A VISITOR DRESSED TO THE NINES--

Nice experiences abound here.  Shortly after watching a pileated woodpecker make it's multiple-times daily visit to my suet feeder I saw a mink with its distinct, vertically undulating gait make its way East on the ice along the face of my dam.  Probably two feet long with dark, reddish brown fur on its bow darkening toward its stern.  It's girth was about the size of a fox squirrel that hasn't missed too many meals.  It crossed over the driveway about 1/2 way from the spill pipe to the chain post and disappeared over the face of the dam.

The spill pipe is flowing robustly and I suspect my attractive visitor knows that is a good source of water and likely a source of food as winter clings here in the early Spring.  Remember, Spring, according to the rules of Bass Hollow, began here March 1st and will tantalize us until it morphs into Summer on the 1st of June.

 

PERPLEXING PEANUT BUTTER

A couple months ago I made a bird-feeding peanut butter log by cutting a 3” branch about 12” long and drilling one inch holes into it at random intervals. I drilled a 3/8 hole through it near the top and hung it with a wire tie. I filled the 1” holes with gobs of creamy peanut butter and...the birds wouldn't touch it.

I changed peanut butter brands and...still nothing. Curious, when I have had lots of peanut butter log feeders over the years. I believed that piece of branch was from an Ash tree and I liked the remaining bark as good for the birds to cling to. Then I began to wonder if the beetle toxins that killed our ash trees could be repelling the birds.

I found a maple log of the right size in an old wood pile, made a new offering and presto! A female downy woodpecker arrived, paused momentarily to check for predators then hopped through the squirrel-repelling wire cage and munched some lunch.

COMMENTERRY--

On a ramble through Washington, D.C. recently I saw a bedraggled sign on the steps of the capital that read, "Welcome to the 'Disunited Banana Republic of America' ".

Heaven help us.

Please!

NOT LOOKING TOO PROMISING

I don't care if it is pretty.  Yuk!

BALTIMORE ORIOLES--
The Avian Variety

For several weeks now I've enjoyed visits from a Baltimore Oriole; a bird uncommon to my feeders.  I knew they liked fruit for their munchies so I've been amazed to watch them grub around on the ground for fallen seeds with common ground feeding birds like sparrows, doves, cardinals and a turkey or two.

Click here for some very nice sample photos of this colorful bird.

After several sightings I decided to fashion a feeder for them I hoped they would find attractive:

 

This is simply a pine board with two long, drywall screws run through from the opposite sides to hold the orange slices with some branch segments attached for the birds to grasp while dining.

 

For the sake of variety I also bought a commercially available product (Perky Pet Bird Feeders) that I found at my local Elzy, home and farm store:

 

 

These birds also are known to enjoy grape jelly.  That's an inverted jar of it in the suspended, orange feeder.  The jelly oozes into the tray thus insuring a constant supply.  The clear dome is a cleaned-up relic from a previous feeder.

 

Today, my visiting friend showed its first evidence of curiosity about my sliced orange offerings.  It flitted about, landing ever closer to that feeder but didn't quite muster the courage to stop for a bite.  I suspect it will take a few days for the bird to get used to this strange concoction. 

 

I will be quite proud if my home-made feeder attracts an oriole before the store-bought one.   

 

Stay tuned!

BUFFLEHEAD DUCKS, PART II

A couple of days ago I offered a piece on my Facebook page regarding the first-ever observed visit to my pond of these delightful little ducks.  Only the male was here on his migration from the deep south of the US where it winters to somewhere in Canada where it prefers to breed.

He spent more than 12 hours during that first visit diving about twice per minute for food.  Evidently it was extremely hungry after its long flight. 

Wednesday morning he or one of his pals was back and brought his girlfriend.  That's the male on the right side of this page from my National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America.  The female is illustrated closest to my thumb.

COMMENTERRY--

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced he will not seek reelection this fall.

Good.

Now, take McConnell and McCain with you please.

AUSTRALIAN WOMAN, 50-ish,
WALKS AWAY FROM PLANE CRASH--

Pundits were calling this a "miracle" but I see a private airplane that the lady pilot had complete control of as her craft impacted the ground in early April near Sydney.  Note the cockpit, in fact, the entire fuselage, appears undisturbed.  Evidently she was able to simply open the door and climb out of the wreckage with some assistance from nearby airport personnel.

