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Close up of Lions Paw on the red earth of Botswana..

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"You can fly like a Penguin when you're dealing with Turkeys."

this is turning into one of my favorite threads! thank you all for posting!

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One two, buckle my shoe!

Went for alovely walk in misty woods with my 9 year old son. It's amazing how woods can disorientate you. It was only thanks to my son's sense of direction that we didn't take a much longer route. We've decided to try and make a map of the woods and pick some mushrooms today.

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The more I learn, the less I know.

I've always enjoyed hiking through the woods. There's an excellent city park here called the Forest Park Nature Preserve. It's an all woods park, which consists of a trail head, and several miles of hiking trails laid out through the woods. The woods are located in the river bluffs, making for hilly trails that provide wonderful views within the thick woods. When hiking these rustic trails, it becomes very clear how one could lose themselves in the woods without an excellent sense of direction or a map. We've nearly gotten lost in this park a couple of times and the trails are marked!

Here's the trail head, which is also a nice little museum with educational displays.


This is the main trail behind the trail head. The further along the trail you go, the more rustic it gets until the trails become mere footpaths in the hills.


Our 9 year old grandson hikes with us occasionally. This trail climbs a bluff that rises 60 feet.


One of the meadows at the bottom of the bluffs. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you can find deer in these meadows.


Sometimes, we're lucky.


Deer can be spotted in the woods also.






And if you're real lucky, you might even find the wild turkeys that inhabit this park.

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Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

Lovely photos!

Went for those mushrooms today - (my ten year old gleefily drawing a map of the wood while we walked).
My nine-year old picked loads of mushrooms, but the obvious question then reared its ugly head-are they poisonous?
Anybody know of a good website where you can put in colour, size, appearance etc. and then come up with an identification?

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The more I learn, the less I know.

There is no website that would be able to give accurate enough information, the majority of identification requires a spore print. Almost all edible mushrooms have look alikes that can cause serious illness or death. My suggestion would be to use your phone book and find a local mycologist. If that doesn't go anywhere, you might want to contact your local gardening clubs etc. to see if they can put you in contact with anyone with experience. That's how I finally found someone when I had picked a sulfur polypore, which despite the name is a choice edible mushroom, unless it is growing on the wrong species of tree, then it might make you pretty ill with a really bad stomach ache.
If you have pics, I might be able to get you as close as a family name using an Audubon Field Guide, but I would be unwilling to speculate beyond that. I'm sure you know this already, but never ever eat a mushroom you aren't sure about.

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"Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read and what we must believe?" T.J.

European robin(Y)
they sick Mothers

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Arf you out of your fucking mind.

Luckily, I took your advice and showed them to my neighbour, who, it turns out, knows something about mushrooms. He said all of them, with the exception of one sort, were poisonous. The one type that wasn't poisonous was only inedible.

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The more I learn, the less I know.

Don't you just hate it when that happens.
Glad to be of assistance. Keep trying, if you do find a couple good one's they are much more flavorful than the store bought ones. Having a neighbor who knows what he's looking for will make it much easier and even more enjoyable.


This photo is an unidentified Lepiota mushroom. I suspected it to be edible, however I couldn't get a definitive answer before it spoiled, so it went uneaten.


This photo is a lemon yellow Lepiota that hasn't matured yet. They are poisonous. It's a shame really, we have them every year. Lepiota lutea


This is a mushroom I had identified, but now I can't find it. Or there is a possibility that it was misidentified as a Coprinus plicatilis, which it is not. You have to be an early riser to find these. When the Sun has risen they vanish.

We have tons more photos of mushrooms that we have taken on discs, I'll attempt to find them and post some more.

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"Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read and what we must believe?" T.J.

The sun was out yesterday and the colors are really starting to pop. We visited Jubilee State Park, and the colors seemed kinda muted, so we drove over to Grand View Drive which runs atop the bluffs overlooking the Illinois River. It seemed that the closer we got to the river, the better the colors.

This is a pan looking north at Kickapoo creek in Jubilee State Park


This is a pan looking south at Kickapoo creek in Jubilee State Park


From one of the overlooks on Grand View Drive


The rest of these are pans that were taken on Grand View Drive. These pans are all mutliple photos stitched together using software. I like the effect, it's sort of a poor man's wide angled lens.

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Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

Home of the world-famous drink?

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Stay with me flagrantly and we'll have ecstasy for all eternity.

Do the pictures of deer make you want to get into a car and drive, Dove?

Really nice pictures. I was driving the other day and saw a deer along side the road that was so close I though I could touch it.

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You gotta give the people something good to read, on a Sunday

I got a sunny day after three days of nasty wet.... I took the camera on the bike ride


The neighborhood in fall colors...


You get these blasts of colors everywhere




Lol, below is the $12, 000.00 root...not the big one in the middle but the smaller one just above it coming from the trunk on the right.....you see I met this baby face down one day right on the front of my upper jaw...and that started what was to be a 3-year chain of events on my front teeth, topping out my dental insurance by February each year ...'till I had anti-up the bulk of the 12 grand myself. Finally, I can smile again...but that's one expensive root...it'll always be a memorable place in my life.

It's sort of an OK picture too I guess


Just some trail pictures...riding every day is good therapy...I have many routes, and I change the music each day so even the familiar routes are different every time














The leaves at 8mph/13kph...


