How can I put this delicately? Or “Prader-Willi continues”  

Posted on March 3, 2019 by Jay McLaughlin

3 March, 2019            How can I put this delicately? Or “Prader-Willi continues”  

I primarily post relaxing images on my blog and generally write about relaxing things. That’s why I avoid politics, religion and advertising. But my rehabilitation career is late in its third decade and not every moment has been relaxing. I’ll return to that at the bottom of this post.

Imperfect image of a Great Horned Owl, but I was so grateful to even see one

Miserable image but this is the first time in my life I’ve ever pointed my camera at a Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus). Many thanks to Michael Marra for  pointing it out. Michael is a true pro photographer; check out some images on his web site. I was fortunate to be walking the dogs earlier this afternoon when he was photographing (pro photographing) this bird. His pictures are way better. And he’s a nice person too.

Meanwhile. On Thursday, February 21 Evelyn and I walked to the Shore Dog Cafe for lunch. We were walking home north on Forest Avenue when we heard and saw a commotion in the trees. At first we thought it was a Red-shouldered Hawk catching a squirrel. We looked more closely and saw a pair of hawks mating! Of course I never go anywhere without my camera. Except when we’re walking out to lunch. Oh well. So I’ve been watching that spot and Tuesday one of the hawks was perched on a wire. I pulled over and snapped this picture and left:

Red-shouldered Hawk keeping an eye on me

I like birds 365 days a year but peak birding season in Virginia begins early March and runs through at least May. They’re all beginning to show up. Friday at the Y I saw a tree full of birds that in years past I would have written off as starlings. This was the first image I took:

At first glance I thought these were starlings. Then I zoomed in – see below:

But then I zoomed in and it was a flock of Cedar Waxwings! I had never seen so many at one time! I wish the light had been more favorable, but what a treat; they are so photogenic. And this was in the YMCA parking lot!:

A little zoom reveals a lot of lovely detail:

Peak birding season and peak flower season occur roughly in tandem. Evelyn’s growing  daffodils throughout our yard, but I photographed this small nodding daffodil in a small bed beside our driveway Thursday:

An early specimen of Evelyn’s seemingly infinite crop of daffodils

Evelyn got me started loving gardenias but I am an inept gardener. I’m awesome with dandelions and I can grow an award-winning clump of onion grass. But I did stop and buy a gardenia at the florist Wednesday morning. This sight and smell will get us through the coming weeks as Spring gains traction and becomes unmistakable and unstoppable:

I always feel like I should be able to smell it through the monitor. Gardenias are incomparable.

The river flooded earlier this week and crested Monday near midnight at 16.2’. We hiked at Pony Pasture (via Landria Drive) Tuesday around twelve hours later. It had gone down to 15.7’, so it dropped about six inches. We had to make a long detour to get around this bridge:

My shoes are waterproof, but I chose not to put them to this test

Then we went up to Charlie’s Bridge; time for another detour:

Charlie’s Bridge, still partially immersed Tuesday

We took a good hike yesterday, though the river was still high and the trails were still muddy and the main parking lot was closed. As I type these words Sunday afternoon the river’s gone down to 10.0’. It was a good day for Bryan Park – and I got to photograph my first Great Horned Owl! Our Dad used to whistle at them at night and they’d whistle back.

Anyway. Here’s my story from an earlier era in my rehab career. Enjoy, have a great week, come back next Sunday, all best,

Jay

= = = = = = = = = = = 

How can I put this delicately? Or “Prader-Willi continues”

On the Prader-Willi Syndrome Association website it says that the third phase of Prader-Willi Syndrome “is the development of an insatiable appetite/drive to eat, accompanied by intense or relentless food-seeking. This is the classic phase most people typically associate with PWS”. It also says that people with PWS have “hyperphagia (an uncontrollable drive to eat), combined with weight gain on fewer calories”. The same website says people with PWS often have “cognitive disabilities, behavioral problems”. This person couldn’t speak. And in my business we say “behavior is communication.” I’ll just call the guy Henry.

Consider for a moment that eleven word stretch that says “an uncontrollable drive to eat, combined with weight gain on fewer calories.” If you were designing a way to make a person’s life miserable, that would be the perfect way to do it. And it’s genetic. I have an old friend who is a psychologist. If he heard about Henry’s frustrations he’d say Henry “comes by it honestly.” My own drive to eat is ostensibly controllable and my weight gain is on the normal amount of calories and it’s still a challenge!

The part about “put this delicately” is the way this food-obsessed person with no verbal means of communication communicated his frustration. It began with the food he put in his mouth and chewed obsessively so he could use it as a weapon. But only when he was angry or frustrated. It changed my career path when it came out the other end and he continued to use it as a weapon.

If you’re at a lecture or reading a book about PWS, it can be dull or forgettable. If you’re a parent, not so much, and if a person is using their partially or completely digested food as a weapon, it is not dull. And it will not be forgettable for the rest of your life, or at least I haven’t forgotten it.

Sometimes he’d put food in his mouth and begin chewing it. And chewing it and chewing it and noisily squishing it around in his mouth, filling up his mouth and obviously not swallowing. When I was being trained, the aides would move back warily and say “swallow your food Henry! Swallow it!” Projectile vomiting was a favorite weapon of his.

