Back on the Islands

I hope you have time to watch these videos.....they take me right back to OBX

Siri Lives up to Her Name

No, not the one that begins with S. The one we routinely call her and her colleague from Samsung that resides inside my old S-4 when they take us places we don't want to visit....like Middle-of-Nowhere-Istan.

This past week we went places we had never been before...voluntarily for the most part but sometimes not so much. We had actual paper maps, but on teeny tiny back roads in the middle of nowhere they are essentially useless. Most of the roads aren't even there.

Thus we used the navigation tools on our phones.

My phone is outdated,  slow, and full of errors, so we eventually used Becky's modest version of the iPhone.

Once we persuaded it to use the route we wanted rather than the one through downtown Washington DC, it worked pretty well.

Until yesterday.

We wanted a route diagonally north from Appomattox to Route 81. Siri found one, or so she told us. In reality I don't think one exists.

Our first clue that something might be wrong was when she turned us off Route 64 and we had to go under that thing in the upper photo.

Things got worse from there. 

When you find yourself looking for Sheep Creek Rd. you tend to get a wee bit nervous.

When you see the sign above you get a little nervouser.

When the road turns from a skinny, twisty, upwardly mobile, paved two-lane to a one-lane rock chip horror that tangles and untangles its way up a mountain you think about turning around. We didn't think about it anywhere near soon enough. 

When we finally gave up we were many miles up in wild mountains, where it was incredibly beautiful, but very, very far from any place we needed to be and by the time we got back where we started we were nearly an hour and a half behind.

 I Googled Sheep Creek Road and looked at the way Siri wanted to take us north I am well beyond wildly grateful we gave up when we did. OMG 

We eventually found our own way to I 81. We eventually found our way home. It was a great trip....but home is home....

*If you wish to trace the route where Siri was trying to take us, follow Sheep Creek to Murrells Gap and see if you can find a way to I 81 North.

BBB Tour Continues

He insisted on doing this over our misgivings

Finished the beaches part yesterday with a heavy heart. Alan said we would fall in love with the Outer Banks and I sure did. Hated to leave, as predicted.

I love Florida, but OBX is more by being less. Off season, so fewer people....less developed.....a lot more welcoming. People were just plain nice to us.

Looks as if we are going to be fighting the Hatteras Island Inn for a refund over our stolen food and toiletries though> However, I'll bet I can write a negative review as well as the next person. Not letting that spoil our fun.

Wall O' Water

We found 50 species in North Carolina over the short time we spent there. Many of them count as life birds for me, although I saw them in Georgia and Florida in the 70s on my first trip south. Those include Little Blue Heron, Snowy Egrets and such. At least one was a real life bird...the three Whimbrels on the very first day. Yesterday we visited Bodie Island Lighthouse and racked up a mess of birds. It was pretty much paradise as I have imagined it.

Then we drove across rural NC into Virginia to Appomattox to begin the Battlefields section of the tour. Everything was closed by the time we got here, so we will be visiting the various places today. 

Sanderlings......because......because.....Sanderlings!

Of course in my world the Birds part of the story never stops.

The last Beach

Far from Home

We made it to the Outer Banks today after a pretty rough trip. It is everything the kids told us and more. As I sit here in our hotel room, which is very pleasant, a Laughing Gull is calling over the parking lot. We went to a lighthouse today and to TWO beaches. 

Somebody found a lot of shells for Miss Peggy.

Saw tons of birds without even looking too hard. 

Great fun, and kudos to the boss for getting us here in one piece against great odds. There are some pretty crazy drivers around our nation's capital, dontcha know?

Fish Crow staking out some territory. They sound like
regular crows after helium

No Joking

***Update, Jade came through OK and was up in a chair this morning. Thanks!


Here today. This morning Jade will be having his second major surgery since his nightmare started on New Years Eve.

Please hold him in your thoughts and prayers. Liz and Peggy too. Liz has been keeping their family afloat while caring for him and Peggy and all their livestock.

Peggy is worried about her daddy....a lot to deal with for someone who is only five, even if she is five going on thirty.

*Meanwhile, here is an oldie from this day in 2016.

