WBW XXXII

       Night Herons In Flight boom boom Afternoon Delight!

  Fretting about light is the nature photographers constant gripe. That and the fact that our subjects don't keep appointments, are notoriously short tempered, and inclined to stomp off just when your ready for business. In contrast, the Night heron  doing duty in the header photo was a remarkably pleasant and cooperative client and I was grateful to get pictures of him in a contemplative mood pond side and then later, in the air, where it flew nearly as gracefully as a gull. The delightful afternoon sun was high and blazing when we chanced upon each other. Without a perfect angle harsh shadows would have thrown otherwise wonderful takes into a yin yang debacle of darkness and light. This little road side pond was perfectly placed to let me roll up in the car and snag nicely lit pictures of the Night heron and also a Great egret. To view a few extra pond pictures click here. 

Bird photography is a solitary passion that requires your eye to be pasted to the rear end of a black box. Directing the action is not an option generally. This day I had the consummate assistant in the form of a Red Winged black bird who stirred the air and kept the big birds riled up just enough to ignore what is often a cameraman's obtrusive, mood killing presence.

  Have you, like this Night heron, ever been pursued by an adversary who is not a physical threat but rather an annoying constant companion like the yapping dog next door, hiccups, or perhaps a bubble gum melody that clings to your subconscious like a blood thirsty tick? The Starland Vocal Bands hit record Afternoon Delight is like that for me. If I hear just one note of it I'm doomed to have it's unholy little hook running on my mental Mp3 player for days.

  Unfortunately, when I rolled the title for this post around in my mind the rhythm of Night Herons in Flight pinged Skyrockets in Flight and like a tuning fork I was shaking with it. 

  As Mother would intone, "An itch that can't be scratched!"

 

  "Thinkin' of you's workin' up my appetite!"  You won't find Night heron on the list of ingredients for a authentic Jambalaya but such was not always the case in and around the Mississippi delta. Audubon wrote of the culinary qualities of the Night heron in 1840. Perhaps a good Cajun meal was on the mind of our little Red-winged blackbird too!

"The young(Night herons) are quite as good for eating as those of the common pigeon, being tender, juicy, and fat, with very little of the fishy taste of many birds which, like them, feed on fishes and reptiles. In the neighborhood of New Orleans, and along the Mississippi as far up as Natchez, the shooting of this species is a favorite occupation with the planters, who represent it as equaling any other bird in the delicacy of its flesh."

Please except my deepest and most sincere apologies to anyone who now has Afternoon Delight stuck in their head because of me. That was not my intention!   ;-)WBW

Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday!

    This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most beautiful treasurers, the birds.

   World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.

   You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents.

#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/

#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!

You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature.
The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!

The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs. Click on them and view their beautiful posts.

Come on it's your turn!

World Bird Wednesday XXXI

A Bad Hair Day Rant!

Anhinga Anhinga

      Paying the Stupid Tax...

    It might start with a slight miscalculation, like the time I tried saving money by cutting my own hair the afternoon before prom to help finance my dates corsage, or perhaps the tedium of repetition makes one incautious and so begins the avalanche of self inflicted misery we call the stupid tax. Like other forms of taxation it is as inevitable as your being served banana pudding at a monkey convention. Unlike other forms of taxation it is all the more damnable because it is self inflicted.
   I paid the stupid tax this week when my laptop caught the Bird flu and from the micro-chip Chicken coop that was my hard drive about twenty-five hundred recent captures flew off forever.
  You won't have to suffer the thumb thumping pain of hammering yourself with the stupid tax like I did if you'll remember to back up your precious files regularly and resist the urge to cut your own hair.
  Can I get an Amen!

A self administered haircut almost always goes wrong.

                                                                                                              The Pink '57

 I, like all the world's people, have the option of learning from my mistakes and so it was I gave up going to proms long ago and forever. It was a bad idea from the beginning, but I have kept on cutting my own hair. My locks are gray these days, at least those brave follicles that still persist. In my hay day my hair was shoulder length and limp, my ears stuck through and when sunburned gave the back of my head all the same appeal as the rear fins of the Pink '57 Lincoln my Dad got a deal on. My Pa was a self employed plumber with arms like a light heavy weight boxer, biceps earned from swinging four foot pipe wrenches. I was riding shotgun in the Pink Linc' when my eldest brother smashed it. He had to face the Old Man and pay the stupid tax. I stood with him and cried.

                                                                                                                      Roasting a Marshmallow...The length of a man's hair is not the social statement it was back in the 1960's. In this era anything goes. These days I have chosen for my...style, what might be called a minimalistic approach. I set the clippers to their closest setting and so the wonders of my bean shaped head are revealed. In the spring of each year it is required I toast my tender scalp slowly in the hot sun like you might carefully roast a marshmallow to a golden brown over the coals of a campfire. If I broil it to quickly a weeks worth of painful skin peeling reveals a splotchy Pinto pony look I find it hard to be content with. God forbid my marshmallow head should melt off the stick and fall into the fire! There is no recovery from that. 

                                                                   (Please double click the storks picture, you won't be sorry!)

When Good Hair People Go Bad!

  

    When those of my loved ones, so blessed with thick hair, have an unfortunate bad hair day they will often and unaccountably call me, a bald man of all people, to share their angst with.

    They think they can get to me! 

    To  help ease their "suffering" I urge them to ponder this bit of sage advice mined from a fortune cookie many moons ago.

             "Complain not about your sore toe to a man who has no foot!"

      Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday!

This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most beautiful treasurers, the birds.

World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.
You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents.

#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/

#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!

You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature.
The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!



