flocking at sunset

Everyone loves a good sunset!

Some people do not love a good flock of seagulls, but y’know, it’s their loss.

 

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

 

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!)

 

casino 3

Interior of Asbury Park Casino–what’s left of it, anyway. And, just to orient you, if you click that “Asbury Park Casino” link and pretend you’re standing there, this is what you’d see if you looked through a hole in the wall to your left.

(Click the photo for a larger size! This is two photos hand-stitched together with no fancy software.)

 

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.