Today I'm bringing you this flock of turkeys I found at Broken Kettle Grasslands. The pictures aren't the best. And they're certainly not as good as the pictures from my last post. But in my defense, the turkeys were kind of far away.
Also as you can see, these birds really blended in with the background. I saw them only because they were constantly moving. And when I went to take pictures of them they decided I wasn't welcome, so they were always moving away from me.
The flock was much bigger than I'm able to show here. I took pictures showing the size, but the birds were so camouflaged you would have to squint to see them. These closer pictures are hard enough. I took these at various parts of the flock while they tried to escape me.
Turkeys are very common around here. Most that I see are in busier areas where I can't stop to get pictures. These are very far out in the country. There aren't many cars out here to run me over if I stand in the middle of the road. I was probably the only human for miles out here. My favorite kind of place.
It's been difficult for me to get any exploring and blogging in because of work. My business activities have overlapped with my blogging most of the time. I put this post together late last night after too many necessary business tasks. I wasn't sure I'd have time, but I really needed to relax, so I decided to write this one.
I really like working right now, but my blogging and adventuring have always been the best way for me to relax. I think I need to do some more of this again. I'm really glad I got this one in. I feel much better.
I also went and saw the new Queen movie "Bohemian Rhapsody." I recommend it to everyone. There are not many things I like more than Queen's music. The movie wasn't 100% accurate, but it was close enough. And I think everyone should be Queen fans. And with the end of that mini promotion, I'll talk to you later.
I visited the bison on my most recent adventure. I wasn't prepared for all of the birds that were swarming around them though. There were so many I was worried that they'd be flying around me like that too.
The birds seemed perfectly comfortable flying around and landing on the bison, but they stayed far away from me while I was out there.
I have no idea why it is, but these pictures seem far more impressive at full size than they do here on the blog. Try clicking on them for some of that. The amount of the birds comes out a little better like that, but they're still not quite right. Even so, I'm glad I finally shared them.
I planned on having these pictures up for you sooner, maybe last week sometime, but my dog died. The poor thing had cancer in her joints. She has been crippled for the past few years. She could walk but it was difficult for her. The cancer finally caught up to her over the weekend and she just couldn't go on anymore.
I didn't realize how much my life revolved around taking care of her these past few years. I love dogs, and she was a good one. But a crippled animal takes a lot of care. She was a big dog so it made things a little harder. Now I'm trying to adjust to life without her.
A pet probably doesn't seem like such a big deal to most people, but I love animals a lot and a person doesn't realize how much the work sneaks up on you to have to take extra care of an animal that was in her situation. Now we'll see how things will be like without all of that.
But let's get back to something more positive. Even though winter is quickly approaching, I'm going to try to go on some far off adventures very soon. Well, maybe not too far off, but farther than I've been going. I've already got a trip planned for next week. We'll see if I can come up with some good stuff to share from that.
It's mainly a trip so I can follow some clues about my family's ancestry, but there are some good nature parks on the way. I recently found out there are English knights in my ancestry. I didn't even know I was English until recently. I'm mostly Irish and Northern European, but I already knew that. That's why I look very good in green.
I didn't mean to get away from talking about these bison this time, but they really weren't the most recent thing for me. But I'm glad to have been able to share them with you. I loved taking the pictures and I also loved the little editing I did to the pictures. Try a good picture editor sometime. You can really help the true look of your pictures come out if you get some experience with it. I use Adobe Lightroom for most of my stuff.
The bison seem like the main thing here, but the birds are something for everyone to watch for. Fall is a good time to watch birds. They'll be in big flocks wherever you go. Take a look for yourself. I'll talk to you later.
I've told you many times in the past about the local river flooding every few years here. A flood is usually a very bad thing, especially when it's as bad as this has been. There are corn and soybean fields near the river that are usually devastated. But I haven't revealed a good result of the floods, until now.
