Big Horn Sheep and another Donkey Find I Can Ride My Bike To.

It is amazing the things that one can find right under your nose so-to-speak. Several years ago, I did a track of where my sales were coming from and most were within 10-miles of home. Most of the agencies will tell you that from their tracking also. Makes me wonder why some go across oceans to get shot when statistics say otherwise. Of course, life is full of the fickleness of things like that.

I've noticed a group of guys in their early 30s with remote control cars like the off-road models in real life racing their cars over the chalk cliffs that are around Dallas . I was standing above them some 30 feet atop an escarpment when one guy looks up and says," your toy may cost more than mine but I have fun doing mine".  I said," I can take pictures of your toy with my toy and you can laugh and smile and cry and have so many memories of this day for years to come." "You win," he said.  I'll look for them again. Right then, I wanted to take some pictures but my needed to eat won because I was feeling lightheaded somewhat. Otherwise, I would have gotten some shots for me and for them.

Big Horn Sheep Ram

This is the second Burro that I have looking through a fence like this. The look is the same!  What's more ironic is that I now know where a total of 5 of these animals are within the city and I'm not talking about a zoo or an animal rescue place. These are in neighborhoods!! That's Texas!

It's Nesting Time Again.

There is a pair of Red Shoulder Hawks that I have followed for the past five years. Even on the days where I don't go specifically to the lake, I will drive by the area from the upper road to see if I can see them surfing the thermals. Today, was one of those times when all the bells and whistles went off as I drove by a road sign and saw the female sitting on the top of the sign.

 Quickly, I made the block and came back around  from another angle. To my surprise, there she sat in the same place on the sign top. Putting the window down on the passenger side before I came to a full stop, her attention was on me but her focus was on the ground below the sign. I had a clear shot of that area. Even without checking settings, I fired off three quick shots for reference. Then, in a flash, she takes off from the sign and glides over the grass area between the shoulder and the incline were I was parked. Into the grass she landed. For a quick bit, I had begun to wonder if she had been injured. She stood up  with a field mouse in her beak. I had gotten the shots of her in a final moment of a hunt that was successful. The next thirty-eight minutes was just amazing as she flew off over the road into a thicket of trees. I decided that I could not miss this action and gave in driving around to the entry of the park about a mile or two away.

Parking the car, I got out and slowly walked into the thicket watching for shadows on the ground and any movement in the trees. Nothing. It was at that point that I wanted to get a fix on the location of the sign where I had seen her first and  where she had flown this way. Walking quietly and slowly through the thicket, I came up on the road from the opposite side from where I had been in the car. Walking down the roadway on the shoulder with traffic whizzing by has plenty of room to walk and not be in an unsafe spot. My intentions were to walk around the thicket and come back to my car  that I had parked in one of the lots. For some reason, I stopped to photograph the sign from across the road when there was movement in the corner of my eye.

Looking up, there was the most amazing hawk in just the right spot doing just the right thing. Perched on a branch in clear site, she sat there while I got off plenty of  images. The sun was back lighting her right side (anatomically correct) so I risk moving and upsetting her, but she continued to sit there watching me. I do talk to wildlife. She got the, pretty bird routine. I moved back and forth several times covering and recovering 20 or so yards. She continued to just sit there on her perch. Then, I hear the screech of her mate from overhead. I looked up to see him appearing to be ridding the thermals, but in reality, he was busy defending his territory as I found out later when the aerial battle began.

There was a Red-Tail Hawk along with the Red Shoulder. Both were attacking a pair of big crows with sticks in their mouths in mid air. It appeared that the crows were starting to build a nest in the hawks territories and they both joined in the fight to defend the range. I have a blur shot of one crow in flight with the stick as nesting material and at least one of the hawks. I'm still learning how to switch back and forth from pre-set settings and those images are more blur. I am always amazed that I can shoot jets coming in from 130 to 170 MPH and not blur an image but something about real birds gets me excited and I blur the images. I'm still working on the problem. But, to me, at this point, the experience is captured in clean shots and the blur shots all the same. That tells a story, too!

It was a good day and I came home.

The Field Mouse Is No More

The Female Red Shoulder Hawk that just  finished  the mouse.

The Male Red Shoulder had to defend his own territory from the crow after the Red Tail drove the crow into the Red Shoulders Territory. Boundaries are Boundaries!

No One Has Ever Won The Kentucky Derby On A Donkey

Play Ball!

In fifteen weeks from this Saturday, the crowds will hear the singing of, "My Old Kentucky Home" and a few minutes later, hear the track announcer say,"--- and they're off!" at the 144th running of the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky.That first Saturday in May is like so much in life. Regardless of how you plan, Mother Nature may just have a different thought about how that day will go from year to year.

