ruby red/rednesday: Red Sea Link ferry

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Waiheke Island is a picturesque blend of farmland, forest, beaches, vineyards and olive groves. Located in the Hauraki Gulf of New Zealand, it is only 35 minutes by ferry from downtown Auckland. There is a great range of activities on Waiheke including sightseeing, mountain biking, sea kayaking, vineyard & winery tours and much more.
SeaLink operates car and passenger ferry services to Waiheke Island from Half Moon Bay and to Great Barrier Island from Auckland city. Waiheke Island ferry is a 35 minute trip from downtown Auckland or 45 minutes from Half Moon Bay to Kennedy Point on the car and passenger ferry.

Yesterday was our Auckland Anniversary day. I went back to Half Moon Bay and a Sea link ferry was just pulling in. People and cars were queuing a long time to board. It did looked as though it had come in from another country.

I remember the ferry in Rejang River in Borneo. We were among the first to cross the river because it was near where my grandma lived.

Bohemian Waxwings for Mellow Yellow Monday

Isnt this Waxwing beautiful with its yellow strip across the bottom of its tail feathers!?

We had seen these birds a week ago but I had forgotten to post the photos as there were too many other nature happenings to post about like: crows, snow buntings, hawks and eagles, etc..
The cinnamon coloured undertail shown in the above picture identifies the above Waxwing as a Bohemian Waxwing.

Happy Monday to all. To view a wonderful variety of yellow-themed photos from other bloggers around the world, just click on the link belowmellow yellow

Hunting for Hawks

Yesterday we decided to go hunting for hawks along highway # 105 in the Maugerville, Sheffield area of New Brunswick. It was a good day to choose for the trees were very beautiful, with a frost coated covering, especially when the sun shone. And the first hawk sighting we had was of a light morph Rough legged Hawk. Its white belly really stood out when it was perched in a tree. It was quite a distance away but I had brought along my telephoto 400 mm lens and it proved to be quite an asset in our hawk photography yesterday. We considered we were off to a good start and so with high hopes we drove on down the highway.

When looking for hawks along this highway the thing is to look for a dark shape perched in a tree. Our second hawk sighting came right away, but as the sun was shining directly at my camera when I tried to photograph this second sighting ,making it difficult at first to id the hawk.We were able to get a better view as this hawk flew on down the highway and perched on a frost covered branch of another tree which reached over the highway. Were we happy? 'Yes!" Our day was proving to be quite successful! and we were able to take another picture of it! As it appeared to be so dark, we erroneously thought it was perhaps a dark phase morph of the rough legged hawk. Photo Shop proved us wrong.

After I downloaded and lightened the photo when back home we discovered. it was another light phase rough-legged as we could now see the white markings on its upper chest and lower belly parts. We were on a roll, on the look out for more hawks!. Already two light-phased Rough legged hawks seen! in just a very short time period! What next? There was more to come!

Continuing on down the highway we saw another dark shape in a tree off at a distance bordering the back of an adjacent field to the highway... Another hawk? perhaps. Shall we say hawk # 3? We then spied another dark shape in another tree which was closer to the highway and I was able to get some pictures of this other dark shape in the tree. But it wasn't a hawk!
We had suspected this second dark shape wasn't a hawk as it appeared to be quite large andalthough it did have white markings on it, but not like a rough legged's markings. It was an Eagle! please click to enlarge the picture below so we may share with you what we had seen. It was a magnificent sighting.Oh happy day! We were having a wonderful time! We drove on down the highway and turned by the bridge crossing the river there. We saw no more intriguing black shapes in trees around there and we decided to return to Oromocto to do our intended grocery shopping. On our return back up the highway, the Eagle we had seen was still perched there so we took more photos of it. It looked rather scruffy and rugged looking perched among the frost covered branches. Before we left the area we spied another dark shape in a tree as shown below.,. But another day might reveal what?! Our hawk sighting appetite had been appeased for the day? We hope you have enjoyed reading about and viewing pictures of our successful 'hawk and eagle day!'