Months after the flooding we are left with huge areas of wetlands right in the middle of the cornfields. What looks like lakes, ponds, rivers, and just general wet areas are distributed all through these places. These wetlands, as you have guessed, bring lots of wildlife.
I see all of this from the dangerous highway that borders these places, so I can't usually stop and get pictures. This time I had to take the risk of getting killed by a speeding vehicle to get a few pictures. I won't soon do it again just for normal safety reasons. But let's move on with this story.
I've seen many kinds of wildlife in these wetlands over the years. Deer like to go here to get water. You have to be careful when they're crossing the road. There have been small flocks of geese relaxing in this water at times. This hasn't been unusual enough for me to take the chance to stop though.
Then I also see egrets in a few places here and there. There are usually only a few at a time, but the first time I saw them I was tempted to stop. The first time I slowed down though, they decided to all fly away. I think I even shared a few pictures of them once before.
But then this time I saw what looked like flocks of hundreds of these egrets scattered around. I had to go back home and get my camera. I had to take a chance this time. This many birds was unusual. So I came back, and after having to wait for quite some time for traffic to lighten up, I stopped and took lots of pictures.
When I got home later I loaded up the pictures of the egrets onto the computer to see if any of them came out okay, because I had to set the camera to maximum zoom while I took the pictures. As you can see, the colors were a little off, but they were good! But there was one problem with my pictures of the egrets.
When I finally got to see these birds up close, they were not egrets at all. They were pelicans! I've never seen this many pelicans before in my life. And would you expect to see huge flocks of pelicans in an Iowa cornfield?
I took the pictures a few days ago. The pelicans are still hanging around a bit. Yesterday I saw the unmistakable shape of a pelican flying above my truck. I don't know what anyone else around here thinks of them, but pelicans area welcome sight to me. I'll talk to you later.
I'm back with a turtle! I wanted to show you this turtle in my first picture because I specifically searched for turtles and I found this one. It was the only one I found this time, but at least I got what I was looking for.
The swampy area where I found him is home to lots of turtles. I don't share every turtle I find because we don't want so many. There would be turtles all the way down the blog if I did that. If you read the same books I do that last sentence might be amusing. Probably not, but you'd know what I'm talking about.
Take a close look at the above picture. Do you see the birds? The one on the left seems to be keeping guard for the one on the right. The right one is lying down for some reason. I'm guessing they are mates, but I don't know that. They left when I got a little closer.
I wouldn't have moved in closer to them but they were right on the side of the road. You might think the one was injured or something, but it flew away just as easy as the other. It's not a busy road, but it's also not a very good place for a possible nest.
I threw this picture above in to show you non-photographers how difficult it is to take these pictures. I tried and tried to focus the camera on this bird, but the camera just wouldn't do it before the bird flew away. So I lost another one. It's a common occurrence with nature photography.
The secret is to just take as many pictures as you can and to use the good ones. If you're like me, you also use some of the bad ones. That's why I get to wear a rat costume.
If you want to be a little safer with your photography, then you can take lots of pictures of things like these. They don't run away when you point your camera at them. They do move a bit when there's a gentle breeze though, so nothing is foolproof.
I used the flowers last because I thought it would be good to end with a pleasant photo after that one with the bird. I'm also trying to not be so distracted so I will post a little more often again. I have to keep trying to remind myself to have some fun because I've been getting too wrapped up in business. I'm still trying to organize my time a little better for everything. Hopefully I'll get it right when I talk to you later.
I'm gonna tell you a story, about a bird I know. He was a ring-necked boy, standing in the road.
Okay, I stole those lines from an Alice Cooper song called Disgraceland. The words aren't exactly the same, but they're close enough. Of course, his song wasn't about a pheasant. My little story is though. At least some of it is.
I've seen pheasants around here kind of infrequently up until this year. I've been seeing lots of them since the weather warmed up this spring. The one in these pictures gave me a golden opportunity to get a few pictures.
