Not everyone hates the soggy weather

This is the kind of weather where you either rust of start to grow moss. In short, it's really soggy.

I took a walk along the river yesterday and thought it might be time for another Inside Dope Cavalcade of Photographs of Dubious Interest. (TM) As always, click on the pictures for larger versions.

The rivers are straining to contain all the water flooding into them, resulting in this spot where you can indulge in a therapeutic foot soak in the healing brown waters of the Mighty Mississippi, which Twain famously described as too thick to drink and too thin to plow.



With relentless rain and the deluge of last night, you may think you're living somewhere in the Amazon basin. But not everyone finds wet weather disagreeable.

Like this rare two-headed Pushmi-pullyu goose for example. It's damned hard to sneak up on an animal that has a head pointed in both directions.

(Missed it by that much. After I realized what I had, I tried to move just a hair to get their necks to line up perfectly, but of course, by then they'd moved. When I tried to tell them to go back and stand in the same places, they acted like they just didn't care.

They'll never work in this town again.)

There were four distinct ages of geese, the adults, the adolescents, young geese still brown and downy, and a small group of very young goslings.

This guy and I struck it off pretty well. He was one of the youngest geese.

I thought he cut a fine figure of a goose, and obviously possessed a keen intelligence.



As a matter of fact, he was so glad to see me that he did a little gosling happy dance.


Sometimes there's moments where your feet just won't behave.

There were a gaggle and a half of geese along the river. Big Dads and Moms standing guard with their necks outstretched, and offspring of all ages, all busy grooming like mad, pecking at the grass, or just chilling out.

Do you ever have an itch where you just can't quite reach it? Geese don't.



This shot reminded me a bit of Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grand Jatte".



Here, I'll run it through the magic Seuratifier.



Young geese, like kids of a certain age everywhere, aren't exactly graceful looking. These guys have a decidedly Dodo-ish look to them, only with downy feathers and little undeveloped wings. This is one of the geese between the babies and the adolescents, maybe a year or two old I'm guessing.



Not everyone gave me such a warm greeting, like this big honker who made it known it wasn't a good idea to get any closer. I didn't.





Then there were the adolescents... their black feathers had come in, but they still had a bit of down, giving them that scruffy unwashed look sought by teen rebels everywhere. This guy really knew how to relax... one wing casually flopped out and webbed foot sprawled out behind him.



In terms of sheer grace and ghostly aura, nothing can match the Blue Heron. This one just took off and hasn't retracted it's landing gear yet. A closer look and it's not too hard to see how birds are considered the direct descendants of dinosaurs.



Once up to speed, the gear comes up, and the awesome curve of their huge wings can be seen.



I'm no bird person, other than to take shots of them when they're around. So here's where you might help. Geese weren't the only birds around yesterday.

There was this odd fellow, which I've seen many times over the past few years. He hangs out with the geese as if he is one, but he's definitely the "odd duck" so to speak. I think someone told me what they thought it was at one time but I've completely forgotten. Anyone know?



And this little bird really intrigues me. I've seen birds like this maybe a couple times before. It's obviously a shore bird with stiff little stilt legs. I think it might be a Killdeer. (I shot this from very far away, so it's not exactly sharp.)