Yakushima Ducks

They're Back

Killdeer

A glowing melon rind of moon was shining through the dark, bare trees just above the eastern horizon. It was as orange as a cantaloupe and as unexpected as a snowflake in July. Some planet, probably Venus, blinking in and out among loose clouds, bright as a lodestar.

5:30 in the morning. Mack and I were outdoor kennel bound. He is a devilish dervish after being in the house all winter and it is plenty warm today even for a Jack Russell coat. Let him run some of that crazy off out there for a change.

I heard a tantalizing twitter as we walked. What was that? Sparrows in the bushes? Something rodenty over by the barn?It was too soft to be sure. Used to be, just a couple short years ago, that on Sunday mornings the traffic noise was quieter than the rest of the week. Not any more. Now I guess the business climate has improved or something and even at this dark hour the trucks are steady and noisy.

Then just as I closed the kennel gate I heard another sound.

Close. 

Right next to the lawn.

Peent-t-t-t-t.....an American Woodcock.

The first in many years here, at least since the cows left us.

As it took to the sky in its mad, twittering sky dance, another began to peent nearby. For a while they alternated calling from the ground and flying their magic mating flight. Then they flew an incredible duet right over my head.

As night wound down and dawn began to break, a dozen robins began to sing. Two song sparrows chimed in, while a small flight of Mallards quacked over. 

A tom turkey gobbled from the hillside, two Killdeers screamed around me another species that has been gone from the farm for a while. 

I was as close to Heaven as I need to be just now. Paradise in your own back yard. What's not to like?

Bama Breeze

The NYS Plastic Bag Ban

Is a TAX. People will buy the replacement paper bags for speed and convenience and state government will get most of the money thus generated, to spend on more of their endless folly and waste. Unnamed local government will get the rest....unnamed..... Who do you think will decide where that money goes?

Washing all those reusable bags will have an environmental impact as well. You know....electricity to run the appliances, extra detergent, dirty water that will be produced, time wasted that might be spent doing something productive. 

And all the doggie doo doo that will have to be picked up without them. What? You aren't going to use your reusable cloth bags for that? Nope, you will have to buy bags, defeating the entire purpose...or at least the purported purpose...of the ban. More single use plastic that is REALLY single use will be generated if you get my drift. And people commenting on news stories are EAGER to buy these bags, which they will then throw away. What on earth is the difference?

Plus we will all spend more time getting our groceries because have to mess around with them. Do you drag them through the store and fumble with them at the cash register, driving the people behind you in line nuts? Or do you haul your unbagged groceries out bare nekkid in the cart, in the rain, snow, sleet etc, and bag them at your car?

Eh, we will all be paying for the vast sums of our money our illustrious governor has sent out of state, those grandstanding lawsuits, the gimme programs for criminals and people who can be trusted to vote the right way, and billions in developments that never developed.....again....plus pay sales tax on everything we have to buy to replace the darned things.

Seems like a complete win-win to me. For the government that is. If sheeple put as much effort into noticing why the state has such a huge budget deficit to fill as they do getting all excited about this smoke and mirrors show, maybe they would vote the big spenders out instead of virtue signalling over how they get their groceries home.

There is a lot of really bad junk in the proposed state budget that is being utterly ignored so people can wave their politically correct grocery bags like a flag of environmental superiority and don't have to think about paying more in taxes for everything they touch.

And that is not to mention this.....

And this..."you can train people..." Should we be welcoming the government training us?

Will it make a difference? California did it, and their cities seem to still be hives of filth and pollution a lot worse than a couple of bags here and there. 

A nickle deposit might be somewhat more palatable in the quest to corral our baggies. Or at least it would be for me.

Sharing and Caring

The other day we went over to MacFadden's to take a look at the stuff in tomorrow's sale.

Or at least that's why the boss went. 

I went birding. The yard is surrounded by mixed woods and hay fields and there are always lots of birds. 

We both had fun.

Flashback

If you want to embiggen these, you can right click, open in a new tab, and make that tab big.... 
The details are.....different....lol
 Some of them are all mine
but most are committee efforts. Somebody would draw something...someone else would add a bit
Someone else would vandalize a little. Sure was fun.

I won't bore you with the long story of the boss's TV-over-the-Internet not working and setting up a house call from the cable company and the Godawful mess that our house usually always is.

instead let's fast forward to me finding a Pioneer seed advertising tote bag under the green desk while clearing a path to the modem and router.