It was standing there in the middle of the road when I came driving along. I had to stop a ways back so it wouldn't fly away or I wouldn't run it over. Luckily I have a good zoom on my camera. It was good enough anyway.
No animal just sits there waiting to get its picture taken. Just like humans, they don't really like it when they see a camera pointing at them. Eventually, they get nervous and decide to make a break for it.
And that's just what this pheasant did.
The middle of the road is a fine place to just stand there and contemplate the world when there isn't either a truck or a camera coming for you. But when one of those two things appear, or both, you just have to move on to a more safe and invisible area.
I don't blame him a bit. I would have probably done the same thing.
And right after this last picture, the pheasant was gone as if he had never been there. I searched for him up close and never was able to see him again. That's a good talent. I've tried it myself. And while I'm also pretty good at hiding, maybe I'm not quite as good as this bird.
So now we come to the end of my little tale. It was fun for me, and I hope you liked it too. I'll have more coming soon if I can fight off the mighty distractions of the outside world that have been fighting me like a monster lately. I'd like to get back to the same schedule I had last year at this time. We'll see what I can do. And until then, I'll talk to you later.
Yesterday I was sonically assaulted by blackbirds. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, so I wasn't exactly prepared for it. I had to move fast. That's the only way I can say it in so few words, but there's more to the story, so let me tell you exactly what happened.
I was sitting there watching something terrible on TV when suddenly I heard a horribly loud high pitched screaming coming from outside. It could have been some kind of machine ready to explode or maybe a gigantic tea kettle going off, but I knew immediately that it was not either of those. It was birds, thousands of them.
It was the sound of very many birds singing, but I don't think I have ever heard so many of them at the same time. I looked out the window and I saw that every tree in town was covered with them. There must have been hundreds of thousands of them out there. I've never seen or heard so many birds in my life. My very first instinct was to run and grab my camera, which I did.
After I got back I began taking pictures. I didn't take many because I knew they'd all be too similar. And I also remembered to get some video, which interrupted my picture taking. I'm really glad I got the video because my pictures are terrible and they don't come anywhere close to showing the sheer number of birds.
But what kind of birds were these? After reviewing my pictures and video, I saw that they were blackbirds. I always thought that there would only be one kind of bird in a flock, but there were at least two different kinds of blackbird here.
Most of these birds were the standard Red-Winged Blackbirds that I've seen many times before. But as you can see in the circled area in the picture above, some had yellow heads. These are called, predictably, Yellow-Headed Blackbirds. I've never seen this kind before this. Pretty cool!
And now here's my video. I have to warn you before you watch this video that you will hear the loud scream of the birds when you click that button. So if you're in a place that needs quiet, then maybe you should wait until later to watch it. Even so, watch it now anyway, because it'll be more fun that way. So this is my newest episode of Rat TV. Let's see if you can watch the whole thing without turning the sound down.
I included these last two pictures just to try to give you the best view I can. This one above has some of the birds in flight. I think that's cool in pictures. I'm not sure any of the pictures are what I was hoping for.
Maybe I should have processed the pictures a bit to give them a bit of zing. I could have brightened them up a bit or done something even cooler. But I was in kind of a hurry to share this post with you. So you get the raw version this time. Maybe I'll make a special post with one fixed up picture just to see what it might look like. Maybe.
The darkness in the pictures is because it was a dark and wet day. We just had another blizzard the night before, and the temperatures were now too high for the snow to remain. It was still snowing while all the snow on the ground was melting away. I think spring may be finally here. (I keep saying that!)
This has been a longer post than I intended. I hope you were interested enough to be able to read it all. Even if you couldn't I'm glad you stopped by. And with that, I'll talk to you later!
The weather around here has not improved at all. We've gone back into the deep freeze again. I think today might be the day we finally warm back up a bit. I probably could have gone out in the deep cold, but to be honest I just plain didn't feel like it. I've really felt the cold a little bit extra this year and I don't want to bother with it. It's been making me extra grumpy and not fun to be around anyway.
