# Photo of the Day - August 2021



## Alli

New month, new thread.


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## Clix Pix

ACK!   Well, I did it again, posted an image yesterday in the July thread when in fact it was actually August 1st  and I should've started a new August thread.  Thanks, Alli, for being more alert than I was!   Oh, well, the shot was taken in July, anyway.....  LOL!!

So, starting fresh with August, albeit the second day of this shiny new month:


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## fooferdoggie

Some scrap from my last job 






Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro


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## Eric

We're getting a ton of them this year.


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## Chew Toy McCoy

Enjoying cocktail hour at my parents fire pit table.


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## Clix Pix




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## Clix Pix




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## Apple fanboy

Hopefully insect porn is okay here!


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## fooferdoggie

a little girl 1 year old saw her favorite chair on Christmas and instantly fell in love and hugged it.


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## Clix Pix

Playing with lines, patterns and a touch of color:


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## Apple fanboy




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## Apple fanboy




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## Clix Pix




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## Apple fanboy

These guys were having a threesome whilst the green bug was more of a watcher!


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## Clix Pix

What are those red bugs, anyway?   I don't think we have them around here, or if so I haven't run across any!   Tsk, tsk, a threesome:  playing with a second would-be lover while being impregnated by the first!!!


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## Apple fanboy

Clix Pix said:


> What are those red bugs, anyway?   I don't think we have them around here, or if so I haven't run across any!   Tsk, tsk, a threesome:  playing with a second would-be lover while being impregnated by the first!!!



Some sort of beetle I think. On that particular night they were everywhere. And all at it!


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## Clix Pix

Hee, hee, that means you will eventually have many MORE of the little devils!!!


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## Clix Pix

Dang, almost forgot to post an image for today!    Geese occasionally do funny things with their long necks!   It almost looks as though he were swallowing a large fish whole, but that wasn't the case, as a moment before his neck was perfectly normal looking, and a moment after I shot this, he resumed his usual neck position as well.....


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## Apple fanboy

Clix Pix said:


> Hee, hee, that means you will eventually have many MORE of the little devils!!!



This was down the road so I don't mind. Meanwhile the sparrows in our garden have had a very successful breading season, so we defiantly have more of those than when we moved in! I don't think the two robins are impressed.


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## Clix Pix

We've had and have a lot of sparrows here this spring/summer, too;  they still come visiting my deck in futile hopes that there is food here for them.   Actually, I think the guy who lives above me may have a feeder or two out on his deck (I can't see from my angle, unfortunately, will have to wait until I'm across the lake where I can get a better vantage point), because several times I've found little piles of what looks like birdseed or something close to it on my deck, and have had to sweep it up and dispose of it.    I can understand how the neighbors were annoyed last year when I was feeding the birds......


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## fooferdoggie

;icky they don't need the bridge raised.


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## Yoused

nm


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## Apple fanboy




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## Eric

Apple fanboy said:


> View attachment 7751



Nice, what lense are you using for these shots?


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## fooferdoggie




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## Clix Pix




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## Eric

On my way out of SF this morning, the fog behind the ferry building had a really nice glow from all the lights on Market St.


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## Yoused

Ghost Ridge Mountain



You can see it back there if you look real hard. The ridgeline is about even with the tallest vegetation. In other years, it would have been clear-as-day.

(And, no, it is not called that. Looks like its real name is Cliff Ridge.)


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## Chew Toy McCoy

Jumping spider I caught in our work office today.  I’m considering this a single photo post loophole as the second picture is just zoomed in from the first.


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## Chew Toy McCoy

Yoused said:


> Ghost Ridge Mountain
> View attachment 7872​
> You can see it back there if you look real hard. The ridgeline is about even with the tallest vegetation. In other years, it would have been clear-as-day.
> 
> (And, no, it is not called that. Looks like its real name is Cliff Ridge.)




Kind of being an unpaid shill for the Aurora HDR app.  This is the result of the default AI right after I dragged it in.  I made no manual adjustments after that.


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## Yoused

Chew Toy McCoy said:


> Kind of being an unpaid shill for the Aurora HDR app.  This is the result of the default AI right after I dragged it in.  I made no manual adjustments after that.
> 
> 
> View attachment 7882



Here is what the ridge looks like from approximately the same spot when reality is not on fire elsewhere.


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## Chew Toy McCoy

Yoused said:


> Here is what the ridge looks like from approximately the same spot when reality is not on fire elsewhere.
> 
> View attachment 7884​




Wow, quite a different image.


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## Clix Pix

"Room for me up there, guys?"


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## Apple fanboy

What you looking at?


