Saturday morning, no breeze, just after sunrise. The first morning with boats on their moorings after five months. Things are getting serious. (The temperature at the time this image was taken, however, was 32 degrees.)
Boats on the pond
Louisiana native iris
I visited New Orleans last weekend and I’d forgotten how wonderful the Louisiana iris are. This one was close to the Newman Bandstand in Audubon Park.
Good eats
Thought I’d spotted a pretty good-sized bird in the treetops (I was on the lookout for a hawk), but it turned out to be this little guy who seemed very pleased with himself, stuffing his face with tree blossoms. He was sixty feet off the ground in the skinny branches – and a 12 mile per hour wind – but apparently so engrossed with the good eating that he wasn’t concerned.
Winter fog
On the second day of the New Year, it dawned foggy. My wife questioned the sanity of going out to take pictures in the fog, which is a challenge of sorts. I’ve had the picture above on my computer desktop for a while and – while not vibrant and cheery – it is soothing. And soothing is a good thing for an administrator in the days before spring semester begins.
The picture below wouldn’t have happened if geese weren’t such noisy birds. You could hear them approach, but until they got this near they weren’t visible and even then I wasn’t sure I’d gotten them.
Bivalves all the rage in RI at New Year’s
Quahogging on the Mill Gut, New Year's Eve 2010
Early morning, New Year’s Eve: Not too late for a little oystering on foot or by boat. Great blue cast to the landscape.
Quahogging on Narragansett Bay off Colt State Park, New Year's Eve 2010
Merry Christmas to all…
and to all a good night!
All the best from the Bristol Ed Strongs….
Origins of a worry-wart…
Okay, so they call it “avoidance of errors.” If I understand the argument correctly, my abundance of dopamine receptors makes me re-live – but not repeat – all of my past mistakes….
Here’s a link to the Journal of Neuroscience article behind it all. Or for a quckie treatment that has more depth than the above, try this web reference.
What else do we need to know about ourselves?
Results of a search for the frequency of appearance of the words "self" and "others" in 5,000,000 books written beteen 1500 and 2000.
I picked some fairly meaningless words to check up on (“quahog”), and then decided to try “self” and “others” to see if there was anything in the data. Bingo!
For a description of what Google’s up to here, see The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Ice in the beard today
25 degrees, wind out of the west at 18- 20 mph. Brisk.
The gulls were hunkered down yesterday morning. The one who decided to give flying a try had a hard time landing.
Gravity needed a little assist yesterday morning
On the other hand, this little guy was hiding out in a hollow tree.
He popped up from the shelter of the truncated hollow limb
Thanksgiving 2010
Random good fortune. I’ve been taking photos at the site of last year’s fall blue-ribbon shot on the chance that lightning would strike twice. Right and wrong. This morning, a small movement caught the corner of my eye. This little guy!
Not really a catbird...appears to be a Northern Mockingbird.
Cabbages and kings 
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