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Feb102015

With Delay The Gray Jay

I’m back with another bird post so you are either overjoyed (if you are a birder) or frustrated about the total lack of diversity so far this month being as we are two for two this month in covering our feathered friends.  Truth be told, much like the last post, this effort is again doing double duty.  On second thought it might actually be doing triple duty, but will hold off on that explanation for a bit.  Today’s featured bird is not a new one to my bird list and it was featured previously back in the early days of the blog.  If you recall, and that means you’ve been frequenting this blog for at least a 5 years now (impressive), the Gray Jay made its debut back in Jan 2010 (link here).  That capture took place in Yellowstone National Park – the same location where my new specimen was discovered.

Yellowstone National Park - Gray Jay

Based on the fact it was previously photographed and secondly already featured on a blog post you would think this bird had already made its way onto the Bird Life List Gallery (link here).   Not the case.  Back then I was processing images solely for the web and therefore was not doing much work in the digital darkroom.  The smaller the file size the better and even reduced it to the final display size on the page – It is possible you don’t realize this, but most of the images in the blog are now full size images up on the EddieSoft Gallery (EddieSoft.smugmug.com) but only the medium sized version are referenced for the actual blog post.  You can simply view the image and it will redirect you to the gallery – rip off the filename in the URL and you will have full access to the gallery controls and view the image at whatever size you want.  For the old shots, the image was simply copied up to the physical blog file directory and referenced from there – what you see is what you get.  I liked the pictures back on the original post but those images were super small and didn’t really want to put those up on the list without at least one better quality one.  I thought there was another shot or two from the 2013 Yellowstone trip out there and I finally found them.

Hit the jump to see another picture and read a bit more about the bird.

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Dec302011

This One is Hard on the Nuts

I have decided to OCCUPY the MAN CAVE with my AMAZING and GINORMOUS Yellowstone photo collection reading about Beyonce’s BABY BUMP and wondering what the BLOWBACK will be on Katy Perry’s divorce.  All of this has led me to believe that being a PET PARENT is going to be the NEW NORMAL even with all the SHARED SACRIFICES that comes with it.  But enough of this rambling, let’s go out and WIN THE FUTURE through deception and TRICKERATION.  Oh, and THANK YOU IN ADVANCE for all your comments!

Whew, my apologies for that opening.  I was scanning the Internet and came across this years list of banned words from Lake Superior State University.  They do this every year to save our sanity from over-hyped words.  With only a few days left I wanted to make sure I used them all at least one more time.  Having done this now (some for the first time ever) I can assuredly say they will not be missed.  Here are a few other words I’d like banned for 2012 based on the shameful over use in the media

  • Slam (and all derivatives)
  • Bashes
  • Crash
  • Grills
  • Undecideds
  • Outrage
  • Weep
  • Obamacare
  • Gallup
  • Facebook

Have I distracted you enough to forget this is really another bird post from our Yellowstone trip?  Well, I tried.  This is the last of the bird posts from Yellowstone and with a small bit of sadness, the likely last post of the year (there may be one more depending on when my year end summary gets done) – where has this year gone?!  The reason I left this one to the end is thanks to our favorite orthopedic surgeon Dr. Giselle there was no need to spend a lot of time rifling through reference books to identify it.  As soon as the shutter went off on this bird…

Dr. Giselle immediately identified it as a Clark’s Nutcracker.  Having never seen this bird before, I was very appreciative of the assist.  Per the reference books, this particular bird prefers open coniferous forests in mountains.  A big checkmark on that – I left this wider shot with the evergreens as validation of that.  It is a member of the jay and crow family but chooses to walk like a crow than hop like a jay on ground (do scientist actually get paid for these observations?).  As is the custom here at Lifeintrigued, let’s bring that bird in for a closer look.

Hit the jump to learn more about the Clark’s Nutcracker

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