Travels with Gunther and Kara

Ok, continuing along with more Serengeti images.

We’ve got the human kids visiting this week…they arrived Sunday for a week. The good news is that we’re enjoying seeing all of them…the bad news is that they were planning on some beach time but it started raining yesterday and is forecast to rain through the weekend so beach is probably not gonna happen. 

Neil and Connie had a concert to attend Sunday afternoon though…it was scheduled before the kids visit and it was the annual Festival of Great Organ Music…which is held down at Artist Naples. The concert included 7 different organists performing 7 different pieces and was quite good.

The star of the show was…naturally…the 4 manual (means 4 keyboards) 3,604 pipes in 64 ranks with 41 independent stops and 60 speaking stops Casavant-Frères instrument. The company also produced the organs at the Kennedy Center in DC, Chicago Symphony Hall, and the Kaufman Center in Kansas City…all of which we’ve heard playing theSaint-Saëns Symphony #3 Organ in the past, so we knew it would be pretty outstanding.

Here’s a shot of the organ Neil got after the concert was over.

The little small thing over on the side I’ll get to in a minute.

The 7 soloists included Connie’s choir director over at St. Therese here in North Fort Myers, a 15 year old who while starting her piano lessons at age 5 only started playing the organ in 2022, and a senior at Ava Maria University here in FL who started teaching herself the piano at age 6.

While all of the pieces were excellent…the one that really stood out was the world premier of a piece written by the organist who played it…a duet of the organ and what is known as an Orgelkids. Orgelkids is an organization started in Norway to teach student about organs…and consists of a small organ kit which is assemble as part of the program and is actually a playable instrument. It’s got a hand cranked bellows to provide the air instead of the large fan structure the organ usually has so it requires both a pumper and a player to work. The piece itself…named It’s a Surprise…is based on Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 which is known as the Surprise Symphony as it has a couple of places where it goes instantly from very quite to the whole orchestra playing a note as loud as they can, hence the surprise part. 

Here’s the Orgelkids closeup…the keyboard is on the right side as you look at it, the pipes on the top and the whitish part with the 2 handles behind is the pair of bellows that provides the air that makes the organ work.

Pretty neat piece…the two soloists passed the tune back and forth with frequent hand gestures to the other to take over…and naturally…there were a couple of surprises when the larger organ hit a really loud note from out of nowhere.

After the concert…we met the kids at Longhorn for dinner before heading home.

During their week here…they’re going to do some vacation stuff and we got tickets for the Mystery Train on Wednesday evening. They’ll head home Saturday as Jen has a teacher thing on Sunday evening.

Ok, on to Africa images.

Ostrich in the morning fog…this is a male and his pair of ladies and while there are probably differences that differentiate the genders I don’t know what they are and they’re sort of muddy and misty anyway so the features might not even be noticeable.

Neil’s vehicle mate Amanda holding the world’s smallest bananas.

Hartebeest.

Speckled Pigeon

Spotted Thick-Knee

Another hartebeest…it’s actually the same one as above but it moved a bit.

Lions in their most often seen position.

Three Banded Plover…I guess they’re counting the white/black/white as three.

Wood Sandpiper…or maybe a Green Sandpiper, using Merlin Bird ID either could be the choice.

Egyptian Goose

Capped Wheatear

Elephants including some youngsters

This young one was giving them the evil eye…only about 6 feet tall so a couple years old probably.

And it’s not only bears that…ya know…in the woods…mid air and mid poop.

Interesting things found on the net.

Up in Vancouver yesterday…a
sightseeing seaplane was taking off and ran into a boat in front of it…apparently it’s the regular takeoff area for seaplanes and there’s some sort of traffic control system that approves the plane’s takeoff runs…and the particular are is off limits to boats during daylight hours (which is the only time seaplanes can operate)…so clearly the boat is in the wrong place. However…there’s plenty of blame to go around in this one. Whatever control people authorize the takeoff should have seen the either visually or on radar and not authorized the takeoff…and right or wrong the pilot needs to not run into the boat that’s directly in front of him. The plane was just a foot or two off the water when it bounced across the boat, crashed, and sank. All 6 on the plane were rescued, the two morons on the boat were injured and taken to the hospital, but there were obviously way more than two morons involved in this incident.

India is the only country in the world that has both tigers and lions due to the wide range of climate zones. In fact…it’s the only country in the world that contains all of the following six species.

Never knew that.

The difference between open carry and concealed carry for weapons.

Neil really needs these two t-shirts.

And finally…

Cyas.

