We had been promised a snow storm for the last week or so. It finally showed up about 10AM. The image is of a Morning Dove that likes to perch on that branch in sunny weather. My wife always asks what kind of bird that is because it looks to her as being large enough wonder about it. It looked to me like this bird decided to sit this one out, by hunching its shoulders and scowling a lot.
It was snowing pretty good when I took the picture.
We had a Chickadee show for just a brief moment and that was about it for bird activity. I pretty much just drew the shades, hunched my shoulders and scowled.
Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by spiffing up our place, so we can sell this dwelling and leave a cold and forbidding land. Since winter is here to stay and we’ve been below zero for almost a week, it has been game on to take care of things up here and move back to our other home, Kansas. Sure, we just got here, relatively speaking, why would we want to go back to where you just moved from, relatively speaking? Well, its not all that complicated, really. Where we used to live, the temperature can be 60 degrees in late December. That and our Son and Grandson live there, so, we spruce up the house, and head back South.
When we are not painting, or wondering when we will ever have a shower again, long story, I like to take pictures of birds and weather phenomena. You’ll notice the image at the top of this post is from yesterday, 10 below with a howling wind and the sun with a couple of sun dogs. I don’t think I ever witnessed sun dogs in South Kansas.
We gave up feeding seed because it just contributed to about 50 Sparrows freeloading on our seed and getting obese. We also had an issue with Starlings on exposed suet, so I made a little roof to go over the suet and now only woodpecker types get to dine on suet, rather than on our house, which is nice.
Clicking on any of the images will make them full sized.
From left to right, we have a Red-Breasted Nuthatch, a Red-Bellied woodpecker, the same Red-Bellied woodpecker with a female Downy woodpecker wishing the Red Belly would hurry up and get out of the way. The last picture is a male Hairy woodpecker. The look the same as the Downey’s, but are much bigger.
This is a Chickadee and you can tell it is cold by how he is hanging by one leg and warming up the other. It was around -7 below and a 20 mph wind.
This video is of the 2 Nuthatches’ we have coming to our suet feeder. The fist one is a Red-Breasted Nuthatch and the second is a White-Breasted Nuthatch.
Yesterday, I noticed a squirrel doing something odd. I grabbed my camera, and caught him popping his head out of the snow and then going back under, looking for a black walnut he had buried.
I switched over to video and it has this neat option of changing over to “shaky cam” without you having to do anything more than try to stand still. For me, that ship has long since sailed out of port. He found the nut and headed back to his place to eat. I asked my video editing software to smooth out my shaky hands and it laughed at me.
You get a brief glimpse of a Dark-Eyed Junco on the Squirrel baffle. They are normally ground feeders, but since it got cold, they have moved up to eat bits of suet that gets dropped from the woodpecker jack hammering on the frozen suet.
Today is Christmas Eve and I encourage you to find a church that preaches from God’s holy word given unto us and has not opened its door to the world. Celebrate the birth of our Lord, Savior and King.
Isaiah 9:6
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have a Raspberry Pi, which is a very small computer that can do many things. I have used them for sensing temperature, tuning on lights when you walk into a room, determining distances of objects, making a robot, and running my HAM Radio. I keep one outside our upstairs East window when it’s not raining. It will do as it is programmed to do, you set it and forget it. And I did. Went to sleep and in the morning, I remembered that I had left it outside last night and downloaded the images it had saved. In the first 40 frames, a rainbow, with a hint of showing a double rainbow. The whole thing in real life lasted for about 30 to 45 seconds. Neat!
The Pi Camera also caught a thunderhead in garish red before the sun went down. Also very neat.
I will leave you with Genesis 9:12-17. God’s Covenant of the Rainbow. 12 God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations; 13 I have set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall serve as a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. 14 It shall come about, when I make a cloud appear over the earth, that the rainbow will be seen in the cloud, 15 and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the rainbow is in the cloud, then I will look at it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” 17 And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
I recommend you picking up your bible and paging through it, after seeing a rainbow, a beautiful sunset, or whatever has caught your attention and give glory unto God Who made heaven and earth, The sea and all that is in them; Who keeps faith forever;Psalms 146:6
I have always been interested in atmospheric phenomena, which is a fancy way of saying I like watching clouds. Living in Kansas, I would have to say was the best cloud watching to be had.
This was looking west from our place in May of 2015. The spring in Kansas is burning season and the plume of smoke took on the colors of the sky.
Coming back to Minnesota, I was pleasantly surprised with offerings here. A bit understated, but nice colors.
I have a Raspberry Pi Zero, which is the size of my thumb. It is a micro-computer that can do many things, but mine has a camera. I set it in my East upstairs window and let it take pictures. The image above was from that Pi. It has also taken bird images.