So I decided to dig around in some of my old pictures again. This time I only did two, but I also included the originals so you can see the difference in my editing. The originals probably didn't need to be edited, but I'm just having a little fun. Both versions are here forever.
The picture at the top is my edited version and this second one is the original. You can see that this one is a little bit duller than the newer one. Both good enough pictures, but I think the top one is a little better. What do you think?
The same goes for these next two pictures. The top is the edited version and the bottom is the original. Like the first picture, I fixed up the shadows a bit and I clarified the picture. You can see that the one above has a little extra sparkle. With this one, I also straightened it out a little.
Editing these pictures indulges my love of nature and my love of computer technology at the same time. And looking at these makes me want to get back out and explore a bit. Now that it'll be warming up a little I think I'm going to try out one of my nature parks.
Maybe in my next post I'll be back to my nature loving self with lots of brand new pictures. They'll look snowy, but snow is good too. I'm excited just thinking about being back out there now. And with the warmer weather, I'll be in a little better mood. Now the neighbors don't have to hide from me. I'll talk to you later.
Today I'll share with you some genuine wild turkeys in their natural habitat. These aren't city turkeys that I've shown you before or turkeys that lurk by the side of a busy road. These turkeys live inside a place called Broken Kettle Grasslands, which is the largest area of free wild prairie left in America. These turkeys are truly wild and free.
I thought with Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow this would be a perfect time to share these turkeys with you. For those of you who are not American, we celebrate Thanksgiving here every year to show our thanks for what we have. We think of it as part of what being an American is all about.
As you can see in the top left of this turkey photo, there is that mysterious object from my previous post. Before I go on I have to admit that I lied to you again. I do that much more often than you'd think. I'm a terrible liar. I knew what this was all along. I just wanted you to find out for yourself. It's more fun that way, and now you'll remember it longer than you would have otherwise.
But I'm still not going to come right out and tell you. Where would the fun in that be? If you really want to know the answer to what the mystery object is, then go to my last post and read the comments. It's there that you will find the answer. When you're finished you will feel happy and exhilarated because of that fun little quest I sent you on.
My newest episode of Rat TV is an interesting experiment I'm trying. The Windows 10 Photos app has a new feature where you can make your own videos with a few simple clicks of your mouse. I made this with a combination of pictures and a video. Let's see how it turns out.
The app to make the video is pretty cool. It enabled me to do in a few seconds some of what it took me hours to accomplish before. I think I'll still use my main video editing software for special stuff, but this quick app is good enough for most things.
I've been telling you recently how I've been having a bit of trouble with my nature stuff. Some of it came from a bit of fall depression that happens to me every year. But much of it also came from just being too busy for any of this fun stuff.
I think I may have solved this problem now. I have now finally found a time in the day to set aside for my blogging activity. I don't usually do much of anything else during this time so I think I have plenty of time to get my blogging done. So after a short time to organize everything just a bit I think I may be able to get back up and running like I want. And with that, I'll talk to you later.
Have you ever wondered if turkeys could fly? Many people think they can't. I remember years ago on a comedy TV show called "WKRP In Cincinnati" the radio station on the show did a promotion where they dropped turkeys from a helicopter. The turkeys inevitably thudded to the ground. It was a huge disaster. The last line on the show was the station manager saying, "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." So, is that the verdict? Is it settled then?
No. The turkeys in my top picture seem to be flying just fine. But wait! They don't seem to be very high off the ground, do they?
That was going to be my proof. I guess I'll have to go even further. Let's go to the next picture then.
This turkey above is flying just fine, isn't it? Maybe. It doesn't seem to be very high off the ground, does it? Maybe it's just hopping. Sometimes pictures can be deceptive. So maybe that's not proof then. Let's move to the next picture and see if I can finally show you flying turkeys.
