Friday Photos

I find it oddly appropriate that today's photo is a bird of prey. There's a lawyer joke in there somewhere and next week I think I might get to it but for now...

One of the things I love about living where I do is I get a bit of country all tucked up nicely next to my city. I have a yard with critters and yet it's only a few minutes drive to Barnes and Noble. I have chickens* that wander through my yard yet I'm a mere three miles to the nearest major highway. I have a lovely dicotomy of a neighborhood. I rarely see anyone but when I do they are so friendly it's kind of spooky.

I came home the other day after picking Cyra up from violin lessons and saw a huge bird hanging out in the front yard. I say huge because it was clearly bigger than the blue jays, cardinals and robins that have so recently been chillin'. As I pulled in it just stared at me. Menacing dark eyes all broody like David Duchovny (interesting side story - I once almost named Ashleigh "Duchovny" because I loved the X-Files that much). The bird stood his ground as Cyra and I got out of the car and moved towards the house. It wasn't until Junie came bounding out through the open door that he decided to take to the skies.

Duchovny didn't go far (yup. I named him. I do that.) just up to a tree over hanging the gazebo. There, he continued to glare at me from on high. Fine, I thought, clearly this is a bird who likes to be in the spotlight. I called Junie in, grabbed the camera off of the dining room table and snapped a half dozen shots before Duchovny and his deep broodiness called it quits.

Pensive Duchovny surveying his dominion.

I bet he thinks all the lady hawks will swoon over that smoulder!

It turns out that this is a red-shouldered hawk. I think. At least that's as near as I can figure from comparing the photo to a bird identifying website. And you know, the internet never lies.




*Unfortunately those chickens are not my own. Someday, chickens, someday!

Friday Photos

Hey all! Me again back with a post. Remember way back when in November when I was doing the Photo a Day challenge and blogger so kindly informed me that I had reached my storage limit? I got quite frustrated and angsty and I took an Internet break.

We didn't break up mind you. I just needed some...space. I certainly don't need an apology from  Internet not will I bore Internet with a 30 page letter expressing my disappointment.

This is what I have discovered: in order to resize the photos on my blog, I would have resize them in picasa then delete from the original post and then repost them. That's a lot a photos, people, over 600. But I found a loophole. If new photos are resized under a certain limit then they don't count towards that 1 GB of space we are allocated.

So here I am testing that theory.

Back in November Cyra found a turtle in our yard. A beautiful turtle that, if it wasn't a protected species, I totally would have adopted then and there because, I loved him right away.

Meet Wilfred (or Winnefred) the Florida Box Turtle

PS - Yay! It worked!!

Photo A Day - Small

This is far later than I like to post. I enjoy the first thing in the morning routine I have established but since today I had to leave the house hours before the sun came up to get to a job interview I did not have the time.

On the plus side, job interview.

So. Small. I struggled with this one. Really. It was hard to come up with a subject until I remembered that just the other day I took a photo of something sneaky small. Sneaky and creepy and I am oh so glad I did not find it in the house like that centipede I almost stepped on the other morning in the kitchen (centipedes are creepy in and of themselves with all those legs, but throw in pinchers and a scorpian-like stinger and ewww).

Hankette (because I'm sure it's a girl) was hanging out in front of the well house door. Her web stretched completely across and almost halfway down. Pretty impressive.

She's pretty, right? I'm not sure what kind of spider she is but I am very glad that she did not jump at me while I was taking the photos. She seemed rather irritated with the flash.

Bonus Small: About 50 gazillion frogs were hiding on and around the door. I cornered this one, Robert (make sure you say that with a French accent), and paparazzi-like took at least 15 photos. Surprisingly, this was the only decent one.

birds win because they can fly

So I came home last night after a successful trip to Barnes and Noble (any trip to the book store, by the way, is always successful) and found this hanging out along the roof of the carport:

 Can you see that little squiggle up next to that ledge? No? Let me...just...zoom...in...

Meet Winston the Yellow Rat Snake

 WHAT?!?! Seriously? That snake is totally waiting to ambush us as we get out of the car!

Just to give you all a bit of scale: that pillar is about 1x2.5 and he is wrapping himself around nearly all FOUR SIDES!

Let me do some math here (it isn't my strong suit so give me a sec)...

Winston is at least three to four feet long! And he's all scrunched up which means he's probably longer.

This is what I think he was after:

There were two birds up in the corner of the that ledge sleeping. They've done it before and I've always told them that they need to go home to their nest because I'm no voyeur. And Winston looked rather intent upon getting to that ledge.

Fortunately for the bird - not so much for Winston - our shrieks of fear that a monster snake was about to launch itself at us from the ceiling woke the birds up and they took off. This one only made it to the pillar on the other side of the carport. I think he was still a bit groggy from all the partying he was doing. Winston, however, seemed less than pleased that his dinner had flown off and took to hunting some moths while we watched from the safety of the house.

This morning when Scott left he found the bird had come back to the pillar after Winston slithered off:

Jackie Chan (I've just named him that) is clinging, ninja-like, to the interior corner of the pillar completely asleep. Not even flash photography disturbed him!