Orleans & Woods Hole

The weather of late has left something to be desired. Cold, damp, snow, ice, rain, slush-turned-to-ice, and more light snow today making for a slippery time. All that in the course of a day or so. It might sound as though I'm complaining. Perhaps I am. I do like this weather though, honestly, but I wish there was more snow and more time to enjoy it.

Yesterday, we took a ride down to Orleans to Birdwatcher's General Store. I've been going to Birdwatcher's for many years, but since I have not been birding like I used to, have not been in quite some time. They have wise-ass senses of humor, similar to mine (their hours on Sunday are 10:13 am to 5:03 pm and next to their bird seed self-service area they have a "slob emergency kit" consisting of a dustpan and brush) so that makes the trip worth it for me. Anyway, I wanted to take a look at a spotting scope that I knew they had there before deciding to purchase one. I recently used the mac-daddy of scopes by Swarovski, but there is no way I'll be affording one of those. Ever. So, I checked out one that looks similar and I thought would be more than sufficient for me and a step up from my ancient Celestron that I have been using. The Celestron was a great scope but is awkward and hard too focus, particularly in the cold weather. I test drove the scope and liked it more than enough to purchase it. A much needed investment and improvement for my little hobby.


We finalized the purchase of the 4Runner yesterday and I went to the RMV this morning to register it. What a great experience there. I know people joke and have genuinely poor experiences with their local registry, but Falmouth really has a good bunch of people. All of the things I neglected to fill in on the title, the RMV lady took care of. The insurance company had slightly screwed up a form, which she took care of rather than sending me away to have the insurance company fix. With all that, and a wait of less than five minutes, I left satisfied that there are still some competent people left in the world.

I returned home, put the plates on the 4Runner and gathered up my gear to go look for a bird that had been reported in Quissett Harbor called an eared grebe. This bird is normally found on the west coast, but occasionally they make their way to the east. The weather changed dramatically this afternoon. It was not much warmer, but the sun came out and the winds died down. I captured a few images at Quissett Harbor.



I decided to take a ride down to Woods Hole just to do it and to take a few more photos at Woods Hole Oceanographic, Marine Biological Laboratory and the other science labs in the area. A few of the research vessels were in port such as the Tioga and Oceanus.



Woods Hole from School Street across Eel Pond.


I drove home along part of the Falmouth Road Race route wondering if I'll stay committed to the run and enjoyed the views of Vineyard Sound. A nice ending to my brief time off.