Scattered Thoughts . . .

Not much has been getting accomplished on the house lately. My health and the weather are not cooperating with each other in the least. I've been feeling absolutely miserable on some rare beautiful weather days and I've been feeling halfway decent on some rainy days... and, even if I were healthy, we've had a lot of rainy days this summer so getting much accomplished on the house would be difficult anyway. Regardless, I'm not too pleased with how little I've accomplished and how much it affects my health. At some point, I need to feel very well on a few very nice days! In the meantime, I'm trying to keep busy in the house. Most of my down time has been spent sketching plans for various projects around the house, researching building products, and even sitting at the piano whenever I'm feeling up to it. This evening, however, I decided to sift through some of my latest photos to see if I could find anything interesting. The first photo that captured my at...

We hadn't seen the resident Bald Eagle pair in a couple of days so we were wondering where they were hiding. We also hadn't seen any other significant wildlife such as bobcats and bears so I was feeling I needed to wander out to find something worth photographing. Sheila and I headed out on our kayaks yesterday morning. I had three cameras in my kayak... a Sony action video camera, a Sony full-frame camera with a 70-200mm lens, and a Sony crop camera with a 400mm F5.6L lens which gives me an equivalent of 600mm. I also brought along a wide angle lens for any landscape photos that may present itself. With these cameras, I was confident I could capture photos of loons, Bald Eagles, bears, bobcats, turtles or whatever wildlife appeared.  About a mile from our lake house, I pulled to the shore to check a nice sandy beach on State land for any tracks... I saw none. We continued on down toward the dam at the end of the lake.  As we approached the end of the lake, I noticed a ...

Today was a rather lousy day for shooting photos of wildlife. We sometimes go through spurts of seeing absolutely no wildlife. One year, we didn't see any wildlife for almost two weeks! Today was just one of those days... quiet. Instead of shooting photos today (although, I kept my eyes open in case something appeared outside our lake house windows), I sifted through some of the photos I've shot thus far and I found another Bald Eagle shot worth sharing here...

People seem to get excited to hear that the Bald Eagle is making a comeback in the northeast after being almost extinct. Personally, I find these birds to be an annoyance equivalent to a seagull and seagulls are something I always refer to as a rat with wings. The Bald Eagle is an aggressive predator preying upon other birds, wildlife and disrupting the life cycle of other animals already on the endangered list so I really do not look upon this nasty bird with affection at all. One of the things we always loved about Lake Groton is the amount of active loons. There is even a healthy dose of transient loons who come and go. I've learned a lot about loons and their quirkiness by carefully observing them over the years including all the difficulties this endangered bird has with effective reproduction. Having a monstrous predator hovering over their heads, harassing them, agitating them and trying to eat them is of no help to building the loon population. I'd rather see the loon...