Thoughtful Thursday: Security

[Ultralight pilot, Musconetcong Valley, NJ, April 25, 2016. Click to enlarge. Certainly one of the best photos I've ever taken.]

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."
- Helen Keller

Wordless Wednesday: A Room With a View

[This dude, the size of a big beagle, held a perch 35 feet up in a tree overlooking the Delaware River and the Delaware Water Gap on Monday. Porcupine, one of NJ's rarer mammals. Click to enlarge.]

Here They Come

[Part of a flock of 61 Glossy Ibis from the Coral Avenue, Cape May NJ spring watch this morning. Crossing Delaware Bay. This was the largest migrant ibis flock Tom Reed and I had ever seen, though you can see more Glossy Ibis at one time in some feeding settings. Click to enlarge photo.]

Thoughtful Thursday: Changing the World

[Game changers: Dan Alon, left, and Jonathan Meyrav, founders of Israel's Champions of the Flyway bird race and conservation event.]

"We are proud that the birding community in Israel is very tight and conservation oriented, especially in context to our location on the globe. . .a "sane brother" in a crazy neighborhood of illegal killing of birds."
- Jonathan Meyrav


"Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world."
- Harriet Tubman

And, finally, a personal favorite:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt

 [Above, Steppe Eagle. Below, Steppe Buzzards and Black Kites. Both, Eilat, Israel, March 2016. Click to enlarge.]

Wordless Wednesday: Champions of the Flyway

[Waiting for Lichtenstein's Sandgrouse: The Leica Cape May Bird Observatory American Dippers. Left to right, Don, Ben, Tom and Doug.]