Last week, a young college professor that I know, wrote a blog post about how people don't ride horses any more. Now, true, this U Mass teacher does live in Boston and while Paul Revere may have ridden his horse to Concord yelling, "The British Are Coming", in Ft. Worth, they were getting ready for the month long Ft. Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. I missed the Western Parade because of the cold. An email from one of my editors wanted to know if I would cover the show for them and I had to decline. It was the second offer from them that I had to say no.  But that didn't dampen my spirits. I have a file folder of people I've come across that ride horses here in Dallas. Being  somewhat of a joker that I am, I  sent Pat the file of images. It wasn't long before I got a reply saying that, "well, I guess people still do ride horses after all." Pat is a link in a growing  number of Anthropologist that I have known, currently know and read regularly and joke with in bantering phrases.

Repartee.Wordplay.Good-humored.Jesting. But most of all, it ties me to an old college professor of mine who was pure English and was then and now in death is noted for his translations of Percy Bysshe Shelley. While teaching in the landmark Hallmarks of English education before coming to the states ever few years, Neville, would go back to London to his flat in the summer. He would continue to write to me filled with his banter and to this day, those days in his classes and the group discussions held in his apartment on the weekends, were spent listening to jazz recordings that he found so delightful as he sipped on  imported Spanish Cognac or Sherry, talking in detail about The Humanities. Neville was employed in our  English Department and the course that I paid to be in was his, The Humanities. Never in my wildest dream would I ever think that such a course would be so profound on my life. It all played out to Mother Nature's plan and I am most grateful and thankful to have had that experience to banter with a man who was so English, so common, so expert in his field. A lot of reading for a course for sure, but when one stops to think that the great leaders of the world all had that same experience, it wraps me in that cloak of knowledge that others do not have. Strongly influenced by Shelley's poems were people like Karl Marx, no less, Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi.

Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience was greatly influenced from Shelley's stand on non-violence  and to have in political protest to violence, no violence. Knowing that Shelley died young in 1822, his popularity is greater now that at the time of his death. Then, I look at the news headlines and I wonder where the Shelley's of today are. All I see is haters everywhere.

Yesterday Was Three Kings Day: Epiphany

The mixing of cultures between Christianity and  Eastern Orthodox tends to confuse some. Even the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas" does not convey the mixture in the best of ways, but it does point to the Epiphany as the 12th day. In short, Epiphany is when the "Three Kings" arrived with their gifts for the Baby Jesus at the manger. On our calendar that is always January 6th---the 12th day of Christmas. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, it is the Festive Day of the Three Kings.

Workers high above the trees reach for the strings of lights.

The trees on the square were all connected with lights.

Boxes of Red Bows are packed away for this coming December.

It's about a two day operation to take down these strings of lights. Watching the men work was amazing at how well they went about their job. There was a small microwave on a brick planter where the men heated up their coffee and lunches. An all things being Texas, the cans of Dr. Pepper was the drink of choice for breaks!

Talk about the commercialization of Christmas and we tend to leave it all with Christmas Day when the neatly wrapped presents are under the tree and the stockings are hung with care. Thank goodness for the Eastern Orthodox that still end Christmas with the Epiphany! Our Epiphany seems to be after the kids have torn through the wrappings like a tornado. The commercialization even continues after Christmas. The lighting companies come around to start taking down the strings of lights for another year. Such was the case in downtown Garland on the square.  The beautiful multi colored lights  in neat diamond patterns that hang from the trees and the red bows and garland that crossed the streets from light pole to light poles were coming down for another year.

Ice Is Pretty and Sometimes Unusual

This start to 2018 has been a bit more wintry than most. The big thing has been the 76 hours below freezing for starters, which will reverse for the next ten days. Remembering that usually by March 1, buds are opening on the trees here. One of the more unusual sights, besides people forgetting to shut off their timers on their sprinkler systems, has been the fountains and stack pipes along main underground water lines. Large lake fountains fire up just enough water to keep them from freezing but they still do.  At least, they don't burst pipes if there is water running. Still, I have seen some unusual ice formations. The frost flowers are  the most unusual. I missed the best opportunity for those by a day but there were some formations that were pretty cool none-the-less.

Frost Flowers

Some Grow Taller Than Others

The formations are so neat.

66 Hours Below Freezing and Counting

One of several  of these fountains look much like this one. It's been below freezing the past 66 hours (and counting).It has not been this cold in Dallas since 1979! Tonight's low will be 19-degrees F.

The second and third tiers were just as frozen as the top.

Ever heard of "BIKING"?That's when you wake up in the morning and look out at your front yard and discover three or four dozen of these "park anywhere" bike rentals have been parked in your lawn by your prankster friends!