Henry lived in a group home and when he came to school on a bus he was sometimes “escalated” – his behaviors were spiraling out of control. I’ve worked with a lot of non verbal people with behavior problems. At that point, I hadn’t. Since “behavior is communication,” I watched all of his behaviors so he would communicate when he was having a difficult morning. The first thing we’d do is go in the bathroom and I’d ask him to wash his hands. Then he’d start pressing the dispenser bar on the paper towel dispenser. If he was having a normal day – most days were normal – he’d press it two or three times and we’d finish up and go work on our activities. But if he’d had a bad dream the night before, or not liked his breakfast, or had a disagreement with one of his housemates, or not liked the music in the car on the way over – it could have been anything – he’d become escalated. He’d press the bar on the paper towel dispenser ten or more times. I’d have to tell him to stop. Picture that pile of brown paper towels reaching from the dispenser to the floor, piling up. But when that’s going on, he’s in a trance. It was practically like a seizure. I’m not sure he could even hear me. It’s some vestige of PTSD that causes me to tense up a tiny bit if I’m in a public bathroom now, twenty years later, and hear someone pressing the bar on the paper towel dispenser a lot. We’re all so funny, what impresses itself on our brains.

Henry was super escalated that day and I sent him into the bathroom stall to  sit down and go to the bathroom. He did – and a moment later, opened the door and came out with his hands full of it. He attacked me with it. Rather than recreate from memory, here’s my almost-twenty-three-year-old journal entry, excerpted here with names changed:

=======

5/16/96 Thu 13:40 7607

“Slinging feces” is what the staff call it when Henry starts taking a crap and throwing it on the walls, etc. I think that there are two factors that lead to this behavior: 1) Henry has to be “escalated,” another work euphemism for “pissed off,” or whatever. I like that term. Henry gets escalated kind of often, so it takes a light touch to avoid that. The second factor is 2) Henry has to be alone. And it ain’t, as I am fond of saying, rocket science, to avoid that happening. You just follow him wherever he goes. I told the boss today that as long as I was there (at work) and Henry was too, no shit was coming out of that bathroom – period. They’ve since switched his old one-on-one to another case, and I have Henry all the time. For better or for worse.

 

5/17/96 Fri 13:50 7607

I probably won’t have nightmares about it, because I’m not a nightmare type person, but at the same time I’ll probably never forget the sight of Henry walking out of that right-hand stall today, zombie-like, a soft and putrid brown mound of his own feces overflowing out of each end of his hand. I’ve since learned that I need to give him choices, so I should have said to flush that back down one of those three toilets, but I just told him to flush it back down the toilet, so he threw it at me. My reflexes aren’t particularly fast, but his are even slower, so that initial launch landed in a blob on the edge of the sink. I was still clean up until that point, but when he attacked me, it was all over. Scratch one new shirt from Eddie Bauer. I didn’t need those top buttons anyway. I’m glad I was able to keep him from biting me. I was glad when Joel happened to appear at the door.

We’ve got another guy there, Keith, and he’s attacked a lot of people, mostly males, and before he attacks, he asks them to puff up their cheeks

=======

The “Joel” I referred to at the end – this was purely a random chance – was the Director of the Behavior Intervention Program at VCU. And he had to use the exact bathroom I was in at the exact time I was dealing with the messiest behavior I’d ever been around. So I got to learn in real time to how to deal with a severe behavior problem, from an international expert on behavioral intervention. How cool is that? How could that timing have been any more awesome?

After an incident like that, your scale of what is off-putting and causes you alarm and consternation is deeply and permanently recalibrated. After you’ve been attacked with feces, other stuff that people say or do becomes less of a big deal. It prepares you for a career with people who have some behavioral challenges, because you’ve probably gotten the worst behind you right at the beginning.

= = = = = = = = = = = 

Posted in Birds, Bryan Park, cedar waxwing, daffodils, disability, Dogs, Endurance, Flowers, Fun, Gardenias, James River, love, People, Pony Pasture, raptors, red-shouldered hawks, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers, simplify, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Experimental

Posted on March 2, 2019 by Jay McLaughlin

Just trying out my first ever blog post from my ipad. This is just a trial balloon. In a manner of speaking:

First gardenia (that I’ve seen and smelled) in 2019

Posted in Flowers, Fun, Gardenias, Rivers | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Lots of H2O, few pictures, Prader-Willi Syndrome

Posted on February 24, 2019 by Jay McLaughlin

24 February, 2019         Lots of H2O, few pictures, Prader-Willi Syndrome

As I type these words Sunday afternoon, the James River at Pony Pasture is fifteen feet deep and rising. That means most trails are underwater, so Evelyn and Mackey and Turner and Yuki and I hiked at Bryan Park today. And didn’t get a lot of pictures!

I was taking pictures out of my office window Thursday morning when the sun came out for a moment. Mackey was lying behind me and it was shining right on him. Black dogs look great in black sunlight – especially up close. I turned around and took this picture – he is so handsome and dignified. He is an elegant boy:

Black goes with everything – isn’t he spectacular?

The “Prader-Willi Syndrome” part is an experience I’ll write about in the future. Perhaps next week. I’ve been encouraged to write about “turning points” in my life. All of our lives have an infinite number. My experience working with a young man with Prader-Willi Syndrome about twenty years ago was an unforgettable turning point in my life, my career, my education. If you’re unfamiliar with Prader-Willi Syndrome, as I was before I met this person, you can learn a bit here: ABOUT PRADER-WILLI SYNDROME. The person I worked with was in the third phase. A lot of the “me” you know was formed by my encounter with him. But I’d chosen to be there, so it works both ways.

