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!)

 

dinosaur 2!

Dinosaurs roam in Sea Bright–and they deck themselves out in Christmas lights.

(This is the best front-yard ornament EVER.)

Edit: read Ericles’ comment below for more information on the artist.)

 

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.

 

dinosaur!

…just so you can see how Bradley Beach’s hobby-horses compare to Ocean Township’s.

I like dinosaurs! I used to, anyway. I collected all kinds of plastic figurines and had all kinds of books and I could tell you anything you wanted to know–except HOW THEY ALL DIED.

(That was back in the day when the meteor theory held as much water as the overpopulation theory and the Dinosaur Version of the Black Plague theory.)