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Jun092019

Featherless

Greetings Intrigued fans.  This was a pretty busy weekend as we headed up north for a little fun in the sun and, of course, a bit of agility dog showing.  Linda decided she wanted to ignore the advice of her heart specialist and get a few agility runs in with Raven.  He needed one more successful standard run to move to the next competition level.  She promised to take it easy in the ring so I relented and agreed to it.  Should probably mentioned she did bribe me with the opportunity to get some trail running training in (their trails were not flooded out like our local ones are) and the cherry on top, a day of birding with Ron and his wife.  Raven ended up getting it done in the ring going 3 for 4 while Linda managed to keep her heart under control.  I managed to get a solid 13 miles in putting me in good position for next week’s 15K considered Illinois’ toughest, but reminded me just how hard the 50K is going to be a few weeks later.  Still a bit sore from yesterday’s run, was still able to get a solid day of birding in – think we came in at the high 30’s species mark for the day.  Once all that was out of the way, we had to race home to watch the St Louis Blues try to claim the Stanley Cup.  One frustrating element was the lack of Internet where we were camping arrrrrgggghhhh!  Had plans to get caught up on my running post – nope.  While sitting here watching the Blues (now down 2 goals) thought I’d jump on the computer and crank out a quick post.

It’s a bittersweet post today as this officially wraps up all the worthy shots from the Georgia birding trip back in May 2015.  With all the bird shots out of the way, it is time to give some time those non-feathered creatures hanging out in the region.  Before I begin though, if you are looking for good shots of dragons and butters you should leave this post immediately and head on over to see B’s work over at Butterflies to Dragsters (link here).  I’m a bit embarrassed to even put these out after seeing his work behind the macro.  So, if you are still here, let’s get to some non-birds shall we.

Georgia May 2015 finds

Hit the jump to see the last shots from the Georgia trip.

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Aug112016

The Lizard King

Greetings everyone!  I would like take this opportunity to officially welcome my brother Ron to the photography blogging world (cheers, hoorays, clowns.. wait scratch that last evil thought).  If you would like to check out his new site, you can visit it by either using the Blog link area in the right navigation pane our simply go here http://rondoerflerphotography.net (link here). Of course, to rub in his superior cache of birds, he leads off with a bird I do not have (dammit!).  If that wasn’t enough he includes photos of bird babies which … wait for it .. .wait for it … I do not have either.  Now before you go feeling too bad for me — and you should be by now — this foray into the wildlife blogging arena comes at an expense.  One trait of my middle brother is he is extremely competitive.  My other brother and I have just learned to live with this unique trait Ron has from the rest of our family – we considered an intervention many years back, but decided it would become a contest on how long he could hold out and opted to not waste the time.  It is because of this trait I had to break down and create an official set of birding rules for us.  This official list can be found on a previous post (link here).  Please take note of Rule 06: If you have a working blog you must feature the bird before counting.  Guess what folks, Ron has a birding blog.  As explicitly stated in our official birding rules, he now has to feature every bird on the blog before it can be officially counted.  I kind of feel bad for him.  Well, for a few minutes at least, but then I realized I was up on him like 160 to TWO (although, I am not competitive).    Regardless, check out Ron’s site – he has that thing looking really sharp.

To be honest, this post is mainly to welcome Ron and picked a post topic that I didn’t need to spend a lot of time on.

Various Lizards from Nevada - August 2013

That my friends is what I refer to as a Lizard.  I can also tell you that my lovely wife always refers to them as snakes with legs.  This specifically means she gets near hysterical when she sees one and has a tendency to rip my clothes to pieces trying to hide behind me (don’t believe me, ASK HER).

Various Lizards from Nevada - August 2013

Unlike my wife, I hope you like looking at picture of Lizards I took out on our trip to Vegas.

Hit the jump to see a few more Lizard shots!

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Feb102013

Snakes with Feet

So one of the reasons I take the time to write these posts is to allow me the opportunity to look back and see what I was interested in or maybe what the state of the world happened to be in at a given point in time. In essence I have a backup plan when the o’l memory starts to go. Crap.. what was I leading into…. Oh yeah. Every once in awhile someone comes out with a statement that I NEVER want to forget. Typically these are statements made by individuals in the entertainment business that feel obligated to proclaim their stupidity. Last week we were blessed (er.. subjected) to two examples of this. Figured I’d just put them here in case I ever want to reference them in the future.

Chris Rock:
I am just here to support the President of the United States. President of the United States is our boss, but he is also, you know, the President and the First Lady are kinda like the Mom and the Dad of the country and when your Dad says something you listen and when you don’t it will usually bite you on the ass later on. So, I’m here to support the President. Note to self: be sure and point this comment out during future administrations – something tells me this position will change.

Tony Bennett:
It’s the kind of turn that happened to the great country of Germany where Nazis came over and created tragic things and they had to be told off. And if we continue this kind of violence and accept it in our country, the rest of the world is really going to take care of us in a really bad way. Note to self: A big thank you for fighting in the Battle of the Bulge now go read history and figure out where the Nazi’s “came over” from and take special note on their stance on gun control.

There, now I only need to go to my blog and search for stupid reptiles and poof there will be the two “entertainers” that are now on my list.  That reminds me, the main topic of this post is Reptiles at the Indianapolis Zoo.  Yes, this is a continuation of the Indy Zoo series, but now that the mammals are out of the way, it’s time to move to those scary “snakes with feet” as Linda likes to refer to them.  This will be a short series primarily because I know absolutely ZERO about lizards.  They have a long heritage, their typically scaly and for some reason there are people out there that think they are cool pets.

Personally I find that identifying snakes and lizards about as hard as distinguishing one sparrow from another.  Translated… damn near impossible.  Since I like to go the extra mile for my millions of readers I did take a stab at it.  A check of the Indy Zoo website did provide a small list of animals on display in their Desert Biome (link here).  Apparently putting their picture or at least a link to the animal is asking way to much from an educational organization.  So, next step was to search individually for each of the names on the list – with exception of the turtles which are clearly not in play here – a shout out to my Biology teacher for getting that in long-term memory.

Hit the jump to read more about these scaly creatures.

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