You may remember me pitying myself yesterday about choosing to virtual 2-D world of my computer over the real infinitely dimensional one a few feet away,

“Best weather of November today: sunny all day … Sadly I did not make it out for a photo, because I became engrossed in reading about Twitter and updating my profile.  Even if I now like my profile, it was not worth missing the day.  Hopefully tomorrow will give me another chance, before winter darkens our skies for good.”

Well, as happens to me far more often than I deserve, I got lucky.  Today was yet another spectacular day.  Over my lunch break, I headed down to our local lake to snap a few choice shots.

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In addition to being stunningly beautiful and inspiring daily, Kutcharo is a Ramsar site.  Ramsar is “an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands.”  Its highlight comes surprisingly in the early winter when the uniquely black beaked swans come stop by on their trip South from Russia.

This afternoon I documented the weather and some shots of the genteel birds,

Please click the square box second from the right for full screen viewing.

If you were asking yourself what was going on with the birds at the end and that howling sound throughout, the answer to both is the wind.  It is literally strong enough to prevent birds from flying forward.  Once the sub-zero temperatures and daily snow come, it will add a refreshing kick to the jewels every time I chose to go outside.

Écrit près Charles Jeffrey Danoff | danoff dot charles at gmail dot com | homepage | twitter.com/danoff

EDITOR’S NOTES

• A good frat brother and friend – the two are mutually exclusive – of mine whom is not necessarily a cat lover, but who likes to use “meow” a little too much, asked me for the Japanese equivalent.  At the time I could not remember it, but thankfully Namiko Abe of About.com was on the case.
  • “A cat’s meow in Japanese is nyan-nyan ニャンニャン or nyaa-nyaa ニャーニャー.”
• Finally another frother – not a typo, and Big Cat under Frat Brothers at left – whom I was chatting with last night chastised my excessive use of strike throughs to correct my mistakes as “unnecessary self-flagellation that is distracting to the reader.” I am not sure I will stop, but found the feedback incredibly helpful, and to be an example of his nimbleness with the language. I am a feedback junkie, so please let me know if you have any thoughts on the blog, for as a reader you are just as important to its creation as I am.