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## fooferdoggie

a nice rare orchid. its a hybrid of two really different orchids. the nI bought him he had one leaf and the breaker didn't to know what he flower would look like. took 3 years for the first bloom


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## Clix Pix




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## Alli




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## Apple fanboy




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## Yoused

even on Mars,
life clings tenaciously
to every bend and crease


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## Eric

I went to capture these huge trees and this jogger happened to be there so I grabbed it, it ended up looking like an ad.


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## Clix Pix

Still playing with my colorful Slinky:


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## fooferdoggie




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## Yoused

Eric said:


> I went to capture these huge trees and this jogger happened to be there so I grabbed it, it ended up looking like an ad.
> 
> View attachment 8154



Those remind me of a row of trees along 1, I think just north of where the road from Petaluma comes in. Or maybe just southa there. The trees that look like a century of Pacific winds has got them really pissed off.


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## Clix Pix

Keeping cool on a hot August afternoon:


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## fooferdoggie

nothing like a path into a marsh.


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## fooferdoggie




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## Clix Pix




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## Apple fanboy

Having rewatched the Hobbit recently, I think a scene like this might have been his inspiration for that forest scene with the spiders.


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## Clix Pix




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## Yoused

We wander about picking up rocks and keeping the ones we like. She keeps the most colorful, the prettiest. Me, I look for the story. Each rock shows you its autobiography, in a language that spans millions or billions of years, that has a lexicon that mostly says "_Count yourself lucky you were not there when_ *this* _happened_."



Spoiler: one such









I look at these solidified pieces of time, read what I can of the anger, tedium and torment they have experienced, and thank them for sharing their stories.



(They are mostly found in those places that other people drive past, not giving much thought to what is not where-I-am-going, lonely, off the highway, often visited out of, shall we say, need.)


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## fooferdoggie




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## Clix Pix




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## lizkat

@Clix Pix   That's the exact color of a solitary maple leaf I saw on my lawn the other day, in that intense grey-green light right before a rainstorm.   It reminded me of the coming change of seasons,  and my only thought at the moment was NOT YET !!

So I like your lily a whole lot better....


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## Clix Pix

Thank you!   I had the vase in the windowsill and so the camera was picking up the background across the lake: green trees and parts of houses......     Then in post-processing I started tinkering around a bit, too, to further enhance the soft focus produced by the lens (Voigtlander 35mm f/1.2).     That lens has the most wonderful color rendering, as does my other Voigtlander, too.

Yeah, won't be long now before we do start seeing signs of autumn approaching.  There is a tree across the lake which I always start watching right about this time of year, as it's usually the first to begin changing colors and even in August I'll spot a stray red leaf or two on it.      OK, just stepped out on the deck for a look and sure enough, I can see a few yellow leaves already......no red ones yet, though.


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## Yoused

Here we have @hulugu engaged in research for a report on agricultural conditions, hesitating to make the leap into the 20mph wind out of the storm over Safford.


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## fooferdoggie




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## Clix Pix

Finally our fountain is back in action again, so decided to take a shot of it at night:


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## Apple fanboy




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## Clix Pix




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## JamesMike

’Red Elephant’ in the Mt. Kenya area. They use red soil to provide a protective coating for their skin.


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## Apple fanboy




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## Clix Pix




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## lizkat

Clix Pix said:


> View attachment 8272




What is that?   Looks like geodomes for very tiny creatures!


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## Apple fanboy

lizkat said:


> What is that?   Looks like geodomes for very tiny creatures!



I'm guessing bubblewrap on her latest purchase.


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## Apple fanboy




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## Clix Pix

Apple fanboy said:


> I'm guessing bubblewrap on her latest purchase.




Apple fanboy wins the prize!!!  Yep, it's bubblewrap,  somewhat larger and different than what I already had around the house so said, "ooh, a photo op!" and instead of throwing it away, kept it and the next day or so experimented with it,  using the latest acquisition that had indeed been protected by it to now shoot it.   The scene was shot in the bedroom, where I angled the camera lens so that I could not only get nice and close to the bubblewrap but could use the green bushes just outside as the backdrop and source for the bubbles to capture additional reflections.....      In the past I've shot a subject through bubblewrap, too:  it's fun stuff to play with!


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## Clix Pix

Today's image was a surprise -- I looked out the window and saw a cormorant circling the lake and the pier, and then he landed quite gracefully and neatly on one of the posts on the pier.  I ran for the camera, grabbed it and hustled out to the deck for a few shots.  I was delighted to realize that this is (probably) Morrey, the cormorant who had been in residence all last summer and well into the autumn.  He's baaaack!!  Bless his heart, he obligingly posed for me:


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## fooferdoggie

A ferry we rode 25 miles to go on






Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro


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## Clix Pix




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## lizkat

Wow.   What on earth?!  Looks like a bit of the natural world has an equivalent of those barbaric things urban landlords stick on front stoop abutments, to keep folks from sitting on them to schmooze awhile during a summer evening...


