Backyard Color
As the sun was setting this evening:
Seed pods in our maple waiting to join the billion or so already carpeting the lawn. When I was a kid we called these thing whirlybirds because of the spinning motion when they fall through the air. Those on the ground will really be spinning tomorrow when I run them over with the Dandelion Destroyer!
Mourning Dove on a power line
THE BOSS’s home world The moon
A Brown Shirted Ticket Scribbler (one of Wythe County’s finest) on the Idiot Strip
Frankie’s Old Maid’s Bonnets are growing like mad!
Outside My Window
Taking advantage of what may be one of the last warm days this year the dogs and I spent some time outdoors watching the local wildlife at my wife’s feeders.
White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis)
Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor)
Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)
I was about to put the cameras away after doing some much needed cleaning, especially the sensor on the camera mounted with my long lens, when Frankie called me to the bedroom where Molly was laying on the foot of the bed intently studying something outside the window. The sun was setting fast but there was just enough light to get a few frames of these whitetails grazing in the back yard.
Tufted Titmouse
The undisputed Boss of Burd Town, the Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor) is always the first to arrive at the feeders.
They are loud and fearless, often landing within 5 or 6 feet when I’m filling the feeders and never shy about telling me to hurry up and get out of the way. On several occasions I’ve seen several of them gang up to chase a much larger Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) away from the feeders.
I shot these frames from less than 10 feet while standing on the picnic table behind the house. This little guy tolerated my presence for a while but was soon sounding off at the top of his little lungs.
P.S. Around our house standing on the picnic table to get close to the burds will also cause THE BOSS to yell “If you fall off and break your neck I’m not driving you to the hospital, you big dummy!” More on that here.
Male Downy Woodpecker
Male Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) captured at the feeder outside our bedroom window.
The Neighbors Come Calling
This is a mature 6 point whitetail buck and he’s absolutely HUGE! I have a 42” chest and this guy is every bit as broad across the chest as I am.
Oh, wait……..ever since we moved here people have been telling me there ain’t no deer on Pine Ridge. Ladies and gentlemen I give you the world’s largest squirrel!
I’m tellin’ ya, sometimes ya just get lucky!
Roses, Autumn Leaves and A Surprise
Late blossoms on my wife’s Knockout Rose.
We’ve already had our first hard frosts so there may not be many more of these this year.
The leaves are also falling fast but there is still plenty of color to be found if you look for it.
Lastly, a Belted Kingfisher I accidentally captured while shooting the fall foliage along a local creek. I didn’t notice him until I got home and downloaded the images from the SDHC cards. Sometimes you just get lucky.
Morning Light
Just a couple frames I shot while out with the dogs this morning.
I’m still adjusting to the change in medications so I stayed on the porch while Buddy and Molly were “on patrol”.
People often ask what equipment I use. Both of these shots are hand held at about 25 yards using a Sigma 150-500MM OS (optically stabilized) telephoto lens mounted on a Canon EOS Rebel T3 DSLR. I also use a Canon EOS Rebel XS, which was my first DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex).
In addition to the Sigma I have 2 Canon 18-55MM IS (image stabilized) lenses (this lens came with each camera), a Canon EF-S 55-250MM IS Telephoto Zoom Lens and a Canon EF-S 60MM f/2.8 Macro USM for close ups. Both cameras will accept all of these lenses, a very good thing now that my wife, Frankie (aka THE BOSS), has been bitten by the shutter bug as well.
NOTE TO THE READER:
I’m publishing this same post on my Virginia Through My Lens Blogger page. When I left Windows Live Spaces a few months back I couldn’t decide whether I preferred Blogger or Word Press so I tried both. After nearly a year I still can’t decide so I’ve decided to continue posting on both pages with this one focusing on photography and my Blogger page leaning more towards writing.
I hope you have a chance to visit each page and, as always, I welcome comments, tips, suggestions and criticism. That’s how I learn. I still can’t believe how much I’ve learned since I first started blogging and shooting photos in the spring of 2009. Y’all have taught me so much and I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate it. Thank you for your input, encouragement and most of all for your friendship.
