I Won!

No, not the lottery. Yet....

But the results are finally in from the Crex Meadows 2010 Photo Contest, where top two in each category make it into the calendar for the next year.

I thought I'd missed the deadline. It was close. I knew it was just after we'd get back from vacation, and with all the chaos, I just let it go until after we got back. When I remembered to check the date, it had just ended, minutes before.

Dang!

I checked in again a few days later for something else, and they had extended the deadline. Time to get busy! I had one day! They needed an 8x10 and an e-file.

I dug out the laptop - completely untouched all vacation long in its place in the RV with all the electrical issues we'd had and the fact I hadn't actually needed it - and found the picture I'd had in mind. It had been taken years before during a presentation on site. It was a close-up of a horned owl, rather wet because it had been raining. In fact, that had been the hook the presenter used to get our attention: "What does an owl do in the rain?" After we all went out, a whole lot of folks who couldn't kill their flash found out the owl eyes in a flash picture are yellow with red pupils like little winged devils. I got a few of those. But I also killed my flash for a whole bunch of shots, and of those I selected one where the owl's beak is open with its tongue showing. (See it here on my blog.)

I wasn't sure such an "unwild" shot was what the contest sponsors had in mind, but I sent along a note explaining that I thought their sponsored events were as important a part of what they do as letting us drive unsupervised around the place hoping to find something worth shooting. With our cameras, of course, though most of Crex is open to hunters in the proper seasons, and is in fact financially supported by them. On the day I dropped off the picture, I took my dad along for a drive and we had a great time.

The following weekend I took him along when I went up again to vote, and they obligingly sat him right in front of the big hi-def TV they use for a pair of gorgeous videos for his own private viewing. He says he saw a lot of it that way, despite his vision. (At least the sound was good, music, bird calls, etc.) Then we two drove around while I took some more pictures. Never too soon to try for next year's contest, after all.

Most years they post the results right away.

Nothing.

I thought somebody hadn't gotten around to posting it on the website. Maybe they had some kind of glitch? I also figured that since I hadn't heard anything via email, my picture wasn't a winner. After all, it was entry #26 just in the birds category, and I hadn't counted to see just how many entries there were. The competition was fierce. Seeing the pictures alone is a great reason to visit.

Today I checked out their website for something else, and there it was: the winners were finally posted. Some explanation about lots of counting. May as well see who I lost to, eh? And there, on the top line of three pictures, was my owl, in second place. I made the calendar!

Some of you might expect a flat package this year for X-mas. Just so you know.

Manatees of Homosassa

Until I had seen one in person, I had always thought of manatees as something like a slow moving walrus or elephant seal in body shape. Rounded. Even the artwork at Homosassa Springs, like a stained glass window next to the front door, depicts them like that. So I guess I can be excused for not recognizing them when I first saw them. From the top they resemble flattish mossy rocks, so still that ducks walk on them! I'd say a better description of a manatee would be a fat pancake with stubs for legs, snout and tail. They're easy to distinguish from a rolling stone because of the mossy tops, actually algae.

Likely their vegetarian diet contributes to their general lack of movement, soaking up sun and wasting little energy. It also helps that they can hold their breath for very long periods. When they do move, at speed for them, they barely leave a wake. But they can, apparently , be trained to come to a certain location at regular intervals for food handouts. This is called putting on a show for Homosassa visitors, and benches are set up so they can watch the trainer enter the water in waders and carrying a bucket of carrots which he distributes along with a canned speech. We saw six at once, maximum, as they come and go - slowly - and he named them as he fed them. For all the differences I could see in size and shape, he could have been making up names on the spot and we'd never know the difference.

Two things happen after the presentation ends, besides most of the crowd moving on. Ducks come in to eat the bits of carrot left behind, and lots and lots of lettuce and other leafy greens are dumped from the railing of a deck over an underwater viewing platform where one can wander over and see them from below water level as they eat.

The area they are in connects to the Gulf, and this is what concerns me right now. As the oil spill grows and spreads, the projected route is eastward to Florida, down to the keys, up the east side, and then presumably the Gulf Stream will carry it out into the Atlantic and over to England. Long before that happens, however, it will invade their sanctuary at Homosassa.

What then will happen to these gentle giants?

Pollinators

Say that word, and everybody thinks honeybees. Fewer people think of other varieties of bees, or other insects. I have very few honeybees visiting my small-town yard, but everything seems to get pollinated just fine. Combing through a couple years worth of pictures, I learned something about just who was doing all that work. And in at least one case, it didn't stop at just pollinating the flower!

Updating with Pictures

Since I finally got my pictures organized, I'm going back through my old postings and filling in some pictures. You can check out the following old posts:

http://werejustpassingthru.blogspot.com/2010/03/hunting-swans-and-eagles.html

http://werejustpassingthru.blogspot.com/2010/04/beekeeper-for-year.html

Of course, on the latter, the bees involved are bumbles, not honey. The pictures were taken either in my yard or (purple) out at Crex Meadows in Wisconsin.

