Thistle blossoms ready to flower. Photo by Bruce Stambaugh
When I awoke, I noticed the ripples of the morning’s mackerel clouds glowed pink. I headed for a location with an open view to the east. Arriving a few minutes later, the colors had dimmed but were still lovely.
I hustled to a high point on a paved trail that separates a golf course and an overgrown field. I snapped several shots of the sunrise but quickly became distracted by all the bird calls.
When I turned to find the Indigo Bunting, this stand of ready-to-bloom thistles caught my focus. I was struck by the faint kiss of the day’s sunrise on the thistle’s buds. The embrace was subtle but evident nonetheless.
I never did find the Indigo Bunting, however.
My initial view of the morning’s beauty. Photo by Bruce Stambaugh
Whenever I visit Lakeside, Ohio, I always head to the dock around sundown. Even if it is cloudy, I never know what to expect.
Two blocks from the shore, the sky looked promising for another spectacular sunset. When I reached the dock, however, I noted the thick cloud bank to the west. Given past experiences at Lakeside, the Chautauqua on Lake Erie, I hung around.
Part of my interest was in the crashing waves driven by a strong northwest wind. Lakeside is on the western end of the lake, where Erie’s waters are the shallowest. Consequently, strong winds play havoc with the water, causing continuous erosion to Lake Erie’s southern coast.
The dramatic show of the wild waves assaulting the cement dock distracted me from the setting sun. A break in the clouds, however, gave me a shot at capturing a sunset.
The sun peeked through an opening in the clouds and sent a crepuscular ray upward, where it illuminated a high cloud. The fury of the waves colliding with the dock created a mirror-like reflection of the evening’s sun.
A Cedar Waxwing collects nesting material. Photo by Bruce Stambaugh
Birds always teach something new.
While mainly looking for warblers on Reddish Knob on the Virginia/West Virginia boundary, I spotted a Cedar Waxwing light into a wild cherry tree. I aimed my camera to capture a shot or two of the always lovely and entertaining waxwings.
At first, I thought the bird might be after the Eastern Tent Caterpillars in their silken nest. Waxwings supplement their spring and summer diets with insects when berries aren’t available.
Since the bird stayed in the same spot, I kept clicking away. It wasn’t until I loaded the photos onto my laptop that I realized that the Cedar Waxwing was after nesting material, not food. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the female Cedar Waxwing usually gathers the nesting material for the first brood.
In this case, the waxwing collected the tent’s silk support strands and ignored the rest. Perhaps those connecting threads are stronger than the silk that forms the tent.
The process took less than a minute, and she was off to add her precious cargo to construct her own nest. The female waxwing weaves grasses, twigs, cattails, and pine needles to form her cup-like nest. Now, tent caterpillar silk threads can be added to the list.
The sequence of the Cedar Waxwing gathering silk from the Eastern Tent Caterpillar tent. Please click on the photos to enlarge them.Photos by Bruce Stambaugh.
Not only did I see a beautiful bird at work, but I also learned about Cedar Waxwing nest building. And, yes, I heard and saw a few colorful warblers, too.
The U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, Washington, D.C. Photo by Bruce Stambaugh
Today is Memorial Day in the United States. It is a day designed to remember U.S. military personnel who have fought and died in wars.
The commemorative day originated as Decoration Day on May 30, 1868, in honor of Union soldiers who had died in the Civil War. It has since been renamed Memorial Day in memory of all loved ones who have died. Congress also set the day as the last Monday in May, making a three-day holiday.
Americans see the weekend as the start of summer. Many schools have already completed their academic year, making June vacations a real possibility for families who can afford them.
Memorial Day has evolved to include parades, 21-gun salutes at cemeteries, family gatherings, and picnics. Memorial Day falls on my wife’s birthday this year, so we will celebrate that with our family, too.
I took this photo on September 12, 2009, at the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial in Washington, D.C. The statue depicts the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima during World War II.
My older brother and I had accompanied our late father on an Honor Flight out of the Akron-Canton Regional Airport in Ohio. The veterans on the flight gathered in front of the memorial for a group photo. Our father is third from the left in the front row.
My wife and I are still exploring Rockingham County, Virginia, where we have lived for seven years. That may sound hard to believe, but Rockingham is the third-largest county in Virginia. It covers 853 square miles, so there’s a lot of area to see.
We recently toured with friends an area of the mostly rural, agricultural county that we had never seen before. They were as curious as we were.
We chose the remote northwest section, where wildfires scorched thousands of acres of mountainous terrain in the George Washington National Forest during the first week of spring. We were pleasantly surprised with what we found.
Recent rains have greened up most of the area, with only a few burned spots visible from roadways. Thanks to firefighters’ efforts, an abandoned cabin was the only structure burned.
The areas of Bergton and Criders are set in a wide-open, fairly flat valley floor surrounded by mostly deciduous forests. It was a lovely scene.
The background of wooded hillsides and the building storm clouds behind this abandoned schoolhouse made an idyllic landscape portrait. It was one of many finds of the day.
My wife and I have been cleaning the house item by item for longer than I can remember. And we’ve been married for 53 years.
She has always been ahead of me in the disposing game. I’m finally beginning to understand the joy of discarding items I have clung to for far too long.
Gone is the brown felt stetson cowboy hat my daughter’s family gave me as a gift years ago when they lived in Texas. It was a striking hat, but I seldom wore it. So, why should I keep it?
To be considerate, I asked my daughter if she cared if I gave the hat away. She just smiled and said, “It’s your hat. You can do whatever you want with it.”
Of course, I knew that, but I wanted to be sensitive to her since she had purchased the thing. I could have donated it to a thrift store, but I didn’t.
