![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/great-blue-heron-5525-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"great-blue-heron-5525-ron-dudley.\\"")
<\/p>\nToday’s post is as much about ‘bugs’ as it is about birds.<\/p>\n
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Yesterday morning at Bear River MBR I found this Great Blue Heron perched on an old observation platform at the refuge. It was an unnatural and unattractive perch so flight shots were my best hope for photos I liked. When the heron eventually took off this photo was one of several flight shots I managed to get with the far away Promontory Mountains in the lower background.<\/p>\n
But when I look back on yesterday at the refuge my strongest memory will always be about bugs rather than birds. Even this late in the year, ten days before November, Bear River’s infamous midges were still out in droves but it was the damned mosquitoes that made my morning miserable. Those little bastards bit me more times yesterday than I’ve been bitten collectively in all of my trips to the refuge all summer. I was in a scratching frenzy for the entire rest of the day and I’m still scratching this morning as I write this post.<\/p>\n
It was obvious that the mosquitoes were also seriously bothering the heron while ‘he’ was perched because he kept shaking his head in annoyance. Look carefully at the photo and you’ll see hundreds of midges and mosquitoes as tiny black specks all around him. I have to wonder if the only reason he took off was to leave the annoying ‘skeeters’ behind.<\/p>\n
In his place that’s what I’d have done.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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PS – It’s no wonder that folks struggle with spelling in the English language.<\/em><\/p>\n The plural of potato is potatoes not potatos. The plural of tomato is tomatoes not tomatos. But the plural of mosquito can be either mosquitoes or mosquitos – both are perfectly acceptable. I don’t cut Dan Quayle much slack about anything but perhaps he can be forgiven for butchering the spelling of potato in that infamous spelling bee. Or perhaps not.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Addendum: As my good friend Jim DeWitt rightfully pointed out after I published this post, mosquitoes that bite are all females. So it might have been more appropriate for me to refer to them as bitches rather than bastards but at the moment both descriptors seem well deserved.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s post is as much about ‘bugs’ as it is about birds.<\/p>\n