Just Caught A Blue Jay

I'm going to try a shorter post today. Maybe I can post more often this way. As you might be able to see in my pictures, I've been taking a lot of pictures of birds. I got this blue jay in some bad light, so I had to enhance the picture just a bit. I liked the bird too much to not share it.

I'd like to thank all of you who identified the junco in my last post. As soon as I saw the first identification from you I slapped myself in the forehead. I said in the post that I should have known what kind of bird it was. I've seen these little birds before in some of your posts, so I knew I've seen them before.

The problem is that my memory is nonexistent nowadays and my research skills are rusty. I actually saw juncos on one of the online bird guides, but theirs didn't look anything like mine. I thought even then that maybe my bird was a junco, but how could I say so if there was no match? Once identified though, I did a junco search on Google Images and there they were, hundreds of pictures that looked just like my little bird!

I also mentioned in my last post that I was going to go in search of the closest nature park to me, a place called Five Ridge Prairie State Preserve. The place is huge and I know right where it is, but I didn't know where the entrance was. I did my search and still can't find it! After I got back home I found an address for the place, so I'm going to try again in the next few days if the weather doesn't get too bad.

One thing neither you or I will have to search that hard for is all inclusive family holidays. That's because the link is right here. Much easier to find than my hidden nature park, and you won't have to drive a bunch of hilly dirt roads to do it. All it takes is a click of your mouse.

I really wish I would have taken a few pictures for you while I was on my nature park search. The tops of the hills I was driving on offer some spectacular views of the countryside. The problem is that I'm still a city boy so I'm a little nervous driving some of these places. In some areas there is a pretty huge drop, and I like to move on quickly to places where I feel a little safer.

I will definitely get those pictures for you some time in the future. It might not be until spring, but the wait will be well worth it. I guarantee that they'll be some of my best pictures ever. This country around here is the most beautiful I've seen, and I've always thought at an instinctive level that it is home.

I'll be back soon. I hope you liked my rambling little post, ad, bird, hills and all. Oh, the blue jay says, "Bye."

Mystery Birds And Other Adventures

I haven't searched for bird types for awhile so I'm having a little trouble now. I took these pictures of the bird you see here and I have no idea what it might be. I've searched several times but I can't find anything with these same colors or pattern. In these pictures it appears to be black and white, but I think the black may be a little more brown than it appears here.

The odd thing is that I think I've seen birds like these before in Michigan, and I think I may have identified them already, but I just can't seem to figure it out now. It's a fun mystery that might stay with me for awhile. And even though the pictures are a little dark, I thought they'd be fun to share.

I also have some other thoughts to share with you today. I almost didn't decide to publish my last post after I read through it. It seemed as if I was a little depressed about my new home, but that wasn't what I was really trying to say. I was trying to point out that living in the country isn't necessarily better than the city. It's just different. bioth have their good and bad points.

For instance, I just saw my second falling star in only a few weeks now! They're the only ones I've ever seen in my entire life! You won't see too many of them in the city. They are there, but the city lights hide them.

I'm also enjoying the peace and quiet very much. Most of the sounds I'm hearing are animals, not the sounds of crowded together humans. Also the people here don't seem to look at each other with the distrust that city people usually have to do out of necessity. And things just seem to move at a slower pace here, which I kind of like.

Let's change the subject a little bit one more time. I haven't really been able to get out and explore the nature parks the way I'd like to yet. It's just that I've been so very busy around my new property that I haven't had much time to go very far. So I'm glad there's plenty of nature around here.

That's all about to change. By tomorrow I hope to go in search of the closest nature park to me. It's only about 4 miles away, and it happens to be a part of the largest preserved prairie land in the entire state of Iowa. It's so big that up until now I haven't been able to find the entrance to the place. I found the right road yesterday.
 

Another thing is, I took my dog out for one of her nightly walks just before I wrote this, and she spotted an animal out there. She barked at it and it gave a squeal right back at here. I don't know what it was she was seeing in the darkness, but she wanted to eat it very badly. She didn't get her wish.

And finally, I keep looking at the bird in my pictures thinking it looks so familiar, but it's still a mystery to me. I wish I knew what it is, but I know I'll have to wait. A happy mystery that I'll still be thinking about even now that I'm done writing this post. Happy trails.


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