Another small elephant pile of pleasant tidbits

Wibble

Be forewarned: this post is going to go all around the houses, through all the back alleys, round and round until it probably ends up nowhere. So if you value your time at all, hit the back button now!

Having said that, I plan to make this elephant pile have a little more depth to it than the other small elephant pile I wrote some time ago. (However, I’m pleased to see that after all this time, that post still has relevance in the world of today.)

Speaking of ‘the world of today’, one thing I did today was to renew my ‘personal plan’ with WordPress. For two years (because there’s a discount for that, and I’m a cheapskate). I did so because I hate adverts with a passion, so I wanted to ensure that you, Dear Reader, weren’t being subjected to any of these loathsome things when visiting ‘Wibble’…

View original post 473 more words

Broken Pots , all may not be lost

Michael Coopers Studio

During recent strong winds I lost a rather nice pot when it crashed to the ground.

Remembering an article I had once read I thought I might try my hand at the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi.
Many years ago a Shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, sent a cracked chawan—or tea bowl—back to China for repair on it’s return he found that it had been done with unsightly metal rivets so he ordered his own craftsmen to do something better and Kintsugi the art of Golden Repair was created. It is all part of  wabi-sabi, the Japanese philosophy celebrating imperfection, impermanence and incompleteness.

                                    The materials I used were Gorilla Epoxy Glue
in a twin tube dispenser and 100 gm Gold Mica Powder via Amazon a jar of which should last me out unless I defy…

View original post 185 more words

Bear River Refuge – Feb 1 2020

BlueRavenBirders

Shanna and I headed south towards Salt Lake early in the morning. The plan was to meet up with my sister and go to a Lunar festival. I knew we left early enough that if we wanted to do some shopping we could. After much discussion we decided to go to Best Buy. Shanna has been looking for a new computer monitor, headset, speakers etc… I didn’t think I needed anything.

We managed to show up during a great sale and Shanna found everything she needed and potentially some things she didn’t. We checked out the new fancy refrigerators because I think mine will need replacing in the next few years. Nearby were vacuum cleaners. Now I haven’t had a new vacuum cleaner in at least 15 years. While in Texas I got to use Rebecca’s marvelous cordless Dyson. Guess what was on sale… During all of this shopping madness…

View original post 164 more words

Review: Bird Brains

BlueRavenBirders

Bird Brains: The Intelligence of Crows, Ravens, Magpies, and Jays
Candace Savage
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Greystone Books 1997
ISBN-10: 0871569566
ISBN-13: 978-0871569561

This is one of my favorite bird books. It’s a thin book at 144 pages but it is large in size almost 10″ by 10″ with lots of color photos showing off corvids and their behavior. I have read large chunks of this to my co-birder on one of our Texas birding trips. It’s entertaining, well written, and the research it is based on is very good. Buy this if you can! – Jenny

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Brainy Birds 2
Beginnings 35
Belonging 62
Bread and Butter Issues 92
Notes 124
Bibliography 126
Index 131

From Amazon:
“Birds have long been viewed as the archetypal featherbrains—beautiful but dumb. But according to naturalist Candace Savage, “bird brain,” as a pejorative expression, should be rendered obsolete by…

View original post 145 more words

Rook in Black and White

Diary of Dennis

Here is a photo that I thought would be bad too but when converted to black and white, it looked quite interesting. Seeing the flying rook from the side in just black and white reminds me of logos. I mean, the rook from side view would actually work well as a minimized logo element and I bet I’ve seen something similar in logos, either in logos of PC games or logos of movie or game companies. I just don’t know where I’ve seen that, but I am pretty sure I did. Also, I must say I like pictures where you just can make out the shape but not the structure of the subject. I think that’s minimalism, huh?

View original post

Wagtail On A Tree Stump

Diary of Dennis

Above you can see a wagtail bird on a tree stump. I am always happy when I can take photos of birds, but when I find a waigtail I am even more happy because they are a bit more difficult to find. When I was in Reinfeld, I noticed you have a higher chance to find them near the pond called Herrenteich. In Lübeck you find them more likely near the Trave River but I had a much better chance to find them in Reinfeld, for some reason they are much more likely to occur there, probably because it’s outside of the city. So, my lesson was that they are mostly near the water, except in the case of the photo above, that one was shot near farm close to a small forest. That’s one of the big reasons why I like photography, it’s not just about…

View original post 43 more words

Walking White Wagtail

Diary of Dennis

I shot so many bird photos when I was in Reinfeld for half a year, that I still didn’t finish to upload them all. But I mentioned this already in other posts and I will continue to work on my backlog. In this post I want to show you a photo that I shot at that time. During a hike, I spotted a white wagtail on the path. I could get quite close. The bird didn’t fly away, it walked with a limp so that I assumed something was wrong with one of the legs and the wings. That poor thing, but I generally don’t intervene, because that’s nature, and I can’t change that. You can watch more bird photos on my blog if you like.

View original post