Two Jays!

Okay...all you druggies (ok, "recreational users!") out there....
I hate to disappoint you...but this isn't about THAT kind of Jay.

Today, I have pictures of two different kinds of birds....both a Blue Jay and a Canadian Jay.

Up until this year, I have not been able to capture a Canadian Jay on camera. Just recently, we saw two different opportunities to see Canadian Jays and this time, I got them on camera, much to my happiness!

Here is a cute Canadian Jay catching a worm!:

Just LOOK at his cute face!:

Here is a close up of his body feathers:

I think they have peaceful faces, much like doves:

This is one of the Blue Jays that stop by our yard everyday.

See how their faces are so much different than the Canadian Jay's?:



Look at the long tail of the Canadian Jay, too:

I loved the crest on this wet Blue Jay's head!:

This little Canadian Jay is peeking at me from behind the branches!:

I hope you enjoyed having pictures of both kinds of Jays so that you can tell the difference better when you see one.

Of course, the bright BLUE is the biggest clue as to seeing a Blue Jay!

Honey, maybe we should quiet down a little...

Here are two funny news articles that made me laugh, along with MY COMMENTS in bold italics.



* (1) In Torrington, Conn., in June, a teenage girl, hearing a
woman she lived with screaming in another room, summoned four
of her friends, who quickly arrived and beat up the 25-year-old
man who was with the woman. It turns out that the couple were
having consensual sex (and good sex, at that). The girl and three
of the boys were charged with assault.

1. You'd think the woman would have stopped the teens from beating her lover and explain things, sometime between the time they broke into the lover's room and began to beat up the guy, wouldn't you?

2. If you were the guy that got beat up after having noisy sex, I think you MIGHT need some therapy after this traumatic event, don't you?

3. Can you imagine the teens embarrassment when they realized that the guy was not attacking this woman but instead having consensual sex? "Oops, my bad." I bet they would be teased foreever by their friends.

************************************************************************************
(2) Keith Griffin, 48, was
arrested in Martin County, Fla., in August for possessing child
pornography on his computer. He tried to talk detectives out of the
arrest by claiming that his cat often walks on the keyboard and
must have stepped on some combination of keys that resulted in
the downloading of about 1,000 images. [CBS News-AP, 7-2-09]
[South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 8-7-09]

1. Yeah, right. My cat did it....................................... A THOUSAND times.

2. I am not going to go there. You know what I mean. I will NOT use that word that starts with a "P" to make a joke here. But your mind went there, didn't it? DIDN'T IT???

3. What if the CAT was addicted to porn?

What if the cat REALLY did look up porn on the computer and enjoyed it. They do have kind of a sly smile at all times.

And no wonder they sleep all day....they are up watching porn all night.

But child porn? Now that is just sick...even for cats.

More Autumn This and That...

Although we have already lost a lot of the colored leaves here in the U.P. of Michigan, I still have some pictures to share with you all of how glorious our season was, even if it was short.

This was a river in the middle of the woods, all ablaze with color:

And one of my favorite things to photograph.

A desolate road in the fall, just waiting for you to go down it to explore:

Another bend in a colorful stream:

Rocky bluffs full of color:

We stumbled upon this abandoned cabin stuck amongst the leaves.

It made me wonder who used it.

Maybe a deer camp for all those hopeful hunters.

If only it could talk!:

Many of the days we went exploring, we had autumn showers.

But not to mind.

I still got out and found something to photograph of interest!:

Another road to explore!:





And more streams to dream by:

And colorful lakeshores to look for ducks.

On this day, we didn't find any ducks on the lake.

But we were blessed with color!:

One last shot of the abandoned cabin in the colorful forest:

You know me.

I would have gone inside the cabin to explore.

But, my law-abiding husband (dang him!) wouldn't let me.

Thank Goodness ONE of us is thinking clearly.

Otherwise, I might be posting this from jail.

:-}

Geese!...

On the way back from finding the drained Prickett Dam (see previous three posts, below) , we saw a farmer's pond that was very picturesque.

On closer exam, I saw TWO kinds of geese floating on the pond...one kind which I have never been able to capture on camera!

Look at these!!

SNOW GEESE!!:

Here is a snow goose on shore. If you look close, there is one behind him, in the bushes, too:

And right behind the snow geese???