The “me” you know is shaped most by my wonderful family and friends, but also of course by my almost equally wonderful companion animals. Mackey and Turner sit and lie in my office (and hike with me) but they’re not allowed on the furniture. Dash likes it up there, especially close to the fire, unless there’s a warm lap nearby. When I emailed this to myself I just put “no anxiety here” in the subject line:

No anxiety here:

As you’ve seen I’ve been taking lots of pictures of birds on my feeders. They’re arriving in ever-increasing numbers along with the ever-increasing daylight. Which will eventually become ever-increasing temperatures, but not for another month or two. I like birds a lot, and I know a lot of other people do too – but hardly anyone likes European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). I am not fond of them myself. But I don’t like the feeling of disliking a bird – I’m sure it doesn’t dislike me. I don’t even know if they have feelings at all. But I know it’s irrational to dislike an animal that doesn’t harm me or anyone I know, and I am a rational person. So I’m going to learn to like them by taking the perfect photograph. Something that displays their likability. All animals have it. With chickadees it’s effortless. It’ll take me a while to locate the likability in a starling. But here’s my first attempt:

Does this starling appear likable to you? I’m working on it:

There is also no rational reason to like a Red-tailed hawk more than I like a starling, but that’s the way I am and I’m not conflicted. Here’s a great expression; I don’t recall where I heard it: “the heart knows reasons that reason does not know.” In other words, our hearts might have reasons that seem unreasonable. Or irrational. Like preferring one type of bird over another. Here’s a Red-tail I photographed near my house this afternoon:

So happy to finally see some blue sky. Male Red-tailed hawk 2:45 this afternoon near home:

Here’s a mockingbird in front of my house during the rain yesterday:

Mockingbird on our front light in the rain yesterday

Next week – hopefully – frogs will be croaking at the river and flowers will be camera ready. Come back then! And hopefully I’ll get my story in here about my old buddy with Prader Willi Syndrome.

Have an excellent week,

Jay

Posted in Birds, cats, Dogs, Fun, mockingbirds, raptors, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Trust the process” – not quite 100% of the time

Posted on February 17, 2019 by Jay McLaughlin

17 February, 2019            “Trust the process” – not quite 100% of the time

Tomorrow is my sister Sheila’s birthday – wish her Happy Birthday if you’re fortunate enough to see her or talk with her! Or send her an email!

I like to “trust the process,” to wait for things to happen of their own accord rather than forcing the issue. But vague statements like “trust the process” have vague outcomes – they’re unreliable. If you “trust the process” to put gas in your car or file your income taxes or fill a glass with water when you’re thirsty, you’ll be out of luck. You have to act.

Where “trust the process” meets “80% of success is showing up” – 11:00 this morning at Pony Pasture

But you can’t force a deer to step in front of your camera. Or a hawk to land on a power line. You can familiarize yourself with their behavior patterns and increase the likelihood of seeing one. You have to pay attention. But you can’t guarantee it, like putting gas in your car guarantees it’ll go. You just do what you can to make conditions favorable (with outdoor photography) and “trust the process.” I almost didn’t see a single raptor this week – until this Red-shouldered hawk landed on a wire near the Country Club of Virginia on our way home from Pony Pasture earlier today: 

Red-shouldered hawk today at the Country Club of Virginia – the only raptor I photographed this week!

“Trust the process” with dogs is somewhere in between. They’re more predictable than deer but less predictable than taxes. But if you’re trustworthy and reliable and confident, they’ll begin to “trust the process” too, and they’ll pay close attention to you, and do what you want them to do before you even ask. You can totally “let go of the steering wheel” and know they’ll be perfect:

Mackey, Turner and Yuki at Pony Pasture this morning. You can always “trust the process” with these guys.

It’ll be tax time soon – don’t “trust the process.” Act. You can develop some intuition about dogs and deer and hawks and most human beings, but there’s no intuition with taxes. There is only math.

Speaking of numbers! The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) was “launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society” and has been gathering bird data from all over the world ever since. It goes for four days every February – and today is Day #3 for 2019. That means you can still participate tomorrow if you like. Click on that link up there! Your only obligation is to spend 15 minutes looking outdoors and record the types of birds you see. If you look out of your office window from 12:10 to 12:25 and see a robin, a crow and a starling, you just record it on their site and you’re done! You can do a whole lot more than that – even tomorrow – if you want, but it’s simple. Check it out! A handful of pictures I took while counting for thirty minutes yesterday: 

Male Northern Cardinal – my first bird of the Great Backyard Bird Count, 2019:

Bluebird (from today, really, but I “got” a bunch yesterday)

Chickadee – what’s not to love?

Handsome male Downy woodpecker

Adding a Tufted Titmouse to my GBBC total

I took all of those bird pictures (and a whole lot more) while I was sitting in the exact chair where I’m sitting while I’m typing this blog post. If it was daylight now I’d take a picture of my desk so you could see. If I opened my window and stuck a broom handle out, I could touch one of those perches where the cardinal is sitting. Makes for great birdwatching, especially when it’s snowy and cold out.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time or known me for any length of time, you’ll know at least three things:

  1. Evelyn’s good taste (except in men) and
  2. That my father loved dogwoods and
  3. That I love chocolate

After I got up on Valentine’s Day morning, I found this on the dining room table:

Valentine’s bowl with chocolate – stunning!

The bottom – isn’t this wonderful? I am so moved.

She got it from the Crossroads Art Center at 2016 Staples Mill Road here in Richmond. She was going to see glass that our friend Pat Ryan is making and displaying and selling there. Here’s his web page at Crossroads: Crossroads Art Center – Patrick Ryan Glass.