Hang in There
I’ve got my fingers crossed that I’ll get out to shoot our Autumn color before it’s gone.
This guy on the maple outside our bedroom window gave me the title for today’s post.
Hang in there!
Outside My Window
I’m grounded, again, but that doesn’t keep me from pointing my lens out the window. THE BOSS really keeps them clean because she knows that as long as I’m busy with the cameras I won’t be fooling around with anything else.
Buddy is always ready to pose for a photo. Molly, on he other hand, was investigating something under the picnic table and was out of camera range.
It’s going to be interesting to see how long this volunteer sunflower holds out. We think one of the burds planted it in an old flower box because we sure didn’t. Overnight lows approaching freezing are in the forecast for next weekend so it’s days may be numbered.
The maple in the yard is just beginning to change colors in earnest. It should be solid yellow by the end of the month and bare week or so after. As always, I intend to let the leaves blow across the street into the jerk’s yard. I’d rather watch him rake hem up that do it myself. Besides, I don’t know how to operate a rake……..and I can’t be taught, either!
The wind was really whipping the branches today so I had to use a fast shutter speed on these two frames.
The next door neighbor’s porch is also within camera range. After Halloween I’ll ask Cody, who lives there, if he wants to get in on the “Blow Your Pumpkin to Smithereens” festivities. Blowing up pumpkins with a shotgun at the county range is a lot of fun. My nephew turned me on to this sport when we were visiting a few years ago and it’s become an annual tradition in our family, especially since you can buy leftover pumpkins at Lowe’s and Walmart for $1 a piece the day after the holiday.
Each year I usually set aside $20 just for pumpkins and another $20 or 30 to replace the shotgun shells. I’ve heard that modern shotgun shells remain stable far longer than they used to but I was taught to replace stored ammo with fresh at least once a year and still do. One of these days we’re going to find the dirt berm on the 25 yard line at the range covered in pumpkin vines! Then we won’t have to buy pumpkins to blow up or haul ‘em up to the range. That’s redneck recycling at it’s best!
Sometimes You Just Get Lucky
Our plans to take a ride out to Crockett’s Cove this afternoon got side tracked by a chest cold trying to put Frankie out of action. She stopped on the way home from work and picked a box of Alka-Seltzer Plus®. That, along with my mom’s sure fire cure for what ails you, Lipton® Chicken Noodle Soup , will have her right as rain and back behind the viewfinder in no time.
One of the big attractions in the cove, especially this time of year, is the beautiful scenery. The other big attraction is the herd of whitetail deer that flocks to the open fields at sunset. My brother in law, the world famous Fish Hook, and I have watched scores and scores of deer wander out of the tree lines. One of the drawbacks to shooting in the gloaming is not enough light for decent shots unless you’re using a tripod. Setting one up and waiting for the deer to appear is usually out of the question because of the single narrow road and signs prohibiting stopping in the road. I guess the folks who live out there have had enough trouble getting home in the evenings.
The day was not a total loss. Just as she was getting settled down in bed with her book, TV remote, Mini-10 netbook and dual 4 legged self propelled foot warmers she happened to spot one of the “big dawgs” through the bedroom window.
I apologize for the grainy images. The light was fading fast so I didn’t bother with the tripod. I’ve missed catching images of this guy several times because by the time I did get the tripod set up he was either gone or I couldn’t pick him out of the background as the light failed.
The first frame was shot through the window using the window frame to brace my left arm and my left arm to brace the 150-500MM telephoto lens. The last two were shot using the clothesline pole for a brace after I managed to sneak out the back door without A) spooking the buck, B) falling on my face and C) having the dogs bolt past me and scare him off before I could frame a shot. All three were shot from about 75 yards.
Now, to get back to catching up on the backlog of blogs I have waiting for me. Man, I’m tellin’ ya; veg out for a couple of days and it takes forever to get back on track. At least the dreams from the pain meds were entertaining! Somewhere I read an article about dreams usually being in black and white. I don’t know where I read it but I do know for a fact that I dream in color, VIVID color, when deep in the grasp of a prescription narcotics buzz!
