utenzi

Maybe that should be spelled "dear." It's kinda hard to determine. The picture is from a hike I did on Saturday. I got the picture just as I was leaving Eno River Park at 8:50pm. The deer were grazing near where I was parked. While there's only two deer in the picture there were 8 in all. Mostly males. And yes, it was getting a wee bit dark to be hiking in the woods. That last 20 minutes of trail had me doing some serious jogging. The "dear" versus "deer" part involves some Emails tossed around between me and JLee. I was teasing her about having to work on Saturday and she was teasing me about her having a dinner date afterwards and me.... not having one. Overall I think she won. Dammit. And speaking of dates, number 3 hasn't happened yet. Nope. Not on Friday, nor Saturday, and not even anything scheduled for Sunday. It's enough to make one wonder...

I went hiking today after work. There were thunderstorms rolling through the area so it was kinda dark and since I didn't want my good camera to get wet, I used my backup camera. Just in case. So, towards the end of the hike I see these two deer pretty far away in the woods. I try to take a photo with my zoom out at 12X but it was just too dark. The picture here was a 1.5 second exposure. Even braced against a tree I couldn't hold the camera steady enough for the shot to work. So, I decided---what the hell---even though they're pretty far away I'll try my flash. Result? Demon deer.

That's a slightly pretentious title but that's the kinda place that it is. Big house , huge estate type grounds, and very well maintained. House tours are $10 and walking the trail around on the grounds is free. Wanna guess which option I took? This, as you can probably surmise, is a very young deer. The little thing was resting in the grass just short of the forest. No mom around so I guess she came to her senses and ditched the fawn. Call Child Services! How would you like a nice pond in your backyard? That's what you see below. Way up on that hill above and to the left of the pond is the main house. When you sit out on the back area of the house you look out over the grassy hill and pond. Nice! 

I got up early this morning to go hiking. I went to Duke Forest this time and wandered about a bit in the misty early morning light. I found this fellow soon after I arrived. He seemed to be kinda intent on his eating. As you can see, he's done a lot of carving out of that leaf. Not very good company for a hike tho---he's on the slow side.  Below you see two fellow travelers on the path I took. Not the proverbial least traveled one, I guess. In any case, they didn't stick around for long. The Mom seemed to think I was a bad influence. No doubt she was right.

I went hiking again today but this time I went by myself. Julie decided she wanted to have breakfast instead of tramping around in the woods. Silly girl! I wanted to get pictures of some deer today and for that you have to either get an early start---or a late one. Since I was having trouble sleeping and woke up at 3am I decided to read for a few hours and then go after those deer that hadn't gone to sleep yet. Isn't that first picture pretty? I love the green of ferns contrasted against dark shades of brown and black. The fallen log adds some contrast in this picture--as does the path though not quite as well. Since I wanted to get a picture of a deer, I was walking fairly quietly---and I was lucky enough to approach this doe before she realized I was around. She was quite a ways away and I had to use my camera zoomed all the way out. The only reason the shot worked was that the doe was standing in a bright spot in a clearing. Had she been in the shaded woods I'd never hav...