Sunday Bridge, Narrow bridge

http://bayphoto.blogspot.com/

This is a narrow bridge at the Mangere sewage plant. It leads to a private island, If you click it, you will see a sign of yellow and black strips on one side of the road. these strips are the reflector for night driving.

Not showed on the photo is a sign with two arrows, one bigger arrow, one smaller arrow, the bigger arrow means if you are on this side of the one way bridge, you have right of way.

Magpies from Guest Photographer in Airdrie , Alberta

Frequently this past fall and winter I have been receiving pictures of Magpies in my brother Roger's backyard in Airdrie, Alberta. They are a beautiful bird ,having a very striking appearance with their black and white contrasting plumage and long tails. Roger has been trying for good closeups of these birds over the past months., but they have proved to be rather elusive as subjects in their chosen yard. I think Roger's photo of the two magpies in the photo below is rather magnificent!
Below are Roger's observations of the visiting magpies:
"The magpies are becoming more confident as they visit and are less fearful?"

"There are two of them now, probably were all along as they all look alike."
This magpie above apparently likes feeding from the suet feeder Roger has provided for the bird visitors to his backyard.

Its really great to have views like this from your window!

Thanks for sharing Roger!

Camera Critters is a meme that features critters, any kind, any size. To see more of this meme please click on the CC logo which can be found on the right sidebar on this page or please click here.http://camera-critters.blogspot.com/

Macro flowers: Hollyhocks

I have joined this meme for a while now, and I am loving it. First I love flowers. Second, the badge for this meme is the North Borneo Orchid.


Join Macro Flowers Saturday, a photo meme for macro photos and close-ups of flowers, garden flowers, wildflowers, blossoms, flowers with insects and butterflies (no insects without flowers), flowers with raindrops and whatever beautiful plants, plant seeds or berries you have, in close-up.

First time visitors, please read the rules. They are simple but I do ask that you, please, use a MFS badge or link back to MFS in some way. Thank you.

Macro Flower Saturday


http://blueberrycraftandhobbytime.blogspot.com/p/join-my-photo-challenge-flowers-on.html

It is summer here in New Zealand. Hollyhocks are blooming. The darker color bloom was actually darker than the photo.

I was at the breast cancer centre for my mammogram. The garden had many beautiful flowers.

Rolling Up The Shirt Sleeves, Gone Wild!

I loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove skating. I freakin love it!

So you know I had to pretty much be half crazed when I decided to take a year off of skating to get San Diego Derby Dolls, the business, off the ground.

But, that's what I did.

I did skate in my last bout as an LA Derby Doll (another blog), but besides that...

For most of '06 and the first couple months of '07, any pix of me you'll find I'm either coaching, reffing, or just, you know, gaining 20 lbs, as I ran the business.

During that year, though, I felt like I had just given birth to something special.

And I wanted to make it truly not about me, and nurture this little thing into existence with every ounce of my energy.

Which is exactly what I did. I gave it all my energy. Too much. I was completely unselfish in my motives, but also an unknowing success addict!

Getting high off every time something came together, I would run myself into the ground making sure that everything did.

I was every committee (but PR and Art, we've always had a bangin' Art dept!), and I was every league job, including the only coach.

This was before I decided skirts are not for me.

I was San Diego Derby Dolls. Except for the skating part. You know, the part I loved the most...

OK, but here's why I'm not a martyr about it.

First of all, no one asked me to make that sacrifice. It was a personal choice.

I know I did the right thing for the league, and myself, at the time. And when it was no longer the right thing, started skating again.

But for that year, I needed to see what I was capable of, outside of skating.

And yah, I took it too far and burned myself out completely, gained a bunch of weight, became a crabby person from lack of exercise in my life, and had to reevaluate.

