Happy New Year 2008!

Well, the new year is upon us. On the home front, the dogs continue to enjoy the winter weather. Here's Quest overtaking Tessa (and overmatching the autofocus on my Lumix TZ3) on a recent walk:
     

     

The Erie Canal makes for a picturesque winter wonderland:
     

Here's Quest at home in a (rare for him) pensive pose:


The snow and cold have been good for business at our feeders. I was surprised to catch a Pileated (Dryocopus pileatus) and Red Bellied WP (Melanerpes carolinus) visiting at the same time:
     

On New Year's Eve Dawn and I took a trip out to Irondequoit Bay, which is home to a pair of adult Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus). We found one of them hanging out on the ice. Unfortunately it was too distant for a detailed shot, and this was the best I could do:


Closer to shore was a mixed congregation of gulls and ducks. This Great Black Backed gull (Larus marinus) was conspicuous by its stark plumage and impressive size:


Nearer still, these Ring-billed gulls (Larus delawarensis) attracted my attention:

I thought perhaps the one in the foreground had suffered from some thoughtless hunter's arrow or other calamity, but when I got home and looked at the picture, its leg band became obvious. I assume the yellow tag makes it easier to pick the banded gull out of a crowd.

We've been dog-sitting for one of Dawn's co-workers. Her boxer, Chesney, makes a good playmate for Quest:
          

They especially enjoy running and romping outside:
     

     

The changes continue at the BeeBee station. The middle smoke stack has been pretty well broken down by now. It's little more than a a stubby twenty feet (6 meters) of rubble now. It looks a lot like a castle turret after a siege.

The process of tearing down the stack was interesting to watch. Here's a short Quicktime video clip that shows the monstrous demolition "claw" in action:


While they were finishing off the center stack, work started on the northern one. In this clip, the iron workers take a blowtorch to the stack's metal catwalk:

One thing I'm going to miss is those catwalks. Particularly on the middle stack, the catwalks provided a relatively low, relatively close perch from which the falcons could be viewed. The catwalk on the High Falls stack is relatively high up so it won't be as easy to see the birds on it. Perhaps the fledglings will make more use of the BeeBee Station's roof and all the pipes on it now that two of the three stacks will be gone. It'll certainly be interesting to see what they do this year.

Another couple of photos of the middle stack coming down, from before Christmas:
     
I'll post some updated shots of the stacks soon.