A Walk in the Park

We've had several nice snowfalls this winter and after the last a friend an I decided to go wandering.

"Where do you want to go?", "I don't know, where's somewhere pretty?", "I'd don't know, you live around here", "Yeah but you grew up here" ...

We eventually settled on Allaire State Park.

The village was snow covered, pristine, and except for us and a mother and daughter sledding, empty.

(Well the daughter was sledding, the mom, just watching.)

Just the way I like it.

We fed the titmice and chickadees by hand. To quick to photo though. We tried.

Sure, you hold still now!

There was beauty all about.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

(Can you tell I like snow?)

Not everything was frozen.

Shadows and sparkles.

Should you be inspired to try this for yourself, be aware that the proper footwear is essential to an enjoyable experience.

Have fun!

Promise

The promise of buds

Waiting as the Earth revolves

Winter becomes spring

Sometimes ...


You get lucky.

You don't.

(Ok, so my luck wasn't all bad. Just before it departed.)

Just Chillin ...

I spent Christmas with my sister and her family, 

and the day after it was nice out. 

(For a while anyways)

So we decided to build a fire.

(My brother-in-law is a bit of a pyromaniac.)

Ah, toasty.

He also likes to cook.

Note the cooler, not really needed ...

(But full of beer!)

((He enjoys a frosty beverage or two.))

(((As do I.)))

Your's truly, enjoying the fine winter's day.

(Time for selsun blue?)

((And another beer!))

The view from the house.

A hardy neighbor joins the party.

(And brought more beer!)

*****

We got six inches of snow here, and were on the edge of the storm. 

Back home snow fall amounts were in the ten to twenty inch range.

We stayed out to the beer was gone.

The fire burned on without us.

Bad Bird Photo of the Week

Sometimes, you just gotta blame the photographer ...

I spotted this bird with a kill (a snow goose?) behind a church in Cumberland County New Jersey as I was driving by. So I pulled into the parking lot ... and the bird flew away.

It flew back across the field to the tree line, meeting up with another eagle, his mate? They circled around and flew off.

I waited. And waited.

Ten minutes later it came back. And I was ready. NOT! I had the camera set on the wrong f-stop, so the exposure times were too long. And I got blurry pictures. D'oh!

I hate when that happens.

*****

These posts are becoming much to frequent ...

(A slightly better shot can be found here.)

Still Twitchin' 

In my Twitchy post I wrote, 

"There were also red crossbills in the area. So Steve and I headed off to find them.

In this endeavor we were not successful."

Well if at first ...

My friend Greg had never seen either crossbill species, so I wandered up to the so called "North Shore" once again to meet up with him, and we started searching.

First up we found the red, when a birder named Peter who we met in the parking lot that morning called to say he had them just down the street form us. We arrived to find a pair, male and female, eating pine seeds and avoiding the sunlight (making for difficult photo ops).

The white-winged were not there this week, so we headed off to look elsewhere.

In this endeavor we were successful. Seeing two and perhaps as many as five flitting amongst the tree limbs.

It was actually a rather pleasant day out, colder but not as windy, and sunny.

Maybe I'll go back next week to look for the blue ones ...

*****

For those keeping score at home I'm now up to 71 species (times twelve will give me 852, a North American record me thinks ;-).

Ephemeral

The incredibly intense colors of this morning's sunrise lasted maybe five minutes. Taken from my kitchen window. Had I gotten dressed and gone outside I would have missed it.