Bards Do Sleep

While the taste of spring is all over the place, the smell of smoke and sight of it on the horizon from West Texas fires filled the air on a strong North wind from the passage of the cold front in and during the first bells of the day and throughout the daylight hours. The storms all moved along the cold front North and East to Minnesota. There were only very light showers, although, I am taking the morning weatherman at his word because all I remember is hearing the air conditioner come on a couple of times during the night. The temperature actually rose over night until the passage of the cold front. So, we were able to dodge a bullet on the tornadoes and strong thunderstorms.

It was a few minutes shy of one o'clock before I was able to leave the house. With the beautiful sunshine, but North wind and much cooler temperatures, I dressed in layers. And, as expected, I was peeling off the top two layers as the afternoon wore on and the sun beat down on my back. Yesterday, I was in shorts with and a T-shirt as the temperature hit 83-degrees. It's been a weird winter and the spring has started out that way, too! In fact, maybe that is why my days have been unside down and right side backwards of late.

The Creighton University women's rowing team has been at White Rock since Monday and will be here until the competition race with SMU is over by noon on Saturday. The lost a coupe of half day practices because of high winds earlier. I got a chance to talk to the bus driver that I have chatted with for a couple of years. He was telling me that he is about to retire and that this would be his last trip down here. His wife will be retiring also, he said. But it isn't to be precluded that he is going to set on his Iowa porch and watch the corn grow. He has a business plus he has a farm, he also manages a farm that is in the family and he plays golf. I have always enjoyed talking with him because he has a since of humor like I do.He doesn't worry about things that he can't control, like me and he has that same viewpoint that I learned from my dad that has a bit of sarcasm at times. Of course, the secret of that is knowing when to use it and when to keep quiet. I'm going to miss his visits to White Rock.

From there I made my way to Winfrey Point, parked overlooking the lake and ate my Fuji apple. It would tide me over until dinner. Then, as a final check on wildlife, I found the Bard owl and the nesting pair of Red Shoulder hawks. The female red shoulder was on the nest again and the male did bring here a bit to eat. There were two more photographers in the area that drifted over. But my images of the day are new growth for cards and marketing pieces and the cute Bard was actually caught sleeping with his head dropping. I had been a bit worried about him falling out of the tree, but then I saw those massive hooks embedded into the bark of the tree. Better the tree bark than in skin, that's for sure. 

Click on any image to enlarge all three.

A wasp nest already underway for 2017 with a wasp working on the nest.

A beautiful Ukulele. The man strommed a couple of cords. The sound was ever so mellow.

An there sits the Bard Owl fast asleep! So cute. Animals are just like us. Or, we are very much like them. There are still people who think that they aren't like us at all. Pain, Blood, Hunger, Life, Death. I sure can't tell the difference. To me, animals actually help us understand who we are more than anything else on this planet.

Part Three (Pictures Only) to Yesterdays Post Upside Down Day

Cable on the sound stage ready to be packed up for the next performance.

Last year it is bananas and water. This year, apple and orange choice.

And,just because the bridge's beer garden closed, there is this new micro brewery that is at Trinity Groves. This image was taken from the bridge's beer garden and I didn't have to use a zoom lense, either!!  

Second Part of Upside Down Day (Pictures Only)

What a backpack! Water at 14 lbs per gallon alone would make the weight at 42 lbs if that's a 3 gallon capacity.

Thank goodness for little wheels!

The recycle container for bottles is sharp.

An Upside Down Day

Today was both a forward day and a backwards day. It was a top up day; a top down day. It was sad. It was happy. It was an downside up and an upside down. It was still above average and I am alright with that. It just felt odd and got worse throwing off my entire day. The low gray clouds and misty rain played a part in causing the top to wobble its spin.