It also looks like she was able to hit a tree with her left wing, tearing it loose from the airframe and helping slow the crippled airplane to a safe stop.  The fact the damaged wing is still attached to the airplane, or at least nearby, suggests she had the plane slowed to its minimum controllable speed just before impact.

At that speed slight heading adjustments are possible with the plane's rudder to avoid hitting the tree with the nose of the plane.

Often times panic-stricken pilots will haul back on the elevator (stick) attempting to keep their craft airborne in this kind of situation.  That results in total loss of control (airfoil stall) and often spinning into a nose down impact with the ground and disastrous results.

I believe this lady saved her own life with a dramatic dose of excellent airmanship when she needed it most.

It remains to be seen, however, what happened to put this airplane in this situation in the first place.
____________________________
I believe the photo was provided by a NSW (New South Wales) ambulance squad and information was published by the Canberra Times.

Finally, once again sloppy journalism was apparent in several articles I read on this crash where the plane was described as "nose-diving" into a ditch.  If that had been the truth we could expect to see extensive damage to the plane's nose and cockpit area.  Evidently, exciting verbiage is more important to some writers than accuracy in their stories.  

 

COMMENTERRY--

A delightful part of watching springtime birds is seeing the migrants or otherwise unusual avian visitors that wander by.   The last few days I've had a Baltimore Oriole visit.  Ordinarily they are attracted by fruity offerings at the feeders and I have offered nothing of the sort.  In fact the one I've been seeing is grubbing around on the ground with the sparrows and doves and etc. 

Maybe I should see about something more traditional to their taste.

And, if we ever get out of the frosty nights it's time to think about your humming bird feeders.  A good cleaning of them is a fine way to start and the mix they like is 1 part sugar to four parts water.

One web site makes this additional comment:

"The solution will keep in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. Please don't use food coloring, honey, brown sugar, unrefined sugar or sugar substitutes, as they can be harmful to humming birds."

*            *            *

I've been shooting handguns quite a bit recently at my safe. home locations because the manufacturer of a couple of my new ones recommends a break-in process of 400 rounds or more before they are put to work in your arsenal.

Today I was wrapping-up another segment of that shooting and walked about 35 feet to examine my target.  While doing so I noticed out of the corner of my eye, a wild turkey pacing me about 50 feet to the east without an obvious care in the world.

My guess was it had evaluated my marksmanship and decided it was in no danger.

TURKEY FROLIC--

Watched a big, male turkey doing his proudest display of passion in the near south woods for at least 20 minutes this morning.  His slowly circling, quarter turn dance with a full fan of tail feathers was performed just behind the long-gone, firewood garage.

Didn't appear it was going to be his lucky day.  He managed to attract only one young lady who showed no interest in his exertions.

Of course, they could have shared their intent to seek more privacy than was available this close to a human dwelling with an old man peeking through the curtains.

Shame on me.  In fact I left them to their potential frolic while his enthusiasm remained obvious.

JON BOAT--
Goes to Church

It was one of those "never thought I would see this" experiences. 

As dawn broke today Brian and Kate showed up, the three of us loaded my Jon boat in their truck, and they were off to deliver it to our Storyside Church.

Ethan Boggs, our Executive Pastor, made good use of it during his message which was part of the church's year-long study of the Book of John.  Today's topic dealt with getting out of your boat and swimming to God.

This was just one more tiny sample of the church's continuous vibrancy in delivering Christian messages with down-to-earth, understandable relevance.

HARVEST TIME--

It is not uncommon to see variations in yield in nut trees from year to year but I have never seen walnut production of this kind in the 24 years I have lived here.

Never!

This little trailer is about 30 x 40" by 12" deep.  If this load were leveled the trailer would be F.U.L.L.

And, every bit of this load came from one tree in the middle of my only grassy yard area.

I'm not sure how many walnut trees I have but there are two or three out along my township road.  Passing traffic ground up those nuts and their black-as-ink, decaying fluid made the tar-and-chip road surface look like newly paved and polished asphalt.

There is another nice walnut tree below the dam but its yield was conveniently dumped in the weeds and didn't require my attention.

I tried raking and I tried shoveling but nothing worked as well as bending over about a thousand times and picking these things up by hand, one-by-one.  I worked as long as my 77 year young muscles would allow each day and it took three of them to amass this harvest.

You can see a tiny piece of the pond in the left background and the lower deck is cantilevered over the pond's west bank.  The stairs visible under the deck deliver folks to the boat dock.

