Wow…almost 2 weeks since my last post but we been pretty busy. 

Our friends Bill and Linda were here last week for a couple of days…they arrived on Wednesday and left Friday morning…unfortunately we had our second COVID vaccine shots Wednesday evening so we were mostly not doing very well during the day on Thursday but we had recovered by mid-afternoon on Friday.

Despite our vaccination woes…Neil had smoked a chicken on Wednesday and made Connie’s published recipe Something Different Meatloaf© on Thursday along with some side dishes…and we had chocolate mint cake one night and mango key lime pie the second night. Breakfast both days was pastries from the Publix.

We visited…talked about old RVing days…and commiserated with Bill’s bad knee but otherwise just visited. Luckily for them…we got the bed for the spare bedroom delivered the week before so they had a place to sleep.

Not much else going on…we did some cleaning around the house before Bill and Linda got here…Connie had a district Ladies of Elks meeting today…Neil called bingo for the Ladies on Sunday…and we went to the Lodge on Friday for a couple cocktails before coming home for dinner and that’s about it. 

Neil ordered some new camera gear…don’t ask how much he spent…once it’s here I’ll put in some details on what he got and why…funny thing is that everything he ordered will be here next week except the new body and lenses…those are on back order with no real idea when they will arrive.

Neil took our BBQ grill and camp stove tables out the back today and power washed the gunk off of them…they were getting pretty nasty. Then he hauled the power washer ‘round the front and did Li’l Red and Sporty Red to get some of the dust and grime off of them. He also had several bike rides…pretty much every other day is his norm now.

Let’s see…what else.

Photoshop introduced a new feature in Adobe Camera Raw a week or so back that increases the resolution and detail of your images…it’s one of those magic AI things that essentially makes up details for you much like you see in the photo enhancement stuff on the various crime shows on TV. He tested it out with one of his images from back in 2015 on our Alaska trip…this is a Kodiak brown bear…which happens to be genetically identical to a grizzly bear…it was about 10 feet away when he took this shot. It was taken back when Connie’s old Nikon D7100 was his main camera and this is substantially better than the original shot.

It was taken on his small plane bear watching trip down to Katmai National Park…they landed on the beach and had to leave before high tide because the runway would disappear at high tide. Luckily…the bears, although wild…are habituated to people and he was fishing so he pretty much left the 6 of them alone…they were huddled together on a small grassy high spot (like 2 feet high) that he measured later was 13 feet from the edge of the stream and this fella passed between them and the bank.

We also had a rare visitor to…or should I say visitors…the pond out back…a pair of Green Herons. I’m not sure whether this was a couple of males establishing dominance or a horny male and his not so receptive female. One chased the other ‘round the pond about 3 time and they landed across from each other a couple of times. Based on the behavior I think it was a male attempting to convince the female to breed with him…but since Green Heron male and females look the same it’s pretty hard to beside.

This is the one that was doing the chasing…you can tell it’s breeding season as the Green Heron just gets the whitish breast instead of the more elaborate plumage that some of the other wading birds get.

This is the other half…the chase-ee…we think this is a female based on the behavior of the chasing, the longer neck of this one, and the greater amount of white on the breast. Eventually they both flew off so together so that makes the male/female interaction more likely…at least we think.

We also spotted the juvenile Little Blue Heron again…although it took us a couple of times to figure out what it was as the coloration isn’t quite as described in Peterson’s “Birds of North America” which is the bible for identification.

The eaglets down any the nest near the Publix are doing well…continuing to grow and starting to look like juvenile birds rather than chicks. They’re now 53 and 54 days old and should fledge the next in another 2 or 3 weeks.

Interesting things found on the net.

After last weekend’s interview by Oprah of Harry and Megan…

Takes a bit of thought…

Just in case you don’t know…a palindrome is a word that is spelled the same forwards and backwards.

Another one that requires a bit o’ thought.

And on the subject of palindromes…although these are numbers rather than letters and words.

I’m liking the way they think.

Best one of the week.

Cyas.