Bald Eagle – Splattered Brains

I hate to admit it, but I do have the Monday Morning Blues today. The worries/annoyances have risen to the surface – Omicron, Build Back Better, stock market, etc.. The microwave oven happened to breathe its last yesterday. It has to be fixed before the rest of the family arrives for the Christmas holiday. The laundry and the groceries have to be done. It is colder than usual this morning, and the Reynauds is always there in the background. I think I can find plenty of stuff to get worked up about if I put my mind to it!😄

The conditions for our Sunday morning walk yesterday were not ideal. Although the temperature was supposed to be in the 40s – not too bad – it was cloudy, and there was a breeze coming through. There was the promise of the sunshine that was to come later in the day, with the blue sky poking through the clouds in the distance, but that did not do anything to help us feel warmer on the trail that time of the morning. My fingers never warmed up in spite of the 7 mile walk.

There were a couple of exciting sightings during the walk. The red-shouldered hawk settled on a branch just above the trail and sat there while I took its pictures. We were close to Swains Lock when that happened.

The bird eventually became shy and turned its head the other way.

We also saw a nest on the other side of the river with a couple of bald eagles in it. Their season for nesting is beginning. We have to thank the birders – a small group of older women – whose actions in the distance on the trail gave us a clue about the presence of the nest. (They also identified the red-shouldered hawk for us when we saw it the first time.)

Its just another day.

My blogs have had the tagline of “Anything Goes” since the beginning, which could indicate either an aimless drift in a random direction, or, if you want to be kind, some sort of attempt on my part to include all of my disconnected interests in my postings. You decide! But one of the things that I hope you do discover in the blogs is that some of them tell stories of some kind or the other, be it that of the tree that grows in the woods, or something as silly as talking about the experience of consuming a bowl of cereal, or perhaps something else that takes my fancy at some particular moment in time. With this kind of a mindset, my response the topic of this week’s challenge comes somewhat easily.

My story for the day touches upon the “bomb cyclone“, a term that I had not heard of until very recently. As I understand it, a bomb cyclone weather phenomenon is characterized by a rapid and large drop in barometric pressure, which leads to extreme wind speeds that can cause a lot of damage. It leads to the story, in pictures, of last weekend’s walk along the C&O canal. This particular outing happened to take place after a bomb cyclone had passed through the region.

It was a sunny morning on the trail as we set out on our walk. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA We encountered quite a few fallen branches on the trail due to the aftereffects of the storm, and, being good citizens, we spent a significant bit of our time cleaning up the trail for those who were going to come after us. (We were not about to break any speed records that day.) And then there were the sections where we could do little to help, sections that would require professional equipment for cleanup. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA We did encounter cyclists who must have had to carry their bikes over fallen trees.

We did make it to our destination close to the mile 31 marker where Edwards Ferry OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA and lock 25 are locatedbefore turning back to return to our starting point.

The story would not be complete without a picture of the bald eagle that we encountered, OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA and a picture of the chopped up pieces of a fallen tree that we saw beside the trail, a little too late for Valentine’s day. We did about 7 1/2 miles of walking that morning. That is my story and I am sticking to it! 🙂

Tag: Bald Eagle

Its Just Another Day

In Search of a Story