I made a case for my Pi Zero from my 3D printer, stuck it on a tripod near the feeder, added a battery and let it do its thing. This image is of a young Oriole female and a female Downy that had developed a sweet tooth/beak.
These days, I have set my Pi to run a timelapse for a couple of hours and I take those hundreds of images and compile them in a video editor, Shotcut, and it makes a video out of them.
With a Drone, I grabbed this sunset.
The glory of the Lord is shown in each one of these images. I am exceedingly thankful for the gifts of my mind and the ease in which I have learned and any other thing that He has directed me to. I was a history lover and He blessed all of us with a book, written through His hand, of the history of His chosen people and the inclusion of us Gentiles. Not necessarily a history book, but a user’s manual, for all of us.
Psalms78:23Yet He commanded the clouds above And opened the doors of heaven;
Proverbs 25:14 Like clouds and wind without rain Is a man who boasts of his gifts falsely.
My only boast is Christ. Look at the sky and the glory He has made, and let He who created you, open the doors of heaven unto you. Repent, and follow the Risen Christ.
Once upon a time, I was content with grabbing my camera and snapping a photo of the birds that came to our feeder. Then, because we live in a fallen world, the Grackles and Starlings showed up and chased all the photogenic birds away. Fine, I thought, we will leave up the nectar feeders and watch the Orioles and Hummingbirds and be content with that. However, the ants showed up in such great numbers, they irritated the Orioles so much that they found less ant plagued feeders in the neighborhood and rarely come now. And I brooded…
I recalled living in a Southern land and having mastery over the skies.
I also recalled getting bit by tiny voracious bugs known as chiggers, as I stood in the grass, piloting my flying machine. I amended my memories of that time, and have relabeled them as bittersweet rather than halcion like.
Not everything is what it once was. While I could stride the land and do many wonderful things back then, I was not at peace, even with all I could do. Little did I know that the good Lord had plans for me, and through the mystery of undeserved grace, (Romans 5:15-17) allowed me to finish remodeling our house and have it be sold the first day on the market, for cash and more than we were asking, and just like that, we ended up back in Minnesota, where we had started, some 19 years ago. Looking back and knowing what I know now, it can only be providence as the way home was smoothed before us.
And then the Lord grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and made it very clear, I was now His. As I said, the mystery of undeserved grace. The last 5 years here have been one of reduction and addition. He took from me the skills of my body, I found out I had ALS about 6 months after we arrived home. He left me the knowledge I had acquired and kept my mind sharp and questing. He added to me a living heart and one that loved His word. I was allowed to learn about charismatic ministries and found them to be a false gospel and a false hope. Our only hope is Christ. (John 4:13-14) He led me to teach bible study and to disciple believers hungry for the word. As of last month, He allowed me to preach in our church when our pastor was on vacation. All of it a mystery to me as to why He pulled me from Hell’s grasp and blessed me with life.
Back to the brooding. I was not displeased with life and how it had turned out. The peace (Romans 5:1) granted to me, completely undeserved, but available to all believers, was a blessing beyond all understanding. Even though I have very little feeling in my feet or hands, and am pretty much housebound, I do not feel disabled. People are taken aback at this, expecting a tale of woe. I am at peace and serving the Lord, what’s to woe about?
I had a thought that I could fly a bit as quite a few people have mentioned to me that they would like to fly a drone too, so maybe this could stir up a conversation that includes the Lord. Since I don’t get out much, I have been amazed as people have been directed to me who need to hear about Jesus or maybe their faith needs a bit of stirring up. I don’t know how it works, but God’s got the details all worked out.
My fingers are a fair bit less responsive than the last time I was flying a drone, but somebody built an app (Litchi) to automate most of what you have to do with flying a drone and taking pictures. And since I have Photoshop, I can do a series of photos and let Photoshop stitch them together. That’s what we have here, from my first flight. Since Photoshop uses an algorithm that dictates how it should stitch photos together, it could care less if you have an odd perspective or shaky fingers or any of that stuff. Thankfully, it also lets you warp images just fine, hence the image you see here is a wee bit bent in areas. Ignore reality and run with it.
You should be able to enlarge the image to see all the details in their warped glory, at least I can on my Mac, I just spread my fingers apart on the touchpad. Your mileage may vary on whatever platform you use.
“There is nothing wrong with your Computer. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are now controlling the transmission. We control the horizontal and the vertical.”
We had a chance to spend some time at the Cordes family cabin last month, and sister-in-law Julie with her friend Alicia, came up from Kansas. We had all gathered together to celebrate Julie’s birthday. It is a beautiful place on a nice quiet lake in the woods of Wisconsin. The cabin will sleep about 20 with ease, so the 10 of us had plenty of room.