Here’s a blog post I wrote back in April (that’s when dogwoods bloom) of 2015. It mentions (briefly) my Dad’s love of dogwoods: Fascinating / boring

A hand turned dogwood bowl for Valentine’s Day – that’s priceless and meaningful. Thank you Evie!

Have a great week! Count some birds tomorrow! All best,

Jay

Posted in Birds, cardinals, Dogs, dogwood, Downy woodpecker, Fun, James River, love, People, Pony Pasture, raptors, red-shouldered hawks, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), whitetail deer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The time between

Posted on February 10, 2019 by Jay McLaughlin

10 February, 2019            The time between

For my own reference I titled this “considering” because we were considering each other. IMO.

This was a great week to be outdoors. Every week is great to be outdoors, but this one had seven solid days. We had the best river hike we’d had in months today. I looked at a record of the river gauge; it got extra deep in mid November and stayed that way. Between November 17 and the end of the year it flooded five times, from ten feet deep to over fifteen feet deep. Once it’s over ten feet deep, so many trails are under water it’s almost a waste of time to hike. It gets the animals out of their routines too. But this morning it was at six feet (not at all low, but an improvement) and the woods were full of deer. Like that beauty at the top of the page.

I first photographed her (she was in a large herd near Charley’s Bridge) at 11:51 this morning. I took this picture just after we arrived at the river at 11:00:

The sky at the river this morning. Words will not improve this.

I was walking to the Westbury Apothecary Friday evening as the sun was setting. It looked spectacular – the colors were beyond compare. If I wore a scarf this color, I would be denounced by one and all for my poor taste. It’s so garish it simply doesn’t match with anything. I guess “doesn’t match with anything” is a longer way of saying “beyond compare.” But look at this:

You can only take this picture when you take it – if you move to “improve” it, the sun is gone. I love it.

I really, really wanted to get across the street or up the hill so there would be less buildings or signs or wires in the way. But it was setting faster than I could walk! And I thought to myself “if I just don’t stop here and take this picture, I won’t get a picture at all – the sun is going to set.” So that’s what I got.

It was moving so fast – there was just nothing you could do. I thought about sunrises too, and how it’s the same way, and so is the rest of life: “the time between.” You can’t juggle around and do two things at once. You have to plan, but it’s more important to act. It was a singular experience. I’m grateful I was there. 

Around the time I took the picture of that cloud-striped sky at the river this morning, I turned my camera toward Mackey and Turner and Yuki. They were feeling mellow and it wasn’t bitter cold; sometimes they’re happy to have their pictures taken. 

Always ready to hike. But they were real mellow today.

At the house, Dash wants to do everything the dogs do, except go outside. He wants treats when they get treats, food when they get food, petting when they get petting, to lie in front of the fire when they lie in front of the fire, he wants all the attention – as long as he doesn’t have to go outside. In a few months when it’s warmer and sunnier and we’re not having fires any more, he’ll lie in the sun and watch the world go by. He is an avid and in every way enthusiastic bird watcher – he watches their every move. But they’re safe when Dash is around. He is not in the picture dictionary next to “killer instinct”: 

“Absence of killer instinct; Still Life With Cat #1”

“Absence of killer instinct; Still Life With Cat #2”

It’s possible – it may even be probable – that I’m the only person looking at this blog who isn’t tired of looking at raptors. But they help me sift through – actually they help me discard entirely – my random useless thoughts. Of which I have like a trillion. When I’m photographing hawks or deer my mind just becomes silent. It’s my favorite way for my mind to sound. I had a lot of opportunities to quiet it down this week; there are hawks everywhere. I think I took pictures every day.

I saw a Red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) Wednesday. It was in a terrible place for photography so I got a terrible image, but thought I’d include it anyway:

Red-shouldered hawk in Bonair in a natural (and difficult to photograph) background:

To make up for that (or not), here are two better quality Red-tailed hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) from this week, just in a less attractive backdrop. The first is from Thursday near Freeman High School and the second is from a day later near a field on Michael Road:  

Sunny pre-sunset Red-tail Thursday evening

Another sunny Red-tail, twenty hours later and about two miles north

I’ll close with a picture of the river from this week. Speaking of things that move non stop (like the river), the time between sunrise and sunset today (February 10) was ten hours and thirty-eight minutes. Six or seven weeks ago, shortly before Christmas, the time the sun was above the horizon was nine hours and thirty-four minutes. In other words, we’re getting more than an hour extra sunlight per day already. And it’s only going to get longer until June. Enjoy! Watch everything sprout! Catch a sunrise or a sunset or both! And have an excellent week, all best,

Jay

There are more stressful places than this

PS This just in! I forgot I “got” another hermit thrush this week, at Pony Pasture on Thursday. It’s not as good a picture as last week, but they’re cute birds and people seem fond of them. I know I am, anyway: 

Pony Pasture hermit thrush from Thursday

 

Posted in Birds, Dogs, Fun, James River, Pony Pasture, raptors, red-shouldered hawks, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers, sunsets, whitetail deer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

In touch with my inner hermit

Posted on February 3, 2019 by Jay McLaughlin

3 February, 2019            In touch with my inner hermit

Delicate (appearing) and beautiful Hermit Thrush at Deep Run Friday:

I saw this Hermit Thrush (Catharus guttatus) Friday at Deep Run Park in western Henrico. I am an outgoing person but the avalanche of sports (today is Super Bowl Sunday) and politics (needs no explanation) have left me looking for a quiet place to hide. To get in touch with my inner hermit. I don’t see a million hermit thrushes but it’s always a treat when I do.  

