Hawk Therapy

The first picture worthy thing I saw driving home from the first day of work was the hawk above. It was high in a pine, so I maxed out my zoom and braced against the JEEP to deshakify the picture.

I had spent the day in meetings ... talk about "do as we say, not as we do." ...
These days teachers are constantly told by their nonteaching administrators ... " Don't lecture, give ownership to the students, break up your lessons, be creative, it's not you as giver of knowledge ... you facilitate." They send us to training after training to learn to be creative (can you really learn that?) break out of the "stand and deliver" mode.
Then, when it's the administrators turn to "teach" us during faculty meetings ... what do you suppose they do?
Yup.
Hours of sit and listen, read along with me, ...wait, was that a micro-rant?
In a week of "preplanning" ... one day is reserved for us to actually plan and think about our lessons. The other 4 days are filled with meetings.
Dang ... am I still micro-ranting ... has it grown to a mini-rant?


Let's stop this silliness and look at birds.

This Mississippi Kite prefers to perch and deliver.
I saw this kite perched high enough to catch the 6:30 pm light, so I stopped and walked towards it.
While scanning the vicinity I saw one, no wait ... two, no there's two in that one tree, so that's 4, and there's another off a little in the distance ... so five kites perched in a handful of old gnarly oaks that towered over the brushy scene.

The two together in one tree lifted off simultaneously and wheeled about, but everybody else seemed content to just chill where they were, so I was able to photograph them. (again zoomed to the max with no support)


Shy kite. This tree is as interesting as the bird to me ... lots of twists.


Here we have a therapeutic kite demonstrating grace even if you've had your feathers ruffled.
One more to deruffle there , dude.

Do not give in to the dark side of the force.

By the time I got the, "Hey, where are you? Supper's ready." call from Emma, the sun had set too much for even treetop pics.
Just as well, my time was up, and I was already feeling better about sitting through another day of meetings on Tuesday.

Which I'd better go do right now, he said, glancing at the clock.
Have a terrific Tuesday!