Tag: photos

get up on that duck and ride

Continuing with the onslaught of ducks, I present these two grainy photos that I took on my sad but trusty little flip phone back in 2009. They probably amuse me more than they should.


Skilled duck rider.


Less adept duck rider.

It also amuses me to think that people first encountering my blog these days may think I have some sort of duck fetish. No, really I don’t. I have more of a fetish for running with themes. (Cf. that time when I got carried away with potatoes. Or utensils. Or bread. And dare I even mention pants? (I dare.))

headless ducks

After yesterday’s array of duck heads, this photo of a headless duck seemed a fitting follow-up:

And no, it wasn’t really headless. Just tucking its head away under its wing. These two didn’t hide their heads quite as thoroughly:

And so the duck roll continues. It being Thursday, I fleetingly thought of putting together a duck-themed ThThTh list. But I really don’t have time for that now. So instead, I’ll just take things one duck at a time. Or three ducks, in this case.

duck heads in a row

I’m on a roll with my ducks these days. Not that I have any actual ducks. I do, however, have plenty of photos of ducks.

This photo is one that strikes me as funny, probably because it’s not a sight likely to be seen in the US. I saw this display of duck heads on my trip to China in 2012, at a food stall. I believe it was in the city of Hangzhou, which is near Shanghai.

Most Americans prefer to dissociate the meat and poultry they eat from the animals they come from. Typically, these purchases are made in a supermarket, with cuts of meat and poultry wrapped in cellophane, denuded of as many signs of having once had feet and faces as possible. Clearly this is not the case in many parts of the world. I still remember being somewhat shocked as a kid when we moved to France, and encountered butcher shops and market stalls with whole animals hanging from hooks, and being disturbed that the chickens we purchased still had feet and head attached.

In any case, it seems that in China, duck heads are a fairly popular food dish.

ducklings in a row

I found this draft of a post that I’d started in 2013. Not sure why didn’t get around to posting it. It looks like it was a friday foto finder post for the theme of “ducks“. Anyhow, I wanted to post something today, but I have a bad cold and a splitting headache, so not enough mental capacity to get any new ducks in a row.


The mama duck has all (or most of) her ducks in a clump.


Now she has her ducks in a row.


So fuzzy.


Mama-baby moment.


I love the little pouf of down on this little guy’s head. (And of course I love the rippled reflections on the water.)

Wild rabbit-duck illusion

Last year, as the last of the snow was melting from around our house at the end of March, a blob of lingering snow caught my eye. “It looks like a duck,” I may have thought. On second glance, it looked like a rabbit. And then I realized that I had spotted the rare wild rabbit-duck. The rabbit-duck is most frequently seen in captivity, on display in discussions of optical illusions, visual processing, and perceptual organization. (The rabbit-duck even has a picture book about it. Though that may actually be about the duck-rabbit.)

What say you? Do you see a rabbit? Do you see a duck? Or do you, perhaps, simply see a blob of dirty melting snow?

trying to get my ducks in a row

I’m finding it challenging to get back in the habit of daily blogging. I always want there to be some sort of sense or order to my posts, but life is just too chaotic these days to invest a lot of time and thought. So, instead I will throw in a bunch of rubber ducks.

driftwood (friday foto finder)

The theme for this week’s friday foto finder is “driftwood,” which while rather intriguing as a theme, is also rather specific. My photo archives are not adrift with driftwood. Happily, the theme did bring to mind a spot we sometimes visit in the summer along the Hudson River, where we have admired chunks of driftwood along the river bank.

These photos were all from June of 2013.

To see what other chunks of wood have washed up on others’ shores, pay a visit to the fff blog.

distorted views through ice

Part of what was keeping me busy over the last few months was winter. It was a long hard winter. There was so very much ice and snow. Record-breaking quantities of snow.

I love to take pictures of ice and snow, but I had more than my fill. Today was the first day since the first day of spring when it actually felt a bit like spring. Now that the thaw is under way, I can look back at some of my ice photos without whimpering. As much.

These are some photos I took through our breakfast nook windows. This ice was due to some early stages of ice dams. (I’m sure I’ll have more to say about ice dams.) The ice was really quite beautiful, sparkling in the morning sunlight, bending and molding the grid lines of the screen into curves and whorls.

It’s really quite hard to reconcile this sparkling beauty with the knowledge that it was the herald of thousands of dollars worth of damage to the house.