A string of Canadian geese!!:

I loved their reflection in the pond:




The snow geese looked like swans at first, but we looked them up and they are indeed Snow Geese, but still very pretty and picturesque:



Look at their funny forehead bumps!:

Here is the group, all swimming on the same pond!:

I think they met there to make some plans as to where they were going to meet up again in Florida!:

Who could blame them? It is getting pretty cold up here in Northern Michigan!!

Prickett Dam: Part THREE of three...

This is Part Three of a three-part series of pictures I took at drained Prickett Dam, near Baraga, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

We arrived there, in anticipation of taking some autumn photos of the "lake" with colored trees surrounding it, and to my delight, the dam was drained (for repairs) and had hundreds of old tree stumps and tangled roots to photograph. I took over a hundred photos, but have only bored you :-} with three blogposts full of them.

So today, enjoy the final in the series of photos I took at the drained dam!:

I loved how the bottom of this tree root swirled round and round into the bottom of the dam's floor:

And this pair. Stuck next to each other under the water for eternity:

This section of the dam still had a little water left in it, but you can see far in the landscape that there were many, many tree stumps in it:

This must have been a majestic tree before it was cut down. It's roots reminds me of snakes going into the water:

I decided this was one of my favorite tree roots. The size and entanglements were amazing!:

Loved the color in the background and the starkness of the dam:







The cat-tails were alive and green in this barren environment:

Tipping over in desolation:

Roots reaching out for life:

I hope you enjoyed this three-part series as much as I enjoyed discovering this place and sharing it with all of you.

The neat thing about hiking or taking a ride in the woods is that you never know what wildlife or treasures you might find to photograph.

Not only do you find peace and tranquility and a way to become close again with nature, but you can find things that many others never get to see.

I hope my experiences that I share with you enriches your day as much as it does ours when we go out there...

Prickett Dam...Part TWO of Three

For those of you that didn't read about this drained dam yet, please go to Part One of Prickett Dam in the blogpost below this one.

They are going to do some repair to the dam, so they drained Prickett Dam, much to our surprise when we arrived there one day when we took a ride to get some photos of some autumn color here in the U.P.

So here is Part Two of the drained dam pictures that captivated me when we got there.

Before long, all of these tangled tree roots and stumps will be covered once again under the water and a smooth lake will hide them.

But look how spooky it looked when we got there!

Like a wasteland against the backdrop of the far shore, which was bright with autumn color!:

But LOOK at one of the many tangled tree roots we saw!

Each one was like a sculpture or work of art to my eyes:

This entire tree looked like it was left "high and dry" in the middle of the lake's bottom:

Another long shot of the dam to show you how many stumps there were hiding under its water!:

Some stumps were left upside down, which made them look like mushrooms!:

Some were so dramatic that I had to do some black and white photos of them:





Look at this HUGE root!:

And the draining of the dam left some victims of nature there:

What a contrast! Barren roots and a shore of color:

I loved this giant tree root too.

Stay tuned for Part Three of Three, which will be the last of this three part series of Prickett Dam.

I could have taken hundreds of photos of nature's art there~!

Amazing Prickett Dam!...Part ONE of THREE

We went for a ride in the woods to see some more opportunities for pictures in the autumn.

My husband remembered a pretty little dam which he thought would be a good spot for photographs in reflecting water.

We drove up to the dam and I was speechless.

Almost all of the water had been drained out. He began to apologize, thinking I would be disappointed.

I was so excited, I could hardly stand it!

Because, in front of me, was a photographer's dream.....a vast, drained pond FULL of twisted tree roots and tangled trees with wonderful shapes! Almost everywhere I looked, there was a photograph begging me to take it.

I took a TON of photos...so this is the first of a THREE part series of shots I was blessed with there.

So....

Are you ready????

Here is a closeup of the many, many tree roots left at the bottom of the drained dam:

And a giant tree root left high and dry.

I loved how it was transposed on the colorful autumn leaves in the background!:

A wider view of the drained dam:

I loved the spreading roots of this stump:

Of course a barren scene like this BEGGED for a black and white of it:

Stumps, stumps, everywhere!:

It was so neat that we could walk on the bed of a dam that was drained and take in all that normally lies under the water:




Twin stumps, waiting for some fisherman's lures to get caught in them when the water used to be there:

It looks like a wasteland, in the middle of an autumn wonderland:

At one time, someone must have put this birdhouse right next to the pretty water-filled dam when it looked like a lake.

Now, it looked lonely and out of place...

Stay tuned for Part Two and Part Three

of the amazing drained dam.

I just couldn't stop at only ten pictures of it.

Now you see WHY!....