It’s been 3 months since my last post and a lot has happened. September began with a bout of Covid for Pam and me. As soon as we started to feel better, Mother Nature sent us hurricane Ian. We spent the last week of September making preparations for the storm and then spent the first week of October cleaning up the debris. Thankfully our damage was minimal compared to those a few miles south, although we did receive over a foot of rain. Unfortunately for my photography buddy, Art Nadelman, he tore his bicep muscle tendon while cleaning up his yard and had to have surgery.
Ian delivered quite a blow to our birding activities. Many parks and preserves were flooded or sustained severe wind damage making them inaccessible. One of our favorite state parks is still closed. The bald eagles that we’ve watched and photographed for the past several years have been displaced. The tree with their nest blew down as well as all the trees surrounding their nest. This is a great loss for photographers because the nest was so accessible. We’ll be watching to see where they choose their next home and hope that we can get another great shooting spot.
If the hurricane wasn’t bad enough, we lost one of our 4-legged babies on October 13. Gabby, our beloved 12-year-old Bichon Frise was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer on October 7 and passed just 6 days later. Needless to say, it was a devastating loss.
Backyard birding has been the norm this fall. The good news is that our male painted bunting returned to our feeder in mid-October, and we’ve been fortunate to attract a pair of ruby-throated hummingbirds to a feeder since the end of September. Our winter waterfowl migrants are just beginning to arrive so it will be good to start getting out again.
