Festive in the Parsley

Continuing with my red theme this week - a sluggish little ladybug in my parsley. I went out to the garden to snip some parsley for a salad I'm making for dinner tonight and as I was headed in, I saw the little dot of red. Which immediately changed my plan - parsley carefully set on the patio table; mad dash into the house to get the camera with the 28-300 lens; more mad dashing to find the close up filters; back outside; rearrange parsley; click, click, click. Set ladybug and one sprig of parsley back in the garden, and back to preparing the salad (grains, black-eyed peas, mint, parsley, capers, onions, bell peppers, cucumber, lemon, oil...)

I took three framed photos up to a wildlife preserve that is doing an art exhibit this morning - they seemed thrilled so I am hoping they hang all three. We'll see. From there, I decided I needed a good walk, so I headed to one of my favorite trails that runs along several marshes and shallow ponds. It was amazingly quiet - I only caught the barest glimpses of a couple of song sparrows and the swans were way across the lake. A big flock of ring-billed gulls got all up-in-arms and took to the sky, leaving me wondering what the hell had gotten into them ... until I saw the huge bald eagle perched in a tree along the path.

I zeroed in like a well-bred hunting dog and ever so slowly advanced, a few feet at a time until I was within about 150 feet of the beauty. At that point, I decided that I should stop, lest I spook him. He (or maybe she) was clearly watching the water for fish (or perhaps a careless grebe) and I always want to be mindful of good birding etiquette which requires that we not disturb the creatures we are looking at. Before slowly creeping back along the lake, however, I sat for about a half hour and just enjoyed watching him. There is something about a bald eagle that just thrills me - even though I grew up in Alaska where they are plentiful, I still get a wave of excitement when I see one.

I posted one heavily cropped shot of the eagle and three other shots from today (bittersweet, cedar waxwing and robin) starting HERE on Flickr.

Things at my Hubs' company continue to progress at lightening speed. The reorganization has been deep and wide across the company. We won't truly know how it effects him/us for several months. In the meantime, it will be a wild ride for hubs.

Happy Hump Day from the wilds of New Jersey...

Debbi