I like to stay in touch with my inner bluebird too; this beauty posed genially in the late morning sunshine at Pony Pasture earlier today:  

Bluebird enjoying some winter sun at Pony Pasture this morning

No one would mistake a Red-tailed hawk for a hermit. They are outdoors and in plain view practically 365 days a year if you keep your eyes open. But as birds go, at least from my perspective, they are highly antisocial. Not 100% antisocial – when they’re with their mates, both appear (from what I’ve observed) so comfortable it’s almost like they’re ignoring one another. My interpretation of this (I may be incorrect) is they’re not ignoring one another. The truth is, they’re so focused on potential prey, that’s all they’re thinking about. Of course, it’s late Winter/early Spring, so they’re also thinking about (or anyway devoting their energy to) making new Red-tailed hawks. I did get a “pair” of Red-tails together yesterday afternoon, but they were perched on two separate cell phone towers so I couldn’t get both in the same image. Here’s the one that was closest to my house:

The Red-tail and the sun are both welcome sights

Oops – I did get a “true” “double” red-tail. This was around 9:30 Friday morning. They’re pairing up all over the place. This is on the cell phone tower behind Henrico County Fire Station 13 on the southeast corner of Church Road and Lauderdale Drive. It’s a predictable spot, but I also pass it regularly and I’m always looking for hawks, so maybe that’s why. Not wonderful light like it was yesterday, but double red-tails always make me smile. This is a great time of year:

Double Red-tail Friday. Hard to believe this is the same day I got the Hermit Thrush picture (at the top of this blog post)

Speaking of things that make me smile – Mackey and Turner went and I went hiking at Richmond’s Bryan Park Tuesday. Yuki didn’t join us for this hike. Possibly you saw this if you see me on facebook or instagram. But not everyone (fortunately) spends time on either of those platforms. Here’s the picture I posted:

Mackey & Turner at Bryan Park. See Turner standing on that big stump?

And, of course, since it’s Sunday, Yuki did join us today. Again we were in a city park, only this time, of course, again, it was Pony Pasture. Our home away from home: 

Mackey, Yuki and Turner pause on the trail this morning – they enjoy the nice weather too!

I’m going to a friend’s house to watch the first half of the Super Bowl. I have to get up for work at 5:00 tomorrow and I need sleep so I’m not going to stay for the finish. Have an excellent week! See you here again (I hope) on Sunday, 2/11. All best,

Jay

Posted in Birds, Dogs, Fun, James River, Pony Pasture, raptors, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Slim Pickens or “trust the process”

Posted on January 27, 2019 by Jay McLaughlin

27 January, 2019            Slim Pickens or “trust the process”

I haven’t gotten a million great images this month. Not even by my standards of “great images,” which are normally not real great. It’s been “slim pickings,” although I used the late actor’s name (Slim Pickens). It’s also “or ‘trust the process'” because some Sundays I’ll sit in front of this computer with a blank space between my ears. Where a blog post is supposed to already be. So I have to go back over the pictures I’ve taken this week and “trust the process.” 

There’s nothing to be proud of about this one, except it’s always fun to see a Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) at close range standing still. At least for a moment. In the partially frozen bird bath outside my office window yesterday:

Northern Flicker in a frozen bird bath

And of course I can’t go a week without a raptor. This Red-tail was perched in the swamp on the edge of Patterson Avenue Wednesday morning:

I love Red-tails on church crosses and cell phone towers. But natural settings are gorgeous

Mackey and Turner and I paid our first visit ever to Larus Park off Huguenot Road in Richmond Thursday. It’s a small, out of the way park but worth a visit – we’ll be back soon. Probably this week. Here’s Mackey and Turner in the park. Big rocks! Fun hiking:

Mackey (left), Turner (right) in front of big rocks at Larus Park Thursday

Here’s Mackey and Turner this morning, along with Yuki, at Pony Pasture:

Mackey, Yuki and Turner this morning in their “natural habitat” at Pony Pasture

We’ve already got bulbs coming up – and it’s still January. I photographed these three yesterday (January 26). I’ll keep following them here. Possibly it’s wishful thinking on my part, but I sense spring is more imminent than it normally is in late January. A week from today will be the first Sunday in February! It feels like the frogs will be singing any second at Pony Pasture. We’ll see. Maybe one more hard freeze first. But here are three bulbs from our yard:

Bulb 1 – week 1

Bulb 2 – week 1

Bulb 3 – week 1

Not gorgeous photography. But I think they’ll become more beautiful in the coming weeks. Begin to show some color. 

Lest I forget this is still January. I scratched this in the ice on the inside of our garage window Tuesday morning. She planted those bulbs:

The frost on this window will be LONG gone when her bulbs bloom. Hopefully very soon!

Have a great week! See you in February! All best,

Jay

Posted in Birds, Dogs, Flowers, Fun, hyacinths, ice, Northern flicker, Pony Pasture, raptors, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

dredge

Posted on January 20, 2019 by Jay McLaughlin

20 January, 2019            dredge

I dredged up a few stories I’d appended to blog posts in years past. Some of them are interesting if you’ve never read them before. I’ll put them near the bottom. After some pics from this past week.

