Juvenile bald eagle
On Saturday Pilot and I climbed a mountain in Utah. On Sunday we drove home for eleven hours. Now we're in Portland in our apartment looking outside at the rain and thinking of all the errands we have to run (Pilot doesn't run errands, really, he just makes sure I'm doing it right) and not wanting to run any of them.
On the mountain there were bugs. So many bugs. Teeny tiny little gnats also known as no-see-ums also known as midges and let me tell you those fuckers bite. The back of my neck looks like something out of a pathology textbook. Pilot, of course, takes these little doggy supplements that make him undesirable to all kinds of biting bugs so no bumps for him, but both of us are so sore and stiff from hiking uphill in the bugs both ways we can barely walk. We (again, really just I) still have to clean out all the camping gear from the car and wash off all the dirt inside and out so I don't show up to work all deserty and dusty and looking like a half-crazed dirty vagabond that won't stop scratching herself. The self-scratching is probably unavoidable, but the dirty vagabond part I do have control over.
I also left my journal in the car and don't want to wobble out in the sloppy wet definitely-not-in-the-desert-anymore rain to get it, which is why you guys get to read all these details. The words have to go somewhere.
I'm so itchy. My tits look like they have measles. My arms look like berries and cream. My scalp, well, at least I'll get some fun scabs to pick later. I have so much shit to do before work tomorrow but all I want to do is lay around editing photos from the trip in between stumbling to the bathroom on my useless legs and writhing around in gleefully torturous itchiness.
So I'm doing that. Fuck it. I don't need groceries. I can eat pickles and peanut butter for dinner tonight. And for breakfast and lunch tomorrow. I don't need to wash the car or the laundry. I can go to work in dirty clothes after a night of no sleep because I was too tired to even go to the store to get calamine lotion.
This is a juvenile bald eagle.
The photos were on the same camera roll as my recent adventure photos, but these were taken in Portland.
(@nineclaws this is for you.)
To think I almost forgot about this guy. Or girl. Or GN juvenile they/them be whatever you want to be who cares about gender roles and labels and expectations bald eagle we love you just the way you are never change always be you.
Sexual dimorphism in bald eagles is challenging to distinguish, especially when they are juveniles and even more especially when you don't really care that much because you're the crow lady.
They were trying to catch one of these ducks, though. I thought that was kinda neat.
They failed.
Brought to you by Nikon D7500, Nikkor 300mm lens, Adobe Lightroom, and an ice pack.
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All the stuff (pictures, words, welts, etc.) I put in this post and any of my other posts is mine (unless otherwise stated) and can't be used by anyone else unless I say it's ok.
Did the ice pack help?😶
Yes! And I still did my errands and ate a real dinner...
The last photo of the eagle is great!
Thanks!!
That is not just photography it is art!
Thank you!!
Crikey! Thats a big feckin' crow!
I exclaimed, before noticing the title...
Some amazing pictures there... I presume there were no crows nearby so you had to 'make do' with this vaguely interesting non-crow eagle thing?
Ouch, I can almost feel the agonizing itchiness in that last photo. I also frequently get eaten alive, much to the amusement of my partner who never ever gets bitten.
Thank you! I'd like one dappled crow, please. Extra large.
It was actually the sound of raptor-shaming by the local crows that got my attention first. They've helped me spot all kinds of dangerbeasts, including owls, raccoons, hawks, and eagles. Don't tell the crows, but I actually do think other birds are pretty neat. I just don't have a lot of time for them since I think crows are neater.
Ugh, I used to have a partner who didn't get bit. He found it quite amusing as well, and thought my agony wasn't such a big deal.
I killed him and fed his body to vultures.Mmmm, smoothie time.
How did you know??!!
My fantasy of you having the most wonderful camping trip has been destroyed. I feel better now about being without power and water while you were eaten by bugs. The visuals I got from your descriptions made me die laughing though, very colourful. 😂
I cannot get over the pictures of that eagle, wowsas! Stunning. You have photographing birds down to a fine art. Thank you for these and tagging me. I had to stare at them for a while last night after I stopped laughing at how you wrote this post.
I don't know if you've ever used neem, it's excellent as a repellant as well as a treatment for bug bites and many other things.
I'm glad you were able to laugh at my misery. I laughed, too, but I thought if I was laughing alone it just meant I was insane. The majority of the trip was amazing, even the hike in spite of the biting bastards. I have used neem for itchy dogs, but the smell is just sooooooo... rotten sink is the term a fellow groomer used. It was pretty accurate. I'm particularly delicious to biting bugs. They won't be stopped by any deterrent except that devil deet.
It's the way you write, it's hilarious! So many visuals came flying in, LOL.
Laughing alone is one of my favourite habits. I do it public too and also talk to myself. With everyone into their cell phones and air buds, people here just think I'm doing the cell thing, so you have to go way extreme to be seen as insane, plus I'd have to dress the part. Some advantages here after all.
