mad seagull

I don't live in Monmouth County anymore, but my parents do, and I visit them, and sometimes there are nifty things around here to photograph. So I'm going to add a couple unofficial not-updates (since OTDP is very clearly "no longer updating"). :)

After my last post (August 17, 2008), I moved to Chicago for two years, and then back to north Jersey. I'm still there, and I've been running New Providence Daily Photo for a year and a half (welllll... a little over a year). It's sort of the bastard stepsister of Monmouth County Daily Photo.

There's nothing like NOT living on the shore to make you appreciate it!

Is OTDP still on your RSS feed? Do you still even have an RSS feed? If so, how are you doing?

(FYI, I will probably not continue updates for this clone of the blog; for Jersey shore photo updates, check Monmouth County Daily Photo [on Wordpress] or New Jersey in Photos [on Tumblr].)

pidgins

Pigeons in the Asbury Park Casino.

Rather than thinking something normal, like "Huh, we usually see more mourning doves than pigeons around here, 'cos these parts aren't too urban," I keep thinking something more along the lines of "Bet those pigeons don't speak Pidgin."

geese

Why did the geese cross the road?



...well, wouldn't you want to hang out with your friends?

beach finds 2

It's a little long to have come from an Eastern Goldfinch; I'm not quite sure what sort of bird this feather comes from.

mourning dove

We've been having a bit of a drought around here. It's not a worrisome drought yet, since we got an awful lot of rain this past winter to fill our reservoirs, but the plants have been generally unhappy. (Our entire lawn has turned a lovely shade of crunchy brown.)

This morning, however, it rained! The plants were ecstatic, and the mourning doves seemed to be enjoying themselves, too. (This afternoon, though, Monmouth County is back to its original state of hot, dry misery.) Speaking of mourning doves, by the way, I am NO NATURE PHOTOGRAPHER. These photos were all taken through a dirty rain-spattered window.

Don't mourning doves usually travel in pairs, you ask?

Yup. They sure do!

Here are a couple more photos, 'cos even though I try to bring an editing eye to this stuff, sometimes I really can't narrow it down to less than four. (There were originally about 24 shots. Give me some credit for trying!)

eggy eggy eggsenfree!

Awwwwwww.

The place where I took this photo was a fairly high-traffic area of Brookdale Community College, so I had to think twice about contorting myself into the compromising position necessary to take this photo. However, about 15 feet away from me was a woman standing, staring at the ground, and talking loudly and clearly to herself (MAYYYYBE she had a hands-free headset or something... but she wasn't using her hands! they just hung at her sides). I decided that her situation was more embarrassing than mine, and if SHE was willing to look like such a looney in the middle of campus, then I shouldn't have any problem with it! So I knelt down to take the picture without another thought.

birds of state

I think I'm still the only official City Daily Photoblog based in New Jersey, so I suppose it's necessary to include a little education about the entire state once in a while. :)

The Eastern Goldfinch has been the official state bird of New Jersey since 1935. Nobody knows why.

sparrow

I'll never know what you'll find when you open up your letter box tomorrow
'Cause a little bird never tells me anything I want to know, she's my best friend, she's a sparrow
And I'll never never know what you never never never want to know when you know what you are-oh.

-They Might Be Giants, "Letterbox"


I spent about 10 minutes with my camera poised at this chirping little sparrow, trying to get a picture of it in flight.



This is the best one I got. (I actually ended up panning, which is why it's blurred; the shutter speed was something like 1/400 sec.)

gull 2

This is not the first gull-on-a-lamppost that I've photographed... but at least the lamppost is prettier this time.

festive geese

Okay, so I forgot that yesterday was St. Patrick's Day. It wasn't until I went into the student center, bought some coffee, and read a sign saying "Just because it's St. Patty's Day doesn't mean you should drink and drive" (or something to that effect) that it even occurred to me. Too many holidays! There's Daylight Savings, then Pi Day, then Palm Sunday, then St. Patrick's Day, then St. Joseph's Day, then Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and Easter--all in the span of two measly weeks!

ANYWAY.

These are some stone geese right by a street sign.



The geese were wearing Christmas attire up until this week. But now, as you can see, they have gotten with the times.

loosey goosey

I may not have mentioned Canada geese before on this blog, but... there are a LOT of them around here, especially wherever you find open fields. (I presume this is not unique to this area, though.) I personally have often seen them in middle school/high school fields, cemeteries, and on the way to Monmouth U. (Traffic is often paused for a moment on one of the back roads [near a horse farm] as we all wait for the damn geese to cross the road.)

Three things I can tell you about Canada geese:
1. They are CANADA geese, not CANADIAN geese.
2. They have no fear of cars.
3. They poop a lot.

(This photo was taken in Thompson Park.)

finches

The finches that frequent our feeders flew away, fearing my footsteps.

Thankfully, they didn't fly too far, and I have a 10x optical zoom on my camera.

Unfortunately, I have no lens hood, and things (like snow) get on my lens very easily.


P.S. The goldfinch, as seen in the middle of the photo, is the New Jersey state bird. (Officially, anyway. Many people contest that our state bird is the mosquito.)

P.P.S. Look what I made! :)

untitled, flight

Geese, I think, somewhere over Freehold or Manalapan.

gull

Walking through the parking lot, some squawking caught my ear.

nylon birds

Kitesurfing in Sandy Hook Bay!

carrion (yum yum)

So I was hurriedly packing my bag for class today, and I glanced at my bulky Fuji with 10x zoom, and I said to myself, "Self, you're not going anywhere interesting today. You probably won't need that big heavy camera. But pack your cheezy little Nikon Coolpix just in case you see an interesting manhole cover."

NATURALLY, because I ONLY had the camera with crappy zoom capabilities, I saw a couple of far-off turkey vultures.

ARGH.

Anyway.

Maybe it's because I'm not a birder, but I don't see a lot of vultures around here. We're deep in the heart of a tree-laden suburbia here, so we get a lot of robins, Canada geese, crows, starlings, mourning doves, woodpeckers (sometimes), and various uninterestingly-colored songbirds... but vultures are a new one for me.

osprey

Osprey.

There are a fair number of them around here. They've been making all kinds of osprey conservation efforts for years.

eggshell

A discarded shell. I just found it, and I think all the robins have been hatched for a while, so I don't have any good explanations for its presence.

ducks

Now THAT is a motion blur. (Joe Palaia Park.)


(Crossposted to Monmouth County Daily Photo)