I often wear t-shirts and hats and sweatshirts (the first one a gift from my brother Kevin and his wonderful family) with a logo that says “simplify”. They bought me the first one many years ago when they were visiting our sister Sheila in Concord, MA. They took a side trip to Thoreau’s home at Walden Pond and picked up that first great t-shirt. I focus on having less “stuff,” although I still have way, way, way too much. But part of the reason I spend so much time at the river is this could be in The Picture Dictionary as the definition for the word “simplify”:

simplify

I took that picture near the beginning of the hike (we started out late) 3:15 this afternoon. We (just Mackey and Turner and me) saw our friend Peter and his dog Henry at the beginning of our hike but they were just leaving as we were arriving. Peter said they’d seen a bunch of deer in the woods. After I took that river picture, Mackey and Turner and I headed down the river bank then turned up the creek and crossed Charlie’s Bridge. Sure enough, the woods were full of deer. I counted five, but there are always more that are “invisible.” I know this because so many times I’ve been looking at (say) “five” deer, and someone comes along with a barking dog and next thing you know, nine deer jump up and run into the woods. It is astonishing how “invisible” they make themselves. This youngster  was (at that instant) in no way invisible:

simplify too

The river says “simplify” and those deer say “simplify” and every raptor (IMO) says “simplify.” It’s early in the season but pairs are beginning to form, and everything is becoming more active. But “activity” for these raptors means a lot of sitting still, which this big female was doing Friday morning at Westhampton Memorial and Cremation Park on Patterson Avenue:  

I find many antidotes to being overwhelmed

The sky was clear earlier this week and I got a few “moon shots.” On Tuesday, 1/15 at 3:30 PM I took this picture directly in front of my house:

The moon Tuesday afternoon at 3:30:

This is how my “world clock” app described it:

About seven hours later, around 10:30 PM the same day, I photographed the same moon, this time from the side of my house:

Same moon, seven hours later

This is my “world clock” app description of the same moon, seven hours later:

Same moon, seven hours “older”

This is fascinating information. In seven hours, the moon has grown from 66.1% full to 68.8% full. It started out (when I saw it) 32º above the horizon and moved up to 46º above the horizon. I first saw it at a heading of 102º, just south of east. My house faces about 120º. Seven hours later it had gone all the way around to 245º, or almost west. I was looking at it from my driveway, continuing its rise over my next-door-neighbor’s house 

For people of a certain sensibility, that may not sound simple, but it is. It’s just numbers. It is entirely predictable, and it will not change in any of our lifetimes. Instead of this predictability being boring, I find it fascinating. But I know lots of people – many readers of this blog, I’m certain – don’t share that opinion. But here we all are. 

Yikes! I almost finished this blog post and neglected my marginal photograph of a rare (in my experience) “accipiter” – either a Cooper’s hawk or a Sharp-shinned hawk. They are not truly rare, I just don’t see them very often. This one was perched in my next-door neighbor’s sweet gum tree, scoping out bird feeders:

Red-tails (earlier in this blog) hunt mammals. This is an accipiter, and they hunt other birds. With no apparent remorse.

Yesterday Mackey and Turner and Yuki and I hiked at Bryan Park to avoid Pony Pasture mud. I didn’t get any brilliant pictures, but we took a moment’s break to get a photograph near this partially cut up fallen tree:

Yuki, Turner and Mackey at Bryan Park yesterday

That’ll be enough (for me) for today. But I’m going to append some links to a few early (-ish) blog posts with stories on the end. All five of them are from early 2012. At that point I didn’t have much blogging experience and was disorganized. But I was enthusiastic. Take a look at them – they’re worthwhile. IMO. And come back next week! All best,

Jay

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My first blog entry was on March 2, 2011 but it wasn’t like it is today. Much more random.

The first post when I appended a story was 13 January, 2012    A lot of life. At the very bottom is a story called Bird by bird that briefly describes the genesis or early years of the person I’ve become today.

My blog posts were still intermittent and less organized (if you can imagine) at that relatively early point. My next post was nine days later when I wrote on 22 January, 2012    A Perfect day for a lot of things. I described the first person I ever worked with, beginning around 1990. I just talked with him last week! Twenty-nine years later, remarkable. Always to see the “story” on a blog post, scroll down to the bottom – that’s where I put them, after the pictures.

It was only four days until my next “story” in the series, in a blog post on 26 January, 2012 called Day tripper. It’s the early story of a young man I began working with in late 1994 when he was fifteen years old. He lives in Charlotte now and we don’t catch up as often but I’m still in touch with his family. He’ll be forty next month!

On Groundhog Day that year I put up a post called We didn’t see our shadows and introduced that guy in a little more detail. He couldn’t really talk – at all – but he was and is an expert communicator. He was a great teacher for me, exactly the person I needed to spend time with early in my career. The most valuable lesson he taught me was (and is) “pay attention.” I am so grateful.

The blog post after that just had a link to a ride, then on February 11 I photographed and wrote a post called Don’t fence me in, which also had some riding in it. But I closed it (at the bottom) with another story that fits in with the series. They’re all a bit different. Currently I’ve found twenty-three blog posts with stories on the end. I’ll add a few more next week.

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Posted in accipiters, Birds, Bryan Park, Cooper's Hawk, Dogs, Fun, James River, moon, Pony Pasture, raptors, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers, simplify, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), thoreau, walden, whitetail deer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mixed emotions

Posted on January 13, 2019 by Jay McLaughlin

13 January, 2019            Mixed emotions

I had an experience – two experiences, really – on Monday, April 16, 2007. The dogs woke me up long before dawn today and, inexplicably, I was thinking of those two experiences. Evelyn is encouraging me to write more, and I’m reading about writing, and it’s stirring stuff up. That is undoubtedly why I was thinking of those two long ago experiences.