'What the heck is this?' I thought.

Oh, my. It's the bag that the state police investigator gleaned from our poor wrecked car when the boss had his terrible accident. The insurance company never even let us see it again......Those were bad times and the bag just got stuffed away without anyone ever looking through it.

Broken binoculars. Little bits of a small box of tackle Alan kept in the car so we could fish if we happened upon a good spot.

Odds. Ends. Maps, which I just stashed in the current car for our upcoming trip. (The B**ch in the Box doesn't always work after all. Sometimes there's no signal.)

And an inch high stack of CDs. I almost pitched them. They were pretty battered and tired looking.

Then I noticed the label on one. Barn Music.

Barn Music 2. OMG, the CD's we used to play in the barn when we were milking cows. We built them to suit everyone. Two songs for this person. Two songs for that one.

From Todd Fritsch to Jimmy Buffet to Trent Tomlinson and everything Emerson Drive had recorded up to that time. The Roosters. Chris LeDoux. Garth. The Grateful Dead, Craig Morgan,. Hours and hours worth.

Barn Music 2 is playing right now and every third song gives me cold chills and takes me back to the crazy fun we had milking back in the day. The barn blackboards where we strove to outdo each other with crazy drawings. Singing along. Some better than others.

The flashbacks just keep coming. Liz is having the same experience. It's like being in the barn again. With the cows and the kids all there. Those days are gone forever, and I try not to ever look back because....well....just because.

I sure am enjoying these CDs though.

Bittersweet. 

Beautiful.

Heartbreaking and wonderful all at the same time. 

Night Owls

We had no car yesterday, as it was in the shop for a check up, so we couldn't go down to the river to look for ducks.

However, when we got it home last evening we took Becky owling in some of our favorite haunts. Right where we found the first Short-eared Owl we found another, flying moth-like across the road and over a field. Late for them to be here, but we'll take it. Then on the way home we found TWO woodcocks.

So a good time was had by all.

Fast Food Fellow

Duck Soup, Redheads, Lesser Scaup, and Ring-necked Ducks

So we found a banded goose the other day, right in front of McDonald's down in town. This one was a younger male, only seven years old, and pretty much a teenager in goose years. (BTW, the female that I wrote about yesterday was the one up in the swamp...got the certificates confused, sorry.)

Guess where this one was hatched......in Quebec, just yards from a Tim Horton's and a pizzeria.

Go figure....a teenager that likes fast food.

Wall Street ducks in pin striped suits
Northern Pintails.

Flock Life

Another Middle-aged Visitor from Canada

I have a lot of photos of Redheads, but somehow I can't resist....

We found another neck band tagged Canada Goose yesterday, this time down on the Mohawk . It was pouring rain and not easy to get a readable photo but we did.

Lesser Scaup as well
I have been struggling to decide whether the birds we see are Greater
or Lesser Scaup. Worrying about bill nails and head notches and feather patterns
Then I read this article that says that male Greater have only green iridescence on their heads
Never purple. Made this guy a lot easier.....Lesser

Turned in a band report and was not surprised to discover that this goose came from the same place in Canada and was banded by the same man as last week's bird. The tag was the same color...white on orange...as the 12-year-old male we found last week...and very close to the same number series.

This bird was a female thirteen years of age, also banded when too young to fly.

How cool is it to see a single bird....or maybe two or even three, although we still haven't heard on the bird with the red or pink tag....among tens of thousands and to know where they were hatched?

There are indeed thousands of geese in the valley this week. Guesstimating counts for eBird reports is an interesting challenge. I imagine many of them are on their way to Canada along with the banded ones. I  don't think I will ever grow tired of hearing their wild cries as they fly overhead or launch into the air when an eagle passes over on the river.

Interesting tourists indeed.

The Things you See

Rough-legged Hawk, probably one of the last of the season
Flew just as I clicked the shutter...lucky me

Sunset

Moonrise

Roadside heifer hazzard

Happy Birthday

To our youngest, but not leastest. Over the past year he has married a wonderful young lady, adding a delightful family to our extended one, purchased a house, albeit four hours away, and also acquired a couple of good doggos.

We miss him and Amber as well, but we are darned proud of them.

So, happy birthday, Alan, hope you have a wonderful day.