After the last week’s physical debacle, I was stoked to wake up on Saturday morning to near darkness and rain pissing down. That meant I could sit around like the mentally challenged obese sloth that I am and rest my back and shoulder without guilt. And ditto for Sunday, thank you very much.
When Monday and the start of another week of fresh hell arrived, I was eager to do something physical and returned to the gym for some time on the treadmill and light strength training.
My back and shoulder made it through without spasms or popping, and it felt awesome to be off the couch and doing stuff, even if it was at a reduced level of intensity, by a man with a reduced level of fucks to give.
With that, I was stoked to do something again on Tuesday morning but feared my back might not be ready for a multi-mile hike, so I headed to Meridian Park to creep around shooting bird pics.
Sadly, the birds missed the memo, and other than a few small birds flying high overhead, I saw nothing, NOTHING! And as far as other critters, I saw a ton of grasshoppers, some small bashful turtles from a distance, a butterfly or two flitting around, and a dead snake in the scummy pond. I took a few shots, but sadly they were lost when I inadvertently formatted the card on Wednesday morning (spoiler alert). And as an added bonus, the trails near the river are so overgrown that I actually lost the trail at one point and had to turn around. To say the creep was a fail would be an understatement.
A few heavy sighs and a short drive later, I was back in the Cul De Sac Shack, cursing my bad luck and wondering if 10:50 AM was too early for beer (it is).
I’ve had some really good luck stalking birds and critters of late, but Tuesday was not that day.
Not to be deterred from getting some shots this week, I poo-pooed the gym on Wednesday in lieu of a photo creep around the Forest Hill Nature Area.
The morning sky was blue, the sun was bright, and it felt like another perfect Michigan summer’s day. I can always count on Forest Hill to offer up some birds to photograph, but the first half of the photo creep was more of nothing; the red-wing blackbirds are done nesting and have moved on, and the water levels are so low and scummy that many birds seem to be opting for better living conditions elsewhere.
As the creep went on, I turned my attention to the dragonflies, butterflies, and plentiful wildflowers covering the preserve in an attempt to salvage some pixels.
Then after about a mile of walking, I started finding a few birds here and there, along with some frogs chilling in the ponds and swamps. I can’t say it was one of my most productive creeps at Forest Hill, but I did walk away with a few shots, including my first shot ever of a hummingbird at the feeder and trees near the parking lot. Coincidentally, when I was carrying Jake (The Dog) in from his early morning dump, a hummingbird was buzzing and hovering just above me, scouring the yard for flowers to suck on; little did I know I would nab a pic of one later1.
***
In the end, I got some pretty OK shots and also spied some cool wildlife that I just couldn’t get quality images of, mostly due to my location or the shot being blocked by brush or trees; I watched a family of ducks through the tall reeds as they paddled around an algae-filled pond, I saw a Green Heron hanging out in a leafy tree, watched a beautiful Great Egret through the brush along a pond until it took flight, saw numerous turtles sunning on distant logs, and heard the countless distinctive “plops” of scared frogs retreating to the water as I approached.
Getting photos of critters in nature is always fun, but I have to admit, even the shots I miss can often give me the tingling. While I sometimes miss the ground I can cover on my bike and the fitness that long rides bring, hiking and creeping around the woods with my camera can give me an even stronger sense of how amazing nature is.
Later.