Priority Mail Stickers
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A day late, but Happy Caturday! I don’t know what it is about boxes, but Josie and Sebastian like them a lot. You should have been here to watch Sebastian take 10 minutes (at least) to squeeze himself into this one. ;) *Beth’s photo.
Les abeilles sont les "premières" polinisatrices qui adoptent des priorités de captation du nectar des fleurs. Priorité de qualité, priorité de distance par rapport à leur "ruche", priorité de couleurs des fleurs convoitées. Ici, une abeille reste longuement au fond de le fleur sans que je puisse apercevoir son moindre profil. Et c'est l'instant magique ou je distingue à peine un début d'antenne...
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Bees are the "first" polinizers that adopt priorities for capturing nectar from flowers. Quality priority, distance priority from their "hive", color priority of the coveted flowers. Here, a bee stays at the bottom of the flower for a long time without me being able to see its slightest profile. And it's the magic moment when I barely distinguish a beginning of antenna ...
Philip
Found some time, after taking down the Holiday Lights and Christmas Decorations, to scoot over to a local wildlife sanctuary; the trip paid off ;-)
Cooper’s Hawk:
Among the bird world’s most skillful fliers, Cooper’s Hawks are common woodland hawks that tear through cluttered tree canopies in high-speed pursuit of other birds.
Dashing through vegetation to catch birds is a dangerous lifestyle. In a study of more than 300 Cooper’s Hawk skeletons, 23 percent showed old, healed-over fractures in the bones of the chest, especially of the furcula, or wishbone.
A Cooper's Hawk captures a bird with its feet and kills it by repeated squeezing. Falcons tend to kill their prey by biting it, but Cooper’s Hawks hold their catch away from the body until it dies. They’ve even been known to drown their prey, holding a bird underwater until it stopped moving.
Once thought averse to towns and cities, Cooper’s Hawks are now fairly common urban and suburban birds. Some studies show their numbers are actually higher in towns than in their natural habitat, forests. Cities provide plenty of Rock Pigeon and Mourning Dove prey.
(Nikon Z8, 600/6.3, 1/640 @ f/6.3 ISO 90, edited to taste)
Found this lone dandelion on our front lawn and, like any self-respecting photographer, I immediately spent half an hour photographing it before mowing. Priorities.
This is an in-camera stack of 10 focus-shifted shots.
It occurred to me that I’ve never actually posted a macro of a whole dandelion before — only segments. About time I gave one the full spotlight.
Dandelions really do blow me away… such tiny plants with so much air-mbition.
Hope your lead-up to Christmas is going well. Our Christmas LEGO sets are nearly finished, I’ve got my final boozy party tomorrow, and all my shopping is done - though buying just one present thanks to Kris Kringle definitely helps!
Thanks, as always, for stopping by — your visits and comments are truly dandy!
I'm just a beginner when it comes to watching and photographing birds. So it was a pleasure to see and photograph my first Bluethroat in the nature reserve close to my home, where I come so often. It was early morning, the sunlight was quite strong. And as often with reed birds, they don't always sit in the perfect position for the picture. But that's allright, they have to straighten their priorities ;) Anyhow, strong sunlight on the left side of the bird and a lot of shadow (which I took away a bit with LRC) on the right side. A classic, the Bluethroat sitting on a reed plume.
Bluethroat, Luscinia svecica, Blauwborst
Het Doove Gat, Haastrecht, The Netherlands
Nikon Z8
Nikon Z600mm f/6.3 VR S
A triad of Santa Fe Railway GP60Ms pull priority intermodal traffic through the Coconino National Forest east of Flagstaff, Arizona on Sept. 30, 1990.
The CHCPTL got first dibs for working Midway on this morning and they are stretched out all the way down to the Commercial Lead at St. Anthony. The Portland Z is waiting back at Van Buren while the South Seattle Z is pulled up here at EBCS Midway anticipating a tailend setout. East Hump kept main 1 open for other moves, and following a CPKC train was TCW's St. Paul Turn.
Zamosc, eastern Poland.
Picture No: 2022-01-17-5504_P_FS
Edited in Canon DPP 4:
Digital lens optimizer: Yes (50)
Diffraction correction: Yes
Chromatic aberration: Yes (100)
Color blur: Yes
Peripheral illumination: Yes (19)
Distortion: Yes (100)
Brightness: +0.33
White balance: Auto (White priority)
Fine tune: Not changed (0.0 / 0.0)
Picture style: Neutral
Gamma: Auto (Not changed)
Contrast: 0
Shadow: +4
Highlight: -5
Color tone: 0
Color saturation: 0
Sharpness: Yes (Unsharp mask)
Strength: 3
Fineness: 1
Thresholt: 3
Cropping: Not cropped
Angle: 0.00.
No photomontage.
Colors not changed
Framed in Photoshop 6
Adult male
This handsome bird was on our priority list and we found a few of them in the Alaskan tundra.
The Bluethroat is found in North America only in the tundra of Alaska and the Yukon Territory. It is common, however, across Europe and Asia where it is not restricted to a tundra habitat.
Male Bluethroats from Alaska to northern Europe have red centers on their throats. Those in central and southern Europe have white throat centers or entirely blue throats.
To draw the monkey's attention, I snap fingers, gesture, whistle...., but the distraction proves too great to ignore.
Monkey forest - Ubud - Bali - Indonesia
Three day lillies in the garden this morning! They bloom and fade in a flash, so ...work will just have to wait.
Our first surprise : the gentoo penguins are waterbirds but their nest is far from the sea, sometimes on hills.
