Tag Archives: weekly photo challenge

Weekly Photo Challenge: Contrasts

Weekly Photo Challenge: Contrastschecking the purple martins

Grandpa’s been working on getting purple martins to nest in his gourds for years. Finally, after many years of empty nests, a few birds moved in. The colony has now grown and this year has been the best by far.

The picture shows my mom just starting to lower the colony in order to check the nests. In the few minutes it took us to peer in all the boxes, record what we saw and pull the whole works up again, we found twenty seven babies and forty one eggs!

All the data is collected, compiled and sent to Project Martin Watch which conducts a continent-wide survey of martins much of which is collected by volunteers.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Split-Second Story

Weekly Photo Challenge: Split-Second Storyhouse demo

We sat, truck idling, windshield wipers flapping, watching in horror and fascination as the big machine went to take yet another bite of out of our old house.

There it all was.

The expanding road that forced the move, and the remains of our first house. It’s paltry insulation rests among the shingles we put on ourselves. The front door that never closed well enough to lock properly falls out the side as my favorite red shutters fall off the front. The bay window still stands as the remaining peony gets crushed under the mess. An un-grounded kitchen outlet lays exposed as my handmade curtains hide just beyond the window.

That was this morning. Tonight, it’s gone.

Nothing but memories now.

Weekly Photo Challenge: On The Move

Weekly Photo Challenge: On The Movewalleye eggs

Last fall my Dad, with his local Walleyes for Tomorrow chapter, built a “Walleye Wagon“. This “wagon” is actually a portable fish hatchery, just for walleye, and is parked right next to the lake that they both collect the eggs from and release the fry into. Just this last weekend the fish were hatching – we had to stop by and check it out.

Everything was on the move!

The eggs were roiling around on the bottom of the giant flasks, the newly hatched fry were swimming up and floating down, partially hatched ones with just tails sticking out were flailing themselves around in circles, and people were dropping by constantly to see all the excitement.

It was amazing!

 You can check out Pewaukee Walleyes website at http://pewaukeewalleyes.wordpress.com/ for more details on how they hatched four million walleye fry!