Bird Pictures and Blog Stats

We went for a drive in a reclaimed coal mine area north of Newburgh last week with the camera. Ran across this Short-eared Owl sitting in a tree along the side of the road.

I found the commentary under "Cool Facts" at this link interesting since that is where we spotted this one.
Short-eared Owl

Here are a couple of shots of a Cooper's Hawk looking for dinner.

It was really windy. The birds could almost hover when going into the wind.

We saw 2 flocks of Wild Turkey. Both were about a dozen birds. Here is a male and two females.

Click to enlarge.

If you right-click you can open the picture in another tab.

They are really skittish. The car makes a pretty good blind but as soon at the camera shutter clicked the male started shooing the females away from the road.

I don't know why I added these two. This is taken from the bluff at Rockport, Indiana.

The river is up a little in this picture.

Here is another shot of the river and the bridge over the river.

I just discovered you can get  statistics on your blog. This is a screenshot of the last months worth of data. It shows that the posts I did from Spain 18 months ago are driving the most page views of the blog. Although when I search on google.es or google.com I don't see any links to the blog. The map shows were visitors to the blog originate.

Here is the data from the beginning of the blog. It seems to average about 300 page views a month.


Click to enlarge.

Everybody laughs about the slide rules but the slide rule convention post is the 3rd most popular.

The key word searches are interesting. I don't know why I never see results for the blog. Could just be an element of randomness in the search results.

I never gave much thought that there might be  viewers from Russia or India. A fair amount of Europe traffic.

For all the traffic I get very little feedback. I think about 10 comments since I started 3 years ago.

Post a comment below and make me feel better!

Crystal Bridges Art Museum

Margot and I visited my parents in Rogers, AR recently. When we returned from Oklahoma we visited the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville.

It is quite a place - just opened in November.

This is about half of it. Here are some pictures from 15 months ago during construction. Construction

The grounds will be beautiful in spring.

Another view.

The museum was funded by the Walton Foundation. Sam's daughter Alice has been the driving force.

Hard to say what the total cost has been so far but the Wikipedia article says the museum has amassed assets of $488MM.




This is one of the most famous acquisitions that the museum has made. Kindred Spirits by Durand was purchased from the New York Public Library for $35MM.

The amazing thing is that you can walk right up to it. They ask you to stay 18 inches away and the gallery monitor will move in pretty quickly if you lean in too close - just ask Margot.


Crystal Bridges - Wikipedia






This is another well known painting.

Rosie the Riveter by Norman Rockwell. I've seen this picture hundreds of times in magazines and what not but I never noticed Rosie's foot rest until Margot pointed it out to me. Hopefully the picture is big enough to read it.

Click to enlarge.

If you right-click and "open link in new tab" you will see a larger version of the picture.

A view of one of the galleries. Some of the paintings are owned by the museum and others are on loan.

Here is a link to the museum website.

http://crystalbridges.org/

The best part (to me) is they let you take pictures. They just ask you to not use flash or focus assist lights.

I don't imagine they allow tripods. I didn't ask. Consequently, it is tough to get really crisp pictures.

They have a portrait of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale but it was too blurry.

I predict that The Bubble by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth will be very popular with the 4th grade boys during field trip season.















Here are a few more.



Click to enlarge.








The museum was sort of controversial when first announced. The East Coast art cognoscenti didn't seem to think much of a major art museum in ARKANSAS. The recent reviews have been grudgingly complimentary in general.
Washington Post
New York Times

This one is by Thomas Moran.

Valley of the Catawissa in Autumn

All sorts of art. From Colonial to 19th Century to Modern to Contemporary.

This article by an obvious Wal-Mart hater even acknowledges that the museum and its art are pretty spectacular.

Bloomberg

Did I mention the admission cost? It is zero, nada, mei you. It is free thanks to a donation of $20MM by Wal-Mart.

This is a self portrait by Evan Penny. Amazingly life-like.

The Island by Walton Ford

This one I thought was interesting. I don't recall the artist it is the Last Supper done in spools of thread hanging vertically. When you look in the little glass sphere in the center you see the painting inverted.

The picture is deceiving. When you stand there it is hard to discern the subject.

Here is a picture of the sphere.

Here is Margot looking at one of the more disturbing compositions.

This is Walking to Boras by Jim Dine.

Eagles at Gentry, Arkansas

During our visit to Arkansas we took a trip out to Gentry to see some Bald Eagles that are wintering in the area.

According to a local photographer at the viewing platform the eagles are supplementing their diet with dead chickens thrown out by the local chicken farmers.

They are hanging out at a power plant cooling lake.

Here is a link to Google Maps if you are interested in the location.

Google Maps Link

Zoom out - all the long silver buildings are chicken farms.

It was really windy. We saw 2 eagles at one time but they weren't hanging out much.

There were some gulls and ducks around.

This one just took off after diving into the water. You can see a few water droplets falling off as he takes off.


Click to enlarge.

Here the gull has a fish in its mouth.

Almost looks like too much to swallow.