Jeane and I once fished six little Wood Ducklings out of a storm drain...we were alerted to their presence by a frantic mother Wood Duck peering down into the drawn and squawking.  She flew off when we got closer to investigate, but luckily she didn't go far...just flew into the nearby creek and waited until we could ferry each little tyke into the creek as we were able to pull them out.  We were able to get to all of them by sticking our hands between the bars of the iron grate right up until we got to the last duckling, who was wily and managed to get himself into a corner where we couldn't reach him.  We flagged down a very strong man who was able to the lift the iron grate off...a true team effort.

Having had a total hard drive failure before in our household (Jeane's PC, where all of our pictures were stored), we're pretty paranoid.  Luckily Kodak Gallery had a service where you could purchase a CD of all of your photos.  It was really expensive, but the only way we recovered some of our older photos.

I have a local backup (you can get a 1 TB USB external hard drive for less than $150), and I use Crashplan for an offsite backup.  There are many offsite backup options available, including just buying the storage space and putting your critical files there manually, but I like the option that does it for me -- Crashplan is an "always running" solution that backs up files as soon as I touch them.  There are other solutions that are similar...

I didn't get to Tricia's today (nor will I tomorrow) because I have a special medical "test" scheduled tomorrow (the one you get when you turn 50), and it requires some "preparation" today!  I'm sure that was TMI.

But the report from Jeane (who has been going to work early so she can get in a few hours at the farm after work and before dark) is that groups of volunteers from two different relief agencies showed up today with lots of heavy-duty equipment and made short work of chopping up lots of downed trees and dismantling the remains of one of the smaller barns.  Jeane said there is a noticeable difference in how the town looks, so the massive volunteer effort must be paying off quickly.  This is the time in a disaster when everybody wants to know how they can help.

Jeane is helping Tricia coordinate a huge effort for this weekend (lots of friends of mine and Jeane's, friends of Tricia's from work and church, etc.)...there is still plenty to do!

All of the missing llamas have returned, so they only lost the one animal...

And in the human interest category, the cops caught a looter today who'd driven down from New Jersey to steal copper...they probably ought to beef up the security at the Clark County jail to keep the guy from vigilante justice.

I thought I'd share some random thoughts and observations from my experience today in Henryville...I won't describe the overall devastation; I'm sure that's obvious enough from the news (though I don't watch TV news, so I don't knows what's been shown).  I've never been in a disaster zone quite like this before...Allstate and State Farm had mobile claims offices set up.  There seemed to be a lot of communications/infrastructure repair going on, we saw trucks carrying telephone poles, cranes holding up electrical wires, etc.

One of the things I found sobering was that all of the houses (those that have some part of a structure still standing) have been marked with a big orange X indicating that search and rescue has already searched there.  They came through Jeane's sister's property yesterday and scoured the fields and woods with rescue dogs. 

Another thing I didn't really expect was how much hail damage there was.  We drove past one used car lot where every single windshield was either cracked or missing, and the cars incredibly dented, as is Tricia's.  Her car is driveable, but is a mess.  Jeane's sister's fields had divots in them 3 inches wide and a couple of inches deep from the baseball-sized hail.  We also found pieces of lumber that had been driven into the soil as much as six inches!  It's amazing that nearly all of her llamas and alpacas survived the hail and the flying missiles. 

And I mentioned this on Facebook, but while most of what we cleaned up today was lumber, pieces of siding, shingles, downed trees and insulation, we also picked up multiple stuffed animals, and saddest of all, a small lampshade that belonged in a little girl's room.

On the uplifting side, as we drove through town we saw tractor trailers full of donated supplies (massive amounts of bottled water, blankets, etc.) being unloaded, and a special "heat tent" set up so folks working outside on a cold day could go in and warm up.  It was also nice to see the llamas and alpacas getting on with their lives...going about the business of grazing...setting a good example of resilience for us humans.

I just heard that little Angel Babcock has passed away.   Fly free little angel. 

That's so incredibly sad; I can't imagine what her grandparents are going through, having lost the whole family.

