Notes:
- Daybreak. December 6, 2020. 7:00 to 7:45 am. 35° F feels like 26° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT.
- Ducks – Hooded Mergansers.
- Post Title: “Beautiful hours move so quickly.” — Irene Hunt, Up a Road Slowly. (Source: The Vale of Soulmaking)
Beautiful hours move so quickly
December 6, 2020 by 35 Comments
Saturday Morning
December 5, 2020 by 44 Comments
Daybreak. December 5, 2020. 7:30 am. 41° F. Heavy Rain. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT
Saturday Morning
June 20, 2020 by 33 Comments
Notes:
- Daybreak. 5:04 am. June 20, 2020. 67° F. Humidity 100%. Wind: 3 mph. Gusts: 5 mph. Cloud Cover: 13%. Weed Ave, Stamford, CT.
- And inspired by this:
A long dark curve is the poem in your body
is the river
is the loon’s throat.
Have you ever asked yourself how
the loon’s voice
opens?
~ Cheryl Hellner, from “Prayer for the Wild Voice, for Nina” (Heron Dance Journal, Feb 2006)
Tuesday Morning Wake-Up Call (Post Long Weekend)
January 21, 2020 by 15 Comments
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call. Up!
September 9, 2019 by 34 Comments
lift of water,
bracing
smooth—
a lubricant
to be part of
this synchrony,
able to lean
on others, ride
the breastbone
of a bird,
without wings or
even a feather.
~ Diane DeCillis, from “To Lean”
Notes: Poem – Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels). Photo: via Mennyfox55.
Two words: Duck Parade.
May 21, 2019 by 33 Comments
One surefire way to bring a smile to anyone’s face? Two words: Duck Parade…
Patients in the continuing care wing of the University of Rochester‘s Thompson Health hospital in Canandaigua, New York, were treated to just that last week. According to the hospital’s Facebook page, a mother duck parades her new ducklings through the hospital every year.
“Every year, without fail, a mama duck chooses one of the enclosed courtyards at our M.M. Ewing Continuing Care Center to lay her eggs and take care of her babies.” “She lets us know when she’s ready to go by tapping on the glass, and this morning, it was time for this annual rite of spring.”
The duck follows the same path every year, and facility services staff use old signage to gently guide her and the ducklings through the halls.
Source: Mother Duck Parades Her Babies Through a New York Hospital Which She Does Once a Year, Every Year (People.com, May 21, 2019)
Where she goes, they follow. All 76 of them… She’s the Mom of the Year.
July 29, 2018 by 28 Comments
Where she goes, they follow. All 76 of them. A female duck in Minnesota has about six dozen ducklings in her care, a remarkable image that an amateur wildlife photographer captured on a recent trip to Lake Bemidji, about 150 miles northwest of Duluth, Minn.
“It was mind blowing,” the photographer, Brent Cizek, said in an interview. “I didn’t know that a duck could care for that many chicks.” It’s not unusual to see many ducklings gathered together. Some 20 or 30 have been reported with a single hen. But 70-plus? “It’s an extraordinary sighting,” said Richard O. Prum, an ornithologist at Yale University…
Mr. Cizek said he first stumbled upon the brood in late June, when he headed out to the local lake in an eight-foot plastic boat he bought to fuel his outdoor photography. He said he wasn’t expecting to take many pictures that day — he brought one camera and one lens — but then he saw the duck and her babies.
He began snapping photos while trying to steer in choppy water. He rushed home to look at his camera roll, he said, and found that only one image turned out: the duck, who is being called Mama, blazing the way for the long line of ducklings in her wake.
“It kind of compels you just to look and wonder: How?” Mr. Cizek said. “How did this happen? How is this mom taking care of all of these ducklings? She just looks really proud and stoic in the photo.” [Read more…]
Miracle. All of it.
January 14, 2017 by 24 Comments
A small child next to us looked down at her snow-covered boots, then pointed to a duck that stood on the ice on the bank and asked her mother an extremely good question: “Why don’t his feet get cold?”…
It’s this: The bigger the temperature difference between two objects when they touch, the faster heat will flow from one to the other. Another way of putting that is to say that the more similar the temperatures of the two objects are, the more slowly heat will flow from one to the other. And that’s what really helps the ducks. As all that frantic paddling was going on, warm blood was flowing down the arteries of each duck’s legs. But those arteries were right next to the veins carrying blood back from the feet. The blood in the veins was cool. So the molecules in the warm blood jostled the blood vessel walls, which then jostled the cooler blood. The warm blood going to the feet got a bit cooler, and the blood going back into the body was warmed up a bit. Slightly farther down the duck’s leg, the arteries and the veins are both cooler overall, but the arteries are still warmer. So heat flows across from the arteries to the veins. All the way down the duck’s legs, heat that came from the duck’s body is being transferred to the blood that’s going back the other way, without going near the duck’s feet. But the blood itself goes all the way around. By the time the duck’s blood reaches its webbed feet, it’s pretty much the same temperature as the water. Because its feet aren’t much hotter than the water, they lose very little heat. And then as the blood travels back up toward the middle of the duck, it gets heated up by the blood coming down. This is called a countercurrent heat exchanger, and it’s a fantastically ingenious way of avoiding heat loss. If the duck can make sure that the heat doesn’t get to its feet, it has almost eliminated the possibility of losing energy that way.
So ducks can happily stand on the ice precisely because their feet are cold. And they don’t care.
~ Helen Czerski, from “Why Ducks Don’t Get Cold Feet” in Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life
Notes:
- Image Credit: wsj.com – Agence France Presse / Getty Images
- Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
- Related Posts: Miracle. All of it.
5:00 PM Bell: Roll em’ Out!
April 8, 2016 by 6 Comments
A Girl and Her Duck
March 20, 2016 by 41 Comments
“A 5-year-old in Maine has an inseparable bond with her duck. Not a toy duck – a real, live duck. She believes she is the duck’s mom, and vice versa.”
Yep. It’s only Thursday. Keep swimming.
May 15, 2014 by 25 Comments
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call: One and Two and One and Two
April 7, 2014 by 22 Comments
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call: 5 more minutes?
September 9, 2013 by 14 Comments
NOT A CHANCE!
- Credits: Wood Duck Photo Source: Thank you Madame Scherzo via Scott Bourne
- Related Post: What’s with the birds?
Little Duck’s Thoughts
July 19, 2013 by 13 Comments
Inspired by:
I’ll tell you what love of this life is.
It’s looking up
through trees newly bare of leaves
and seeing there the oldest road,
a broken line of white stars
stretching out across the sky.
It’s thinking,
this could be enough.– Susan Elbe, Light Made From Nothing
Credits: Little Duck Comic Adapted from Poorly Drawn Lines. Susan Elbe quote: Whiskey River
Rubber Duckie, You’re the One
May 6, 2013 by 30 Comments
Now, who wouldn’t love a six-story, floating rubber duckie. Something incredibly soothing about this picture (and the story).
And if you want to go back down memory lane,
[Read more…]
T.G.I.F.: Loooooong Week
March 8, 2013 by 25 Comments
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call: Bath Time!
December 3, 2012 by 24 Comments
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call: Get up!
October 1, 2012 by 23 Comments
Life in the fast lane…
September 5, 2012 by 37 Comments
56 second video clip. Yet it packs a punch above (way above) its weight class.
Will you avert your eyes?
Will you grimace?
Will you hold your breath?
Did you breathe a sigh of relief when it ended?
I bet money the answer is yes to all. Don’t take the wager. I only bet when I know I will win. 🙂
Live & Learn 