First, I set out to find a garage sale that I wanted to check out. After doing my research, finding it was easier than I thought that it would be. In the process, it turned out that I had used logic to a good way and saved a bunch of miles. Then, the top started to spin. I saw the sign that the next light was the street that I wanted. The catch: a neighboring suburban street department had cut a lane north bound a half a block before the intersection which I missed. That's right. When I got to the advertised intersection no right turns were permitted as it had been made two lanes to turn left at a very weird intersection as it  is aligned currently. As a result, I had to go around the block which was a whole mile farther down the road. Then, I had to  go up a mile, come back a mile and get back on track which turned out to be my street that I was looking for after I got back on the street that I could not turn on. So, I lost all the miles that I had saved!

Again, the same thing happened on down the road sending me onto I-35E going to Lewisville. No! No! but it was to late. The traffic jam from the construction had me sitting in locked in traffic for nearly a half hour. As I sat in the only lane that carried traffic I'm looking up through the sunroof at the open sky between beams overhead. The longer I sat there, the more I'm thinking, it's time to make lemonade out of lemons and I got my camera out. When I got to where I could take the only exit working I sat in traffic another half hour. The big difference was that I could eventually  turn into a shopping center just past the Vista Ridge Mall and grab a quick burger at Steak and Shake. That was a mistake also as every one else had the same ideal. Plus, an entire soccer team was taking up the tables that were available. I was stuck at the counter on a stool next to the cash register. It took --hold on--another half hour to order.

By the time I got back downtown to the event going on at the Ron Kirk Bridge Park, all the vendors were packing up! Total miles wracked up: 79.6. Total elapsed time: 6 hours. Then, if all that wasn't enough, somewhere down the line---and I think it was when I put the camera in the bag last night after charging the battery---I must have hit the dial that moves my auto focus to programed function and there was some noise in the images when I started to edit images tonight. It was a long day and I need to get back on the old regular routine.

The I-35E upgrade at the Sam Rayburn Toll Road in North Dallas at the Denton County Line.

Burger and a Chocolate Shake.

When the sun comes out, I'll come back and get some redos. It will be worth the effort. Also, there will be an additional post of must pictures both  following this post  and one tomorrow.

Just A Little Songbird

My car had a mind of its own today and took me in a direction that I would not have gone on my own this time of year. As it turned out, it gave me some shots that were needed to fill in some gaps in both stock and in product textures. Those are always needed,too. I also got a history lesson about Conestoga and Pittsburgh wagons and the mid 1850s crossing of the Trinity River at Valley Ranch where hundreds of pioneers would spend the night before crossing at California Crossing. There were many rivers that had to be crossed between here and the western places of settlement. One of the more famous is right here in the Metroplex.

The Trinity River just below the 1850's crossing point.

My new friend. This bird just kept following me. I  had talked to him when I started down the trail and he just kept following me and staying in sight at eye level or just below all the time. Then, he just disappeared.

This is a classic wild texture. It is one of those places where you see trail guides with machetes in the movies, but not on this trail, at least. 

Meteorological Spring. It's the Real Deal!

Happy Spring, folks. Yes, I know some of you are already saying that I'm rushing the season already, but actually, it is the first day of spring in meteorological terms. Spring is March 1 to May 31. So what happened to the 20 or 21 or 22 days you were waiting to arrive? They are still there. But it's called astronomical spring--the traditional seasons as earth moves around our sun. It's important to know the difference and I'll leave it at that.

But, I do not want to make you work that hard so to better explain it, this appeared in the Accu Weather site today. It reads: "The spring season associated with the vernal equinox, called astronomical spring, happens on or around March 21 in the Northern Hemisphere, but meteorologists recognize March 1 as the first day of meteorological spring, which is based on annual temperature cycles and the Gregorian calendar".

So, yesterday, even though I had an appointment with my doctor and it took longer than I though it would, it was completely overcast and tons of moisture had moved in while I was at the doctors office. When I did come out, my whole schedule had changed. There was some images taken on the go and that is what is posted today. Enjoy, and hey, drop me an email now and then and let me know what you think about the images or if you have seen something in the past and just want to follow up. My readers are important to me.

Soccer fields look great.

