AT LONG LAST... ~~ LOOKING BACK ~~ PARTING SHOT

AT LONG LAST...

Spring is finally on the way!  We have had our last significant snow for this season, although I'm not ruling out the chance for a random flake or two. The piles of snow have mostly melted by now due to the very welcome 50 and 60 degree temperatures we have been having.

When it starts to turn warm here, all we want to do is get out of the house. Saturday we decided to do just that, so we headed to Randall Park with another bag of cracked corn for the ducks and geese. Other birds are welcome to it, too, but I'm not sure the duck and geese are willing to share.

As soon as we pulled up in the truck, a number of ducks came over to greet us. They didn't follow us as we carried the bag of corn over to an area where the snow had melted. We cut open the bag and dragged it around to disperse the corn. Immediately the ducks were there on top of it, celebrating the Cracked Corn Festival, denoting the impending arrival of Spring.

Those African Geese sure are noisy, you can certainly tell when they arrive. While they were eating the corn, there was a large white goose hanging around the male African Goose. She took a nip at the female African Goose at one point. I told Linda that the male must be having an affair with that white goose.

It doesn't take them long to gobble up a whole 40-pound bag of cracked corn. We love standing there and just watching them. They don't seem to be afraid of us. I snapped this picture below while this beautiful couple of Mallard ducks were eating right in front of me.

Mallards

There was still quite a bit of snow around on that day, but in the time between Saturday and now on Wednesday, I bet most of it is gone.

Still snow around the park

It was around 32 degrees when we were at the park, but we were glad to see that part of the pond has thawed out. The ducks and geese were enjoying taking a dip that morning. I caught a couple of Canada geese coming in for a landing.

Perfect 3-point landing (2 feet & tail)

I decided to try to get some in-flight pictures of the birds because I always admire the beautiful in-flight shots that my friend Alyssa Davis takes (check out her Facebook page View From My Window Photography). I managed to get a few that weren't too bad (examples above and in slideshow below). I adjusted my shutter speed to 1000 to be sure to freeze the motion. It worked out pretty good, if I do say so myself.

While at the pond area I watched several ducks up on the shore. In this picture below, you can see why the female Mallard has the coloring that she does. It does a good job of helping her blend in with the surroundings, so that she is pretty well hidden when she is sitting on her nest.

Can you spot both females?

At one spot in the pond the ducks had left their footprints in the ice. It made for an interesting photo.

Ice prints

I made a quick, two-minute slideshow of some of my pictures below. Although I would love to claim the music on this video as mine, it isn't. I used the music that came with the iMac Photos program. It seemed to fit the mood very well.

One last video to finish out our visit to the park. This little guy decided to take a stroll on the ice to get from one side of the pond to the other. (This video uses a percussion "loop" that I found on GarageBand).

LOOKING BACK

Since I have so many pictures that I transferred over from the PC, I thought I would start a new feature to include some of them in the blog. I'm not sure if I will put this in the blog every week, but it will pop up from time to time, depending on how long the blog is that week. This week's "Looking Back" picture was taken probably around 1976. It shows me with my first "real" camera, a Minolta XE-5. I absolutely loved that camera, it took the best pictures and was so easy to operate. Little did I know back then what cameras would become in the future. And little did I know that EVERYBODY (almost) would have one with a phone attached to it.

Is that really me?

PARTING SHOT

With the advent of warmer temperatures, Summer Girl has been spending more time outside (sometimes reluctantly). Linda managed to catch her waking up from a short nap in the sun, and grabbed this shot below.

My, my, what a big mouth you have!

That's all for this week, friends. Please check me out again here next week!