...and at 13/24...


...and at 15.9/26
(There's candy in the pouch if ya want some)...


...then coming back down the boardwalk to go off on another route...where I found....



...BILLY!

Breaking news, this just in...
BILLY FOUND!!

October 25, 2009
API
Groton, CT- Billy, the missing mountain was found this morning by a local bike rider after coughing up a few boulders in the rider's path. He was demanding information on the whereabouts of his tree Ethyl, and threatening the eastern seaboard with quakes if his tree was not returned.

Ya gotta look for the face...Come on folks, ya gotta uuuuuuse yer imagination here













You gotta watch them deer signs, they jump right out in front of ya!




They had 5 this Spring....3've made it so far
It's been fun watching the kids get bigger this year

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Lesser-evilism IS war.

great pictures, baddy, but that last one is awesome!

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Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

har-de-har-har, cal! but the pics of fall foliage do make me want to motor east--we have some here, but not even close to what i remember---can it be?--5 years ago.

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One two, buckle my shoe!

Meeting of the waters over the Amazon River...

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

It's amazing how the landscape in CT is so similar to the landscape where I live (less tarmac round here though - the East Germans didn't have enough money for that!). I was going to post some photos of Autumn here, but you've done it already! Perhaps, we''ll bump into each other in the 4th Dimension Baddy, and you'll swear at my kids and I'll curse your bike!

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The more I learn, the less I know.

I get your point, but pans the way you've done them are actually better than wide angle lens shots because pans don't have the distortion of a wide angle lens. Unless of course you want the distortion effect, which is another matter. Great pics mate.

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The way I see it Barry, this should be a very dynamite show.

Thanks. I hadn't thought about it that way, but you're right - wide angle look without the distortion. The thing is, you could back up farther, take one pic of the same view and then just crop it to make it look like a pan, but stitching multiple pics together makes for a pan that, when viewed in actual resolution, allows the viewer to scroll horizontally and get a much higher resolution view of the whole scene while still maintaining the feel of panning. This is very effective when making video slideshows with software that allows defining pan and zoom on photos.

I use Panorama Maker 3. It's software that came with one of my digital cameras, I don't remember which one, but it's very easy to use. Just shoot overlapping photos of the scene, drag and drop them into the program. The key is to shoot the photos that will make up the pan with the exact same exposure settings instead of using the camera's auto mode. This is a big help to make the pans look seamless.

Glad you like the photos. Illinois is generally thought of as a boring state for scenery, and most of it is, but there are parts that are as spectacular as anywhere else, you just have to travel a bit to find them. Plus, Illinois is a very large state - it can't all be corn and soybeans.

I've spent the better part of the last couple of years finding interesting scenery around Illinois, most of it near where we live, and taking pictures of it. It's been a great way to learn how to operate my camera, plus it's just plain fun.

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Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

I'll meet ya there Saturday, we can swear at the the kids and go bike riding.....

...the 4th dimension's fun if you can make the jump to light-speed....



....but don't overshoot it cuz you'll end up in...
...


....and that's pretty awful...I got stuck there once for eons...took me forever to get back to the age of Pisces


...I still got that stupid fuckin' song in my head

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Lesser-evilism IS war.

Would a soundtrack of Devo's "4th Dimension" be acceptable? It's a bit feeble for Devo, but at least its got the riff from "Day Tripper".

Only trouble is, now I've got "This is the age of Aquarius, Aquarius, AQUAAARRRIIIIIUUUUUS" stuck in my brain now too...
BTW "Working on a groovy thing" must be about the most disgusting song title ever!

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The more I learn, the less I know.

After seeing some of these photos I feel like I live in a Black n White world....Keep em coming Im day dreaming here at work and this helps

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Music > Everything
CLETUS must now, regretfully, dispose of the ones who refuse to alter their unmusical ways.
http://www.vulturesawait.com

OK, I'll keep 'em comin'

Let's go to the Hennepin Canal State Park

This is a 104 mile linear park that follows the Hennepin Canal, which was built in the late 1800's and was obsolete by the time the first boat used it. The State of Illinois has built a hiking/biking trail along both sides of it.




One of the many bridges crossing the canal. This one's a drawbridge.


All of the locks were disabled long ago, but the water still slowly flows from one end of the canal to the other creating man-made waterfalls at every lock.


For us older folks, these trails are great as they are mostly flat. We enjoy biking here. And for the younger folks, well, it is 104 miles long.


Some pans...


That's my bike on the left in this pan.


This is a part of the canal that is missing. The original canal was a viaduct over Big Bureau creek. The viaduct was removed long ago, so when the state built the park, they built this bike trail bridge to take the place of the old viaduct. They also built a pipe that connects the upstream part of the canal to the downstream part which is buried under the creek below. This pipe carries water from the upstream part of the canal to the downstream part of the canal to keep the water moving all the way through.

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Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

What... I didn't flick my cigar ash! After (So much for the nature walk when your smoking!)

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What would Zappa say?....... http://www.dweezilzappaworld.com/thepoodlebites

This is one of my horses (Phantom) This is the only way to take a nature walk

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What would Zappa say?....... http://www.dweezilzappaworld.com/thepoodlebites