The Pelican, Briefly Revisited

The Pelicans did stick around for about another week, although they had started leaving in small chunks just after my last posting. For a time, they settled on North Center Lake on a sand bar exposed by low lake levels. Passing fishermen, even ones at high speed, didn't seem to bother them. I now haven't seen a single one for a week, although my eye has been trained to search them out each time I pass all their previous locations, and even though experience has taught me they aren't there any more. I am assuming they have gone on to their individual summer breeding locations. I only hope they come back for regular seasonal visits, and this year wasn't a fluke.

There does seem to be territorial expansion. My Audobon bird guide claims their territory is marshy areas of Texas and the west coast. This is a long way from there, and I've seen them in this state for several years now.

Just for contrast, I am adding a couple pictures of brown pelicans from Florida, shot at Homosassa Springs in January of 2009. They are free to come and go, but seem quite comfortable in a location encircled by boardwalks for the tourists and filled with herons, flamingos, roseate spoonbills, and many other bird species.

Backyard Bluebirds

It was nice enough for a backyard bonfire and brat-roast. We were all settled in comfortably when I sent Paul in for my camera. One of the nest boxes, originally bought with bluebirds in mind when we first moved in, but taken over in turn by tree swallows, wrens, and the occasional tree frog, was now hosting bluebirds.

Finally !

Our visitors obligingly posed long enough for me to find the focus and grab a few shots. All are taken with the 300 mm lens, as we were on opposite sides of the yard. Continuous shutter is a setting I'm coming to love, especially since it's what caught some in-flight action.

My Pretty New White Car

I put off painting my red car white as long as I could. I liked the red, so much I ordered the painter to save the racing stripes as a whole, with the red showing between the three silver stripes. He took it a step further, saving the red inside the Hyundai symbol. And now, after three weeks of driving, it's taken on even more color.

Beekeeper for a Year

Once upon a time, long long ago, you could order honeybees from the Sears catalogue and get them in the mail. I got a book on the subject and decided to try it. This was while we were living in Peachtree City, Georgia, and my three kids were still little, say, around 1980.

First you need the supers, better known as the boxes to keep the bees in. They have frames inside as a platform for the bees to build honeycombs, and you can expand capacity by stacking more supers on top. Complete the hive by adding a floor, roof, and a queen excluder. This keeps the queen from leaving the hive, which means the rest of the bees come back to her by nightfall every night. The pheremones she emits tells them this is home and that she is the most important member of it. Set it up on top of a few bricks to keep it off the ground, and you are ready to go.

The hive arrives in a raw wood condition. The outside should be painted, but like with homes for many other living critters, latex paint is the only way to go. Chemicals in oil-based paints can be deadly. I picked green, the better to blend in with the yard and draw less unwanted attention from the neighbors, some of whom were problems. (Yes, I mean you, David S., picking carrots from my garden when you thought nobody was watching.) To further separate bees from neighbors, I located the bees on the 2nd story deck behind the house. Anybody messing with my bees would have to be really trying to get into trouble. I figured that way if anybody wanted to sue me for their bee stings while breaking into my hive, they couldn't claim they hadn't intended to do it and just "stumbled over" the hive.

I did all the advance prep I thought I needed to, including ordering the full coverall, gloves, head net and smoker, and ordered my bees. Then there was just the waiting. But while I was waiting, a funny thing happened. While driving over to Sharpsburg to work one morning, I spied a wild swarm of bees in a branch along the road, just at reachable level. Hmmmm....

After mentioning it, I was put in touch with a local beekeeper - a real one, not a wannabe like me - who asked me did I want the swarm? You mean you can really do that? And get honey? And he could help? He was happy to, and arranged to meet me there after work. First I had to go home and get the hive to put the bees in. Once under the swarm, he - the brave one - gave the branch the swarm was on a hard jerk downward, knocking the majority of the bees into the hive. The roof was quickly put back on, and we left. The theory was that the queen was in the middle of the swarm, that the knock had put her in the hive she now couldn't leave, and that the rest of its members would join her by dark. At that time, we'd meet again at the hive, load it onto his pickup truck, and take it to my house. In the morning, the bees would orient on their new location and use the sun to find their way home after foraging for nectar and pollen.

Practice worked as well as theory, and I was now a beekeeper. The only hitch was, I already had domestic bees ordered and no home to put them in. No worries, there was a supplier within a few miles, and I ought to have time to buy another hive and paint it. I did, just, with a couple of days for the paint to dry.

