What do we do for fun at the Lodge?

People sometimes ask, and we know that they think: What can you do in a house with no electricity yet and no entertainment electronics?
Well, our neighbors keep us entertained part of the time. Saturday morning four of them came calling. Although the hen beaked at the door for a long time, when we went to open, she changed her mind. As for her tom? He apparently only cared about the impression he was making on the other turkeys, including the one that looked like him in the glass.
Yes, I was using the 50-year-old 250mm Nikkor.

Birds, and more birds

I covered some of my bird photography on my older web site , but thought I would add a few more pictures here as a salute to the new year.

The lesser snow geese were in migration and using Harney Lake in East Central Oregon.
The American goldfinch, the yellow-headed blackbird and the ruby-crowned kinglet were shots taken on the fly, handheld, using a 400mm F4.5 Nikkor with pistol grip. The pigmy owl was much closer and, after rehabilitation, about to be released back into the wild.