“Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours.”
~Richard Bach, Illusions
Posts Tagged With: photography
#challengeonnaturephotography Day 6: I Call Him Tiny
Newt
The punchline is, “I call him Tiny because he’s my newt (minute)!” but he’s not really my newt.
The late Dr. Allen Foley, Professor Emeritus of History at Dartmouth College, related a story in his book, “What the Old-Timer Said”, about a local boy who came across a boy from the city who was tormenting a toad.
“Put that toad down,” he said.
“Why should I?” asked the city boy. “He’s my toad, ain’t he?”
“No, he ain’t,” replied the local lad. “This is Vermont. He is his own toad.”
Safe travels, Tiny.
(We’ve paid tribute to the Celebrated Professor Foley before, back in 2014, in a post about Vermont Town Meeting Day (see Hibernation Ends and How Did You Know My Name Was Mac?) . This year’s meeting is still more than a month away but already some people have taken to running serpentine routes from from the Post Office, ducking for cover behind parked cars or trees on the green when necessary.)
Categories: nature, politics, Rural Life, Vermont
Tags: Allen Foley, facebook #challengeonnaturephotography, Humor, nature, newt, outdoors, photography, quill gordon, Rural Life, Vermont
2 Comments
#challengeonnaturephotography Day 5: A Two-fer
The geese may start the season with a dozen little goslings but by the end of May they’re getting a little twitchy and a lot less cavalier about things eating their babies.
Ten Down, Two to Go
Some will tough it out, doing what they can to at least have something to show for their great expenditure of effort, but others will leave with whatever remains of their brood, heading overland in search of safer water. Things must be pretty bad if geese are willing to risk walking their last child through the woods, but it makes a certain sense.
These guys don’t run very fast.
Hey, a Guy’s Gotta Eat
#challengeonnaturephotography Day 4: Sometimes Both Eggs Hatch
Loons with Two Chicks
Two eggs hatched in 2014. Both chicks survived, thrived and fledged, taking off in October for a few years at sea. The Vermont Center for Ecostudies has learned that loons return to places very close to where they were raised, even after all that time and having only seen home from the air once, as they were flying away.
Categories: Loons, nature, Vermont
Tags: facebook #challengeonnaturephotography, Loons, nature, photography, quill gordon, Vermont
1 Comment
#challengeonnaturephotography Day 3: Egg of Loon
Egg of Loon
The geese and mergansers of Fish in a Barrel Pond begin the season with dozens of goslings and ducklings. Those numbers dwindle quickly, though, as snapping turtles, otters and mink take their toll. They rely on sheer numbers in spring to leave one or two youngsters still swimming come fall. When danger strikes they scatter, every bird for itself, and if one or two of your brothers or sisters get picked off, at least it wasn’t you.
The loons, however, lay only one egg, maybe two, with one serving as an insurance policy, should something happen to the other. Something usually does. One egg hatched this spring, one egg did not, and we were able to get to the one that didn’t before it was snatched up by an otter, mink, heron or crow.
Wrapped up in paper towels and tape, it was labeled and frozen before being picked up by the Vermont Center for Ecostudies for further, um, study.
Categories: Loons, nature, Vermont
Tags: facebook #challengeonnaturephotography, fish in a barrel pond, Loons, nature, outdoors, photography, quill gordon, Vermont
Leave a comment
#challengeonnaturephotography Day 2
There is a challenge going on over at facebook, where people are asked to post a nature photo every day for seven days and challenge another person to do so each day. Challenged by Ken G of Waterdog Journal fame, my first photo went up last evening but not without issue. You can see it by heading to the Quill Gordon page on facebook, or take a peek at it in our last post Cold and Cold Running Water. It’s the middle one of the three, the one Mike Sepelak liked, showing that, despite rumors to the contrary, he is capable of demonstrating good taste from time to time.
Because 1) I don’t have the authority to tell anyone else what to do, 2) can’t seem to link to anyone on facebook even if I did have the aforementioned authority, and 3) I feel much more comfortable here, letting things get posted there automatically, I call on all seven readers of this blog to post their own photos and issue challenges to anyone they wish.
With that part of the challenge covered, here is my photo for Day 2, some lovely fungus I found while wandering around on an exceptionally mild December afternoon:
Categories: nature, Vermont
Tags: facebook #challengeonnaturephotography, fish in a barrel pond, nature, photography, quill gordon, Vermont
Leave a comment
Cold and Cold Running Water
Warm and wet turned cold and wet and then just cold this week, leaving plenty of ice behind. Never sure how to feel about pictures of running water, here’s something for everyone:
Categories: nature, Vermont, Winter
Tags: fish in a barrel pond, ice, nature, outdoors, photography, quill gordon, Vermont, water, winter
2 Comments
A Draining Season
Last seen on an early spring night, spinning down a muddy road, swigging from a jar of warm syrup, Quill Gordon did not bounce into a ditch, spill the syrup and contract a nasty case of distemper after being licked clean by raccoons.
He did not pop an angler in the nose and wind up in rehab, nor did he find true enlightenment in a small cove on a June afternoon, skating caddis patterns one minute, disappearing in a sparkly poof the next.
If you think leading a normal, productive life makes it hard to keep up a blog, try it as the figment of someone’s imagination, always forced to crash trucks or achieve bliss against your will! Of course, none of those things actually happened so Quill Gordon is still here at Fish in a Barrel Pond, running around naked and peeing on stuff carefully putting the place to bed as one more season comes to an end — a season that was more unusual than seasons usually are around here, right from the start.
The universe did not get the memo asking that natural processes be synchronized with human calendars and the lake was still frozen when the members of the Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society arrived for Opening Weekend. There wasn’t even a sliver of open water at the spillway where they could pose for pictures, pretending to fish while wearing snowshoes.
Fish in a Barrel Pond, Opening Day, 2015
Categories: +The Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society, Vermont
Tags: dam repair, fish in a barrel pond, Humor, opening day, outdoors, photography, quill gordon, Vermont
10 Comments
Closing Up
Everyone is anxious in spring, wondering when the ice will be gone, but I don’t field many inquires as to the time of its first appearance. The ones I do are often followed by, “But isn’t that early? or, “But isn’t that late?” or some such other nonsense.
Fish in a Barrel Pond, November 18
Categories: nature, Vermont, Winter
Tags: fish in a barrel pond, ice, nature, photography, quill gordon, Vermont, winter
1 Comment
The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond 