Baby Birdies

I walked out of the shop this morning and spotted something a little out of the ordinary on the cell tower across the street. It took some close watching, but I finally decided that there were two juvenile bald eagles perched up there. The shot above is the best one I got, and it's enhanced quite a bit. I don't think this will make the calendar, but it's something you don't see every day.

Lookee, lookee who came back later in the day? Only one of them this time, and not in the best spot to get a picture, but at least the light was much better.

Time To Wash The Thunderbird

So, it's Saturday morning, and you want to take the Thunderbird out for a spin this afternoon. What do you do? Why, wash and wax it, of course!

Meanwhile, Back At The Airshow

Did I tell you I saw the US Air Force Thunderbirds at Airfest Saturday? Yep, and they were impressive, as usual!

Airfest 2009-Threesome

Well, someone commented asking if the picture I posted last night of the two planes in flight together was a composite. It's not, and neither is this one, a fly-by with three planes! This is the ever-popular Heritage Flight, where they get current Air Force planes to play with vintage Air Force and Army Air Corps planes. It's always a stunning sight to see these jets in formation with prop driven planes that were made sixty years ago. The prop is pushing as fast as it can go, and the jet engines are throttled back to something close to stall speed to make this flight possible. But it's awfully impressive.

Airfest 2009-B1

Here're a couple shots of the B1 that flew over Airfest yesterday. The first pass was the one above, with the wings at their fully extended position. The second pass below shows the wings tucked in, which I think is for faster flight, when this baby goes full throttle. They flew this plane in from Texas just to make these two passes. Then they flew off to another airshow going on somewhere else. (One possible destination was Pensacola, where I think they had an airshow featuring the Blue Angels.)

Airfest 2009-There's Still Time

I just got home from Airfest 2009 at Macdill Air Force Base up in Tampa. Got some great shots that I hope to share with you soon (and a spot on my lens or image sensor that I need to fix...) The show continues tomorrow, but it's supposed to rain the morning. So if airplanes like this make you get all excited, head up there once the rain stops. You won't regret it. And it's free!

E-Who?

Yes, it's an emu. A large flightless bird, only slightly smaller than an ostrich. Caught this guy at Big Cat Habitat this weekend. He looks a little unkempt and/or mean, but he was a nice guy, eating corn from the hands of little kids. I think he's giving me the eyeball because I didn't feed him anything.

Lions And Tigers And Bears, Again

As I just mentioned, I journeyed out to a big cat rescue place this weekend that I had heard of but never visited. I don't know why I'd never been there, since it's only a few miles from my house, but I hadn't. It's called Big Cat Habitat And Gulf Coast Sanctuary. They're a little more oriented towards the circus show animals than my usual cat place, but they still have a lot of impressive animals, and they do a little show with them, to show you what some of these animals are capable of. The first big cat I saw when I got there is this lioness, just chilling out in her own private swimming pool. She didn't seem to have a care in the world, all the tourists with their cameras walking by, and she's not paying us a bit of mind.

Up next was this tiger, rolling around on his back with his tongue hanging out, again, not a care in the world, just enjoying the life of Riley in the sanctuary.

And finishing up the Oh, My! trio is this bear, hanging out in his huge bear pool. Sorry about all the fencing between the camera and the animals, but they have to do something to keep us paparazzi safe.

Non-Jewish Goats

I visited a new big cat sanctuary this weekend, but before I show you any of the big cats, or the bears or the emus or camels or raccoons or monkeys or even the lemurs, I wanted to show you one of their goats. Isn't he just the cutest little thing? I just thought he was a cute little goatling (or kid, I guess they're called), but the sign below let me know that this is actually a gentile goat. I didn't know they came in different religions, did you? (Insert your own non-PC joke here, I'm not gonna do it...)

Little Green Birdies

Well, I tried for a couple of hours last night to post some content to the old blog, but Picassa just wouldn't cooperate. She seems to be a little more agreeable tonight, so let me see how much of my weekend I can share with you before she conks out again. I had stopped in front of the public library on Fruitville Saturday morning to take some pictures of a giant book (which you may or may not see later) when I heard the incessant chatter of quaker parrots. I'm always hearing these guys, but they're difficult to see and even harder to shoot because of their green coloration and rather reclusive behavior. So I got really lucky when I caught this pair working on a new nest. You can see both of them above, checking out the interior, and just one of them below, weaving some new sticks onto the outside. And all the way at the bottom is one of the pair just hanging out, waiting for just the right time to take off on a new stick gathering mission. These guys are not native here, but there are dozens if not hundreds of wild flocks around here, eating all sorts of natural foods and making tons of noise. But it's pretty neat to have wild parrots flying around, noisy or not!

The First Four Are The Easiest

2471 posts ago, I started my blog on this day back in 2005. So unlike most of the blogs out there that don't seem to last more than a year or two, this one is four years old. I can remember the day I started it. I had gotten back from Sanibel Island the week before with a camera full of pictures that I didn't know what to do with. It took me a bit of doing, but I finally figured out how to share them with the world via a blog. I've come a long way since then. In that time I've shown you planes, trains and automobiles, lions, tigers and bears (Oh, My!), and let's see, all sorts of other things. I've been to New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Cleveland, Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles (for about 20 hours) and umpteen cities here in Florida. (Where will I go next? You'll see...) I've seen more birds than you can shake a stick at, I think the only one I really still need to see in the wild is a cara cara. For a long time, I couldn't find any bald eagles in the wild, but I've seen three (no, four) in the past month, so I've got that under control. I've brought you doodles from over three hundred musty old albums, and I've shared the music from literally hundreds of full albums with you, albeit most of them during Christmas. I am pretty proud to be the only place I know of on the internet to bring you the For Hi-Fi Living series, released way back in 1957 and re-released by me 50 years later. Christmas has always been a big deal here, both in December and July. I slacked off this last year quite a bit, but in previous years I've posted more than 250 items between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's enough that I've been called Santa Claus on more than one occasion. I'm skipping over plenty of things, like lighthouses and license plates, artworks both big and small, miscellaneous animals both big and small, more sunsets and beaches than you can shake a another stick at, some alligators both real and plush, and who knows what else, it's been a long four years. (Wait, can't forget my cat...space shuttles...fire works...the moon) Anyhow, I just wanted to make a little notice of my anniversary. Here's to the past four years, and to forty more!

Old Glory

While killing time yesterday, I shot some pictures of the flag that was in front of the snack bar in the little park I waited for the shuttle launch in. I was looking right into the sun through a long lens, just hoping that the wind didn't let up and the flag drop. That wouldn't have been good for my eye. But it didn't, so I got these neat shots of Old Glory, flapping in the breeze with some cool washed-out colors. I like 'em.

One More Bald Eagle

Hard to believe but I spotted one more rare bird while in Titusville for the shuttle launch. There were dozens of ospreys around while I was shooting, and I'd pretty much been ignoring them. But something caught my eye about one that just didn't look right, and sure enough, it turned out to be a bald eagle. He was pretty much out of range, but I still squeezed off a couple of blurry shots. Don't judge me too harshly on them, I was just happy to see a bald eagle.


What I didn't expect after spotting the eagle was to see an osprey start giving him a hard time. Twice he came after the eagle in mid-air, and twice the eagle did some incredible flying to show the osprey who was boss. It's a little tough to see in these photos, but that's the osprey on top and the eagle on bottom, flying upside down to go after the osprey with his talons. I kept hoping he'd fly back by, but I never saw him again after this pass.

Kingfishing

While waiting for the shuttle launch, I wandered all over the place. You have to get there early to get a parking spot, then you're left with all kind of time to kill. So I wandered. One of the first things I found was a kingfisher. This is only the second one I've ever shot, so it's pretty special. I never did get very close to him, so I was lucky to get these halfway decent pictures.

