Mr. Eagle - deep in the wood and not visible from up the creek at the road edge
In my haste to get a shot of our national bird I stepped over the guard-railing and almost onto one of the largest snakes I have caught a glimpse of in decades - it immediately disappeared into the grass and brush but remained about three feet from my feet giving an ominous rattling sound with the covering grasses quavering away - I got a slight photograph of it but found it hard to identify until it went slithering away when I prodded it with a stick - it was a dun gray and about six feet long, and maybe four inches in diameter - either a common black snake or a water moccasin - but I will never know for sure - and even though I have no snake phobias to speak of, I definitely was a little leery of continuing on to the creek in the grass. However I plodded on, thrusting a long stick ahead of me into the grass to startle any more Serpentes and arrived at the creeks edge only slightly ill at ease.
Fish Kill and Weed Killer - Coincidence? [note: update]
I will follow with a series of photographs and comments about my little jaunt to photograph the Eagle at Stony Run and how the dead fish and the road-side weed control seemed to be bound togeth er.
This is a considered update, after supper and thinking that my posting was sounding a bit 'memesh' as it stood. I do know that weed killer run-off is usually deleterious to fish, but had no idea if the dead fish were like salmon which usually die after spawning. I did not think that shad and herring and similar fish did die and a quick check on the internet confirmed that in normal circumstances they do journey back to the ocean sometime after spawning. So I feel that I can let the posting stand as it is, i.e. a good query to think about. I was too late in the day to contact environmental resources to see if they could look into the matter but will do so tomorrow if all goes well. So stay tuned to some more photos and my grumblings about habitat destruction and the state of mind of the average American garbage thrower across the highways and onto the verge.
New Bees - the Nuc box on top
After the mysterious disappearance of our thriving hive last year we are starting anew with this five frame 'nuc'
While Waiting On The Train
I am guessing that this is a Mocking Bird, Mimus polyglottos - basic coloration and shape of beak but I could be more sure if I had photographed him in profile.
The Little White Cloud
Words and music by Johnnie Ray
I went walkin' down by the river
Feeling very sad inside
When all at once I saw in the sky
The little white cloud that cried.
Feeling very sad inside
When all at once I saw in the sky
The little white cloud that cried.
He told me he was very lonesome
And no one cared if he lived or died
And said sometimes the thunder and lightning
Make all little clouds hide.
And no one cared if he lived or died
And said sometimes the thunder and lightning
Make all little clouds hide.
He said "Have faith in all kinds of weather"
"For the sun will always shine"
"Do your best and always remember"
"The dark clouds pass with time."
"For the sun will always shine"
"Do your best and always remember"
"The dark clouds pass with time."
He asked if I'd tell all my world
Just how hard those little clouds try
That's how I know I'll always remember
The little white cloud that sat right down and cried.
Just how hard those little clouds try
That's how I know I'll always remember
The little white cloud that sat right down and cried.
this song was written when I was about a Junior in high school -1951 - even though I felt in general that 50's popular music was dopey, the melody to this was at least hum-able.
The Old Sawmill Landscape Today
This piece of land which abuts the North East River in the far distance for a long while during WWII and for some years after was known locally as The Sawmill. Here many thousands of board feet of oak and pine lumber were sawn and sold of which built many an older home in North East and surrounding area. When I was a child in the '30s my parents would come here to what they and others called the 'Ball Diamond' where many a baseball game had been played and pick wild Strawberries in profusion, by the bucket-full, both to preserve and to sell to supplement their meager income in those hardship days of the Great Depression. Today if you walk through the field, the stunted forest and marshy areas near the river you see mounds of trash in profusion but no strawberries. And you also see numerous monitoring well pipes driven to sample the unknown pollution of those days of heedless destruction of nature by things like the saw mill and a county with no such things as landfills and recycling for the trash generated by a slowly growing community.
The Fruit Ball of the Sycamore Tree - Platanus orientalis
The flowers of the Sycamore appear in spring and develop into fuzzy, round fruiting balls
that hang on long stems like Christmas ornaments. They darken and ripen
in October. Within each ball are tiny, seed-like fruits that disperse in
downy tufts like daffodil fluff, as the balls disintegrate.
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