Local Color
Reposted from my Blogger page. Still not 100% after my run in with the flu & pneumonia vaccines. Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
First, I’d like to thank Buddy for filling in for me yesterday, even if he did change the focus settings on my viewfinder. All in all I have to say he’s a very good boy.
I’m back on my feet, no loner feeling like I’d have to die to feel better and out with the cameras again. That said, I didn’t get far from the house before discovering I’m not quite back to what passes for normal in my world. While Godzilla is a marvel of automotive engineering it lacks one important feature….indoor plumbing. Consequently, these were all shot within 5 miles of home.
Autumn is coming on fast and it won’t be long before we reach peak colors in the foliage. I often wonder if the number of traffic accidents increases this time of year as people pay more attention to the view than to the road.
If you look very closely at the image above you can just make out the roof of a very nice home on the side of that mountain.
Just in case you can’t find it, here’s a tighter shot with my long lens.
Okay, okay, I’ll zoom in as tight as I can. See it now? I guess it is a little tough to pick put in that first shot seeing as how it is about 3 or 4 miles away from where I was shooting.
Maybe that wasn’t fair of me. Tell you what I’ll do…How about a shot of the view from that house? This is shot from directly in front of the house, looking past the right side…….
….and this is from the left. I couldn’t get a decent shot of the house itself because there just wasn’t enough room between the house and the steep slope of the mountain for me to get it all in one frame, even with my shortest lens.
I shot this one along Ridge Rd. on my way home.
Okay, I have to get my tripod ready and set up both cameras for this evening. You see, the weather guesser done missed it again. The forecast called for solid overcast and rain from Tuesday evening through Friday morning. Well, here it is Wednesday afternoon, the sun is shining and the sky is only partly overcast. With any luck I just may capture decent images of the harvest moon!
We shall see…..
Just a couple today
Well, this may be about the last shot I’m liable to get of the moon this cycle and I may moss shooting the Harvest Moon all together. Rain moved in this afternoon and I’m under the weather due to a bad reaction to the influenza and/or pneumonia vaccinations I got yesterday.
I did manage to capture this whitetail buck, shot through the bedroom window this afternoon. He was grazing in the back yard and about 25 yards away when I took the shot.
Well, I’m going back to bed in the hope that I’ll feel better when I wake up. I spent most of the day napping off and on. All that did was make me think evil thoughts about the medical community for not coming up with something for the common cold or flu that I can take without risking a bad interaction with my daily meds.
October Moon
According to the calendar we’re due for a Harvest Moon this coming week. Naturally, according to the forecast from the National Weather Service in Blacksburg, Virginia, we’re supposed to have mostly cloudy skies and a 50% chance of rain Tuesday night through Thursday night.
On the off chance that the forecast is wrong, as is often he case, I was out experimenting with my longest lens and newest camera in the back yard last night.
These images were shot, hand held, with my Canon EOS Rebel T3 DSLR and Sigma 150-500MM optically stabilized zoom lens.
While I’m pleased with the way these frames turned out, the camera and lens combination weighs in at a little over 5 lbs. While that may not seem like a lot, holding that rascal still while pointing it up at the sky is a TOUGH, especially after shooting a couple of dozen frames! Thanks you Sigma for the optical stabilization feature.
If we get a break in the cloud cover Wednesday evening I’ll use a tripod and remote shutter release to eliminate any camera shake and see what I come up with.
Rural Retreat Lake
The weather was absolutely magnificent today; crystal clear skies, 75°F, humidity hovering around 40% and only the barest hint of a breeze! This afternoon THE BOSS and I grabbed our cameras and the livestock, piled into Godzilla and headed out to see what we could see. We ended up in and around Rural Retreat, a little town about 10 miles due west.
Of course gas is down to $3.00 a gallon today…..I filled up yesterday at $3.15! Big deal? Well, Godzilla gets around 12 miles per gallon in town, 16 MPG highway and has a 30 gallon tank. Do the math.
The fate of the old railroad depot in Rural Retreat was in doubt because of a dispute over who actually owned it. Thankfully, a non-profit foundation has been established, secured the deed and a drive for funds to restore it is under way. One more piece of history saved from the wrecking ball!