I’m going to pop a couple of pictures up here then put the “Mixed emotions” story at the end. So first, of course, the usual stuff. A lot of nice time outdoors this week. This morning I woke up real, real agitated from thinking – dreaming, I presume – about my two experiences on April 16, 2007. It was wet and cold outside but being agitated pushes me even harder than usual to the banks of the river. It was calming, as always. I took this picture shortly after we arrived:

Our wonderful James River this cold, gray January morning:

Monday morning on Patterson Avenue I saw a Red-shouldered hawk and a Red-tailed hawk perched in trees about five hundred yards apart. I love them both, but Red-shoulders don’t seem as confident at Red-tails. In my eyes, Red-tails always look confident – they perch and fly with swagger – and Red-shoulders always look a little concerned. Both of those assessments are what is called anthropomorphism – I am projecting my human emotions onto an animal. But that’s neither here nor there. Here is the Red-tail I saw Friday, at Westhampton Memorial & Cremation Park (it’s really called that, a “Park”) at 10000 Patterson Ave, Richmond, VA 23238: 

That bird does not appear to be worried. Maybe it is, or maybe they don’t have emotions. How would I knew? Great looking bird though. 

Here’s a picture of a Red-shouldered hawk, four or five hundred yards away: 

Red-shouldered hawk, a quick glide away from the Red-tail

I captured a fifty second video of a big female Red-tailed hawk in a tree across from my house Tuesday afternoon at 3:30. She had just flown into the tree carrying a mouse or a chipmunk or a mole or a vole – something small. By the time I went inside and got my camera and came back out, she had swallowed it. She stayed perched there for some time, then started moving her head around. I started taking a little video. It starts out bumpy but gets smoother. As an amateur ornithologist, her actions at the end surprised me. Hawks are true obligate carnivores – they only get their calories from meat. But she’s perched in what the Virginia Tech Dendrology department identifies as a yellow poplar. And in this video, she clearly consumes the seeds. She really starts eating them enthusiastically at around 40 or 45 seconds, right at the end. But it’s cool to see: 

Obligate carnivore consuming a plant

Deer are settling in at Pony Pasture for the short cold days and long cold nights. I hiked with some friends and their dog at Pony Pasture yesterday. I got this picture at 11:00 yesterday morning: 

A deer’s emotions in no way resemble a hawk’s. IMO.

Deer only eat plants. They don’t kill animals. Hawks are the opposite – they ONLY kill animals. Top of the food chain.

Yesterday that deer was looking at me, two other adults, and three dogs. It was for the most part unconcerned – there was an old fence in the woods and the dogs were on leashes. This morning the deer was looking at me and two dogs. They always assess risk. It’s always about energy. They get a certain number of calories (units of energy) from the plants they eat. They burn up those calories doing other things. If they run away when there’s no threat, they’ve burned valuable calories. And edible plants are few and far between in January. So it’s a foolish animal that burns needless energy. They stay around if they feel safe enough. Here are Mackey and Turner this morning, about twenty minutes walk (at my pace) away from those deer: 

Mackey and Turner are not fair weather hikers. They are all weather hikers.

Anyway enough with the pictures etc. Here is a bit about the thoughts that were troubling me before my two furry therapists and I went hiking at the river this morning. Have a great week, I hope you’ll join me here again next Sunday, all best, 

Jay

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Mixed emotions

In April, 2007 my dog Ivory and I had been visiting a friend with brain cancer for five years. Her name was Whitney and when we first met her in 2002 she was ten years old. She was lovely and had huge eyes and an even bigger smile and heart warmer than anyone else you know. She was as bald as a bowling ball but some people look even more beautiful bald, and she was one of them. She’d had a bad relapse and Ivory and I visited her again in the hospital on April 16 of 2007. She was fifteen when we visited her in 2007, and she’d loved dolphins her whole life. At some point during her illness the Make-a-wish foundation set up a trip to Florida so she could swim with dolphins. When Ivory and I visited her on April 16 she was wearing dolphin earrings. They were an inch long, with the outline of a dolphin in silver, around a smooth blue enamel dolphin. She was in a coma and she couldn’t swallow or hold her head up straight and thick foam pads on either side of her head held it up straight while she lay in bed. There was a little vacuum tube in her mouth sucking the saliva out. There were little humming buzzing hospital noises and Ivory and I were standing on her right side. And the blue enamel tail of her dolphin earring was vibrating just above the foam pads. Vibrating a tiny bit. I’m typing this twelve years later; I can see it perfectly in my mind’s eye. Hear that vacuum tube sucking out saliva. See the tail of that dolphin earring vibrating near the foam pad. Ivory was there to comfort her, or to comfort her family, or to comfort staff, but at that time he was only comforting me, a lot. Another thing I can recall perfectly is stroking Ivory’s soft fur. Since dogs don’t talk, they pay attention to other details, and intuitive dogs always understand the lightness or gravity of situations. Ivory breathed, like I did, and like Whitney did, except a machine was doing it for her. She died six weeks later. Her family had a blog/web site when she was alive, to update her friends and family about her progress. I found this entry from a couple of months after she died: “Whit’s tombstone was delivered last Thurs. and it is beautiful. I hope she loves the dolphins on her marker.” Fifteen years old. That is just wrong. 

Get an image in your mind of a young person you know well and care for very deeply. Imagine that person bald and withered and under hospital room lights, which are not like other lights. Hospital lights have only light, they don’t have warmth. Imagine knowing quite well you weren’t going to see this person alive again. Imagine that blue enamel dolphin earring tail vibrating, just perceptibly.

It’s hard to do that – it’s really, really hard. I would say I can imagine how hard it must be for her parents, but that would be a lie. I can’t imagine that. I’m sure it was hard for Ivory too, but I’m also sure he didn’t keep reliving it after we left. I dropped him off at the house and drove straight to the Y for a long, long swim, because that’s how I make myself eat and sleep when my mind and heart are in turmoil. 

