beauty in the sky

I saw an amazing sight this morning as I was driving the short distance from my house to the antique store.

My house is on the outskirts of one end of town and the antique store is on the opposite side of town. When I was about ¾ of the way to the store I looked up and to my left to see hundreds of birds swirling around in the warm thermals.

They were big birds and very high up. They looked dark for the most part but every now and then a group would turn and they would flash white.

I kept craning my neck out the window to see better and finally pulled over into a parking lot and watched for a while and snapped some pics at full zoom (3x) and I know from experience that those pictures come out very grainy.

So here are the pictures I took. They totally don't convey what I was seeing and only show a portion of all the birds.

When I got to the store, the swirling floating mass of birds seemed to be right above me and the courthouse and the square. I unlocked the store and then got my camera out and took this last picture. I still wasn't sure what they were. Not vultures or ahningas. Long necks held out, feet straight out behind, big wings. Some sort of geese maybe but I didn't think so.

I went in to turn on the lights and 'open' the shop and when I came back to the door, they were gone. Not a one in sight. When I consulted my tablet bird app I thought they must be cranes.

And it turns out I'm pretty sure that's what they were. Of the three cranes in my bird app it wasn't the common crane which is considered an accidental vagrant from Europe/Asia and doesn't come down this far. It definitely wasn't a whooping crane although they winter over not that far from here in a protected area in Matagorda Island State Park and Aransas National Wildlife Refuge as do sandhill cranes. So I'm thinking they were sandhill cranes but if they were, I'm surprised they are just now migrating.

Cranes are among the oldest living species of birds with fossils dating back 9 million years. Sandhill cranes have proved to be very adaptable and their populations are healthy although they are considered endangered in Ohio. They are large birds, standing 3' to 4' with a wingspan of 6' to 7'. They are omnivorous. They mate for life and live 20 – 40 years. They are migratory with their range extending from Alaska to Texas and they migrate in enormous groups. Cranes rely on thermals and tail winds to aid them in their migration, attaining speeds of 25 – 35 mph and covering an average of 200 – 300 miles a day or more. They have been seen flying over Mt. Everest at 28,000 feet.

I borrowed this beautiful image of sandhill cranes from: http://deepmiddle.blogspot.com/2012/03/sandhill-cranes-in-flight.html

If I should ever wonder why I moved away from the city, this is why. I would never have seen this and so many other wonderful things if I was still in the city.

short stories 10

a few fun facts

I looked at my stats today via StatCounter and out of 171 visits to my blog via search engines in the last three days, 79 had the words 'sex', 'nude', or 'naked' in the query. 40 had the word 'rain' leaving only 52 for things like bird, flower, turtle, juke box. Only 4 queries used the word 'glass'. And then there were these...

'dog's uterus thicken walls'

'sunsets stars earth's soda milk betters shop pets'

'ancient hieroglyphics of star beings with dog-like ears'

Unsurprisingly, a great many of the queries for 'sex' come from the repressive muslim middle east and asia but good ole America and Europe has it's aficionados too. And because I get so many hits from muslim countries, the Department Of Homeland Security has checked in a time or two as well.

That I could do without, especially considering they are not averse to whisking you away in the middle of the night never to be heard from again and if the republican front runners get their way, talking about sex and nudity, having sex and engaging in nudity will be enough to justify it.

embracing the machine

I love getting up in the morning to a clean kitchen but I hate doing dishes at night especially because we eat dinner late.

I never had a built-in dishwasher until we moved to the country house. Our city house is very old and the counters are not high enough for a built in dishwasher unless we tear out the bottom cabinets and counter and completely rebuild them and that's just not gonna happen. When the kids were dish doing age we opted for one on wheels that you hooked up to the faucet. With four in the family it got filled up every night. When it died, however, we didn't replace it because it took up valuable real estate in our already too small kitchen.

Now the kids are grown and there is just the two of us out here in the country house. A whole day's worth of dishes, though, is not enough to fill the dishwasher so, as a general rule, I have not used it.

Until recently.

I've decided to embrace the machine.

I still won't run it until it's full and since we still have just a minimum of pots and pans, sometimes what we have for dinner depends on what's clean. Hee hee. Not really. I'll wash the needed pan.

truth in advertising

We had some Spinach and Artichoke Hummus for lunch the other day. Later, looking at the ingredients list: chickpeas, water, soybean/canola oil, tahini, red & green bell peppers, spinach, cucumber, salt, garlic, onion, artichoke, citric acid, natural flavors, lemon juice, seasonings & spices, potassium sorbate.

Artichoke, the last 'food' ingredient coming even after 'salt' and yet that's what they advertised on the label.

resident wren

The little loud mouth was back again the other day, going all around the shop, on and poking in everything, screeching out it's alarm call the whole time. It visited the old nest again, about the only time it was quiet. It didn't seem particularly upset by my attempts to photograph it and at one point it got quite close to me, maybe 5'. I wonder if it's the wren baby from last spring?

If I want to know where the cat is in the morning or evening all I need do is follow the sound of the wren taking it's job seriously keeping vigil, letting all birdkind know there is a cat on the premises.

tree hopping

That crazy fucker that flies the crop duster has been buzzing the neighborhood this week. He's been spraying something on the agricultural field across the road and when he gets to the end he pulls up and banks around right over our house for another pass over the field.

He has to fly very low over the field when he releases whatever it is he's releasing so that it goes on the field and not have the wind dissipate it. In the past he has flown over the houses at a higher altitude but this past week I swear he's brushing the treetops and skimming the houses, very loud and kinda scary to see that little plane coming right at us.

This morning he was at it again only this time he was spraying perpendicular to the road and flying right at the tree line along the road, pulling up and banking around over the 13 acre field behind us.

We stay inside when he is out doing his spraying and it is the only part of living in an agricultural community that I don't like.

flying cars?

the Transition by Terrafugia

I got an email from my high school boyfriend the other day letting me know that my flying car is now available. Only problem is, it looks and acts like a small plane. Needs a runway to take off and land. The thing that makes it a flying car, they say, is that the wings fold up after landing and you can drive it home.

This does not qualify it as a flying car.

It's still a small plane and requires a pilot's license to fly. I suppose not having hangar fees or having to deal with a left behind car is a plus and a little bush hopper of a plane that only needs a 'sport license' to fly might be fun but its kind of ugly in its car mode.

Reminds me of the car-boat that didn't make a very good car or a very good boat.

Besides, it costs $250,000. Yup, that's a quarter of a million dollars.

OK folks, back to the drawing board.

Think Jetsons.

the wild blue yonder

My brother lives in a small village outside Seattle. He has moved around a lot in his employment, living on the east coast, Switzerland, California and finally Washington state. We don't see each other often but he has taken the holiday weekend to come visit on his way to a meeting next week, staying with our elder sister while he is here. He is also co-owner of a little four seater airplane. His partner in ownership was going to have the plane in San Antonio this weekend so they arranged for the partner to fly it to the little local airport here today and he gave us all plane rides.

this is the plane

peering in

granted, my brother is 6' but it is still very small inside

instruments from edge to edge

gaining altitude, that's the Colorado river below...and probably a pecan orchard lower right

it was hazy in the lower altitudes...a patchwork quilt

we've reached cloud level now

flying around them

up above the clouds...pasture land and woods

coming back down

our own Nazca

crossing the river again, rice fields top right

approaching the runway

sister, brother and I