The smell is not as bad as the taste, I can tell you from recent experience several days ago, LOL. I've used neem for years for many things. It's my fav when I have a flu, nothing works better. I don't take the oil though, I drink the powdered leaves and make tea with other stuff in it. It's so bitter, it's like being stabbed, but at this point, too used to it and bitter things.
Some people are particularly delicious to bugs I've noticed. I suspect it has something to do with the person's body chemistry. As to what, no idea. I can't use chemicals, I have extreme reactions to many of them. I make all my cleaning products and all products I use on my body. It's the same if I eat things with chemical additives, so I avoid them as much as possible. Deet would do me in, dead on the spot. I used to wear mosquito netting when out fishing and keep my skin covered. Then it was only my hands I had to be concerned with.
I read that type O blood is the most appealing because it is the oldest blood type and therefore the bugs' first love.
I don't think I could eat neem. I like to avoid chemicals when possible and lie all the herbal remedies, but I would draw the line at neem unless it was life or death.
Wow! That's the first I've heard about blood type being a factor. I have no idea what my blood type is, but it must not be "O", hahaha, since the bugs don't eat me, not like they do you. I'm not tasty.
LOLOLOL! So my first experience with neem....
I was so darn sick with the flu and bronchitis on top of it, that's what did it. I had a co-worker/friend and funny enough lived in same building at the time that was always telling me to take it, that its the best. He was into Ayurveda medicine and that's what he used. So hear I am, literally feeling that I'm so sick, I'll try it. He warned me that it's really bitter and how to take it. This one was the worst bitter thing ever. So I mixed it with some water and had an orange juice chaser ready. I had to steel my nerves for ten minutes beforehand. I held my nose (you won't taste if you do that), drank it, then slammed the orange juice on top of it before removing my fingers from my nose. That's the only way I could get it down. Bitter things were not my thing way back then, did not like bitter at all.
Twenty to thirty minutes later, I felt the neem hit and boy did it ever hit hard. All my symptoms went down by about eighty percent. It lasts about five hours for me. That's a quarter teaspoon of the powdered leaf. Nothing I've ever taken has done that, so I didn't care about the bitter after that experience. At this point, I'm desensitized to bitter herbs because of having ingested many different kinds. I'm not pushing neem like my friend, lol, since I don't do that, but I thought you'd enjoy hearing the story.
The chemicals....I have no choice. They have made me very sick and caused allergic reactions all over the place. Think of your gnat experience on steroids for the topical reactions, on top of internal stuff. So that's why I have to do that. It's either find another way, get sicker using things I can't, or just suffer it out. One of the most annoying things is simple house hold cleaning products, can't use any of them, even bleach without reacting. Very annoying. Even the ones in the health food store, you know the environmentally friendly kind and all that jazz? Even those I react to.
*edit, I see I wrote a book, "sardee" (sorry) about that.
nice book!
Your neem story is intriguing. But powered leaf, can't they just put that in a pill??
😂 I seem to think of these stories sporadically. I've never checked to see if they are in pill form, so I don't know. For whatever unexplainable reason, I've never liked taking anything, including vitamins in pill form, so that's probably why I've never looked.
Yeah pills are weird. I take them, lots of supplements, but some days they feel really unpalatable.
Nice way to put it, unpalatable. My herbalist sighed at me because I didn't want to take vitamin D, so he says, "it's only four little pills" and gave me this LOOK. At least those ones are tiny, so I take some because I have no choice, LOLOLOL.
Pretty sure I might die without my D... I take at least 5,000 IU a day! The pills are really tiny though.
So you're taking 1000 IU more than I do. I'm terrible with my routines lately so I have to get back on track. It helps that those ones are tiny. Even when I was a kid, I'd prefer the supplements in liquid form (think cod liver oil and other lovelies).
Any recommendations for things like msm and glucosamine? Whenever I take the pills, even the high end stuff, I get those little calcium bumps all over my arms within a couple weeks. Same with those biotin supplements. Annoying too because that stuff works really well for me otherwise, but I prefer not to turn into an alligator.
Calcium bumps? Wowsas, never seen that before. I'm kind of curious as to what that looks like. Little tiny white bumps? I don't take glucosamine and have limited familiarity with it. Maybe try it in powdered form? MSM is something I do take for some years now. I've never had a problem like you describe. Not sure how you take it, but I buy mine by the pound from the herbalist, so it's loose, looks like larger salt crystals, dissolve in water with the rest of the mix (custom blend) I take, plus a couple teaspoons of chia seeds. Maybe do some research as to why that's happening for you, it's a new one to me. Alligator is not conjuring beauty visions here you know, LOL.
I looked it up but couldn't find anything to explain my reaction. Maybe I should try msm chunkles from the herbalist.
MSM chunkles, LOL! That's crappy that you couldn't find any info about your reaction. Maybe you're mutating into a crow and those bumps are where your feathers will sprout from when the time comes?
Holy shit you're right! They're my pinfeathers!!
😂 It feels like a natural evolution for you. I can totally see you flying with wings.