So I walk into the Y and a crowd is gathered and they’re all watching TV, so many people you can hardly even get past, and I was determined to swim, but I stopped and looked up, and I was in agony and wanted to get in the pool, where nobody talks to you and you don’t talk to anybody. And on the TV, a man with a mental illness had killed himself and more than thirty other people at Virginia Tech. My brother was in Blacksburg but nothing happened to him. Every member of our Y is connected to Virginia Tech in some way, either by friendship or academics. People were hardly even breathing. It was so still and quiet, except for the person talking on the television. I still had every single molecule of my hospital visit – I hadn’t even left an hour earlier – in my system. I knew what I was seeing was awful – that was true evil on that television – but I’d just been a foot from a real human being who I knew well, and I knew she wasn’t going to breathe much longer.

I was aware how crazy my mixed emotions were, how one of these things was not worse than the other. I knew that, of all the times in our lives we talk about having “mixed emotions,” there would never be a more appropriate time than that moment. Thank goodness I was able to swim.

This story doesn’t have an ending. My friend with the dolphin earrings is not any less dead, and neither are all the people at Virginia Tech. But it’s January here in Richmond and it’s snowy and wet and cold. If Ivory was still around, he would’ve loved to take a hike at the river today – regardless of anything else. Mackey and Turner and I had a great, wet, cold, quiet, peaceful hike this morning. I don’t know if they were grateful every single second of the hike, but I sure was.  

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Posted in Birds, Dogs, Fun, ice, James River, People, Pony Pasture, raptors, red-shouldered hawks, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), whitetail deer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Nobody yawns…

Posted on January 6, 2019 by Jay McLaughlin

6 January, 2019            Nobody yawns…

Nobody yawns when they’re surprised by a free roaming eagle

I am embarrassed. I am acutely and painfully aware of the poor quality of this image. I took it. What stunned me about it – what is remarkable about it, IMO – is this magnificent animal was perched in a dead tree five hundred feet from a CVS pharmacy to the west, a Domino’s pizza to the east, an Episcopal church to the south. A couple of wingbeats and it could have landed on the roof of any of them. A Bald Eagle! The national bird and national animal of the United States. I was born in the early 1960’s inside the Beltway in the Washington DC area, and the idea of ever seeing a Bald Eagle was far-fetched. It simply (I believed) would never happen. Now here’s one perched practically in a strip mall. It’s a crummy image but what a bird to see in what an incredible spot. The black lines above it and below it are power lines strung beside Patterson Avenue 

I read up on them a bit afterward – I’d heard something about Benjamin Franklin being unimpressed with their character. I found this on a Smithsonian Magazine web site. The article says Franklin wrote: 

“For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly.” 

[Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/american-myths-benjamin-franklins-turkey-and-the-presidential-seal-6623414/%5D

Maybe they don’t make their living honestly – honestly I can’t say. I’m skeptical that birds have “moral Character” either way – they behave according to natural selection. They are at the top of the food chain. But they are spectacular to look at; you practically can’t turn your eyes away. You’d better believe you won’t yawn.  

Anyway, I’m still amazed. Hopefully the next time I photograph an eagle near a Domino’s, a 7/11, a CVS and a church I’ll get a better image.

======= 

From a more pedestrian point of view (in a manner of speaking) I was with my friend Clark at Hollywood Cemetery watching a trainload of covered hoppers moving east. These are probably full of grain or corn or something of that nature. I’ve been hearing and glimpsing mid-train locomotives for a couple of months, but Wednesday was the first time I’ve gotten a good look. It’s not exciting or award-winning photography but – like the strip mall Bald Eagle – it was unexpected and the first one I’ve ever seen: 

A mid-train locomotive

Thursday Mackey and Turner and I made it down to the river; it was muddy but not impassable. I believe the does that are going to get pregnant are pregnant, and they’re spending their mid-days bedded down in the woods. Chewing their cuds or “ruminating.” No great pictures, but here’s one: 

A white tail deer, a “ruminant,” ruminating at Pony Pasture Thursday morning

Just a few feet down the path I saw six gray squirrels at one time! If you’d drawn a 50′ x 50′ square in the air, a big frame, they would have all fit inside it. Plus there were probably more on the backs of the trees. I don’t know why or how that happened. Forget about photographing it – I don’t think it’s possible. Here is one of them; again a marginal image: 

Gray squirrel in view of deer at Pony Pasture. Part of a squirrel convention, IMO

I did have one image that came out well this week. It’s pretty tame, but it’s a Carolina Wren from Deep Run Park in western Henrico. My friend Kendall and I were hiking there Friday: 

Carolina Wren at Deep Run Friday

In quick succession from Pony Pasture this morning – because I’m tired and, not coincidentally, disorganized – three pictures then I’m done. 

A bluebird this morning, wearing drab winter colors: 

Bluebird sunning itself at Pony Pasture this morning

Second, a female turtle sunning herself on a log, while being ogled by two males – see their heads poking out of the water?: 

Two male turtles in the water, courting this female on the log

Finally, the river – I’m going to bed! Have an excellent first full week of 2019! 

Just look how beautiful our river looked this morning. It makes everything okay.

Have a great week! All best, 

Jay 

 

 

 

Posted in Bald eagles, Birds, Carolina wren, Fun, James River, Pony Pasture, raptors, Rivers, squirrels, Trains, whitetail deer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments