Brad (and Jan) are still out wining and dining our editor staff at the Denver facility – tells you how important they are to us I.T. professionals. I can hold my own in the coding world, but my knuckles still have not recovered from the damaged inflicted during my first class in deconstructing a sentence under the iron rule of nuns wielding heavy wooden rulers (WHACK). They eventually wore me down and got the basics past my defenses and honestly, these past 17+ year here at Intrigued has helped, but I still prefer talking bits and bytes. In Brad’s absence, you are stuck with me again for today’s featured feathered friend.
I know, I know, a bit of a letdown from the more colorful specimens featured in my previous posts. We still need to give the species that overslept the day when Mother Nature was waving her paint brush.
Hit the jump to read more about this species that could easily be mistaken for a member of the Sparrow family.
Greetings everyone! Brad and Jan are out visiting one of our favorite editors at our satellite facility in Colorado. Always good to see our employees when we can…and I hear the view from that facility is magnificent! While they enjoy their trip, going to jump our typical alternating schedule and bring you another series of shots from our Texas Gulf Coast trip back in 2023.
Hit the jump to read more about our brightly colored and slightly devilish feathered friend.
I have to thank the weather gods as of late, nothing like waking up on a training day to temps in the low 60s. Basically for the past week or so I’ve had the luxury of enjoying cool temps for at least the first part allowing me to stretch out some of the longer runs. I have to be extra careful on the hot days that I don’t over-cook. My thermostat was severely impaired by a couple of unfortunate mishaps over my running career and now more susceptible to “going over the edge” so to speak. The impact to the body would be one thing to overcome, but worse would be enduring the scorn from Linda. I’ll still need more heat conditioning before the July ultra race, but for now focused on taking the legs to exhaustion and then pushing them again before they’ve fully recovered – little ultra-secret, you NEVER train for the full race distances (similar to marathon training), but we can simulate those hardship miles by training on tired bodies. Now, tired doesn’t mean injured so we have to make sure to keep those heavy feet ABOVE the roots of all evil! I was thinking about those careful foot placements on today’s run when this post topic popped in my head.
About now you are probably wondering what a Ruddy Turnstone has to do with trail running. As a general warning, there is a high occurrence of hallucinations and mental disconnects during long runs, so keep your expectations low – hit the jump and I’ll do my best to explain.
Thanks to the return of the wet stuff, I am officially in a forced recovery day. I should probably give a hat-tip to the weather gods based on the muscle whining while getting out of bed this morning. Instead, I get to spend the day learning about the traditional muscle structures of those “grotesque” creatures that watch us upon their high perches and hopefully test out some new wing linkages – Halloween is nearly here people ha! Meanwhile, Brad is going to give us a look at another creature with wings that do not illicit the same level of nightmares… unless you are foolish enough to let them see your cheese curl while strolling along the beach. Time to grab your favorite dark chocolate treat (thanks for the recent restock Brad and Jan!), sit back and enjoy a few laughs.
Take it away Brad…
Jan and I had just returned from a long day of birding along the Atlantic Coast. I think we carried our cameras for 9 miles that day. No monopods. No fancy shoulder straps. No sherpas. Don’t feel sorry for us–we were on vacation after all. And we are retired. But after chasing birds in swamps, marshes, and forests (and avoiding the more than occasional alligator) we decided to have a little bit of fun.
Our resort on Hilton Head was right on the beach (aren’t they all). Keep in mind that it’s mid-February on a beach; the high temperature that day was almost 60F (but only if you rounded up). Normally, a beach and cold weather don’t go together. Beach (more specifically sand) and camera gear don’t go together either, but there was nary a breeze this time of day and no fluffy blowing sand to worry about. I remember Brian and his brother Ron getting caught in a sand storm on a beach in Texas and I didn’t want to repeat their adventure. Plus, I didn’t want to have to extricate sand castles from my lenses and cameras. My camera gear coverage from Wildlife Intrigued hasn’t quite started yet; still the newbie I guess.
The light breeze didn’t stop the gulls from entertaining us.
Welcome to June everybody! We are almost halfway through ’24 and assuredly you are thinking ONLY 43 days to the first ultra race of the year and ONLY 120 days before this year’s annual Haunted Trail Event. The horror, the horror (link here). Linda apparently heard my Marlon Brando impersonating as she just walked by and stated “No dork, that’s just you!”. Harsh, but she is probably right, however, looking back, you are likely wondering where the year has went. While in the grind, I could always look back at the two quarterly performance reviews and see the accomplishments, not so easy these days as most of my haunt projects are in a constant state of construction up until days before the event and training is a perpetual endeavor. What I can look back on are the various birding trips throughout the year and the resulting tins. Today we are going to travel back to Texas and bring you a subject from one of my favorite photography settings.
Hit the jump to read more about this “woodwren instrument”.
Wildlife Intrigued 