For us, as short time visitors, the rules are simple :
Clean your clothes and bags before landing, never put anything on the ground, never sit down, never get on your knees, never approach less than 5 meters from animals, give them a total priority, move back if they come to you.
And enjoy, it's magic !!!
Falkland islands.
With the usual six GEs (4x2) for power today, high priority intermodal traffic heads thru a very frosty North Dakota prairie.
Westbound priority intermodal 217 (Charlotte, NC-Chicago, IL) blasts out of Welch Tunnel at Welch, West Virginia on May 25, 2022.
There was a time in railroading when the lowest numbered train symbols, were the highest priority on that railroad. Burlington Northern's Pacific Zip, Train 3 and 4 come to mind, along with CP's 'Canadian' numbers 1 and 2, as well as Union Pacific's proud City of San Francisco, numbers 101 and 102. The low number left no doubt in any junior railroader's mind as to which train was going in the hole during a meet, or departing a terminal at the front of a fleet.
Much later, after intermodal containerized freight began booming in the late 1970's for railroads, this traffic was handled as a priority cargo, and handled by existing time freight trains, or in dedicated service trains. If there were 'cans' aboard, you knew you were seeing a 'hot' train. Dedicated service doublestack trains of solid sets of a single shipping line's containers were typical in the 1980's and early 1990's. Union Pacific's partnerships with APL and K-Line, Burlington Northern's Sea-Land, Hanjin and Evergreen trains, and Southern Pacific's Sea-Land, and NYK stackers made it clear that there was hot competition for which railroad could haul marine boxes the with the quickest, most reliable, and economical service.
Fast forward to the current decade and railroads strive to handle domestic containers with some degree of alacrity, while marine containers are hauled slowly and in huge combined trains striving to tie up the railroad, while expending as little fuel to eventually get the cargo to the destination. Railroads embracing the 'PSR mentality' take this to the extremes, with 12-15,000 foot long land barges dragging hundreds of containers from all varieties of shipping lines that are destined in the same approximate direction.
After finishing work on a recent trip to Kamloops, I was pleased to hear CN Q101 departing town westward around the same time I was. I was even more pleased to spy the train across Kamloops lake, and see it running in 1990's trim; two locomotives and a 'short' train length of around a mile. The 101 skirted around the eastbound 11,000ft long land barge Q116 at Jaleslie, and was charging hard westward at 40mph. With the shot you see above at Walhachin in mind, I hurried down the highway. Late afternoon in the Thompson Canyon is a busy time for both railroads, with the early morning fleet of eastbounds out of Vancouver arriving, and the steady flow of westbounds departing with the perennial maintenance of way windows ending for the day. My scanner annunciated back to back CN detector broadcasts, indicated the Q101 was about to run into a fleet of eastbounds. To my chagrin, the dispatcher stuffed the westbound intermodal into the siding at Savona to languish for an hour to meet an empty coal train, and empty grain. The cloud bank to the west, threatening the sun gave me some minor anxiety while I waited, but in the end the resulting image was likely better for the delay.
I know this train is only third, or perhaps fourth in terms of scheduled priority over the line, but the experience described above was another reminder to me how the only thing that stays the same, is change.
P.S. This counts for my quota of 'full sunlight' images posted this month. Brace yourselves for low light and no-light, BSLT images forthcoming.
My priorities are straight in 2026. There will always be coffee. That is it. Simple.
Our blog name is on the photo. I know you can find it!
Worrying about the upcoming grade crossing wouldn't be the first thing on my mind as I headed across the North Dakota countryside on this farm road west of Douglas.
CP 3015 leads westbound crude oil empties on CP's Newtown Subdivision in late 2011, the year the four-axle restriction on this line was lifted.
To see what this looks like when the water is much lower, check out Robert Scott's image from summer 2017.
One of my most prized possessions: a roll of dutch priorty mail stickers. It allows me to send postcards all over the world.
I highly recommend postcrossing.com
No flowers: 8/20
Montana Rail Link's nightly LAUBOZ-20 rolls by the pair of abandoned grain elevators, at Reed Point on 10/20/2022.
LAUBOZ was one of the cooler trains on MRL, being high priority and often lead by a pair of SD40-2XR's, the train would make good time out of Laurel in perfect lighting.
However, the job would be cut after the Twin Bridges derailment/collapse and the traffic lumped onto the ML and LM. BNSF did revive the job, however I am not certain if its still around or not.
Montana Rail Link
Train: LAUBOZ-20
10/20/2022
Reed Point, MT
MRL 2nd Subdivision
An Elderly Woman Was Standing At The Railing Of A Cruise Ship Gripping Her Hat Tightly So It Wouldn't Blow Away.
A Gentleman Approached Her And Said, "Pardon Me Madam...I Don't Mean To Seem Forward, But Did You Know Your Dress Is Blowing Up In this Strong Wind?"
She Replied, "Yes I Know But I Need Both Hands To Hold Onto This Hat."
The Man Fairly Shouted, "But Madam, You're Not Wearing Any Underwear And Your Privates Are Exposed!"
The Woman Looked Down Then Back Up At The Man And Said, "Sir, Anything You See Down There Is 75 Years Old.
I Just Bought This Hat Yesterday!"
I'm proud and honored that my work is showcased on the Public Blogger for his 7 days of Peace Campaign: thepublicblogger.com/
Metra 148 pushes an inbound commute past the UP PALG3, waiting to gain access to the Geneva Sub and head down to Rochelle.
Mallard and Pintail Ducks co-mingling on the
Monte Vista NWR, Monte Vista, CO