Connie and Neil had an interesting date nite yesterday. She had entered a drawing for a bottle of 1988 Dom Perignon Champagne and a bottle of Rémy Martin VSOP Cognac…which according to the sign were worth somewhere north of 2500 if she recalls correctly. Amazingly enough…she won and one of the ladies brought it down to us. Neil googled and tried to find out if it was really worth that much as value would help determine when it got opened up. As close as he could tell…the champagne is worth somewhere between 400 and 1500 bucks depending on which website you choose to believe and the cognac in the low to mid hundreds…again depending on which you choose to believe. The champagne is labeled Cuvee which means it’s from the first pressing of the grapes…same principle as extra virgin olive oil which comes from the first press…and thus it’s lesser in quantity and hence more valued. But even at the low end of the ranges…it’s still a pretty good return for a $20 ticket.

Anyways…they met at the lodge and got a nice picture of her and the loot for the newsletter…and we had a couple of cocktails while there…before heading off to a late dinner at Pinchers which is a nice seafood place on the river. Connie had clam strips and Neil a cheeseburger…which was ok but not great. He usually doesn’t order one at a fish place but didn’t feel like fish last night and with the ongoing bridge construction they needed to eat before trying to get back across the river.

Ah yeah…bridge construction. There are basically six ways across the river…two down in Cape Coral that are toll one way that are pretty far out of the way for us. Coming northeast…there’s the Cleveland Avenue bridge and the US-41 bridge both of which are 4 lane…and then there is the one on I-75 and another one further east from there that’s out of the way, as is the I-75 one for heading to anyplace we go often. Anyways…the Cleveland one doesn’t have a bike/pedestrian lane and is 2 separate spans separated by a foot or so and it closed to 1 lane each way a month or so back…FL DOT got some federal money in the last infrastructure bill and decided to connect these two spans, narrow the lanes by a foot each, and build a separate bike/pedestrian lane which it should have had way back when but bike lanes weren’t considered a necessity back then. The closure to 1 lane each way started back before the snowbirds had fully left (they’re called Winter Complaints for those of us who live here all the time) and traffic naturally backed up a lot, at least until Winter Complaints Season was over and then it was only lousy at rush hour and only one direction at a time. The state then decided to fully close the bridge for 10 weeks which will allow most of the work to be completed before our friends from the cold north return…so from anyplace up near us one has to take the US-41 bridge to get to Fort Myers…and since it’s now got double traffic it’s lousy one way at rush hour even though it’s 3 lanes each way…so hence we went to the seafood place.

At any rate…by the time dinner was done rush hour was over so getting home was easy. Connie thinks they should save the champagne for their 50th anniversary…Neil thinks that’s a long time coming still and suggested Tuesday would be a great opportunity…but was held to be out of order. They’ll have to come to some agreement I guess.

Oh yeah…almost forgot. The kids and Alex will be here Sunday for a week. Connie finally talked them into coming down…or maybe they just got situated enough in their life with Bryan’s promotion and all to be able to take time off and travel. Jen can obviously only travel much during summers as she’s a teacher…but Bryan is now the store manager at his Burlington location so has a little more freedom to take time off as he’s in charge of scheduling. We’re going to do the Mystery Train with them one evening…it’s a dinner theater on an old passenger car train and during dinner the actors perform the play in the aisles of the dining cars…there are a half dozen or so cars and they do a scene in all 6 before moving onto the next scene all while passengers are eating a pretty decent prime rib dinner.

We read an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day…it was quoting from several NY State court decisions…and if the facts it quoted are accurate (which is the usual for the WSJ, they have opinion pages but in the news pages they play it pretty straight and call it like it is)…then all of the hoops that Mr. Bragg had to jump through to make the felony charges stick were not jumped through…and thus the conviction may not stand. As I said the other day though…they didn’t think it would stand all along in our opinion…this was primarily a political trial whether he did it or not…just like Hunter Biden’s is…and all they really want is to be able to label him as a felon for the election. If it is overturned but after he loses…they’ll be just fine with that. I won’t bore you with all the relevant facts in the article…but if you have a WSJ subscription you can see it
here. True…this is an opinion piece and not a news piece…but they’re quoting a bunch of previous court review decisions and assuming the current courts read the law the same way we could see the verdict overturned. The problem is that *all* criminal defendants are constitutionally guaranteed the right to due process…and previous NY court decisions on what due process is seem to indicate that he was not provided due process…and no matter whether you believe he is innocent or not…constitutional rights still apply to him…as they do to Hunter Biden and SCOTUS justice wives and angry House, Senate, and talking heads on both sides do. That’s the biggest problem with this…the man may or may not be actually factually guilty but the rabid haters and lovers on both sides aren’t interested in justice, rights, or due process…they’re interested in getting their way. Round here…we’re big supporters of justice and getting things right and observing all constitutional rights, even the ones we personally think less of…because they’re still rights.