Rural Retreat Lake and Campground is also the site of the annual County Fair and Tractor Pull.
THE BOSS was putting “her new camera” through the paces, the DSLR she commandeered from me, capturing this handsome young man exercising his small horses. The shot above and the next three are Frankie’s hence the NRVGirl (New River Valley Girl) watermark.
You’ll note that the livestock tend to go in opposite directions until they A) decide where the best smelling stuff is or B) dislocate my arms.
Molly on the scent of the small horses’ newly discovered delicacy, grasshoppers. Someone has apparently told Buddy and Molly that grasshoppers taste just like chicken because they sure love hunting and eating them!
In case you’re wondering, the T-shirt bears the US Air Force Pararescue logo. I served as a proud Pararescueman, or PJ, for most of my 9 years of active duty in the USAF Reserves following my tour in ICBMs.
“Come on, Molly; one good tug and we’ll see if the old guy can still swim like he used to!”
I’m really stoked about the frames above and below. Both were featured on the local CBS affiliate this evening! I’m grinning about it and Frankie’s doing the YEE-HAW! dance!
The moon, BOSS, the moon!
We still have a couple of weeks before the fall foliage reaches it’s peak but the varied altitudes here in the Blue Ridge Mountains actually causes prime leaf peeping season to last longer than it does back home on the coast.
At higher elevations the color change occurs earlier than in the lower, protected valleys.
The change is governed not just by temperature but by wind, as well. All around we see trees with red and yellow leaves near the top or on one side and bright green leaves closer to the ground and on the leeward side of the tree.
Hope, y’all don’t get tired of Autumn leaves before I get tired of shooting them. It won’t be long before I’m posting burds and snow!
Welcome to October
After a cold, blustery, drizzly start yesterday the sun finally came out in the afternoon and Frankie (aka THE BOSS, Baby Duck, Duck Butt, my darling bride, my better half, Shotgun, she who SHALL be obeyed, Meanness, that wild little woman with the cast iron skillet, bringer of headaches) agreed that a ride in the country with the cameras was a great idea….much better, in fact, than emptying the kitchen cabinets and re-organizing the canned goods as she had planned! Yes, it was my idea and yes, I am a bad influence MWAHAHA! but I digress. We had fun, the livestock enjoyed the ride and the cabinets can always wait for a rainy day.
Old Glory was really whipping in the stiff breeze at Sheetz while I was doing my part to keep OPEC happy, putting $65.00 worth of regular into Godzilla’s bottomless pit gas tank.
The leaves are changing colors as Autumn sets in. If you’re a follower of this blog be prepared for a lot of leaf peeping shots in the next couple of weeks. Frankie has laid claim to one of my DSLRs and is learning how to use it. Her little point and shoot is great for snapshots and small enough to carry in her purse but “her new” Canon EOS Rebel XS can do so much more, including accepting all of my lenses! Now all I have to do is get her hooked on blogging………..
Naturally, we took the livestock with us. Molly is more laid back when it comes to going for a ride. She usually curls up on the seat or in the cargo area of the truck and catches a few Z’s……when she’s not chewing the corner off the door trim or eating the protective plug for the auxiliary power port in the back seat.
Adult Labs are used by waterfowl hunters because they have a “soft mouth” and don’t damage the birds. Lab puppies can and will chew up everything in sight! At about a year old Molly is still a pup and we’ve got a good 6 months to a year before she stops chewing. That’s why there are rolled up newspapers stashed all over the house; a swat on the nose with one doesn’t really hurt but the noise gets the message across.
Buddy, on the other hand, loves riding with his head out the window, ears, lips and tongue flapping in the breeze. He’s about 3 years old and pretty much matured. After eating 2 power cords within a week of our adopting him, both of which were plugged into the wall outlets at the time, he got over his chewing spell. He still does his best to become invisible when Molly screws up and one of us reaches for a nose whacker.
We spotted a small herd of these funny looking deer (gazelles?) just down the road from Frankie’s alma mater, Fort Chiswell High School.
