Transition

The transition of seasons always causes me to sigh. What will there be to photograph as seasonal subjects disappear? What will there be to post about if I have no images?

Yet I know full well there will always be a subject worth photographing.

Though I’ve given up on close-ups of Venus. Grant attached the tripod a few days ago but with no better results, the planet being very much too far distant for my lens.

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“Why not take my picture? I’m right here.” said Little Man.

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“After all, isn’t your blog-thingy supposed to be about cats?”

Well yes, cats – and other things, I believe the description says.

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“Things? Cats are not things!”

No, Dee Dee. Indeed not!

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One of my subjects that vanished recently was Gimpy, the peg-legged grackle that seemed to have been left behind when its flock departed for warmer climes.

Hopefully Gimpy is safely winging his/her way south.

A week later, another out-of-season bird turned up. It’s another Notso, this one a male.

Two years ago, a female brown-headed cowbird got left behind. Cow birds lay their eggs in the nests of other species and we decided that she thought herself to be a sparrow, hence Notso.

Not so much a sparrow.

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Notso stayed with the sparrows for weeks, then in November a noisy flock of starlings perched in a tree in the bottom field, kicking up a racket. As I recall, a single starling made its way up to the hedge where Notso had been living and later that day, when the starlings were gone, so too was she.

It was my opinion the starlings had come to collect her.

We tell ourselves what we must, but it seemed possible she’d gone with the flock.

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The last of the groundhogs took itself off to its burrow for the winter a week or more ago.

Little Red has been cleaning up the carrots that were left over.

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Zoomer the chipmunk considered an apple core but decided peanuts were a better option.

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The turkey babies have grown up a lot.

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The flock often strides past my window, pausing to groom their beautiful feathers.

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Which gives me a chance to admire them.

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This morning a couple of male turkeys were gobbling up on the hill above us. Perhaps they are looking to join a flock for the winter. Hunting season here is from Oct 18th – 31st but I’m happy to say it is very limited and restricted by many rules.

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Hunting is part of wildlife management and of course I understand it is necessary to keep their numbers in check, for their own good. But every year more land is taken away from wildlife. This had become more than I could bare watching where I lived in Washington State, outside Seattle and it is happening here too now, trees being felled to build condominiums and offices, while abandoned farms remain rotting. It makes no sense.

This continent is so stunningly beautiful. How truly wonderful it must have been before Europeans thought to possess it, to “civilise” it. To plunder it.