One last thing before images. Today is June 6 and is the 80th anniversary of D Day when Allied forces landed in Normandy France during WWII. The landings involved about 350,000 sailors and soldiers and we lost about 4,500 killed with another 6,000 or so wounded during the landings.There are lots of people visiting and attending the various memorial ceremonies…and I don’t want to take away from any of them but did want to point out one veteran in particular. Robert Persichitti, a 102-year-old World War II US Navy veteran was in Germany visiting as he was getting to Normandy for the memorial services. He served as a radioman on one of the ships supporting the invasion and also served in the Pacific after Germany surrendered. Unfortunately…he passed away on the way to Normandy for the memorial. Round these parts…we respect all veterans (and would do so even if Neil was not one) and we salute the contributions made by Robert and his many comrades in arms in the 1940s and every other place and time our military has served the cause of freedom. Well done, shipmate.

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Ok, moving into the afternoon drive on Day 6.

Pride of lions about a couple of miles from camp (it’s located on the far side of the hill you can seen the distance just to the let of the tree)…there are 11 here…the dominant male, 3 adult females, and 7 less than adult females…the male offspring have been driven off by the dominant pride male. And just in case you’re wondering why most of the lion shots you’ve been seeing they’re either sleeping or laying down…remember…they’re cats…and cats sleep and rest…a lot. With the heat and their fur, they mostly hunt in the evening and nighttime and find some shade during daylight hours. These were lying there when they entered the park about 1500 and were still there as they left going on 1900…and most of them had not even moved. The dominant mail is back in the deep shade behind the upside down V of the trunks…he’s responsible for pride protection and is the king of the savannah (no jungle here) so he gets to eat first and has the best sleeping spot…and rarely hunts, that’s the responsibility of the females.

Superb Starlig.

Speke’s Weaver.

Black Wing Lapwing launch sequence…thank goodness for 20 frames per second to catch action like this. Lapwings are ground nesting birds in the same family as plovers and are larger than pigeons…about12 inches long with a 24 inch wingspan.

Thompson’s Gazelle…they’re the little ones about 24-28 inches tall to the shoulder with the black racing stripe.

Male lion yawning and showing his teeth after waking up…seems to have an insect problem.

Crowned Lapwing…similar to the Black Wing Lapwing (there are a bunch of lapwing species here although they only saw a few of them). It’s so named because of the white3 crown you can barely see on top of it’s head, when on the ground it is more prominent but these despite being a bit bigger than the Black Wing are more skittish.

They had a bit of a dry spell for most of the remainder of the drive until just shortly before sundown with the exception of this hyena.

Then along just before sunset they spotted an Eland…which is the largest of the antelopes in Africa…or at least in the Serengeti. The vehicles kept maneuvering to get shots of it with the storms and sunset in the background as by this time of day the light was just too low to get decent closeup shots without excessive noise in the image. Neil brightened these up a bit in post…it was actually darker than it looks like it was.

They did get one decent closeup.

These are all ofd the same individual but it kept moving to the right and the vehicles kept trying to get ahead of it so there would be an approaching shot but it kept altering direction to it’s left to avoid getting close (even though they were 50 yards away from it at least). They still liked the shot though with the storm and sun going down in the background. They had to leave before the color came out in the sky because it was a good half hour back to the camp and at this side of the park the guys at the gate are sticklers for being out of the park by sunset…at the first camp it was in the park so there was no getting out needed.

Interesting things found on the net.

Mom’s life.

Ya know…one thing about Africa is just how darn big the place is…on the map it looks like it’s the same size roughly as North America but in reality it’s a lot bigger…here it is with some other countries pasted on top of it at the correct scale for the map. And for those of you who have no frigging idea of where Tanzania is…it’s on the east side about where the overlays of India and Iberia come together and the Serengeti where he was in the India part but over on the west border where the Gulf of Mexico would be since the USA is to the left of the India overlay. It’s just a really huge place.

Cyas.

Ok, continuing in the series of posts from Neil’s recent trip.

Nothing new to report at home so let’s get right to it.

We headed out on Day 3 with our first stop at the kopje where the pride with the cubs was found. This little guy (and it was almost always the same cub as best we could tell) really loves using mom’s tail for a toy.

Mom and the kids.

Black backed jackal.

The kids wrestling.

Superb Starling.

Small kopje with an Egyptian Goose on top.

As close to getting them all lined up for a family portrait as mom could get them.

Dad watching the proceedings.

Rufous Naped Lark.

Blacksmith Lapwing.

Cheetah.

Storm over savannah and Acacia.

Common Kestrel.

Impala bucks.

Spike heeled Lark.

Looking ahead…we’ll probably be another 3 weeks posting images as Neil slowly culls through them and gets it down to a reasonable number of picks to denoise and process.

Interesting things found on the net…only 20 images today so I can put some of these in.

You may never have heard of the plant Brassica Oleracea, but six vegetables you can find in any grocery store and you eat on a regular basis are actually all from this one plant and they’re all human made products of selective breeding. All of the following plants were derived from it…and Neil eats exactly zero of them…well, he will eat cabbage if it’s on a fish taco.

Cyas