More and more facilities are installing these.

 

 They are lightening alert systems.These are used at most sports facilities, golf courses and amusement parks. They can detect lightening 20 miles away and the warning will sound to alert those at the facility. Technology really is good.

This is deep in a large thicket where reports continue to come in that wild orchids and flying squirrels have been documented  with a site of both by naturist.

Highly Unusual Day at the Lake

Like Santa in the Night Before Christmas I went straight to the nesting pair of red shoulders breaking with my normal cycle of covering the full 9 miles of shoreline. Pulling into the lot across the street for the area where the hawks usually hang out, there was a lady in full bike gear squatted down pouring water onto something. She spoke to a family of four as they walked past, turned around and came back. Obviously, something the size of a small dog was on the ground in distress. After watching her pour more water on this life form, it was time to get out of the car and go see what was happening as it was, for sure, cutting into my bird time schedule.

As it turns out, it is a small opossum on its side in what I judged to be pain. It would lift its head a little and look around and then put its head back on the ground. As the woman said,"you don't know what kind of injury is on the other side". My thought was immediately focused on what I was also seeing that they lady had not observed. One of the big red shoulders flew from tree to tree and was watching every move at the opossum location. I pointed out the hawk to the lady and said that it might have been knocked out of the tree and fell to the ground, or that the hawk had actually tried to lunch and was interrupted by humans or had made some move to free itself from the talons of the hawk.

The lady mentioned that her father had been a falconer and that she knew about hawks and that her husband was bringing a metal cage and that they were going to take the animal to a Rehab Center south of where we were at the lake. I said that I would move on to my next location  since she had help on the way and I left, knowing that the hawks were still in the area and that when I could come back later in the afternoon, they would most likely be in the area still.

At next stops turned up nothing and I made my way around to Sunset Bay when I saw shadows on the ground in the area of a nest that I knew of from last year.  I parked the car and stood at the edge of the parking lot looking and watching for the shadows to move overhead again. Then, I saw the other pair of red shoulders in the tree line. Now, I had my first images of the afternoon and they were pretty good for the distance. But, as I got closer, the images got better. Now, I know what a 600MM glass would do for that image, but, one, I don't have a 600MM, I could get one, but there are other issues that go with a 600 MM piece of glass that I happen to think keeps photographers from being good photographers because the glass does get the image that every one seeks but these guys tend to forget why you are a photographer in the first place---or, second, you let the success of a 600 glass overtake your head and you think you have mastered photography and start to get sloppy. So, I'm happy with a 150-200 glass and I keep trying to get better and better with each image.

Then, I made my way back to the original site when I first arrived at the lake and found the opossum delay keeping me from getting the shots that were there.It had only been about 10-minutes before I spotted the female sitting in her usual spot. Shockingly, I saw shadows on the ground moving in that direction and I looked up just in time to see the male come sweeping into the area where the female was sitting. And then, before I could get my camera off my neck and pointed, the male mated with the female. That pretty much cemented the fact that the pair were ready to start the nest site officially and the female will be laying eggs shortly. After shooting both the male and female before the male flew off to patrol his territory, I watched  the female for some time and she was content to sit where she had been sitting prior. I decided to walk around to the other side of the wooded area to another clearing to see if I could find the male or get a better shot of the female, as she had been facing in that direction anyway. To my surprise, I saw another photographer that I like and we were talking when he ask if I had seen the Bard owl. I said, "no, but I had heard it earlier." After taking a secretive location oath, I promised not to tell where the big owl was hanging out. Every one knows where the other big owl hangs out and they all look there. No one seems to be very informed on this one and I can understand why you don't share the wealth on things like this because the rush of traffic would drive the big owl away. I got the shots. They are pretty good.One is good in a bad kind of way in that the big eyes are so funny and the feather pattern is out of focus as the owl moved from a narrow branch to a more sturdy one. I got home late. Hungry, dinner was had on the go as I headed home.

Full wing span flying into trees

Red shoulders had just mated

Bard owl