P-51 of the MONTH

             The Museum of North Texas History hosted a barbecue supper for supporters of the Call Field Museum. David Martin flew aerobatics over the airport, then landed to share with us our meal.

Here I show David Martin and Bill English posing for their fans. 

Wide angle view of the P-51 and the fans walking around it. 

Of Birds and Barking

BirdManBob released a burrowing owl today amid barking prairie dogs.

Prairie dog, new neighbor to the Burrowing Owl.

Robert Lee

      The town of Robert Lee, Texas, named after Robert E. Lee, became known to sport fishermen and hunters for the striped bass fishing and prevalent white tailed deer. As the damned (pardon the pun) Colorado River water levels became lower, fishermen did not frequent Robert Lee as often. I think the hunting and fishing led to the development of a fine runway, but the decline in the numbers of visitors has led to . . .  the neglect of the runway. We landed on a strip needing some attention.

Can you see the grasshopper in the foreground? 

To Fly Before Sunrise

The wind sock at Kickapoo Airport indicates winds from the south at five knots per hour before sunrise.

Feisty Burrowing Owl

       The Burrowing Owl convalescing at Wild Bird Rescue shows signs of improving strength. After the storms pass through the area, BirdManBob will place the owl in the outside aviary so that he can exercise his injured wing. After a week, BirdManBob will release him.

Bats

         A colony of bats cared for and nurtured by Gail, in Lubbock, spent the afternoon at Wild Bird Rescue, resting and preparing for the evening's lecture to the public at Riverbend Nature Center. 

          Occasionally, Wild Bird Rescue receives injured or orphaned bats, so Gayle taught the rehabbers how to care for the bats before transporting them to her sanctuary.

Vulture!

Hoo-HOOO-hoo-hoo!

Great Horned Owl at sunset, Archer County.

Of a Bird, a Cow, Boots, and a Horse Named Bird

            In the category of Cutest Rump of the Year, I present the Scissortail Flycatcher.  They haven't left for Mexico yet, and when they do, I will miss them and will wait for them until their return next spring. 

A Hereford and sunflower plants. 

Bird, Clay's favorite horse, inspects the back of my truck. 

Muddy boots hanging in a barn.

Everything Loves to Eat Wheat

          Wild sunflowers grow along miles of fencing in Wichita and Archer counties. The wheat fields have begun to grow, and with them, the grasshoppers, living in the fences, venture to the tender wheat sprouts for their nutrition. Unfortunately, in such vast numbers, grasshoppers have begun to decimate some of the wheat crops. Below I show healthy rows of wheat before grasshoppers had their supper, leaving only empty rows of soil.

No wonder we have so many grasshoppers.

The army worms have begun to appear, too. 

Wheat farmers must contend with insects all year.

Burrowing Owl

Beautiful face. 

Cross your fingers so that this owl taken to Wild Bird Rescue recovers from head trauma soon.

Airport Hound

At one of the local airports nearby, a dog named Ram Jet lives in a hangar with his owners. 

I hear he's a great aviator.

Lila and Missi

Missi's Mom and Missi gave a lecture on hawks and bird life at the EcoFair. 

Missi's Mom designed the t-shirt below, now on sale for a steal, $10.00. 

Horned Lizards

          Wichita Falls Reptile Rescue brought some snakes and lizards to the EcoFair on Saturday.

        About fifteen or eighteen species of Horned Toads exist, but they live in different ecosystems. The lizards shown above live at the reptile rescue center while the rehabbers there attempt to find their proper environments for release, or because they cannot live on their own in the wild. WFRR also nurtures snakes, salamanders, turtles, and other amazing reptiles. 

D60, 50mm, f5.6, ISO 400

        Sometimes I want to JTP, or Just Take Pictures. That's when I carry a lighter load and bring out my Nikon D60, a 50mm 1:1.4 lens, place the settings on Aperture Priority, f5.6, and ISO 400, which under many circumstances can yield adequately measured photographs. As usual, I set out with MyMrMallory not knowing what my JTP attitude would yield. Over the last few days, I snapped images of crop circles in the Texas Panhandle, noting that from 7,500 feet in altitude, the crops looked like art on soil. I had previously explored "farmer's art" and show it on my PBase site, so I felt interested in re-visiting this concept once the thought came to me.

Corn quarter circles. Circles can have one mile in diameter. 

Overlapping circles.

Water ditches meandering across the circle.

Cotton fields in the circle.

Wheat circle surrounded by corn.

Harvested circles of corn.

Corn crop circle view from the ground.

Harvesters gather the corn, separating the kernels from the stalks. 

The kernels fill up the bin, and from here, the bin fills up the eighteen-wheeler 

that will transport the corn to the elevators for storage.

The combine pictured above can tackle eight rows of corn.

Trucks stand in line to fill up with corn.

At the office of the elevators, this device measures 

the moisture content of corn, and important factor in its quality. 

         In the old days, farmers employed a more simplified device to measure the weight of corn. Today, in case of a dispute, farmers may need to search through their storage to find the measuring device, as Bud did (above, to show it to us), for the court of law will not accept measurements made by electronic devices.

            And so ended my D60, 50mm, f5.6, ISO 400 experience. Post processing in the digital darkroom  involved only minor cropping and enhancing contrast. 

Holding My Breath for Handheld Images