(Remember, you can left click on the photo to see a larger image).

I was able to dump these in a nearby weedy area where an army of composting-critters (say, bacteria) will go to work and transform this messy pile of woodsy detritus into fresh top-soil by Springtime.

Except, of course, the nuts ambushed by raiding squirrels who will apply their own special form of composting over the Winter.

And, so it goes!

COLUMBUS METRO PARKS--
2017 Geotrail Season Wrap-up

You can tell the Columbus park system is a classy operation by the quality of this pavilion in their Homestead Park.  Geocachers from a wide area gathered there for munchies and this annual program recently, the highlight of which was the awarding of much sought-after Geo Coins in this popular, geo-trail event.

Earlier in the year about 20 geocaches were hidden, mostly at the rate of one per park.  After those hides are published on Geocaching.com the hunt is on.  As cachers found the caches they had to make note of a code word found in the hidden cache's containers and record that word on their entry forms.

This year geocachers had to find 15 correct code words in order to receive one of the much sought-after, 200 coins available.

There are two ladies in white sweaters, left center of the photo.  That's my partner, Sue (Skagway071) talking to caching friends Bill (Lighthouse Nuts in the blue t-shirt) and his wife Diane to his right.

Monikers like Skagway071 and Lighthouse Nuts are names cachers are known by when they sign logs of caches they find.  The Lighthouse Nuts live in the Westerville area.  The other lady in white behind Sue is Linda from Marion who is known as CoolJ.  To Linda's right her partner, Mike aka Gabby200, lives in Columbus.

The six of us along with another couple that lives in the Sunbury area often participate in caching activities like this around OH.  In an amazing coincidence we also assemble ourselves as a team since we discovered ourselves all wintering fairly close together in Florida.

FWIW I just logged my 5,600th cache in just a little over 5 years of caching and Sue is closing-in on #5,000 quite quickly.

Can you sense our passion for the activity? 

*            *            *

I forgot to publish this post; a brain cramp that appears to becoming more prevalent as age consumes me.  Yesterday at a birthday celebration I noticed my cell phone had disappeared from its belt holster.  Good Grief, I announced and launched a search.  It was in my shirt pocket.  😊

Sue has since surpassed 5,000 finds.

HMMMMM...

This is the kind of thing my dozing brain concocts late at night when sleep is elusive.  I had the cellphone lying on the munching bar while I enjoyed late night radio and was fiddling with the front and back viewing control on the phone's camera.

I was rewarded with a hint of what this image could become.

Hand-holding the phone up to about a foot or so from the bottom of the subject, I made this exposure of a small, leaded glass chandelier as seen from directly below.

I first believed the perimeter panels were sloping into the composition toward the center.

Then, after a couple more hours of sleep and with daylight approaching I took another peek at the image and then concluded the perimeter panels are sloping out from the center of the composition.

...until I went and looked at the actual subject and found the perimeter panels are hanging exactly vertical to the horizon.

Actually, this is another example of one's changing perspective making radical changes in the outcome of the image.

We all know railroad tracks, for example, run parallel to each other but if you stand between them and look toward the horizon you will note they appear to converge.

This image is a pint-sized version of that visual phenomenon with a little optical illusion thrown in.

Late in this mental exercise I noticed a malady had crept into my creation.  One of the five light bulbs was burned out.

I'm sure when the PhD's in the crowd get done wrestling with the geometric nuances of the photo the other PhD's (the philosopher variety) will have tomes of analyses/analyzes dancing merrily through their heads on the meaning of there always seeming to be a confrontational malady present in life.

Egad.  Time to go back to bed!

***Remember; you can click on photos in the blog and see a much larger image.  This will give you a particularly dramatic view in the panoramic photo of Cleveland stadium below.***

Cleveland Indians
TRIUMPHANT CONSECUTIVE WINS--

The Cleveland Indians today smashed their way into the American League history books with their 21st consecutive win, beating the Detroit Tigers 5-3.

Who knows where this stunning performance will end but, at this rate this year's world series could be an anti-climax.

The Indians tied the American League record of 20 consecutive wins at their home field Tuesday night, September 12th with a 2-0 victory over the Tigers.

I enjoyed Tuesday night's game with a group of folks from my Bellville church; Storyside and hosted by our lead pastor Micah Pelky, second from left below.

That's yours truly on the far left, then Pastor Micah, Jeremy Overholt, son Brian Wolf, Pastor Adam Dinkard, Shane Allyne and Eric Wickham.

