Grackles photographed from my desk

Cardinals in the yard (ours and neighbors)

New lens

I got a new lens yesterday, and in the current world, I ordered online, and picked up in the parking lot since no customers were allowed in the store.  Unfortunately the past two days have been cloudy, but not rainy, so I have been to try it out.  Not ideal without sun, but still some nice shots.  These are from Quiet Waters (free, but the speed limit still applies, and this afternoon it was really crowded).

Canada goose where we hoped to see osprey.  We have been surveiling this perch for the last month.

Buffleheads.

Photographer.

Innocence Incarnate

We are settling in for the long haul with COVID-19.  To that end I got a new desk chair, since I will be sitting here quite a lot.

This innocent looking cat has wicked claws, some of which are now getting ingrown and require attention.

My old desk chair, the object of his attention.  The foam makes it way all over the room, and the comfort level is way down.

I never saw him attacking the backrest, but the evidence is unmistakeable.  Before the kids went off to college, he left my chair alone, and attacked theirs.  

He also goes after one pants leg when we linger after dinner.

New chair, hopefully more cat proof.

A Floating Feather

Math in our Lives--Prime Day to Pi Day

From Prime Day to Pi Day, I've recorded 650 tracks around town, some of which were out of town, on my Garmin.  Here's a summary of where I've been;

All the places the Garmin has been.

Heat map of where the Garmin has been.

Blow up of the heat map.  You can see  the parking garage, my favorite path across the road, and the traffic light that never seems to get the timing right.  This emphasizes walking, as the points are much closer togehter which leads to a greater density picked up by the heat map.

Chincoteague--Egrets

Three Egrets

Egret and Heron

Chincoteague Standing Heron

Flying Heron--Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge

This week was supposed to be in Egypt

We were due to leave on Friday, and on Tuesday the trip was cancelled.  So we scrambled, and went on a car and camera trip.

This is the daily image of our route from March 8, from https://wvs.earthdata.nasa.gov/

where you can get the view from several satellites.  There was barely a cloud to be seen, which was true for all three days we were gone.

Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.  This is the view from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellite, also for March 8.  They have a view every few days.  The red color is really the near infrared, and shows how healthy the vegetation is.  The yellow symbols show where our pictures were taken.

Assateague National Seashorte.  The really bright red areas in the upper left are golf courses.

Turtles at Chincoteague

And one fell off the log.

Bird pictures coming.  I had 2000 pictures to go through when we got back.

Hiking today

Our local paper, sometimes affectionately called the "crab wrapper", has started a Sunday column on local places to go hiking.  This week they suggested Franklin Point State Park, and we were off.

Our route, on  2018 aerial imagery.  Not much to see, either on the image or the ground, about the airfield that was apparently here.  So I set off to see the history of the area in maps, courtesy of USGS.

First map was from 1892.  Not much there, except three small bays.

1905; a road is heading toward the water.

1944.  Map from the Army Corps of Engineers.

1957.

1957--Army Map Service

1957 Army Map Service, with purple additions by USGS from 1970 aerial photography

1997

2011.  This was during a minimalist era for USGS, as they moved to automate map updates.

2014

2014.  The maps had an imagery layer, which only worked on a computer.

2016

2016

2019

Plotting our path of the 1997 map shows where the trails followed the old runways.