A Black Vulture was soaring up high:

Sometimes a camera just isn’t the right tool to capture wildlife. I know there was at least one Kingfisher in these trees, I could hear them clearly.

I saw a bunch of these little birds darting around. I was surprised I managed to capture a picture of one in flight.

Turtles were out in numerous places. That one did some serious climbing to get up there.

And Mallards were foraging along the shore. um, I think those are mallards…

Yup, MR Ducks!

And now, the obligatory Great Blue Heron picture:

What the heck, it’s a holiday, have another on the house:

Croft again, going towards summer

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Today I got back to one of my favorite places to take a walk in the woods: Croft State Park, where there are literally dozens of kilometers of trails, although some areas are temporarily closed right now for “ordnance removal”. This area used to to be a military training base back during World War II and they’re working to clear up any remaining Dangerous Stuff from that time.

Now this is my kind of trail:

That was along the Beech Tree trail, which apparently doesn’t get a lot of traffic. Correction, a lot of human traffic:

This area was torn up by a tornado back in 2019, but seems to be recovering nicely. Compare with what I saw back then.

One thing about nature, everything gets recycled. It’s definitely “one life form’s trash is another’s treasure” (yes, these trails are used by horses).

The Beech Tree trail has a couple of creek crossings, which I thought might be a challenge after the previous night’s rains, but not a big deal with a little “rock collecting”:

This one took a bit of a “leap of faith”, as it wasn’t possible to gauge ahead of time how solid that bit of tree was. Worked out fine though.

The natural world is always changing. I’m sure there was something there for this vine to wrap around at one time:

All in all it was a perfect day. The prior night’s rain rinsed everything off (although it did leave some trail areas muddy), and the east wind kept a pretty solid overcast in place to keep temperatures in the 60F’s. Not the kind of day you might expect around here with it being almost summer, but I’ll take it!

Creature Feature 2022 #1

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Hey! Guess what! The Creature Feature is back! It seems like I’ve had one thing after another going on this season so far (some of which you’ve seen here), so it took me until today to get out on the lake here.
It was good to get off the land for a bit and visit some of my favorite quieter places (reminder: you can click on the image to get a full-resolution version).

I wonder if these two guys were “ugly gooslings”?

A hawk of some sort up high….

…and a dragonfly down low

That white fuzzy stuff wasn’t snow, but some plant seeds blowin’ in the wind. Some got caught up in spider webs.

This Mallard was chillin’ out….

…until time to move. Here I come! I think a lot of bird calls are the avian equivalent to our ADS-B.

Flarin’ a little high there, don’t ya think?

I guess not.

Meanwhile, the Canada Geese were watching. I expected them to hold up numbers.

I’m not sure, at first I thought these guys might be juvenile Killdeer. They were smaller than the adults and I’m not sure of the plumage, which was really hard to spot unless they were moving.

But they sure behaved and sounded like Killdeer. I think though, they might be Spotted Sandpipers, which would be a new one around here for me.

Now here’s an exclamation point. I had to go digging for an ID on these birds, and came up with Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks. Range maps don’t show them anywhere near here, but they sure are a match.

They didn’t vocalize as I went by, so I don’t know if these whistled, but maybe climate change is driving them this way?