Sunday, April 15, 2018

Mountain Bluebirds, Kodak, Ships, and Skies

Welcome to John's Island

Mountain Bluebirds

I recently told Eileen, of Saturday's Critters, that I wanted to dig into my archives and find some of my Mountain Bluebird photos to post and link up with her. So that's what we have here. These photos are from 2007 and were taken in Southwest Montana. Check out Saturday's Critters #226 for lots more critter photos. Thanks to Eileen for hosting, and, what a coincidence ... she is featuring the Eastern Bluebird! Gotta love that!

Mountain Bluebird Dad

Mountain Bluebird Mom

Bluebird Home

Babies and one egg that hasn't hatched.

Opening the box resulted in this behavior.
Of course, they are expecting mom or dad to arrive with
nourisment.

Mom at work.

More blue than Eastern?

A Monument

This week's theme at Postcards for the Weekend is "monuments." This proved to be a challenge for my collection of postcards. By way of explanation, Postcards for the Weekend is a weekly event for postcard collectors to share some of their cards, somehow matched to a certain theme. So, this is as close as we could get. Well, it's kind of like a monument! A monument to Kodak! It's the Kodak Pavilion at the New York World's Fair of 1964-1965. It's a pretty neat card. If we had a World's Fair today it seems unlikely that Kodak would get its own Pavilion, what do you think? Someone missed the boat when it was time to make the move to digital.

Kodak Pavilion
New York World's Fair
1964 - 1965

Back of the unused card.


Description from back of the card.

Ship Watch

Hapag-Lloyd
Essen Express
Departing Seattle, April 13th  5:56 PM
The interesting thing about the photo above, if you look closely, is the exhaust blowing in the same direction that the ship is moving. That speaks for the wind out on Puget Sound at the time the photo was taken. It was a stormy afternoon, indeed.

KOGO Charter Yacht
Docked at Elliott Bay Marina
April 13th  8:01 PM
I noticed the KOGO yacht docked at Elliott Bay Marina and decided to snap a photo showing the cool look of the lights along the waterline. I haven't seen that before. Of course, curiosity kicked in and I had to look her up on the web. The screen shots below show how the ship is identified, using VesselFinder.com, and then one can look up further information thanks to Google. Charter yachts of this size are not all that common at this particular marina. No, I'm not at all interested in chartering a yacht like this but I do find it fascinating to see how the weathly folks like to spend their money.

How KOGO appears on website VesselFinder

Vessel information for KOGO from MarineTraffic website.
The photo is from the website.

The info you need if you wish to charter KOGO.
Note ... Crew of 21. Not going to be for someone on a budget!
Sky Watch

Digging through the 2007 archives for the Bluebird pics became a slow process as I encountered sky photos from eleven years ago and had to stop and admire them again. Well, isn't that what the archives are all about? So, I decided to post a few of those sky watch photos since they were well before the beginning of John's Island, AND the past week in Seattle hasn't presented many new opportunities.


Most of these photos were taken in the Rocky Mountains of Montana. Linking up with Skywatch Friday as usual, where you can find many more blogger photos of the sky. Thanks to Yogi for hosting!


I recall printing the photo above and taking it to the family who lived in the house below the rainbow. They loved it so much they had it framed and hung it on the wall in their living room.


In the photo above you see Fan Mountain ... so named, I believe, because, when looking at it at the right time and place, it appears to be like one of those old fashioned hand fans. In the photo below, Fan Mountain appears again on the left. In the sunlight, right in the center, is a mountain all by itself, which, I think, is why it's named Lone Mountain. And, Lone Mountain is home to well known ski resort Big Sky.


The photo below, again from 2007, was taken on a road trip through Arizona. I do not recall the exact location. The thing I like about this photo is the way layers of mountains are revealed by the somewhat hazy sky.


Closing thought (and I can confirm this for my friends who blog) ...
You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
    Poet John Lydgate as made famous by Abraham Lincoln

Thank you for stopping by John's Island.

19 comments:

  1. I just love your pretty bluebird pictures, John. And of course all the rest as well, but those are my faves. You manage to please ME all of the time with your posts, BTW. :-)

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  2. Hello John, I love your Mountain Bluebird photos. I am glad you found your archived Bluebirds. Great captures, they are a lovely color blue. Wow that yacht is huge. Pretty sky images too. Thanks so much for linking up your post. Happy Sunday, enjoy your day and new week. PS, thanks too for the comment.

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  3. No doubt the postcard you chose is very original.
    I love the rainbow picture a lot. Sometimes is difficult to get them right on pictures!

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  4. That is a pretty little bird you showed in the first photos. Some neat postcards as well but I really like your skys this week

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  5. The rainbow is beautiful!

    The mountains...sigh...now we see why the word majesty is so often attached to them.

    "Kodak Pavilion at the New York World's Fair of 1964-1965"

    I hesitate to say this and am probably just looking at this through modern eyes, but...my first thought was how much that firework looks like an incoming missile. (Sorry.)

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  6. I totally agree with that closing thought. I love the Mountain Bluebird photos. It has been years since I last saw one.The Eastern are more common around here and even those are not that many.

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  7. The bluebird is a gorgeous shade of blue. Ours are lovely, but not so brilliant in color. I also like those sky shots and that rainbow is gorgeous!!

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  8. Great sky photos, great bluebird photos.I love archives and when go looking into them I am thankful for the time I spent tagging them. I love your post card and your views of the charter yacht. My bosses boss has purchased a boat big enough to have its own identifier. When he retires he is going to take it from its present place in South Carolina, down the east coast, along the gulf coast, and up the Mississippi and then the Arkansas River to the Port of Catoosa near Tulsa.

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  9. I like your blue bird photos as you show all stages. it takes time and effort to get such a series of photos.

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  10. Those bluebirds are such wonderful colours, most of our local birds are pretty dull but then they have to blend into the bush. Their colour tends to be on the underside of the wings. I also enjoyed your sky pics.

    Diana

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  11. Yes, interesting about the plume of exhaust blowing 'the wrong way' on the cargo ship, John. I don't know that I've ever seen that before, although I used to report the ships in port for the Vancouver Sun in Vancouver, BC, many years ago. Your "sky photos from eleven years ago" which you "had to stop to admire them again" are definitely worth a stop. The Rockies in Montana are very much like the Rockies in Alberta and in my native British Columbia, of course, and always beautiful to my mind. As for the bluebirds: they're wonderful!
    Kay
    An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel

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  12. The bluebirds are so pretty. Yes, more blue than the ones around here and ours have some red on the breast too.
    Beautiful rainbow.

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  14. Those pictures are really cool and this is an informative post! I love those pictures of baby birds! that just really got me! This is the first time that i saw something like this. :)

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  15. A monument to Kodak, how interesting! For as long as I can remember, taking photos during my childhood days was coined as "Kodak-an", from noun to verb with the addition of the suffix "-an". What it meant was that Kodak was such a huge name in photography that it's used as a verb by itself! Thank you very much for sharing this monument to Kodak, John!

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  16. Wow to those beautiful bluebirds!

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