More Discovery

Here are a few more pictures from the shuttle launch yesterday. I drove the three hours over there, and it took me over six hours to drive home, so I guess I need to get as much mileage as possible out of these pictures. The shot above shows the shuttle to the left and the two solid rocket boosters after separation on the left. The two SRBs are actually falling into the Atlantic Ocean at the point, but Shuttle Discovery is continuing to move off into space. The curvature of the Earth is what makes it look like it's moving downward. This was probably the longest I've ever watched the shuttle after the launch. I read later that it was visible for more than seven minutes, and was as far north at New Jersey before it winked out of sight.

And three more pictures of that awesome smoke trail. I'm afraid none of my pictures really do it justice. It was just incredible, the way it caught the light and became more and more distorted as the upper level winds twisted it into a pretzel.

Discovery Is Go

Perhaps you heard there was a shuttle launch yesterday. Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off at 7:43 PM on it's way to the International Space Station, and I was there. It was about 15 minutes after sunset, so it was still pretty light out. But the light from that solid rocket fuel made everything else in the picture seem dark as night. Someday I'll get good at taking these pictures. I suspect that'll be right around the time they end the shuttle program.

I was well-enough prepared this time that I was able to slap on a shorter lens soon after take-off. So you get to see something other than a long tongue of flame behind an invisible shuttle.

I mentioned that the launch took place just after sunset. Not long into flight, the smoke plume entered the area where the suns' rays were still in the orange sunset color. Past that, the full illumination of the sun turned the trail a brilliant white, so it was quite possibly the most colorful shuttle launch ever.

This detail of the smoke trail in the area where the most color was shows the beautiful colors that are usually reserved for sunsets in some island nation you only ever get to visit once in your life.

More Eagles

Well, after finding a new bald eagle nest yesterday, I thought I'd stop by my local nest this afternoon and see what I could see. As I was pulling up, I saw one of the adults in his usual perch on a dead tree near his nest. You've seen this same shot any number of times now, going all the way back to my first sighting of these eagles back in 2005. Off to the left of this, I saw the other adult raising a commotion in another tree, but by the time I got the camera out and the long lens on it, that bird was nowhere to be seen. I hopped out of the car and started walking around when something caught my attention.

Soaring behind the trees was a big dark bird. My first thought was that it was a vulture, they seem to be all over the place around here lately. But something didn't seem right about it, so I snapped a quick shot and tried to get out from behind the trees, but I didn't see him again. Well, at least not in the air.

Sure enough, after scanning the tree line for a while, I spotted what I think is the same bird. It's a juvenile bald eagle, probably not long out of the nest. I waited almost half an hour hoping he'd take flight, but he was content to sit on his limb and wait me out.

Come On Ride The Train

Did I mention the steam locomotive I saw this weekend? I don't think I did. Gonna be riding this thing in a couple of weeks, so I don't want to get too far into it. But you can always go here for more info.

Another Eagle!

So, I'm cruising down the road today with the top down, doing about 60, when I see this bald eagle. He's sitting on top of a cell phone tower, just watching the world go by. I rapidly decelerate and pull over to shoot some pictures. I think he may actually be nesting on the cell tower, which I think is a little atypical. They don't normally nest on artificial structures. And given the size to which their nests can grow, it's going to be a problem for the people who operate the tower. Anyhow, I was quite happy to find another eagle nest.

Just Ducky

I went to the Cortez Commercial Fishing Festival this past weekend, for the fourth or fifth year in a row. I gotta tell you it's getting a little boring, but there's always some little something to see or shoot that I've missed before. This year it was the rubber duck race. I thought this was a cool shot, with just the one duck in focus. Now if I could have gotten that green frog in focus with all the blurry ducks around him, that would have been the money shot. Well, so to speak...