Tag: White Ibis

Best of the Rest While I Rest to be the Best

I’m back, well, kinda. As the saying goes, rumors of my demise are [somewhat] exaggerated. The good news is I am past the first of the two events that have been consuming every available second night and day. We held our annual Halloween Haunted Trail event over the weekend. I am rating it as a complete success based on some of the feedback we have been receiving on various social media outlets. Some of my readers made it to the event, so I’ll let them chime in on the comments on how they think it went. Ron and his son even came down a day early to help me out as some of my usual volunteers were unable to help this year – that was a huge assist along with Brad providing guest posts so I could focus on the trail. Finally got the haunted trail torn down and in our outbuilding late this afternoon – will move to packing phase after the second of the two stressful events is over. Focus now shifts to the 100K ultra that launches at 5am this coming Saturday. Need to heal some tweaks, get some rest and see what I can do about the 5 pounds I lost putting the trail together. I don’t mind being a little lighter to carry the large hills, but that is a bit more than I am comfortable with. I’ll cover these two endeavors in future posts, right now I just wanted to get something out so you don’t forget about me ha! The good news is Brad has been gracious to give me a few more features to use as I get closer to race time. Enough gabbing, time to get on with your regularly scheduled programming.

Dickcissal found at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, Wilmington IL in May 2016

Hit the jump to see more of the rest.

Continue reading Best of the Rest While I Rest to be the Best

Well Engineered Bird

Pretty much on the go these days. We had to leave the great-nephew’s graduation/family reunion a day early in order to make our way up to Michigan for the UKC Agility Nationals competition. Raven and Linda qualified for the national ranks this year and was invited to compete with the rest of the ranked boys and girls. Planned on leaving the reunion on morning rise to give us sufficient time to repack us and the dogs – that was the plan until we heard the words “water balloon fight”. Decided we could spare a few hours to experience the perfect way to spend a hot Midwestern summer day. Quickly learned the old days of trying to slip the rim of a balloon over a water spigot without it breaking, trying to cut the water off before the balloon overfills and finally getting it successfully tied without dropping it are LONG GONE. A clever engineer (guessing) looked at the struggles of a kid trying to rain bombs on his enemy and came up with a better plan. Have you seen the new water balloon system (link here). Unbelievable! Hook up a bunch with a single nozzle, let the water flow and presto 35 perfectly shaped bombs. They even fall off when they are full or simply jerk the nozzle down and they all plop off perfectly sealed thanks to a rubber collar that slides off the fill straw. I watched in horror as the kids prepared over 1,000 water bombs in probably less than 15 minutes. Ummm, honey, thinking it might be time to go ha! What followed can only be defined as perfectly engineered fun – well, after the first barrage of bombs from the kids directed at the still stunned adults. Luckily some of the kids were still developing their arms allowing us to catch and retaliate. That worked great until those little bastards realized they could throw above us and let the balloons bust on the RVs and shower us. We finally got the upper hand, but there wasn’t a dry set of clothes anywhere to be seen – just miles and miles of smiles.

In honor of that experience, thought I’d go with this featured friend for today’s post.

Juvi White Ibis found at Padre Island Bird Viewing and Nature Center in January 2017

Why go with this rather odd looking bird? Well, the first reason was pretty easy. I was flipping through my backlog of images specifically looking for a bird that is commonly associated with “water”. As we are in the later part of the week I allowed myself to go back in the catalog and found our rather odd looking friend. It also luckily met my second criteria of being purpose built – correctly engineered (or evolved) if you will.

Hit the jump to read more about our young bird.

Continue reading Well Engineered Bird

The Purveyor of Wisdom and Blogging

Greetings everyone.  Feels like I’ve been exploring a third world country as of late thanks to not having connectivity for the last couple of days.  Amazing how accustomed you become to being able to check on the pulse of the country whenever you have the need to dampen your mood.  Today we made it back to civilization and now have some access – sure enough, disbelief soon followed.  Not sure when or even if I’ll weigh into the current state of affairs.  For now I’ll simply mention that big tech monopolies colluding to deplatform competitors is utter bullshit.  I’ve spent my career in the high tech world and this absolutely sickens me.  So, until I opt to delve into this deeper, let’s all brighten our hearts a bit by looking at a “purdy” bird.

