In Which We Think of Hitchcock Films

The crow in the corner calls the morning bird meeting to order.

See the power lines, which I photographed on a cool, cloudy Wednesday morning during my bicycle ride to Mount Mercy University. This is on Eastern Avenue.

“The Birds,” right? The crow that seems to be chairing this meeting did squawk a bit menacingly at me as I paused to photograph this group—sadly, only one crow so it’s just a group of birds, not a murder—but I don’t think it quothed “nevermore.”

And so I emerged from said spooky October dinosaur photo shoot unscathed.

It’s fall y’all, and the seasonal bird sightings continued Wednesday afternoon. I choose the trail route home, and there wasn’t just one white bird of unusual size at Cedar Lake—two flocks of pelicans graced the lake with their awkward, stately presence. They were pretty to see, and I may swing by the lake today to see if they’re there in the bright, cool, pretty fall sunshine of today.

The pelicans have landed. There were in two groups, one on the lake near the north shore (first two photos) and one that came in for a landing in the middle of the lake (bottom photo).

Finally, get a load of the deer. This is not the same photo shoot as in my previous blog post—this is later on my ride home Wednesday, almost there—the deer are right beside C Avenue near rush hour—I hope they don’t become McMeat via any car (or bike) dodging!

Light is fading, so walking deer is a blur. There were three in this group.

Today featured featured the first frost of fall–definitely a jacket morning. I looked, but did not find my winter gloves, and my bike gloves did not quite cut it. My digits were frigid by the time I got to campus, although not too frozen to shoot an image of the frosty grass at sunrise.

First frost--I hope you can see it on the oak leaf. Sunrise on hillside at MMU this morning.

Fall is indeed second only to spring as a pleasant biking season. I love the cool air. The advantages that spring has are: Flowers. And the bugs aren’t out yet. But with frost in the air, we may be getting to the end of mosquito season in Iowa. The true bug hammer won’t come down until the first hard freeze, which isn’t even in the weather forecast, yet.

Maybe that’s a good thing. I still have time to find those gloves.