Got there in the afternoon and by the time all the hugs and handshakes and what not had gone on, it was evening and what happens in this family is the games come out. I am not a game player, but I hung around, whispering clues to my wife and listening to all the laughter.
The next day, after breakfast and a second helping of coffee, most of us headed down to the dock and Patti, Julie and Alicia wanted to take the paddleboards out before the breeze picked up on the lake.
Leighton wandered down to the dock, and the next thing you know, he noticed the dock frame had broken from the paddleboard rack. And he proceeds to get in the water and starts to fix it. My job is not falling off the dock and taking pictures, so I stuck to my job.
It was a beautifully mild June day and not many mosquitoes, so sitting by the fire pit and listening to Julie sing was a treat. That evening we went out to eat and listen to one of the locals sing, who happens to be a retired cardiac doctor and a fanboy of Bob Dylan. Mr Dylan and I are not on speaking terms and probably have been that way since 1969 or so. Everybody had some salad thing to eat, but I stuck to bread and water and called it good.
More games after we got home and they went way late into the night. About 1 am I heard guitars and singing from the basement, where Julie and Alicia were staying and I think it was Bob Dylan stuff to boot. It eventually petered out around 2 am-ish and a guy could sleep.
The next day was damp with sprinkles, and the ladies all went into Hayward for some shopping. Us men decided to drive the backwood roads in search of an Elk or maybe a Bear. We saw neither, but did happen upon 2 separate snapping turtles laying eggs on the side of the road. On the way home we came upon something a bit out of the ordinary. This is Ojibwe country and there is a reservation of theirs very near here. What we drove past was a cemetery of theirs.
Little wooden huts in which their relatives come and put things into these huts of their dead. Cigarettes, candy, jerky, and other things are placed in these huts. We got home about the same time the ladies did and the evening proceeded with more music, games and laughter.
Church Service with family, at the cabin.
The next day was Sunday and after breakfast, we arranged ourselves about the main floor and sang several songs of praise unto our Lord and Savior and I gave the sermon. It was the one written for next Sunday at our church, so it gave me a good chance to practice it with my family. That afternoon, we took the pontoon out and had a great time. Much singing, love and laughter.
We cruised right past a Loon and got sprinkled upon on the way home.
That evening, we went to a fish fry place, Pine Ridge on Sissabagama Lake, which lake, from the air, looks like an old man running, sort of. This is a popular place to eat and it is first come, first served.
We put our name in and ended up waiting outside the restaurant under the covered porch attached to the building. There we sat with another family waiting to eat. It was Alicia and Julie along with myself and my wife on our side. We also had the family that was waiting to eat in our grouping. The rest of us, that would be Randy, Patti, Carol, Ronda and Leighton, were on the other side, and the people entering and leaving the restaurant walked in between us. Alicia turns to Julie and says “I have a rap song I am working on and would like to try it now, and you need to sing the chorus, you know the one…”
And then she points to me and tells me I need to thump my feet to the beat, and I think to myself oh yeah, back home I’m known as Mr. Rhythm. She starts out rapping the tune, I start thumping my beat erratically as it’s the way my people, and Julie starts singing the chorus at the appropriate time. The people sitting next to us, who we do not know, are just smiling and starting to make mouth noises like they’re trying to sing along. Pretty soon we’re thumping the whole porch. People walking past and into the restaurant are smiling and bobbing their heads and it goes on like this for the next 30 minutes, one song after another. Those people sitting next to us, who’d been smiling and singing along with us, were called in to eat and then we were next, and entered the building. It is a large place divided into two sections, with two long tables in our section, we filled 1 table and the party who was sitting next to us singing outside, filled the other table. We place our orders, and it’s basically all you can eat chicken strips, fried fish or broiled fish if you prefer. You get a glass of wine and coleslaw, fry bread and eat as much as you want.
Julie gets up and heads to the ladies room. When she was out of ear shot, Alicia tells everyone in our group to sing Happy Birthday when she comes back to the table. And so we do, and so does the entire other table across the room. It was a great time and I ate too much. More games when we got home and more singing.
The next day was a travel day for our group of Leighton, Ronda, myself and my wife. We were headed back home. Carol, who had ridden up with us, was staying another week and Julie and Alicia were headed to South Dakota to visit Jessica and family, Leighton and Ronda’s daughter. The whole trip we saw 2 snapping turtles and one Loon, no Elk or Bears. We were about 7 miles out from the cabin on State Road 70 and Ronda was whining that she hadn’t seen any Bears. As she was saying this, I observed a Mamma Bear, 2 cubs of this year and a yearling bear with them. Mamma was sniffing a cabin porch, and her little ones were gathered around her. Leighton wheels the car around and Ronda takes a few pictures and I got a video of them. We could then go home satisfied and at peace. A good time was had by all.