Actually, there’s an exotic animal zoo on the other side of the hill from where I shot these. Oh, and the camera is level in both of these shots. I told you there was a hill!
As I was trying to frame a shot of wildflowers along Frankie’s side of the road I realized there was something moving behind the flowers. (She was driving and I was on the passenger side using a 500MM zoom lens aiming through her open window.)
I handed her the camera and she found this spike whitetail deer (a yearling buck with very short antlers) hiding in the weeds. At first we thought he had been injured but when we turned around and came back to this spot a few minutes later he was gone.
The gravel road leading through the woods made for a smooth ride while the surrounding ridges blocked a good deal of that stiff breeze I mentioned. It was still chilly enough that we needed the heater, especially with my window down so that I could shoot pictures and the back windows partially down so the dawgs could give their sniffers a workout.
One of the last things one would expect to find way back in the woods along a gravel road is a stately old mansion. This is the Major Graham Mansion which is reputed to be haunted and is currently open to pre-Halloween tours.
Just down the road from the mansion is this abandoned house which causes a chill to run down our spines each time we pass it. No, we didn’t get out for a closer look. To coin a phrase, I ain’t afraid of no ghosts. However, they’re probably bullet proof so I’m not pushing my luck!
A Hedge Apple (Maclura pomifera) on the side of the road. I had no idea what they were but Frankie did. A small deciduous shrub also known as Osage-orange, Horse-apple, Bois D’Arc, or Bodark and native to parts of Texas the plant is commonly used as a windbreak in prairie states. The fruit is also used as an insect repellant and, now that we know, will be getting a test run in our house next year because they are said to be very effective at repelling fleas.
These were also tons of baseball size walnuts scattered everywhere long the side of the road. The abundance of walnuts, acorns and other natural signs we’ve observed recently have us convinced that we’re in for another hard winter. I guess it’s a good thing we stocked up on ice melter when it went on sale this past spring.
Cattails (Typha) in a creek bed just down the road from where that spike had been hiding. We used to whack each other with these things when I was a kid and catch hell when we came home and had puffs of white fuzz (the seeds inside the brown cover) all over our clothes and hair.
Yep, that’s why these are called the Blue Ridge Mountains but it will only be a week or two until they’re a riot of color. I can hardly wait! Of course, not too long after the color fades and those ridges will be white and I hardly wait for that, either! The kid next door knows my back and legs are all screwed up and he has already volunteered to shovel our walk and parking area when he does his!
Shore Burds
A few random shots from our trip home to Virginia Beach last week.
“The Rocks” at the western end of Chesapeake Beach (Chic’s Beach to locals), in the northwestern corner of Virginia Beach. I grew up on this stretch of sand and spent a good part of my teen age years sitting on those rocks staring out across the Chesapeake Bay trying to figure out life’s mysteries. No trip home is complete without a return to this site no matter what the weather or time of year. In the distance is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, spanning the 20 mile mouth of the bay.
Now, a few burds I managed to shoot while once again sitting on those rocks:
US Navy SH-60 Seahawk anti-submarine warfare helicopter. The special paint job is in honor of 100 years of Navy aviation. The first flight from a US Navy ship, the USS Birmingham riding at anchor in Hampton Roads, was made by Eugene Ely just a few miles east of Chesapeake Beach on 14 November 1910. Hampton Roads was also the site of the first battle between ironclad warships, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia, during the American Civil War.
The first landing on a Navy ship, USS Pennsylvania, was also made by Ely in San Francisco harbor on 18 January 1911 and the navy purchased it’s first airplane the following month, establishing the first Navy flight training facility at Coronado, California..
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to view the slide show. When I was Googling Chic’s Beach for links as I wrote this I was pretty stoked when it appeared 6th in the results. I made it a couple of years ago so some of you have already seen it. The little kids in the black and white shot are me and my oldest sister with our dad and one of his friends at Chic’s Beach in 1958. I literally grew up on that beach!