The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs. Click on them and view their beautiful posts.

                      Come On it's your turn!

World Bird Wednesday XXX

                              A Good Thrashing

This last Thursday my chum Joe was up North visiting me at my Pine River digs . He's an avid follower of WBW so I suggested we travel over to Fish Point reserve where I could show him the levee's and wetlands that have been my recent photographic stomping grounds. Joe is a bird whistler. He tweets out these short little musical phrases that coax in birds from surrounding trees and bushes to come nearer, perch close by and join in with his whistling. It's akin to Tarzan calling in the jungle animals to help him out of a jam. Joe is a handy guy to have around if your looking for birds as his mere presence seems to attract the unusual. The weather was overcast and threatened rain. The temperature had gone from the upper nineties and dropped like a meteor in a matter of a few hours into the fifties. Rough winds had blown through and many a tree lay toppled over or broken to pieces along the back roads of Bay County. One such tree was resting half submerged in a creek that held close to the side of the road before escaping into Saginaw Bay. I caught a quick glimpse of a brown shape glide up and over the embankment where this Oak lay flattened. "What was that?" We said simultaneously. Joe had worked his mojo once again. I grabbed the camera and took a few steps over to the bank and as luck would have it a Brown thrasher (Toxostoma rufum) was frolicking there, leaping from trunk to limb to trunk again. Georgia's state bird, on furlough to Michigan gave us a solid minute of photo op's. Here are some of the moments we enjoyed and came away with.

 


The intensity of this eleven inch bird shocked me a little. The yellow/orange eye that stares madly from an otherwise drab countenance gives a clue to the more complicated personality wrapped tightly inside. Firstly, the Brown thrasher is a diva, a native singer of profound talent with thousands of melodic phrases at its beck and call. It's virtuosity is legendary among birders, a singer who saves its song for wooing a tree top lover in the spring of each year. The thrasher then remains strangely silent and elusive inhabiting the inner sanctums of it's hedge row and thicket hermitage. It is not heard from again except for a subdued whisper song, rarely experienced, and sung quietly to itself in the autumn.
For a Utube taste of Thrasher music click here.

One would be wise to use a little caution when examining a Brown thrashers nest as these birds have a long standing reputation for violently protecting their home turf. Accounts from researchers abound with harrowing tales of quick retreats as these warriors put their sharp beaks to good use stabbing at the eyes and temples of those who would dare to interfere with the nestlings. Here is one such reminiscence from a 1910 photographic expedition taken from Familiar Birds.
  "She (the Brown thrasher) left and then set up a loud cry of protest and defiance, which soon brought her mate to join in the attack. As I attempted to examine the young, both birds flew at me and attacked me savagely; they flew at my face, once striking a stinging blow close to my eye and drawing blood; within a few seconds I was struck on the side of my head, and we decided to withdraw from the scene of the battle, leaving the brave birds masters of the situation."
Even the revered Audubon painted a stirring picture of his experience seeing a Black snake foolishly attempting to rob a Thrasher nest of it's eggs. A complicated singer/assailant, the Brown thrasher more probably gets its last name from it's habit of threshing through leaf debris looking for insects rather than it's reputation as the welterweight champion of the underbrush.

Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday!

  

This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds.

  
 World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.
   You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents.

                                                         

#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/



#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.


#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!


You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature.The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!


The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs. Click on them and view their beautiful posts.

                                             Come on it's your turn!

Okay the heck with linky, let's try a new service. Carry on!

World Bird Wednesday XXIX

                                            Cute as a ...

Why is cute, cute? Cute is one of those things that you instantly recognise like this little Mute swan cygnet bobbing about in a pond, but if you were pressed to define cute could you really do it? What is the origin of cute? How is it that the human animal has an acute, innate sense of what is cute and not cute? Is there an evolutionary imperative driving this curious "knowing" that we seem to share? I distinctly remember back in kindergarten knowing who the cute ones were. This switch is apparently flipped very early in life. What we're talking about here, I suppose, is a softer, more innocent, less complicated version of beautiful. So when does cute change into beautiful? Certainly the mother swan is beautiful and not cute even though other than size there's not a heck of a lot of difference between the adult and the adorable little versions. Puzzling isn't it?

         It seems that most everyone craves cuteness. And why not? Cuteness has its privileges like the adoring attention it attracts by the boatloads and the power inherent there in. It'll get you out of a ticket faster than butt ugly any day of the week. If your not cute it doesn't hurt to have a puppy in tow to attract the "Oh, how adorable," reaction that can reflect well on you and bump up your cuteness quotient significantly.

And then there's homely like this Canadian gosling. Pity the poor thing, a couple of weeks ago it was a different story. Cuteness can be fickle and like a candle in the wind, flicker, fade and vanish into the abstract body shapes of the half grown. If your cute, enjoy it while you can.

Like anything, cuteness can be taken to far just as to much sugar in your coffee can make you gag. Consider Norman Rockwell's stellar career painting nostalgic covers for The Saturday Evening Post. Even given the genius of his technique Mr. Rockwell was never taken seriously as a painter because of his saccharine subject matter. He would have been better off, in terms of critical acclaim, painting Campbell's soup cans ala Andy Warhol.

Lesson learned: Don't get caught being to cute if you want to be taken seriously!

                                    These little mallard ducklings are sooooo cute, don't cha luv 'em!

Not cute. I include this vulture picture to cleanse your palette. That much sweetness isn't good for anybody!

         Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday!
 

This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds.

World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.
You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents.


                                                

#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/


#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!


You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature.The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!

        The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs. Click on them and view their beautiful posts.
                                               Come on it's your turn!