Brad's Blog
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Oct. 4, 2019
  A couple weeks ago I might have seen some Loch Ness monsters at Farragut Park:


Except that another photo reveals them to be:


Western Grebes....
I like the impressionistic graininess of these photos...  And we don't have western grebes on little Spirit Lake...


I keep expecting flocks of migrating ducks to come through, like the ring-billed...   This wood duck male and his harem of 3-4 females has been the most reliable group in the mill pond lately...   Wood ducks are, in my opinion, the second most beautfiul ducks, after the mandarin...

Oct. 10
We got a repeat of last month's rain turning to 3 inches of snow a couple nights ago, resulting in patchy snow and cold nights in the area...
Butters and I went up on the ridge and I saw a tiny skink, about two inches long:

It prompted me to write this to a local young person who's been writing articles on Idaho lizards and amphibians:
"Today I found this small skink  on the trail by Spirit Lake. Unfortunately it was frozen...  It reminded me that my wife and I have a long sadness related to local kids making a spring habit of overturning rocks on the ridge hunting for skinks.  It is wrong to capture them, and it is wrong to overturn the rocks and leave them overturned, killing the native wildflowers and making a worse environment for lizards to survive.  I'm not sure if you've written about skinks, but if you do, you might encourage people to enjoy them with photos instead of captures and habitat destruction...  A photo of a living skink is much harder than catching one..."
This was the view from the ridge today towards Maiden Rock:




books read
Bark of Night by David Rosenfelt.  Another fine mystery revolving around dogs, with a fairly complicated conspiracy...
Cold Hearted River by Keith McCafferty   Although I don't agree with the appellation of Hemingway as the greatest American novelist, the Hemingway mystique adds a fun dimension to what would otherwise be another fishing yarn...
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