We got a text last night that Carolyn is out of the hospital and is now home.

Her text indicated that she is in good spirits.

She thanks everyone for their thoughts and prayers.

As an example of how behind we are…..

These images were going to be the basis of a Mother’s Day post. Our very good friend Paulette Cigliana is the unofficial/official “Barn Mom” for several thoroughbred race horses. She frets over her ‘babies’ and brings them carrots ( she says she keeps several grocery stores in business buying them) and peppermints. Horse may like to eat apples or carrots but if you really want to get on the “Love List”— give them a peppermint.

Paulette has taken several photographers like yours truly under her wing and pointed out some of the intricacies of horse racing. She and Carolyn Schlueter are the “Fun Girls”. It is a long story best told by the “Fun Girls” themselves.

You can find Paulette standing on one of the picnic tables at Fairmount taking pictures of the horses and the jockeys– and enjoying the beauty of horses and the skill of the jockeys. She is also fretting that everything goes well during the races. Look up ‘cannon bone and race horses’ sometimes and realize the miracle that everything goes right when 1500 pound horses are running full throttle down a race track.

Anyway– enjoy the photos

One of the ‘target’ species we hoped to see at our feeders this year are Baltimore Orioles. About a week ago one landed on the hummingbird feeder trying to get the “nectar” and we broke out the oriole feeder. Molly filled up the small recesses with grape jelly. For the past week we have been graced with at least 4 mature males, 2 mature females and what we think are juvie males.

We must have been the place to be for Orioles. They hit the feeder hard. We were refilling it twice a day. They were eating so much jelly, Molly went to the store and bought a bargain brand so she would have some Welch’s for her morning toast. It has been a lot of fun to see these colorful visitors.

This week has been a different story. Oriole activity is down. After looking at the migration /nesting area map, we see that our part of Missouri is on the borderline between “just passing through” and “setting up housekeeping”.

We aren’t sure if they are in the process of leaving or are busy building nests etc.

A trio of shots– not Nat Geo but we didn’t have time to do the ‘bird on a stick’ set up. Tomato cages have to be fabricated so Miss Molly can get her garden set up and I’m running behind. 🙂

When ducks want to land— THEY LAND!!!!!

Here a Gadwall Drake came in hot to land in the swamp hole at Duck Hollow Farms.

Impressive bubble trail eh??

Gadwall Drake creating bubble trail from landing in the water

a shot from recent trip to ‘duck country’– more to follow

Northern Shoveler setting up for a landing

I was in the process of working on some catch up posts and happened to look at some of the latest posts and the images. I noticed that WP had auto updated to a newer version and some glitches had popped up.

Seems the WP rendering engine is acting up again and some of the images are loading slow, despite keeping file sizes small, and they look very soft.

In the past, I reloaded the version and things straightened themselves out. I hope that is the case again. Will wait a few days and check it again.

Until then, bear with us and we will try to get a few new posts up that reflect what is going on in our little piece of paradise 🙂

One of our favorite things about living near the New Haven city limits is having blue birds use the box that Carolyn Schleuter gave us as a housewarming gift last year. We had three sets of bluebird babies fledged out of our box last year.

This year we put the box up early thinking that the birds would get a head start. Little did we know that the House Sparrows would try to claim the box for themselves. Numerous ‘raids’ ran the blue birds off. After reading everything we could about blue birds and house sparrow nesting conflicts, we had to take the box down for a week. This was to break any bond that the house sparrows had to the box. Luckily, the rains came and we have not seen any house sparrows in sometime. The alternative is to trap and eliminate the house sparrows with as they say “extreme prejudice”.

Put the box up this morning and we hope the battle of the box is over. So far, no house sparrows and the blue birds are going in and out of the box.

Fingers crossed, we hope to see bluebird babies soon.

Recent shots

Caught this guy early,early in the morning at close range. He and his lady friend have been checking out the blue bird box we put out. He certainly has his ‘courting colors’ working and no…..there is no added saturation.

I recently got an invitation to photograph eagles with Scott Vilmer ( winner of a gazillion photo contests and all around good guy). Scott is one of those photographers that photographs everything well, always has a camera with him and is very successful.

We met at the Junie Moon Cafe for breakfast and then had a quick photo shoot. Scott had to cut it short due to some yahoo missing a curve near his house in Richwoods and flattening a couple of Rose of Sharon bushes. Like Molly always tells me…”You can’t fix stupid.” Hopefully, Scott can re-plant the bushes and maybe put a couple of boulders in the yard so the next yahoo gets a ‘wake up call’.

Here is a half-dozen– I’m sure Scott’s are better but these will have to do.

Last Tuesday, I had to get out of the house. Decided to head up to Two Rivers National Wildlife Refuge. That called for an “O Dark Thirty” wake-up so I could get there around 7am.

There are a couple of photography groups that we belong to that are going to visit the refuge in the next week or two and I kind of wanted to scout stuff out. With the weather we have had, I was not sure if I was going to be early or late in the migration. Our normal migration pattern calls for the 2nd week in March to the end of March for waterfowl.

After being there, I think I might have been early for ducks and late for snow geese.

In any event, I tried to knock off some more of that Winter’s Rust. Here are a few that I liked.