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Statistics |
| Unique Visitors: 0 |
| Total Unique Visitors: 10489130 |
| Visitors Out: 7072 |
| Total Visitors Out: 22095 |
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| The Moon Through The Trees |
| 2012-01-31 02:15:00 |
It's time once again for a nighttime adventure, especially since I kind of like going out at night right now. I haven't been taking Isabella for many nighttime walks ever since those orbs showed up. No, it's not that I was frightened away. It's because she likes being out there on her chain, and I have gotten lazy.
But this time when I let her out on the chain I saw something very interesting peeking at me through the trees. It may look like the biggest brightest mysterious orb you've ever seen, but it's really the Moon, and it really was crescent shaped.
I know it doesn't look exactly crescent shaped in these pictures, but that's because the focus is on the tree. I tried to get some good Mooon pictures a little while later, but for some reason the manual settings that I normally use for that didn't work at all this time. And then the clouds came to hide the moon for the rest of the night. I hate when that happens!
You should be able to see a smaller dot below the Moon in these ...
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| A New Day |
| 2012-01-30 03:00:00 |
I got up this morning with the sunrise. My intention was to be outside when the birds were around. I heard them as soon as I opened my front door. But did I see them? That was the number one question. The answer was not good. The birds were all hiding in the pine trees around here, and they only came out to dart to the next tree.
The hiding birds only slowed me down a little bit though, because nature isn't just about birds or any other animal. Nature is everything. Everything we see all around us is part of nature. Mostly we think of the things outside as nature, so I set out to find some other aspects of nature.
I didn't know what would turn up, but then I looked to the east. It was the rising Sun! I hesitated to point the camera right at the Sun, but I never have taken a picture of the sunrise so I took a chance. These pictures are what I got out of it. Maybe not quite as spectacular as some of the sunsets I've gotten recently, but these are pretty good for my first sunrise pict...
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| Animals Where Are You? |
| 2012-01-27 03:00:00 |
I've been busy. I've been tired. And I almost forgot! I mentioned to a few people the other day that I was going to be taking a trip on the suddenly ice covered roads around here. I was worried that I was going to have some problems, but it turns out my fears of me and my truck spinning out of control came to absolutely nothing. There was some ice, but the truck handled it very well.
Something else that seems to keep coming to nothing lately is my search for pictures of wild animals, any wild animals. I've been too busy to go very far from home this past month, so I've had to search for nature here on my own property. I'm glad this place is as wild as a good nature park in places.
But I seem to keep going out when the animals have left. We get huge flocks of birds around here every morning, but I've been late getting out there each and every day. It's my own fault, but that's the way it has been.
I do have these two very bad pictures of this little bird that was a complete expe...
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| What's At The End Of The Road |
| 2012-01-25 03:00:00 |
I've been telling you for awhile that there is a creek at the edge of my property where the road ends. But I've never shown it to you until now. You can see it down there at the bottom of what I guess is classified as a gully.
I don't usually like coming all the way to the edge of this place because it's very steep, and I don't know of an easy way out if I fell down there. And it's deep enough that a serious injury would probably accompany any fall. You can see in the pictures that it is not only steep, but the edges of
this place are eroding, so a fall here isn't too hard to imagine.
This steep gully is what keeps a lot of wild animals from gaining easy access to my property. They still have many ways in, but this way is not an easy one. There is a corn field on the other side of the gully, so I'm guessing I'll see some deer over there some time this year.
It was very cold here when I took these pictures. Now it's back around the freezing mark and we've been getting free...
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| Crazy Night |
| 2012-01-23 03:00:00 |
I've been having a bit of trouble with something lately. I've been seeing plenty of animals, but only at night when I can't get any reasonable pictures of them. I've seen rabbits, opossums, too many feral cats to count, and now I think I've seen a skunk.
A big part of the problem is that I was up all night Saturday, so I ended up sleeping in the morning. In the morning is when the birds and many other animals like to come around here. So I wasn't exactly conscious when all the animals were out having a good time in the morning Sun.
Now before I continue, and before you think it's my own fault for missing these animals after staying up too late, I'd like to say that it wasn't my fault. I have somebody else to blame, and a little story of why. And who is that somebody?
I came up with a good idea to give myself a rest from walking Isabella multiple times a night. I parked my truck out of the way in the garage and let Isabella out on the chain instead of walking her. It gives her al...
