Feathers

The day is done, and the darkness 

Falls from the wings of Night, 

As a feather is wafted downward 

From an eagle in his flight. 

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I regularly find feathers in the yard and around. It's illegal to hang on to them if they are not a game species (come on, like I would even know?). So I take a photo or two and post them on iNaturalist. Sometimes I know the bird (Blue Jays are pretty easy). But sometimes it's a bit of a mystery.

This week I found these feathers. I knew the jay, but the other...hmmm...

Yeah. It's a Blue Jay

The identification app suggested vulture or wild turkey. That did not seem right so I just put "Bird" as a placeholder.

The mystery feather that has been identified as from an Eastern Screech Owl!

One member suggested "Eastern Screech Owl" - one of my favorite birds. It's even a bird I know by ear! I expressed some skepticism and he replied with a fabulous website that clearly identifies my feather (um, the feather I left on the ground in my yard) as from a screech owl.

Guess I'm going to start a page where I add bird feathers found and identified.

This is it.


NOTES:

The magic website: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=eastern+screech+owl+feather&t=ffsb&atb=v72-2&iax=1&ia=images

Anyone Need a Barricade?

The road to success is always under construction.

~ Internet Meme

I am interrupting my other writing to vent...sharing an example of what seems to be a constant companion these days - road construction.*

I walked the dog "through" and will be driving "through" to get to the house...unless a maintenance truck is parked across the drive - but that's generally the cable or electric company.

Yesterday I walked out the back door to find a warning sign - "Construction Ahead" on one side and "End of Construction" on the other - next to the side yard curb. Later a pile of plastic and aluminum began to grow in the corner of the side yard (yes, on my grass).

Okay. This is not my corner, but they moved mine before I got a photo. AND I had to pile the stuff neatly in my yard. This is a neat stack compared to what they did on my corner. It had basically been thrown down willy-nilly. It's not their pathetic dry grass, after all.

There were pieces of more signs and barriers and sandbags.

Up early this morning, I set up the hose to finish watering our crispy yard (we have lost a few of my experimental plantings in plastic pots in the heat and our negligence for taking a vacation), I noted the construction team had been at work before me - staging the implementation of chaos in the neighborhood.

The road in front of the house is a major one in this small town. There is always traffic. There will be snarls without it.

It seems that we are surrounded by road construction these days - my former workplace has two entities working on different projects creating an endless looping detour on one side and inconvenience for everyone on the other. When I finally found my way past the "road closed" signs I asked them how they managed to tick-off both the city and the state. They explained that both had delays (one fired a contractor and was two months behind on the project).

How students and employees will manage this when school begins in a couple of weeks is anyone's guess. I only stopped to purchase my weekly egg supply from a former co-worker who has free-range hens.** While I was there I found my way to the office of campus police to pick up a new parking sticker. I figured the driving situation could only get worse and I would avoid more hassles by acting right away.

Anyway, I suppose we will be driving the dog to the park and trying to figure ways to escape the noise and smell. Our suitcases haven't been put away. A trip is always an option.

No one really knows what is planned for our neighborhood, but we've shared some ideas on social media. We suspect a resurface of this major street - nice hot sticky smelly tar and loose gravel everywhere.

Maybe they will finish before school starts. Ha!

NOTES:

* Okay. I know - first world problem. I should be grateful to have paved streets. We all really do have more to worry about considering the current political climate and chaos in the world. Please, let me whine. [I do fear I am turning into a bit of a crank.]

**My class is on the edge of the campus and I have envisioned a magic path in from the north. It won't matter if I cannot get out of my driveway.

Irish Horses (and friends)

The grace of God is found

between the saddle and the ground.

~ Irish saying

I am not a horse person. Horses frighten me. In 60+ years I have been on one horse (with my grandfather) and one pony (at a cousin's birthday party). 

Now, don't get me wrong. I think horses are beautiful and amazing creatures, but I would never want to own one (and am perfectly happy appreciating them from a safe distance).

That being said, I do have dear friends and family members who are horse people. One of them asked me to take photos of horses for her. And, because she asked, I noticed the horses more than I would have had she not.

Here they are, along with my stories of them. [There will be a few non-horses in here too. I do have one friend in Ireland, but he's not a horse.]

Bunratty, County Clare:

Patricia, our landlady, let me know there were horses just down the road. And I found them.

On one side of the road I found this mare and foal. When we returned 2 weeks later they were gone, perhaps moved to another field.

On the other side of the road was a larger field and a small herd of horses. They were also in the field when we returned to Bunratty for our last night (it is 20 minutes from the airport). We cut up apples we had left over from our lunches with a plan to treat the horses, but they would not come back to the gate. So, we left the apples on top of the concrete gatepost. When we walked by about an hour later the apples were gone.

Note this bend in the gate.

On our last day in Ireland they met us at the gate.

It was almost as if they knew we had apples left in our packs. So we made a special trip to retrieve the apples, but the horses were out in the field and waited until we walked away to enjoy their treat.

Doolin, County Clare:

Found this horse grazing in a field on a hazy day. It you look in the distance you can see the coastline, cliffs and Atlantic.

Beautiful!

Achill Island, County Mayo:

Claremorris, County Mayo:

Some animals did not want their photo taken.

Inishnee, Roundstone, County Galway:

Often when we were on a hike or visiting some site or other, we had time just to grab a photo and go. I almost missed this horse because the plants were so high around it.

Connemara National Park, Letterfrack, County Galway:

This freaked us all out. We all stopped and wondered what we should do. It looked and felt like something was wrong.

We could see the foal was breathing, but...

We were all relieved to read this notice. Apparently they often have visitors freaking out at the resting foals. One woman in our party went back just before we were due on the bus to make sure. The foal was up and walking around.

Coole Lake, Coole Park, County Galway:

The lake at Coole Park is a turlough.* Its level is dependent more on rain than on the small stream that feeds it as well. While we had a few days of decent rain and the lake level rose significantly in a week, horses are grazing here in what is actually part of the lake bottom. One of the folks we spoke with shared that there has been much discussion (disturbance?) about the horses grazing here.

Whether they are supposed to be here or not, they are lovely.

 NOT HORSES

I teased my friend and sent her photos of donkeys via text message asking, "What kind of horses are these? I think she may have wondered about me for a minute or two.

Still, these wonderful animals deserve notice too.


Doolin, County Clare:

My friend, Joe. He was playing hard to get, but finally came to eat grass out of my hand. He would not come for the sugar cube I swiped from dinner. I left it on the wall (where I had left grass when he was being stubborn) and it was gone when I walked by again.

He's got "character." We've been flirting for a couple of years now.

These animals were pretty noisy.

See - mouthy creature. I often heard them when I was out walking.

This little creature was across the street from Killilagh and showed a great deal of interest when I took an early morning walk. It wandered over to the wall and climbed up on something, looking as if it was going to come over the wall. It didn't. I shared just a little bit of grass before it turned away.

 

Ballyvaughn, County Clare:

I was a little surprised to see these creatures grazing this narrow field by the harbor.

We had stopped to eat and then walked along the harbor road.

There you have it. It always amazes me how a comment can change the way you see a place.  My wildflower photos still outnumber the horses (and donkeys), but the horses outnumber the frogs.

There were only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. 

The ox and the donkey understood more 

of the first Christmas 

than the high priests in Jerusalem. 

And it is the same today. 

~ Thomas Merton

NOTES:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turlough_(lake)



No place for Cows and sheep...so here we go:

I love Irish cows.

This makes me laugh...tiny cow balancing on a big one.

I'm not as fond of sheep...

Here are the stragglers.