After having a difficult time posting pictures to the blog last night, I'm a bit leery of trying again tonight, especially because I think my computer hates me. I received several pictures tonight, and it has taken way too long to load them to my picture file and once loaded, there were delays as I resized them for the blog. Now, as I write, I'm typing way ahead of the screen display - unnerving. I can hear lots of gurgling like a boiling cauldron waiting to gobble up the words I type and spit them out in globs arranged in mysterious ways until I hit the publish button and then the page will go blank. I'll keep going and can only hope what I want to post will be there the way I intend it to be. We'll see.

I had a message from Bob Kimball asking about the birds he's been seeing in the big spruces on the little island - Pearl's Island - and he sent pictures. (Click on them to enlarge them.) It sure looks like a cormorant to me. I think Bob is right that the osprey has more white, and I think the long neck identifies it as a cormorant. They do dive under water, and we've definitely had them here in the past. One year we had one that roosted on one of our boats and the canvass cover was never the same again - white stripes and splotches! That one was about a feather away from being fish bait. If anyone can positively identify the birds in the photos above, let me know.

It was a bit difficult to tell just what sort of animal it is in this first picture, but within minutes, it was clear there were no feathers on these guys. Diane Rossi sent these photos to me tonight, taken by Joyce Rogers this morning at 5 o'clock on their water front. I guess these two beautiful animals wanted an early morning swim - gotta wonder if they were chased into the pond by dogs or other predators. Like Joyce said, they were pretty strange ducks. Thank you Diane for sending them along, and please thank Joyce. They look as if they are glad to be back on land. I don't think they are strong swimmers.

Oops! My fears have been realized - I'm getting a message about my post perhaps not able to be published, like last night. I'm going to post the pictures and try to get it published. I KNEW I was in trouble the way the computer was acting . . . must be the weather. Have you been reading and hearing about all the power outages in the area? We were lucky here - Waterford, the Ryegate and Peacham area, some lines down in Danville. It looked very threatening when we came up through Peacham yesterday afternoon, but we had no idea it would get so bad some of the roads were closed with downed power lines and trees across.

I just did a test run and everything looks ok. Perhaps I should just plan to write shorter blogs and not put the poor system under such a strain.