White Ibis found at South Padre Island Bird Viewing and Nature Center December 2016

There, I can feel my concerns melting away for the moment – a general soothing, if you, will thanks to an innocent bird simply enjoying the calm marsh waters of South Padre Island.  Will get this cringe part over now… not exactly new, this series was taken on our Texas birding trip back in December 2016.  I know, I know, I promised more current material for the new year, but during our exploration mode the only material I have is what I’ve already processed and put into the holding queue.  All is good as I happen to really like this particular series of shots.

White Ibis found at South Padre Island Bird Viewing and Nature Center December 2016

Hit the jump to see a few more shots of our pink highlighted friend.

Continue reading The Purveyor of Wisdom and Blogging

I Got a Wedgie

So, how many readers out there thought this was going to be the month!?!  .. as in the month after years and years of successfully hitting my self-imposed 6 posts a month quota… was it finally going to come to an end.  Fear not, I shall not let me loyal readers down.  I am tremendously relieved that July is a long month as I needed just about every second to get this taken care of.  In case you are counting the Wildlife posts and coming up a bit short, a lot of my free time was spent detailing some rather elaborate props that were added to the Haunted Trail of Tears last year on the mothership blog.  If you like a good Halloween scare, feel free to check those out (links here: Westworld 2.0 Posey Line and Ned).  For the last post of the month (with little time to spare), thought I would stick with my “white” theme for July.

White Ibis found at Anahuac NWR in December 2017

Some would say I should have led with this species of the Ibis for the anniversary post.  As mentioned previously, this would not have earned me a precious +1 like the White-Faced delivered.  Admittedly, the White Ibis is a bit more charming and more fitting to the whole white wedding extravaganza.  The good news is unlike the Glossy Ibis and the White-Faced Ibis, there is no difficulty in identifying this one .. ‘cuz it’s white ha.

White Ibis found at Galveston State Park in December 2017

Hit the jump if you want to see a wedgie… sure you do!

Continue reading I Got a Wedgie

Sky Commander

Well, here I sit with a completely drained body trying to speculate just how bad it is going to be tomorrow when the adrenaline drains out. Don’t feel sorry, I willingly chose to test myself once again on a nasty half marathon trail run. I wasn’t expecting the heat to come in so fast especially after heavy rains the last two days and quite frankly most of this month! I’ll leave the details for a post on the mothership blog, but today’s course was a wicked combination of multiple water crossing (one was a spillway up over the calves), rocks, roots and a nasty collection of hills that beat me down like an after school encounter with the local bully. As soon as you dived into the valleys you were suffocated by Mr. Heatmiser while you tried your best to make sure your shoes came out of the ankle deep mud. Didn’t help I smacked the ground at mile 11 badly bruising my ankle and leaving me wondering if my ribs were still attached – gotta pick up those feet Bri regardless of how tired you are! The good news is there’s new hardware on my running shelf for my efforts so as they say … worth it hehehe.

Going with a short one tonight so I can get a good amount of foam rolling in before crawling (literally) into bed.

White Ibis found at Harris Neck NWR outside Savannah Georgia May 2015

Hit the jump to see a couple more shots of the Ibis.

Continue reading Sky Commander

Bloodletting for Checkmarking

Greetings everyone!  Decided I would give my loyal readers a break from all the Halloween posts as of late and bring you something new and refreshing.  Part of this is to buy myself a little bit of time because there is an upcoming Halloween post to cover the Haunted Trail night walkthrough – can you say a butt load of pictures!?! It took forever to get those images processed and queued up for publishing.   While those are aging properly in wooden barrels, feast your eyes on this intriguing bird.
White Ibis Shot on Texas Birding Trip November 2013

Pretty cool eh?  Kind of a cross between that spoonbill you saw previously (link here) and a Stork.  Wait… did that say Stork – that reminds me I have some Georgia surprises coming hehehe.  But I digress.  This colorfully paletted bird is a White Ibis.  Your probably could have guessed the first part of that name, but the second part might be a bit more difficult to pull out of the air.
White Ibis Shot on Texas Birding Trip November 2013

Hit the jump to read a bit more about this bird and maybe learn a few interesting facts.

Continue reading Bloodletting for Checkmarking