23 October, 2016            My chauffeur really flies! // Gone to the dogs

I encourage you to vote on November 8. One of the candidates will be president soon. Please do your part to make sure it’s the best one.

Here’s how this blog post got its name(s):

I walked out to my car this week and found this Carolina Wren ready to drive (My chauffeur really flies!):

And today I hiked and spent time with a large (six dogs) pack of canines (thanks to my friend Ariel for supplying the friendship, spare dogs, background scenery and photography expertise): 

Mackey, Turner, Yuki, Sonny, Lola, Luna, me. Photograph by Ariel – thanks Ariel! (“Gone to the dogs”)

And since we began this post with an animal behind the steering wheel, and there’s a dog theme, there’s an obvious choice for the next picture (photography and clever disguise both supplied by Ariel):

These dogs really know how to enjoy themselves

All the dogs were curious when I was wearing that getup. Yuki most of all:

Found my doppelgänger

I took a week off last week for various reasons. So I have a few extra pictures. And a good story (I hope) to (I hope) save for next week. But until then –

Cleverly disguised as part of the pack:

They were giving me such strange looks I felt extremely self-conscious

My friend Ariel (Yuki’s owner) (and photographer for all the pictures with me in them)  pointed out this frog on one of her plants last week. She later identified it a Cope’s Gray Treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis), light phase:

Cope’s gray treefrog

And the very next day I was at the Y and walked out to my car and greeted this beautiful animal on my hood. It rode all the way home with me and now it’s in my ‘hood!:

Praying mantis on the hood then in the ‘hood

Brief glimpse of a flying downy woodpecker just as it leapt from a tree in Pony Pasture on Thursday:

Not perfect, but a fun action shot

And – all my time birding I’ve heard about woodpecker holes being used by other birds and animals. Today I saw fungus growing inside one!:

Fungus growing in an old woodpecker hole

I haven’t done much this week – but here are a couple of panoramas from when I was in Page County (in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley) last weekend. This is the edge of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River. On weekends from the time I was around thirteen through my early forties I was often here in person, and in spirit I returned constantly:

South Fork of the Shenandoah River on a sunny October afternoon

I see I wrote about our cabin in the Shenandoah Valley in a blog post from April of 2014 called Only the beginning… and again in October in a blog post called We had so much fun! and a follow up called More fun!

I should write more later – and will in the future. But from that riverside scene I walked Mackey and Turner about half a mile to the edge of our old friends Doug and Doris’s property.

10 minutes walk from the river. Much of the “me” you know was shaped by what I learned in this hollow.

Hopefully I’ll be slightly more organized/energized next week. But I don’t anticipate appearing disguised as a white dog again anytime soon. But you never know.

Don’t forget to vote! Two weeks from Tuesday.

All best,

Jay