We do an organized bike ride every year in New Pekin, Indiana, where this little girl and her family were from...the town really gets behind the ride; many of them provide refreshments (gatorade, homemade pies and cookies, fried chicken) for the riders who hang out in their front yards.  They're such warm, friendly folks...many of them without homes now.

More later on my adventure in Henryville...there aren't really words to describe the devastation.

Dale sent me a nice personal email...and I saw this post after I replied...so Dale, I hope you don't mind if I recap here.

Jeane and I are just fine, but Jeane’s sister lives in one of the small Indiana towns just over the river that got flattened. 

Jeane spent the day at her sister's house today along with several able-bodied men folk doing big work like putting up tarps and plastic over broken windows and over holes in roofs, repairing fencing, assessing the damage, trying to stabilize damaged barns, rounding up loose animals, etc. (Tricia owns a farm with llamas and alpacas). Two barns were destroyed, but the houses survived with relatively minor damage to roofs, windows, and siding.  There is major hail damage to Tricia’s car (it’ll need some windows replaced, and it’s good and dented).  The county’s search and rescue crew stopped by and cleared an enormous tree from their driveway so they could get in and out.

They have road blocks set up and they're only allowing small numbers of folks through with residents, and we decided there are folks much more handy with hammers and nails than me, so I gave up my seat in the car to someone much more capable of providing the kind of help that was needed today.  I’ll go tomorrow when our task will be picking up loads of debris from all over the farm fields.  Jeane says the fields are just full of so much stuff – everything from siding, shingles, styrofoam, downed trees, to kid’s stuffed animals, books and papers from the Henryville High School, which is gone…

The crew today rounded up most of the llamas and alpacas, though one had to be euthanized (it was impaled by a flying board), and there are still two or three llamas missing (it’s hard to get an accurate head count when 60-ish animals are milling about).  The county is setting up an animal shelter at the fairgrounds where folks can take animals who have turned up on their property who don’t belong there, so Tricia is hoping the missing animals may turn up there.

Given that the town of Henryville is largely entirely gone, I suppose Tricia should feel lucky that her house is still standing, but there’s a lot of cleanup ahead. I guess I’ll get my first sobering look tomorrow.

How sad. 

My family all got to see both Pale Male and Lima last November; I'm glad we got that chance:  http://rfalconcam.com/forum/index.php?topic=6671.0

Patti, a gal I know from MN posted this link on FaceBook and I thought you (or others) might like it...

http://journal.northshoreimages.com/2012/02/split-rock-aurora.html

Thanks Nora, the aurora was really nice, and I perused several other galleries there...I love the winter shots.  We visited the same two friends several years ago during winter -- they took us snowshoeing and cross-country skiing (things we don't get to do in Louisville), and we made it down to the North Shore to see the ice piled up...it was a pretty magnificent sight.

We didn't get to hike as hard as we originally intended when we planned the trip because I injured my knee just before we left...but I limped around on the trails and made the best of it.  It's a really beautiful area (both Ely/Boundary Waters and the North Shore of Lake Superior).  I don't think I could survive a whole winter there, though!  I'm constituted to tolerate heat much more than cold...

I finally got photos from a another trip organized.  These are from an early September trip to Minnesota where we hung out with a couple of friends over the Labor Day weekend, and then explored the North Shore of Lake Superior:

http://photos.bellhanley.com/Trips/Hiking/Minnesota-2011

There are so many birds in this album I considered putting it under "general nature discussion", but it really is a vacation album.  However, we saw gazillions of Cedar Waxwings, and visited one of the major raptor migration spots in Duluth (Hawk Ridge), where Patti got to release a Sharp-shinned Hawk.

So there are plenty of bird photos to keep folks interested...and a couple of videos.

I have a Canadian Peregrine foundation videotape, Life on the Ledge, filmed in July of 1998.  It follows the Etobicoke nest, with a young Windwhistler and his siblings, one of whom, Angel, also went on to a long and remarkable career as a territorial falcon. At one point the camera centers on Windwhistler and Angel as the narrator explains that most juvenile peregrines do not survive their first year.  