The Progressive Field, Tuesday night photo (top) was done from our seats in left field with my cell phone's panorama feature.

SOOTHING TO THE SOUL--

A hungry bird's approach to my feeder this sunny and still morning gave me reason to be thankful to God for the quietude just outside my computer room's window.

The background is the surface of my acre and a half pond.

The photo was done through two panes of window glass with a Canon Rebel digital, single lens, reflex camera and Canon's marvelous 70-200 mm, 1:2.8 L IS USM lens.  The camera was hand-held with my elbows propped on a desktop using a manual exposure of 1/400 sec., F 5.6 at ISO 400.

With the lens focused on the feeder and the window glass very close to the camera, that closeness and the lense's shallow depth of field rendered any imperfections in or on the glass invisible by being completely out of focus.

The shutter speed was short enough to arrest fuzziness from any camera movement but not so short to arrest motion in the bird's wings.  The F 5.6 aperture was slightly underexposed but made a pleasing image under the harsh, back lighting.

I watched the alignment of my composition through the viewfinder with my right eye and winked quickly back and forth to watching the activity surrounding the feeder with my left eye.  That way I could see the bird's flight in time to trip the shutter before it landed at the feeder while maintaining accurate camera alignment.

A tripod would be a wise choice for less experienced photographers under these conditions.

I'm not sure of the identity of the bird but White Breasted Nuthatches, Chickadees (SP) and Tufted Titmice were present in abundance.  The parenthetical SP means it could be either a Black Capped or Carolina Chickadee because we are directly on the line between the ranges of those two birds.  They are hard to tell apart but local birding experts tell me we likely are seeing the Black Capped variety here.

A delightful side effect to this frenzied feeder activity involves momma Wild Turkey and her brood of three, half-grown youngsters showing up multiple times daily to clean up the mess of dropped seeds created by her smaller avian friends.

Life is good!    😊

(A recreated copy of our story originally published August 22, 2017--and inadvertently erased)

YESTERDAY'S ECLIPSE--
Some Celestial and Spiritual Majesty

As I grappled with making this image with my cell phone I was longing for a couple of thousand dollars worth of photography equipment that was lounging quietly--at home.  A digital, single lens reflex camera and a fine quality, telephoto lens would have made quite a difference in this image.

That's the eclipse, an upside down moon-shaped sliver dead center in the photo, as close as it got to totality in our area.

Yet, as I fiddled with presenting this image I began to like how the vastness of space was visually enhanced by its overwhelming volume compared to the shadowed sun.

Then, why did the clouds not obscure the event entirely?  Actually they made it possible to take a safe peek at this unfolding miracle.

I also pondered what actually was happening just a few hundred miles south of here where, at totality, the moon appeared to be precisely the same size as the sun and, in precise alignment with it.

Imagine, our sun is about 400 times the size of our moon but the distance between these two bodies was exactly what it needed to be to make the moon appear to be the same size as the sun, the size it needed to be to exactly cover its partner in this celestial dance.

How did that come to be?  Some would say it is a random happenstance.  It just so happened that the ratio of distance and size was precisely what it needed to be to cause totality.  An amazing coincidence they might try to convince themselves.

Others would say it has to be the work of an intelligent designer.

Thank you God.

CHILDREN: DON'T DO AS I DO
Do as I say, please

We were geocaching at the fairgrounds in Wellington, OH and had to hike .18 mile along the other side of this parked train; struggling for footing in the steeply sloped ballast.

When we finally got aligned with the cache's location we discovered it was still 150 feet into the woods, evidently only accessible to us by a bruising treck through rugged undergrowth.  I was wearing Bermuda shorts and Sue had only sandals for footwear.

We could see the train's engines and hear their silence sooooo we both scurried under the couplers of two cars and down the opposite bank to an adjacent road then began the long walk back toward our parked car.  That required us to travel to the end of the parked train, walk around it then continue our reversed course in 81 degree heat.

I kept finding a slice of optimism for a sultry Sue by reminding her she was establishing a day's record with her Fitbit that would do most folks proud.

I couldn't hear her response.

Which likely was a good thing.

We also took comfort in the fact our children all were raised far beyond the age where there was little danger they would be foolish enough to mirror our behavior.

Lookin' like it will be a few years yet before we will be content to sit quietly in our rockers, I mused.

If we live that long--I could hear someone stammering.