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## Apple fanboy

Clix Pix said:


> View attachment 8329



Nope you've got me on this one. I'll guess at an ornament? 

Mine is more about the lighting than the subjec

t.


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## Clix Pix

.       I love to take an ordinary object or even a not-so-ordinary object and see what I can do with it when I've got a camera in my hands.....   In this case,  the complete object is actually a wooden giraffe presumably created and carved in Africa.   A few days ago I was looking for something, rummaging around, and along the way ran across this guy who had been stashed in a rather obscure place in the house, and realized that he needed a good cleaning, so set him aside for that.  A washing and then a nice oiling-up again to restore sheen to the wood made him more presentable again, and I started thinking, "hmmmm....."

So I had this new lens, too, and what better way to put it through some of its paces than to play around with the giraffe?  Or, parts of him, to be more precise?

The bits along the neck, meant to represent a giraffe's mane/hair/locks but which really didn't exactly look like that, kept attracting my attention so the lens and I focused our sights on it and I played with selective focusing and, well, voila!    .   This particular lens, like its other Voigtlander brethren, seems to have an ability to pull out and render the most amazing colors in what would otherwise be an ordinary image, and I took advantage of that as well, along with composing the image to capture only the elements that I felt would be the most interesting in terms of shapes and colors.  So that's the story.....


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## fooferdoggie




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## Clix Pix




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## Yoused

fooferdoggie said:


> A ferry we rode 25 miles to go on




Have you been on the Westport-Cathlamet ferry? Little 12 car ferry similar to that, but across the big river.


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## fooferdoggie

Yoused said:


> Have you been on the Westport-Cathlamet ferry? Little 12 car ferry similar to that, but across the big river.



that would be cool but it is 80 miles away.


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## fooferdoggie




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## Clix Pix




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## Apple fanboy

An old one from me.


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## Herdfan

fooferdoggie said:


> View attachment 8341



My neighbor has like 4 of these all with flowers like that.  She has to spray Deer Off on them daily.


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## fooferdoggie

Herdfan said:


> My neighbor has like 4 of these all with flowers like that.  She has to spray Deer Off on them daily.



I bet these were at a high end store.


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## Clix Pix

Morrey the cormorant paddles along in the lake with his freshly-caught lunch:


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## Eric

Another friendly Ana's hummingbird, they buzz all over outside of our windows now.


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## Yoused

not her burrow, I suspect


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## lizkat

Yoused said:


> not her burrow, I suspect
> 
> View attachment 8393​




She looks like she's checking it out with prudent caution....  and is a little skeptical.


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## lizkat

fooferdoggie said:


> I bet these were at a high end store.




Up in these parts,  the equivalent of Deer Off when it came to pricey flowers and shrubs for a neighbor up the way used to be a loaded shotgun kept by the back door in certain seasons.   She was a real piece of work.   Any season was deer season by her lights, and it wasn't about meat for the table, just scaring the deer away from her greenery.   Probably kept assorted other varmints away too, who knows.  Everything and everyone in the area understood where the lawns part of her property ran to,  that's for sure.


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## Yoused

lizkat said:


> Everything and everyone in the area understood where the lawns part of her property ran to, that's for sure.



gotta maintain lawn order


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## Clix Pix




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## Yoused

This is an ant hill. Not very tall and conical as you might expect of one, but still, a home for ants. The curious thing we have noticed is that the ants cut rocks into pieces that are all consistently about 1mm in size. We have taken to calling this stuff (which is often just the outermost layer of the hill) "ant sand". This picture shows the rocks spread around the hill that have not yet been made into ant sand, which, as you might guess, can be very pretty when you look closely at it.


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## Apple fanboy

Eric said:


> Another friendly Ana's hummingbird, they buzz all over outside of our windows now.
> 
> View attachment 8391



Beautiful bird. Beautiful lighting. Nicely done.


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## Clix Pix

Arose much earlier than usual this morning, and in coming out to the kitchen to prepare my coffee I noticed how the sunlight was coming through the windows and backlighting the lilies in a vase that I had on the counter.   Immediately ran to the cabinet, grabbed the new camera and slipped the 90mm macro lens on her, and spent a little time shooting.   New camera is pretty much set up now and ready for action,  although I'll probably still be tinkering here-and-there the more I use the camera and find that I want to tweak this-or-that setting.    Before it gets too hot today  I'll be taking her out for a stroll around the boardwalk, seeing how she likes the 100-400mm,  the lens which I think will be spending a lot of time on her.