In another frame you’ll see a couple standing under a canopy on the beach. That’s my mom and dad, shot in the late 70s. The solitary girl looking out to sea in another frame is our youngest daughter, Laura. I took that shot 50 years after the shot of me, Dad and Crazy Horse (my sister) was made. There is another frame of two women, my mom and my wife, Frankie (aka THE BOSS) walking towards the setting sun taken this past June.
Hope you enjoyed the nickel tour.
Know what I mean?
Did you ever have one of those days that just seems to blur on into the next day and the next and ……well you know. I’ve been dealing with a case of writer’s block recently and it just keeps going on and on.
The trip home was okay but sort of a bust. I cooked for Mom a couple of times and she enjoyed that. We gave her a couple of nice American History books and she enjoyed those as well, after giving us a minor chewing out for spending the money on her.
Then the old best laid plans deal kicked in.
I have given this sea gull instructions to keep a close eye on you.
It was overcast or raining for just about the entire week we were there. I didn’t mind the bad weather for the first day or so because my back gave me fits after the 6 hour drive and I was stoned out of my gourd on pain killers..
One afternoon the sun came out just long enough for me to load the dogs in the truck and drive to the beach. We made it about 100 yards from the parking lot when a near miss by a huge bolt of lightning sent us scrambling for cover. That was the extent of our time on the beach.
The air show we were looking forward to was rained out. This is about the best shot I managed to get when the Blue Angels were practicing the day before the start of the weekend long performance. That patch of blue sky, top right, was about the only clear spot we saw the entire week we were in Virginia Beach and it only lasted for a few minutes.
Just in case you think you can get away from that first sea gull’s steely gaze I know where I can find more……lots more……and they’ll work for stale french fries.
We decided to try a different route for the return trip. While it was nice to see different scenery this route was 40 miles longer. That said, we’ll most likely use this route from now on because it only involved about 20 miles of Interstate and I hate the Interstates with a passion.
The new route should also provide some great photo opportunities……as long as we don’t find ourselves stuck in a 30 minute traffic backup due to road construction.
Did I mention that we spent that 30 minutes INSIDE a rain cloud? The cloud deck was around 1,500 feet and, according to the roadside sign where we sat waiting just before Lovers Leap, our elevation was 3,000 feet. (The sign was the only thing I could see besides the brake lights on the tractor trailer in front of us.)
As a former manager in a major heavy truck repair facility I am all too aware of just how many trucks on our nation’s highways are literally falling apart. I spent the entire 30 minutes praying that truck didn’t suffer a brake failure because we were sitting on a pretty serious grade and I have no desire to have “Squished by a damned semi!” engraved on my headstone.
Gulls weren’t the only burds I found at home. This egret was hanging out in the top of a tree when I took a ride to First Landing State Park one afternoon.
I shot these from the driver’s seat of the truck using a 500MM zoom lens because I didn’t feel like dealing with wiping the drizzle that was falling off the lens every other frame.
It wasn’t until I got back home and started going through the photos that I spotted this guy sitting on a branch at the top of that dead tree.
I think it’s an osprey but I could be wrong. He must have landed there while I was concentrating on the egret because he wasn’t there when I shot the first frame.
Oh, yes…….the sun finally did come out on our way home…….when we were about 15 miles from home. At least we got to see some of the fall colors which are just beginning to burst across the mountainsides.
Frankie has this weekend off and we’ve already planned a day trip to capture as much of it as we can. I think she’s been nipped by the shutter bug because she’s already claimed one of my DSLRs as hers and decided that I’m going to teach her how to shoot it. This should be a lot of fun!
Oh, wait……..that means I’ll have even more photos to sort and edit…..along with the 1,500 or so I managed to shoot back home in spite of the weather. I may never finish!
At least the writer’s block seems to be easing up a little.
ROAD TRIP!
Image via Wikipedia
THE BOSS has been plotting with her sister again. Tomorrow we’re loading up Godzilla, stopping to pick up said sister and her long suffering husband, Fish Hook, and we’re all going to Saltville for the re-enactment of the Battle of Saltville.