You looked ahead, didn't you? I knew you would. So you already saw this picture above of these two turkeys in mid-flight. They are indeed flying. I'm not sure there can be any mistake about it now.
But they don't seem very high. Maybe they can only fly a little bit. And the first one doesn't look very graceful, does it? That second one looks like a regular old bird though. It's flying just fine. But maybe we can do a little better here. Let's move to the next picture.
Now this turkey here is up there pretty far. And you can see that it is indeed a turkey. Turkeys aren't the best flyers, but they can indeed fly. They like to sleep in the tops of trees around here. They have to get up there somehow, and they don't climb. Now you can call all your friends right away to inform them that turkeys can fly. Go on. Do it right now. I'll wait.
You're back from your call? Let me quickly tell you how I got these pictures. I stopped on this dirt road because I saw one lone turkey wander into the ditch at the side. I wandered over there to get a couple of pictures when all hell broke loose!
It wasn't just one turkey. It was an entire flock. As soon as I got near, turkeys kind of erupted everywhere. The flock went flying in every direction. I would have gotten video, but I was too surprised to do much of anything except get these pictures I have here. I hope you like them.
So that's my story. Turkeys can fly. And I am a close-up witness to this ability. This was another everyday adventure that I will never forget. This was a good one. I've wandered into some doozies in the past. I wish I could have described it a little better, but this will have to do. I'll talk to you later.
There seem to be many creatures in the pond I like to watch. I've seen turtles and many types of birds. Oddly enough, I've never seen any alligators. I guess I would be the first one to see an alligator in an Iowa pond. But I have ducks instead. They're just as fun. They really are.
I followed these two to their destination on the other side of the pond. They wanted to be over there because I was over here. Ducks always seem to swim away from me. Not like my old friends, the geese.
These ducks in the last two pictures were very difficult to see because of the bad lighting. I edited the pictures as much as I felt was reasonable so I could share them properly without them looking too obnoxious.
You can see both ducks if you look at the pictures very closely. They really are there. I mean it.
Why do I share these pictures that are so hard to see? Why not just share the good ones? Because that wouldn't be real life. These shady pictures are real life. This is how I really saw the ducks. This is a real experience. What I really like to share is my experience, not some old fancy pictures.
So this was a view of another everyday adventure by the guy stuck in an old smelly rat costume. I rented this suit nine years ago as a joke. I wonder if they're still waiting for me to return it. I probably never will, even if I somehow get this zipper unstuck, because I probably owe them a great deal of money for it by this time. I'll talk to you later.
I finally found the prize I was looking for! I found this great blue heron in the same pond that the turtles live in. This was the kind of thing I have been looking for in that pond all along. I just knew one of these birds would return.
The first time I visited this pond I saw a big bird in the water there. I don't remember whether it was a heron or an egret, but I knew I wanted to go back with my camera for one of those big animals. It took me all summer this year, but I finally did it.
This picture above is my first picture of the heron.
What? You don't see it?
I didn't see the bird at first either. I was just taking random pictures of the pond.
Look at the far left of the picture right in the middle. The heron is right behind that clump of tall water weeds. You may have to click the picture to get a better look. Maybe you still can't see it. That's okay, I didn't either.
I finally saw it when it got scared and decided to fly away. These birds don't fly very fast so I was able to get a few pictures of it in flight. It even took me a few seconds before I recovered from being startled from the sudden movement to get the pictures.
Then I had to run to another section of the hidden pond to find out where the bird landed. I had to run past lots of trees that blocked the pond from view. I was surprised that I found the heron again at all. But I got several more pictures after I did.
It took a few minutes for the bird to notice me there furiously taking pictures. But when it did it flew away again to another hidden place in the pond. This time I couldn't find its new destination. That's okay because I got the pictures I wanted. Now this great blue heron will be a worldwide celebrity.
