Bass Trombone Wauchope

Friday, January 4, 2019

Birding 2 11 more photos!

Cold but bright Friday, Jan 4th, out for more photos.
Again, what I am trying to do is get a photo of each species I see, and as the year goes by, try to improve all of those as I go, and add more species. No.11 looks like a keeper to me!

Downy Woodpecker (8)

Bufflehead (9)

Black-capped Chickadee (10)

House Finch (11)

Common Goldeneye (12)

Ring-billed Gull (13)

Great Blue Heron (14)

Red-bellied Woodpecker (15)

Mallard (16)

Common Merganser (f) (17)

White-breasted Nuthatch (18)

American Robin (19)

Northern Shoveler (20)

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

New Year's Day birding

After Susan and I quietly (for the first time in many years) celebrated New Year's Eve together, I got up at 6:00 and drove down to the Cape and did a little birding, taking my first pictures for 2019.
I am going to keep one select photo of as many species as I can this year, and every time I get a better shot, replace it. I am going to aim for a 500 species photos for the year. Hmmmm….
So here is the first 7!

Harbor seal at Manomet

Red-breasted Merganser

First bird photo for 2019

This will be "keeper" No. 1

And here you can see he has swallowed the whole fish

(see the lump in the throat)

Black Scoter

(A "keeper" for now, hopefully a better photo later in the year)

White-winged Scoters

(Keeper for now)

Common Loon

(for now)

Common Eider

(This is pretty good, that green is so hard to capture)

Common Eider, with immature male.

I spent over an hour driving up and down the canal, hoping to see

a King Eider amongst the thousands of Common.

No luck so far.

Common Eider, female

Another female

I think the female is quite beautiful

Great Black-backed Gull

for now

Herring Gull

for now

Barge on the Canal

So that is the first seven for the photo record.

Every time I go out I will try to get better shots, and get new species.

Saturday, December 8, 2018

A morning at the Boston Metro Hi-Railers Train Club

At the invitation of Trevor Hartford, the son of long time friend Marty Hartford, Marty, Alex and I went out to visit the Boston Metro Hi-Railers, a train club. They had an open house, and it was great to watch Alex get so excited.

One of the layouts at the club.

This was amazing. A trestle, assembled by hand, stick by stick.

It will be moved into place upon completion

A detail showing the construction.

I swear to you, Alex was excited. Honestly!

A snowplow, for blizzards. Impressive.

Thank you so much, Trevor, it was great to visit your club.

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Glen, Heritage, Harvard Art Museum

We had our annual visit to Heritage Gardens in Sandwich, which is all about lights for Christmas; Glen came to visit and Erin arranged a dinner in Burlington; I took Mark Slawson to see the Harvard Art Museum, and focused on faces, reflecting on what the expressions might be saying.