Anyway, one of the first images shot with her that is worth sharing:


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## Clix Pix




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## Clix Pix

Alfred must've heard via the wildlife underground rumor mill that Clix Pix has a new camera, as yesterday he suddenly appeared on the pier, ready to pose for me!  I was so happy to see him again, as it had been a while.  Went out there with the 100-400mm and had fun shooting him.   Still processing those images....

This morning, while I was out in the kitchen making coffee I spotted Alfred on the pier again and I immediately hustled to the deck with the tripod, slipped the camera on to the Bazooka (200-600mm) and 1.4x teleconverter and spent the next little while shooting him in the early morning light:


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## Yoused

He _so_ looks like an Alfred.


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## Clix Pix

I first "met" Alfred last year and one day for some reason I suddenly found myself calling him "Alfred," rather than just referring to him as "that big heron" or "the Great Blue Heron/GBH".    Why?   I didn't make a conscious connection straightaway but.... "Alfred the Great"!   .  Yeah, my mind works in strange ways sometimes!


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## Apple fanboy

Nothing new from me in a while so I'll post this one from 2015. One day the big yellow globe might operate a bit better over here and I'll actually get some light to play with.


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## Pumbaa

Apple fanboy said:


> One day the big yellow globe might operate a bit better over here and I'll actually get some light to play with.



Have you tried turning it off and on again? 

Or tried removing excess water and moisture? I don’t think the big yellow globe is designed to operate at full brightness in your conditions. Probably a safety measure to avoid permanent damage. Be happy it’s working at all!


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## Apple fanboy

Pumbaa said:


> Have you tried turning it off and on again?
> 
> Or tried removing excess water and moisture? I don’t think the big yellow globe is designed to operate at full brightness in your conditions. Probably a safety measure to avoid permanent damage. Be happy it’s working at all!



It was working at some point in July, but I think its been on 1/3rd power since. Maybe there will be a firmware update to get it working again.


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## Pumbaa

Apple fanboy said:


> It was working at some point in July, but I think its been on 1/3rd power since. Maybe there will be a firmware update to get it working again.



As a workaround until then you could try another location with better wireless coverage.


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## Herdfan

Yoused said:


> View attachment 8413​
> This is an ant hill. Not very tall and conical as you might expect of one, but still, a home for ants. The curious thing we have noticed is that the ants cut rocks into pieces that are all consistently about 1mm in size. We have taken to calling this stuff (which is often just the outermost layer of the hill) "ant sand". This picture shows the rocks spread around the hill that have not yet been made into ant sand, which, as you might guess, can be very pretty when you look closely at it.




Are those the kind of ants that will bite?  That colony must be massive.


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## Yoused

Herdfan said:


> Are those the kind of ants that will bite?  That colony must be massive.



Well, technically, all ants bite. I mean that is how they make that ant sand. As far as biting people, I have not encountered any aggressive ants that have bitten, tried to bite or stung me in the pictured area (south central Wyoming). The flies though, when a storm is coming, they can bloody your legs if they are not covered.

ETA that ant hill is about 3' across, so, not really huge compared to what I have seen in the SW and W (dry regions).


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## fooferdoggie

We are not in Oregon anymore toto.


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## Yoused

You want not Oregon? This is most definitely not Oregon:


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## Clix Pix

Last summer once in a while when I was shooting Alfred I would see him standing there with his mouth open and his tongue rapidly flipping up-and-down, with his throat sort of gently billowing in-and-out. He was always too far away for me to hear if he were singing or vocalizing, and it was clear that he wasn't eating anything. The other day I noticed he was doing this same thing while standing on the pier, and this time I remembered to look in Google and see if I could find some explanation of this behavior.

It's called "gular fluttering," and he does it to cool himself down on a hot day. Definitely that afternoon was a hot (over 90°) and very humid one, so this explanation makes perfect sense! Why he didn't just get in the water and chill out that way I have no idea, but he seemed happy enough to just stand on the pier for a long time......


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## lizkat

Apple fanboy said:


> It was working at some point in July, but I think its been on 1/3rd power since. Maybe there will be a firmware update to get it working again.




Hah!  Not sure we'd actually like results of a firmware update to the big yellow globe.   For long, anyway.

But I know what you mean.  We've had more overcast and rainy days all summer here than many I can remember over the past decade at least.


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## Clix Pix




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## Yoused




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## Pumbaa

Think it’s September everywhere now.


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## Clix Pix

Oops!!!!


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