Life on the Ledge is from a time when urban peregrines were a new development, and has the best footage I've seen of the behavior of juveniles.  It's a shame that it is no longer available.  I really should burn a DVD from my copy.  Maybe CPF could raise some money by reissuing it on DVD (or even Blu-Ray, if they have a good master copy).
Paul

I have that videotape as well, and thought it was entertaining and educational...I'd definitely vote for a re-issue!

Patti

My family (Jeane, both sisters and one brother-in-law) took a day trip to a small town about an hour south of Louisville to find some Sandhill Cranes to gawk at, and we were thrilled to find a couple of Whooping Cranes hanging out with them.  It still astounds me that with only a few hundred Whooping Cranes left in the world, we managed to see some on their migration!

This habitat is agricultural fields (mown cornfields, primarily) that hold a lot of water, providing good feeding grounds and the shallow water in which cranes prefer to roost at night.  The area is well known among Kentucky birders for hosting thousands of Sandhill Cranes for a few weeks in February as they fuel up here on their journey North.  We'd begun hearing reports that they were gathering in large numbers, but I think ours was the first sighting of Whooping Cranes reported on the KY bird list.  I hope they make their journey unscathed; too many cranes being shot lately  .

It was a most cool experience!!

It was a HORRIBLE day for photography; it started out dreary and gray and ended with pouring rain, but I did my best given the available light...

Here are my photos:
http://photos.bellhanley.com/Birds-Bats-Butterflies/Around-Kentucky/Cranes-Cecilia-2012/

My sisters also took photos, and all of us captured a few different scenes, so I'll share those albums as well. Linda got some nice photos of the Whooping Cranes in flight, as well as one doing a nice display...and she also shot a video for those folks that enjoy the cacophony of crane calls.
http://joyfuldog.smugmug.com/Animals/Cranes-in-Cecilia-KY

Sister Laura got a nice series of series of flight shots as well:
http://tinyurl.com/6phcuzw

Our crocuses are already blooming, so I've declared it Spring.  I hope the plants aren't sorry for deciding to start up three weeks early...

Carol, I posted a comment in your album, but I think your smaller birds are Horned Larks.  Google them and see if you concur.

We've had a nesting pair of Bald Eagles on the Ohio River for the last three years, within view of downtown Louisville.  They took over an old Great Blue Heron nest in a rookery.  Many herons are still nesting there; they can't be real fond of their new neighbors.  So far the eagles haven't managed to fledge any young...

Ever entertained the idea of leaving your body to science? Even if you have, you can scarcely have considered the strange fate of one donated corpse that has just been revealed in the journal Forensic Science International: a donor's body was left in a Texan wilderness so that vultures could scavenge and "skeletonise" it - and distribute the remains far and wide.

I actually have considered that...I read Mary Roach's book "Stiff", which was about many of the ways donated bodies are used, as well as what happens to one's body after death...it was the first I'd heard about the facility in Tennessee that does this same sort of research.  There's something I like about the idea of birds (or other animals, or the forest) benefiting from my death :-)  In that category of life lessons you remember vividly for the way they alter your world view, when I was a kid hiking with my Dad, we came across a tree that had fallen a long time earlier, and was in an advanced state of decomposition.  You could still recognize it as a tree, but could grab a piece of it in your hand and crumble it into dirt.  My Dad made us stop and do that...and helped us to understand the "circle of life"...how that tree was feeding bacteria and fungus, millipedes, worms, termites...and would eventually nourish the plants around it, perhaps its own descendants.  For me as a young child it was an amazing realization that good soil isn't just "dirt", it's all of the plants and animals (with some minerals thrown in) that went before.  Coming across decomposing trees in the woods still makes me think fondly of my Dad...and makes me want to be vulture food myself...

There are so many ways for a body to be used...I haven't quite landed on my favorite.  Also important to pick an option your next of kin won't be wigged out about as well.