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Sunday, January 31, 2010 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM

Sandhill Crane, Bosque National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, January 30, 2010
Sandhill Crane, Bosque National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, January 30, 2010

Man o man - I shot this handheld with George's Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM Telephoto Zoom Lens on my new Canon EOS 7D camera. Zoomed all the way out to 400mm. Other than cropping this image is right straight out of the camera. This old duffer who never handled a real camera before finds this just amazing. What a hoot!

You'll find a larger version of this picture over on my Birds Series of photos.

Thank you George for letting me play with this lens.

Night camp

Site 16 - Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, San Antonio NM

Sweet, Rich Hickory Milk

Hickory was another favorite. Rambling through the Southeast in the 1770s, the naturalist William Bartram observed Creek families storing a hundred bushels of hickory nuts at a time. "They pound them to pieces, and then cast them into boiling water, which, after passing through fine strainers, preserves the most oily part of the liquid" to make a thick milk, "as sweet as fresh cream, an ingredient in most of their cookery, especially hominy and corncakes." Years ago a friend and I were served hickory milk in rural Georgia by an eccentric backwoods artist named St. EOM who claimed Creek descent. Despite the unsanitary presentation, the milk was ambrosial - fragrantly nutty, delightfully heavy on the tongue, unlike anything I had encountered before.

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