2016 winding down

Another year prepares to bite the dust.



I hope we will move into a peaceful 2017.



I have reached the age where uneventful is a good thing.



I certainly wasn't always like that.



For me the big events I enjoy are happenings like the gulls returning to the lake for the winter.



It's odd the way gulls leave the lake near my house in the spring and return in the winter.



Another change at the lake is the Canada Geese move away from the sandbars at the bridge in the winter and hangout on the dam and in the fields.



The Canada Geese return to the long bridge and sandbar side after their babies are starting to grow up and sometime before then the gulls go away until the next winter. 



I've never quite been able to figure out the reason for these shifts.



Cormorants are another group that tend to disappear in the summer and come back in the fall. 



The gulls and cormorants hang out on the sandbars that were full of geese until about a month ago when the geese moved to the other part of the lake. The mallards tend to hang out pretty much anywhere around the lake without visible changes by season.

November 26 through December 10, 2016

I'm going to start with shots I took this morning and move back to the end of fall.



The shot above of the American Robin was planned. I didn't realize I'd caught a bird in the next shot until I uploaded to my computer.



The frost on my car almost looks like wrapping paper to me.



I took the next few shots at work with my cell phone.



The clouds were wonderful.



I wish I had my camera with me but my cell phone does a fair job.



I took the next shot after I got home with my camera.



I love capturing robins with wide open mouths.



I try to give the birds fresh water in the winter as well as the summer.



There are a lot of robins although in the winter I usually see them in the trees more that at the bird bath.



I didn't even see the titmouse below until after I took the picture of the robin.



The next one is a rufous sided towhee (female).



I can't remember what kind of woodpecker I caught below.



I think the next bird is a grackle.



I like the hint of vivid color.



Male cardinals are one of my favorite birds to capture when it snows. It hasn't snowed here yet and didn't turn very cold until this past week.



Next are finches, a sparrow (I think) and an american robin.



A couple of days after I took the shot below the leaves fell off the trees in a hard rain.



The next shot was taken at the Neuse River trail.



As I keep mentioning we had an unusually late fall but the leaves have finally fallen.



Last but not least is my neighbor's Japanese Maple.

November 19 through the 25th, 2016

As I've mentioned on the last few posts we've had a later and prolonged fall this year.



The shots at the beginning of this post were taken at my neighborhood lake (Shelley) last weekend.



But we still have a lot of fall color even now.



I don't think I can ever remember a Thanksgiving with leaves still on the trees. 



The shots above were taken on November 19th and the next few below were taken on the 20th and 21st.



The shot above is one of the oak trees in front of my house and the next shot was taken when I was running errands.



I think the clouds above look like dancers.



I love the way pine cones and pine needles look with autumnal light.



The next batch of shots were taken on Thanksgiving day.



It started off drizzling and raining but by the time I got to Oxford where Bill has retired the blue sky was peeping through.



Bill made a delicious Thanksgiving dinner. 



We alternate holiday meals so I'll be doing Christmas dinner in Raleigh this year and he did Thanksgiving in Oxford.



The oak above is in Bill's front yard. 



Until recently Bill lived in a townhouse in Raleigh near where I live but after retiring he bought five acres of land and an old farm house in the country.



I still live in the same house Bill and I bought in 1984 several years after we were married and a year before our daughter was born. 



The shot above and the rest of the shots in this post were taken today, November 25, 2016.



I went on a walk at Shelley Lake and one sign of winter coming is the geese have mostly moved to the dam and the gulls are starting to return to the part of the lake with the long bridge.



The gulls go somewhere else in the spring (I suppose to breed) and return here to the lake in the winter.



The geese tend to move to the dam and big field in the winter and don't congregate as much near the bridge until the goslings are born and walking well.



The pair of mallards above are the only ones I saw at the lake today.



Hard to pick out shots.



I took so many because even with a very late fall I can't believe the colorful leaves will stay on the trees much longer.



Last week we had several nights that were well over 10 degrees below freezing.



I hope everyone that celebrates it had a happy Thanksgiving.