It's taken some time, but I'm finally seeing the animals again. I'm getting acquainted with nature again. The summer is at an end, but there are animals in the winter too. And soon enough warm weather will be back again. I'm ready for it all. I'll talk to you later.
I saw some ducks recently in a swampy pond at Deer Creek nature area. You might think that's no big deal, but it really is to me. Let me tell you why.
For some reason, I don't see many ducks around here. There is a lot of water here, but none that water birds really like to visit very much, except this one place. So far every time I've visited this pond I've seen water birds of some sort. But nowhere else.
Until just recently I usually forget this place, but I'll be visiting very often from now on just so I can get some good bird pictures. These today are far from my best. Next time I'll have to try to get a little closer so I get some actually good pictures for you.
The one thing that I did find out was that these ducks aren't the usual kind I get. Usually, my ducks are the standard Mallards that I see a lot. These ducks are clearly not Mallards.
From what I can tell these appear to be Wood Ducks. You can't get a good look at them from my pictures, but the head of the mother seems to give away the identity.
I have a new episode of Rat TV for you today! You'll like this video of Ducks In The Water because I made it short enough to keep you happy. I'm extra pleased with this one because I used a new video editor on it. Lightworks is my new video editor. Once I learned a little about how to use it I'm very happy with how my first video turned out.
This video of the ducks was actually two videos that I took, and I needed to merge them into one. For awhile before this, I was just uploading my videos straight to Youtube. I've never been happy with that. Even though my videos aren't much, I still like to enhance them just a bit.
The picture above is a screenshot I took from the video. I added the picture in at the last moment. I used to get pictures like this years ago in an old piece of software I used to use for my videos. I wanted to see if I could do it again now. The good news is that I can now do it again. So now even if my other pictures don't satisfy me enough, I can still get some things from the videos.
I watched this family of ducks disappear into the weeds three times. At first, I thought they were two different groups, but after looking at the pictures they appeared too similar to be different ducks.
I once saw an Egret in this pond so I know other birds come here too. I didn't have my camera with me back then, but I'll be sure to have it every time from now on. And I think I'll visit this place again this weekend to see what's going on. Who knows what I might find. I'll talk to you later.
I had an encounter with a Red-Winged Blackbird at Deer Creek Wildlife Management Area the other day. Maybe you might really call it a showdown. This bird did not want me to be there at all. It did its best to warn me off, but it mostly didn't work. Mostly.
I wish my pictures could have captured the best of the drama, but I just wasn't quick enough. I was actually distracted at the time because I was busy geocaching. I had to keep switching apps on the phone and I wasn't fast enough. Let me explain better.
This bird kept hovering right above my head and squawking at me. Whenever I would get the camera ready the bird would fly to the side and land on a tree nearby. I was a little frustrated by that, but I was even more distracted looking for the cache.
In the end, I came to the realization that the cache I was looking for was maybe very close to this blackbird's nest. So that was the end of my search. I knew when it was time to back down. I didn't want to cause this poor bird any more distress.
And looky here! I have another brand new episode of Rat TV for you today. It shows this red-winged blackbird desperately clinging to a treetop on this very windy day. It was up there because it didn't want to lose sight of this evil rat-suited invader that was lurking to near to its nest.
There really is a bird in the picture above. You just can't see him. Actually, you can see it if you look very closely. I could have cropped the photo to give you a better look, but I thought it looked better this way. I kind of like this picture.
None of my pictures of this bird today are very good. The bird never came out very well because the phone camera just wasn't up to the task. It's made for more close up pictures. I'll have to start bringing my big camera with me again. I like the feeling of freedom I get with the smaller camera, but the bigger one zooms in at things like birds so much better.
Now that I'm getting out more and taking more pictures I'm finding the need for the better zoom again. I knew it would happen eventually. So now maybe I'll get more animals to share with you. We'll see. Either way, I think I'll have some good stuff. I'll talk to you later.