After the size of the wild swarm, I was surprised that my new bees came in such a tiny box. Try as I might, I couldn't tell the queen from the rest of the bees by size alone, and wasn't experienced enough to do it by watching the behavior of the attendant bees surrounding her. Luckily she came in her very own separate container with attendants, inside the bigger box, so I didn't have to guess. The directions said to calm the bees and prevent them from flying by misting them with water from a squirt bottle, so I did this, opened the box, and shook them into the hive. Some escaped, but I knew they'd rejoin their queen as soon as they could.

Unfortunately, I forgot one little piece of the to-do list: put rubber bands around the bottoms of my pants cuffs. Bees that can't fly can still crawl, and when they get to the point on your legs where clothing traps them and they can't go farther, they get mad. When a bee gets mad, it turns kamikaze, stinging you even though it means its own death. At first I was too tenderhearted to just give them a hard swat to kill them before they stung. Besides, my hands were more then full getting the queen into the hive along with as many of her cohorts as possible as gently as possible. But when a trapped bee stings, it keeps pumping its venom into you until its supply is exhausted. It only took me about six of these to convince me the necessity of taking a sec for a swat. They were going to die anyway, so why not be merciful- to me? As it was, I had half a dozen stings showing as 6" red patches on my legs, hot, inflamed, and sore for several days.

Paul Sr., himself allergic to bee stings, was sure that now I would be too, but that never happened. (He had moved out by this time, lest you think I was endangering him by this hobby.)

Now that I had my two happy little hives, it was just a matter of waiting and watching until there was enough honey produced that the bees could spare some for our eating pleasure.

There was an immediate difference between the two hives. The wild-caught swarm was much more aggressive, both in collecting and in defending their hive. Their honeycombs rambled all over the place, welding several frames together so that they had to be cut through in order to lift one out. I found myself hesitant to do this, and as a result harvested little of what I could have from this hive. The domestic bees were slower off the mark, slow to grow in numbers, slow to produce honey. So I didn't get any honey from them, thinking they needed it all themselves yet.

Then suddenly it was time to move, the first of what would be a two-step process returning us to Minnesota. Bees can travel overnight, but not over days in a moving van. I called my bee guy, asking him if he wanted my bees or knew someone who did. Shortly after dark a few nights later, the bees were carried down the deck stairs and loaded in the back of a truck to start new lives elsewhere.

Just like we would.

Several years later, once I had my own home again in Shafer, I thought about starting over with beekeeping again. The city clerk emphatically assured me it was not allowed within city limits, though I still haven't seen the part of the code that states that. We seen to have enough pollinators to cope with all the fruiting and flowering plantings we put in the yard. Occasionally I go out and buy some honey.

Hunting Swans and Eagles

There's this strange shiny bright thing up in the sky this morning. It's almost reminiscent of... oh, wait! I remember now: it's called the sun! We haven't seen it in so long I'd almost forgotten. It's been days after days of totally cloudy, foggy, evenly-temperatured days and nights. In short, spring has been dismal but came in with a rush. So many nights above freezing means the snow goes away fast, floods are forcast in all the usual places, maple syruping is a dud, and my winter weekend plans for hunting swans and eagles were thwarted. I left them until too late.

Partly that was because the impetus for them came so late. It's always about the camera, and mine was state of the art when I bought it, but has developed some issues that newer ones are supposed to correct. My first real camera was a Pentax K-1000, manual everything, ability to add filters and lenses, and using costly 35mm film. Well, it's costly when you do things like shoot 36 rolls of it on vacation. I had what my ego wants to think of as the usual luck with a ratio of bad and good pictures. That was the only reason I was even tempted to go digital - erasing the awful ones, only showing off the good ones. Even so, I resisted for many years.

Once I received my share of the inheritance from Lylah, I spent part of it on a Sony HD camcorder which also took still pictures. It became my do-everything camera. Typical digital takes the picture a second or two after you push the button. It pauses to ask itself first about focus, aperture, shutter speed, and while it's doing all that, the subject you were trying to shoot has moved, possibly even gone away. I needed to go back to the good ol' single lens reflex like my K-1000. Digital SLRs are expensive. I had to wait. Besides, they weren't that good yet.

Actually, Bambi had a hand in my getting my new camera. To get through the time between the accident and the still-awaited final payout, I had to cash in a CD. It was of course for more than what I absolutely needed, and once all is settled, the balance will do more good paying down my credit card than gathering today's interest. But meanwhile new possibilities existed. One of them included a shopping trip, resulting in a Nikon D-5000, a digital SLR camera with 12+ megapixel pictures, continuous-shutter possibilities, and a gazillion more bells and whistles. Hopefully, the very last camera I'll ever want or need.

If, of course, I actually learn how to use it. Yikes! The manual needs its own translator. I sat down with it on a quiet Sunday afternoon to read it through and get acquainted with my camera. All there? Check. Charge battery? Check. Come back later, nothing's going to happen without the battery. Now, go into ____ menu to set time and date.