I have mixed emotions. Any road trip is a great opportunity for photos. Since the girls will undoubtedly banish me, Fish Hook and the small red horse to the back seat I’ll sit on the left side where I can shoot from the window more easily. My injuries left me with limited range of motion when it comes to turning to the right but I can do left real good!
The article in the local paper said that in addition to the civil war encampment and battle re-enactment they’re going to have a few other events including a skillet toss. Frankie should have little trouble winning that judging by the velocity she employees when whacking me on the headbone with one.
I should have some great photos to post tomorrow……unless I’m in the ER getting a new crop of headbone lumps looked at.
It had to happen
Either the 60s are coming back to haunt me or Frankie and I discovered where the magic mushrooms grow.
The Big Dawgs
THE BOSS started hollerin’ at me to get the camera and come a runnin’. Not being in the mood for getting that cast iron skillet of hers upside my headbone (which I have dubbed BANGY! BANGY! ) I grabbed the closest camera at did my impression of a crippled old fart running. I think I may have sprained something in my haste but it was worth any damage done because I’ve been waiting for this.
THE BIG DAWGS ARE BACK!
While I mounted a lens, got everything turned on, found a perch to shoot this buck in our back yard and even remembered to remove the dust cap Frankie ever so slowly and gently opened the window to give me a clear shot.
Just as the shutter tripped for the 5th or 6th time I caught movement at the corner of the frame and there were these little guys just coming out of the trees. These are the first fawns we’ve seen this season and we’ve been wondering where they all were.
Then I panned left a little and there was Mama Deer!
Try as I might I just couldn’t manage any decent shots of the fawns romping around the yard. The light was poor and I was shooting off hand so they all came out badly blurred but now that I know they’re around I’ll keep one of the cameras set up on the tripod with my long lens so I’ll be ready when they show up again.
It’s downright comical to watch the little ones romp. Once I get this posted I’m getting out the manual for my T3 and read up on shooting HD video with it.
“What do you mean them ain’t dogs? They look just like me, don’t they?”
Still Above the Dirt
No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth or broken all my cameras; I’m just in a slump. Usually I’ll wander around with my eye glues to the viewfinder, shoot a couple hundred frames, download them to my laptop and inspiration for a blog or three will come to me while I process what I’ve shot. Other times something I’ve read, heard or seen during my morning news fix will set me off on a rant and I’ll take it out on you poor folks.
Then there’s my unique (some say twisted) slant on the world around me. Blogs written on that basis usually cause a lot of you to post comments such as “You do know you ain’t right?”, “Do the guards know you’re out of your padded cell?”, “Do you lay awake nights thinking this stuff up?”, “What color is the sky in your world?” of the ever popular “God bless poor Frankie for putting up with you!”
As most of you know I have a few health issues and have to work around them at certain times of the year. During cold weather snow and ice require me to be extra cautious because of mobility issues related to my back and leg injuries . Hot humid weather, such as we’ve had the past couple of weeks, often aggravates my chronic bronchitis.
I’m the first to admit that I’m very hard headed but there are times when my refusal to let my physical problems from keeping me from doing what I want just isn’t enough and I end up where I am now, deep in the throes of cabin fever. To give you an idea of just how bad it is now, I have several pieces of new gear in my bag and I’m just dying to get out and play with it! Any time I don’t rush out to play with new toys something is definitely wrong!
Anyhoo……..the weather guessers are saying we should be in for something of a break as the daytime highs next week should be about 10 degrees cooler. Until then I have a few books I’ve been meaning to read and I’ll be able to catch up on your blogs…….and maybe, just maybe, I’ll find something interesting on the magic box across the room…….maybe even a Three Stooges Marathon!
Keep an eye on this space…….you never can tell when the voices in my head tell me to write something worth publishing. 
Buddy says he has a few good ideas but I’m not about to admit, in writing at least, that I converse with my dawg. People might think I was losing what little is left of my mind!
Crockett’s Cove in the Evening
The brutal heat continues but our humidity plunged this afternoon, enough so that I could breathe comfortably so Frankie loaded me and the dog into the truck and we set out to look for deer in Crockett’s Cove.
We were not disappointed!
It was a fine ride!