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| What She Saw |
| 2012-01-20 03:00:00 |
Isabella pointed something out to me the other day. Most of the time when I go out to fill the wood stove Isabella is right there with me. She loves being outside except on the coldest days. On those days she only likes going out if there is a guaranteed walk with the leash in the deal. So what was it that she told me?
I didn't know that yet! I was too busy with the firewood. When I turned around I saw that she was intently staring at something. I kept looking at her to see what she was so fascinated with. Luckily I remembered to run in and get my camera to capture whatever was going on.
So when I came back out I saw that she was staring up into the trees. This obviously wasn't one of the feral cats that live in the area. Usually when one of those comes around Isabella goes crazy trying to get at them while they calmly walk by. They're smart enough to know she is on a chain.
So I looked up into the high parts of the trees to see what she was looking at. Can I draw out a story, ...
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| Frost On The Window |
| 2012-01-18 03:00:00 |
It's down to 1 degree Fahrenheit outside as I write this post. I've been out there several times to fill my wood stove. It didn't really feel very cold until the wind began to blow hard. I had to force Isabella to come back in because she wants to stay out there and bark at every little sound.
She usually doesn't like the cold very much, but she wants to be outside for some reason right now. Maybe that's because just a few short days ago the temperature was springtime warm. She enjoyed laying out there sunning herself. Maybe she misses that now and she's hoping this is just a trick.
The window in the outside front door keeps frosting over for some reason. Maybe it needs to be cleaned. Maybe Jack Frost is drawing his frozen graffiti on my door because he's trying to get us to come out and play. I don't want to play with him because he's a cheater.
I've seen other people share some excellent pictures of window frost so I thought I'd give it a try. Mine are probably not quite as go...
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| It's Just Snow |
| 2012-01-17 03:03:00 |
Oh no! Are the orbs back? No, it's just a bit of snow. Snow seems to show up very bright in this deep darkness I have here. I've taken many pictures of snow in the past, but without such bright results. Of course I used the flash to get this, but that's the best way to get snow.
The only problem is that the snow is a little bit too bright. When it's so dark the camera has to focus on something, so the snow comes out as these flat white blobs. I would experiment a little bit to get better pictures, but it's not really that fun standing outside in the middle of the night in single digit temperature taking pictures of falling snow.
This must really seem boring after so many days of mystical orbs and then a stupid prank to cap it all off. That's why I'm keeping this post short today. This is my way of easing back into normal everyday nature. If you want more to read then try today's article over at Nature Center Magazine or maybe my latest insane rambling at Rat Tales.
Nature Cente...
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| That Face! That Horrible Face! |
| 2012-01-16 03:00:00 |
You're not going to believe what happened to me when I went out to confront the orbs, and I don't know if I believe it either! I am shocked, I tell you, shocked! Poor Isabella not only refused to go out there with me, she tried to stop me from leaving the house. But did I listen to her? No! And now I wish I did! I'm not sure if I ever want to go back out there again!
When I got out there I heard a strange howling sound in the wind. No, it wasn't in the wind, it was part of the wind. This did not sound like coyotes. It sounded like voices! I was too stupid to take that as a warning, so I began taking pictures. I wish I hadn't done it!
It was only after the first flash that I finally knew something was wrong. I thought I heard my name coming from the wind, so I dropped the camera and looked up to see it floating there in front of me! It was an orb with a face! Upon seeing it I ran for my life back to the house.
When I got back in and gathered my wits I put the pictures onto the comp...
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| Stupid Dog Scaring Orbs |
| 2012-01-13 03:05:00 |
I've been thinking about this situation with the orbs, and I'm sure there must be a logical explanation for them. I've seen many scientific theories for their existence from moisture to dust. I'm almost certain that there is no moisture or dust in the air. There may be something on my camera lens, which I have purposely not cleaned since the orbs appeared.
I did this to see if the orbs would appear in the same places in my pictures. The only problem with that is they haven't. These orbs show up in all different places in the pictures, and they also only show up at that one end of my property.
The first time I ever heard of orbs was a few years ago. Brian May, the guitar player of the rock group Queen, was having a very similar experience with them, but his orbs were in the daytime. He also happens to have a doctorate in astronomy. He also did his own investigation. He thought for quite some time that maybe he had found actual spirits until he finally determined that they were nothi...
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