Uh, the which menu? I find it where? And maneuver through it how? Oh, there it is...and oops, it disappeared! How do I find it again? Now "up" does... the wrong thing, obviously. I can just cut this short and say it took two whole frickin' hours to get to the point where I could hit the button and take a picture of my living room!

(Add to pet peeves list: badly written instruction manuals.)

OK, I can finally take a picture with everything on full automatic. Big whoop. It's time to complicate things a bit and get a 300mm lens for the camera. Actually, a 70-300 zoom. The camera came with an 18-55, giving me wide angle to standard. I needed the telephoto, modest as it is, for all the wildlife shooting I like to do, plus macro capabilities for those close ups of flowers and stuff.

This shouldn't be rocket science. I'm used to whipping through different lenses with the old K-1000. Push, twist, remove, line up new, insert, twist, click. Done as fast as you can read the words. So next weekend I pack everything up, load it in the car, pick up Steve, and we head over to Monticello to find the park where the lady feeds the trumpeter swans that spend winters there. I haven't actually tried putting on the new lens, however. I just figure no problem.

Yeah, right.

When you change lenses, they have to be lined up just so before you begin the insert and twist part. They come with a colored spot on the camera body and one on the lens. When those line up, it's right. I'd put on and taken off the regular lens. But where the heck was the spot on the 300? Nothing! Anywhere! At this point I'm sitting in the front seat of my car, parked about a hundred feet from the riverbank below which the swans rested by the thousands. I'm trying one position, then another. No go. Can hear, not see the swans. Other people are coming, shooting, leaving. Not us. I finally settle on the original lens, hoping it'll actually do me some good. Just as we open the car doors to set out, something startles the flock, and we glimpse through the trees two thousand or so trumpeter swans lifting and flying away.

Figures!

When we get there, about a half dozen remain. As we watch and try to shoot, a few more stop in, two here, one there. I decide to go back to the car, dig through to find the instructions sheet for the 300, and see whether, all by myself and the pressure off, they'll make any sense. Unfold, spread out, find English. Browse, browse, browse... Got it! This other mark, not a spot but a line, the one partway up the barrel, showing the number your lens is zoomed out to, that's the one that doubles to line up the lens and camera body! How idiotic! But it works, and I head back down to see if I can get any better shots. I can.

And just as I start to use the telephoto, the remaining flock is up and away.

I promise myself to return next year in winter, when the river is more frozen and they have fewer options of where to be than they do on this gorgeous spring day. The camera will be working better for me by then.

It better!

With spring finally taking hold, my dad's feeling of cabin fever intensified. He's been so cooped up all winter, unable to navigate ice and snow safely. I'd heard about the bald eagles congregating down along the river in Red Wing, and asked if he'd like to go on a road trip the next Sunday, weather permitting. I felt safe making this offer, now having the replacement car, reliably new and with real heat in it. He was enthusiastic, so we made plans. Part of mine included studying my camera more so I could now do things like setting the shutter release on "continuous" and making the overall setting one that selected for higher shutter speed.

We left just after lunch, planning to be back in time for supper. It would be about a 170 mile round trip. While it was often overcast, it cooperated by staying dry. Roads were good, as long as you avoided potholes. Patches of brown were appearing as snow cover dropped, though they were mostly grasses and brush rather than actual bare ground. He was glad to get out, enjoying the passing scenery even with his very limited vision. The park was easy to find, and the promised assistants were there with their fancy high-powered telescopes pointed on the single eagle in the area.

Yep, single eagle. Spring had come so fast that the bulk of the eagles had scattered, defending nests and territories, ample fishing with miles of open river available to them. The single eagle was wa-a-a-a-a-y-y-y-y-y-y-y over there, a smudge amongst solid tree branches with a lighter smudge on the top end. You really needed the telescopes.

We got out of the car to stretch legs. I never even bothered to pull the camera from its box. Instead we sat, watching people come and peer and go, boats back down the public access ramp to fish in the river, and just enjoy a view of open water. I pointed towards the eagle, but of course he couldn't see it. We agreed it had been a pleasant ride anyway, and headed home.

Turning off Hwy. 95 onto Pleasant Valley Road, the short cut home, I pulled over onto the narrow shoulder. There in a dead snag in the pasture behind the fence was a lone bald eagle, sitting there elegantly framed by blue sky. I rolled Daddy's window down, pointed him at the bird until he saw where it was, dug out the camera, and got off several shots through the open window. Of course, as soon as I put the camera down, off he flew. But at least, this time Daddy knew he'd actually seen an eagle, even if we'd had to come back to 5 miles from home to do it.

Next thing I have to learn is how to load the pictures into my laptop from this camera. You'll know it worked when there's a posting with pictures.