But... sometimes you can't really know what your perfect balance looks like, till you've run to each end of extremes first.

Also, for the purpose of relating with so many other people over the years, I'm glad I got to see how humbling a come-back to skating can be.

But that's another story!

I hope you have the raddest of days today!

I literally never high five anyone, but for some reason think this is rad.   : D

Here's my parting gifts, till we meet again!

A Lone Snow Bunting

A telephone call yesterday afternoon from a bird watching aquaintance in the village alerted us to a bird she had not seen in her feeder areas before. From her description we thought it possibly was a Snow Bunting and we were right for with camera and bird book in hand we ventured to her home to investigate. The Snow Bunting was there where she had just spread some more bird feed and blackoiled sunflower seeds out on her driveway. The bird was not that timid as I got out of my car and it came right back where it has been checking out the food supply when we had arrived. There were no other SnowBuntings in sight nearby so it appeared that this lone Bunting had somehow gotten separated from the rest of the flock.

Great Giveaways, Batman!

This great idea came from Juliet Wilson, who blogs at Crafty Green Poet: http://craftygreenpoet.blogspot.com/

Here it is: I promise to send something I make myself to the first 5 people who leave a comment on this post and who, in turn, promise to make the same offer on their blog. The rules are that you need to make the items personally and send them to your 5 folks within 2011.

I agreed to do this (wanting a nifty handmade thing from Juliet) a couple of weeks back, as I like making things very much as long as they use paper, paint, wood, wire or clay. Don't sew, don't knit.

But then ArtSparker came up with these brilliant woolly things,

together with directions for making them, here: http://artsparktheatre.blogspot.com/2011/01/felt-buttons-crafty.html

Which I thought looked almost achievable. So tonight three of us began colouring-in a jumper I'd got tired of to start the whole process off. Notice no needles have been used in this exercise yet.


Goodness knows how it will end up once it's been boil-washed, but the intention is that one of the things you could receive from me will be a woolly-button-thing necklace. Others could be a woven fruitwood (my trees) coaster, a lino-print (original - going on a workshop next month), a painting or, oh, guess what, a hand-made poetry pamphlet.

When Your Addictions Have Addictions...

No one needs me to start this with the obvious statement that roller derby is addictive.

Roller skating alone is so fun!

Add in the competition, the strategies, the endless possibilities and challenges that come with learning a new sport...

But... There's ALSO the whole business end of things... which has it's own odd allure that doesn't get talked about as much.



So I'm gonna talk about it.

When I started my league, I pretty much knew nothing about nothing.

I mean, I'd gathered a pretty good amount of life experience, for a 24 year old, but nothing to prepare me for what running a league was like.

So there I was, learning on the job.

I quickly found that reaching a milestone or accomplishment came with a... buzz of some kind.

Like, an adrenaline rush.

It was like an instant kick of self esteem and excitement.

Simple as it sounds now, I remember when the first merch order was shipped to my house. I looked at all these shirts and thought....

Holy shit, Bonnie... You can do stuff! You can get stuff done!!!

And that feeling becomes addictive, doesn't it? The whole capability thing.

Because once you find out you're capable, you wanna see what all you're capable of! And you wanna have more of that special feeling, and you want it more all the time.

And next thing you know, you're so addicted to successes, there's no stopping to celebrate one or another. In fact, if you're not careful...

Successes and milestones can actually stop being a rush of excitement after a while, and turn into more of a constant, panicked state of mind.

And then it's possible to become completely enamored with your own capability, forgetting other people carry the same potential.

Now, don't get me wrong.

I'm personally OBSESSED with human potential. I wanna know exactly what the best version of me looks like, and make her happen.

Nothing wrong with ambition.

But... there comes a point where you can get a little unhealthy with it if you're not careful.

 And that's pretty much what I did. So I'll tell you my cautionary tale.

Well, next time I will.  : )

For now I bid you adieu. Have a super radical day today!

Here's my parting gifts!