Guess where the stetson ended up? Back in my daughter’s household. Her second son, 17, jumped at the chance to own it. He hopes to have a hatter stretch it so it fits him.
Knowing that the hat has a familial home has instilled as much pleasure in me as having received it in the first place. Isn’t that the point of decluttering your life, especially when you’re 76?
Our two-year-old grandson loves to dress up as a firefighter, among other wholesome job roles. I kept my old helmet from my volunteer firefighting days. The black fiberglass headgear, long lacking necessary safety standards, still has my uniform number, 828, emblazoned on it.
When I offered it to his parents for their son, they declined. I wasn’t either surprised or disappointed. The thing has too many places for tender little fingers to get pinched or cut.
So, the same grandson who confiscated the cowboy hat will also own my helmet. I don’t know what he will do with it, but when I hand it over, I’m sure he’ll ask questions about emergencies to which I responded. I have a storehouse of tales to tell him.
My old fire helmet. Photo by Bruce Stambaugh
Our teenage granddaughter didn’t hesitate when I offered her a t-shirt from a favorite burger place on the island where we wintered in Florida. Our daughter’s family joined us for a few days a couple of times, and the grandkids loved that restaurant, too. Many snowbird memories passed to her in that faded shirt.
When our son and daughter were young, I brought out my old model train set at Christmas and continued that through the toddler years of the grandchildren. Now, our son has it to entertain his son. I don’t have to be there to know and sense the joy of a child and his father connecting one track segment to another until the oval is complete. Just mentally picturing that scene is enough.
A teen I mentor enjoys birding but needed a bird guide. Over the years, I have collected many books on birds, so it was no sacrifice to give this enthusiastic youngster a field guide I cherished so that he could, too.
I have an old black-and-white photo of four of the 28 fourth-grade students from my first year of teaching. I will send it to the one Amish boy in the picture, knowing he would revere it more than me. He will remember and tell his grandchildren when his fourth-grade class created a radio station.
I discover new items daily that equally resurface loving and sad memories. If I don’t need the apparel, souvenirs, or keepsakes, I gladly pass them on to the younger generations for posterity. I’ve already had mine.
Colors galore as a wildfire burned in the valley below last fall. Photo by Bruce Stambaugh
This is the last in a series celebrating National Park Week.
Autumn is often the best time to visit a national park. The annual coloring of the leaves attracts millions of people to many national parks, including Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
The Park Service staff do an excellent job of keeping the public informed about the status of the changing of the leaves. From websites to social media to webcams, patrons of the parks can plan their trips accordingly.
Of course, everyone wants to hit the peak colors. The problem is that many factors play into trying to time the peak of coloration. Elevation, weather, temperature, tree species, longitude and latitude, and the sun’s angle all assist the color transformations. People’s schedules add to the leafy puzzle.
Living near a national park makes timing less risky. I closely monitor the weather, social media group photo posts that specialize in leaf watching in Shenandoah National Park, and the park’s weekly livestreaming. When it’s time to go, I head east and am seldom disappointed.
This past fall, much like this spring, was relatively dry. Fire conditions lasted several weeks, and fires did break out. The photo shows smoke from a fire near the Rappadan Camp that started outside park boundaries but quickly burned into the park’s forest.
The fire’s smoke starkly contrasted with the vibrant colors of the ashes, sassafras, hickory, oaks, and poplar trees. It subdued the usual exuberance for the park’s universal beauty.
Over nearly a week, firefighters finally got the upper hand as the leaves began to rain down. Eventually, fall storms helped quench the blazes and brought down the last leaves.
Despite the fire, park visitors still enjoyed the beauty of the changing leaves along Skyline Drive, from overlooks, and walking the trails that remained open.
Given nature’s multiple colors, it’s a good bet everyone left the park with lasting memories and photos to brag about.
Wild Lupine growing along a fire road in Shenandoah National Park. Photo by Bruce Stambaugh
This is the fifth post in a series celebrating National Park Week.
When you are in a national park, don’t forget to look down. You don’t want to miss the many wildflowers prolific in all but the winter. Even Death Valley is currently having a superbloom. I would love to see that sometime.
In the meantime, spring is the perfect time to look for wildflowers in national parks. I photographed the wild lupines along a fire road in Shenandoah National Park.
Wildflowers bring beauty to the park and attract other beauties, too. When I first visited Shenandoah National Park seven years ago, I was pleasantly surprised at the number and variety of butterflies I found in the park, even in the forests. The colorful blooms also drew bugs, bees, and, of course, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds.
So, when I visit any national park to bird, hike, and photograph birds and wildlife, the wildflowers also are on my agenda. The lovely lupines are the proof.
Little falls upstream form the main event. Photo by Bruce Stambaugh
This is the fourth in a series of posts celebrating National Park Week.
It is an understatement to say that people are drawn to waterfalls. Big or small, they are simply mesmerizing.
It’s one thing to see a photo or video of a waterfall, but it’s something else entirely to be standing next to one. The roar and the beauty transfix their observers. Even cascades of water over rock, then a crystal clear pool, then more white water entrances children and adults alike.
Shenandoah National Park officially has 36 named waterfalls. However, numerous others are in the park depending on the water flow. The photo above demonstrates that.
It’s one of many mini-falls above Lewis Falls, near the Big Meadows area. On a chilly November day, I hiked the Lewis Falls Trail in a group, and the many rapids and little falls upstream of the main event impressed us all.
It’s easy to be swayed by the impressive Yosemite Falls or Bridalveil Falls. I love them both. But romantic that I am, I am just as happy crisscrossing rapidly falling streams that form white water all the way to the cliff’s edge.
So, big or small, let’s praise the falling water in our national parks, which brings joy to everyone.
Roadkill Crossing 
You must be logged in to post a comment.