Black Paint and Robins

I had a long day of fence painting. I'm painting the weathered wood black, which is a big mess. The most difficult problem is the wire mesh on the inside of the fence. The inside of the fence will have to be spray painted. The front side I'm doing by hand to try and cut down on the mess. It was near 80° F. (26° C.) this afternoon.



ABOVE: Before

BELOW: After



This first batch of paint was a Christmas gift from Betsy and Billy. At about $100.00 per side, per section. . . we've got several hundred dollars worth to go along with several weeks work.



I had a lot of company while painting, from the flocks of American Robins (Turdus migratorius) passing through, and the hundreds of jets that fly overhead each hour. The Robins are a bit skittish but they have to stop and rest periodically, and I was able to get a few good shots from afar using a strong telephoto lens.



The American Robin is most active during the day. As the sun gets low in the sky they start heading for the swamps to our west. They assemble at night in large flocks in the secluded swamps and dense vegetation just to our west. I see them starting around 3:00 pm heading NNW in groups of 10 or 15 toward the vast St. Johns River swamp just down the hill. These migratory birds generally return north to the northern USA and southern Canada in late February and early March. This year -- with very warm temperatures in January -- it appears they are migrating early.



It is truly astounding the number of jets traveling north-south over the peninsula. Working outside most of the day I took to looking for the jets. . . at intervals of about 30 seconds they passed overhead at many different elevations. At times there were 10 large passenger jets at a time crossing the sky. It was easier today to pick them out in the bright sunshine filled sky due to the contrails they were leaving as they'd enter a relatively moist air mass above us.



ABOVE and BELOW: Robins flying at about 1,000' with jets. A fun shot. I could waste a lot of time trying to capture these images, this time of year.



BELOW: Some of my fish are mating due to the warm weather. I've been feeding them a couple times a day to give them plenty of energy for coitus. I will have to move some of these koi to the less protected ponds in Deltona soon. There are far too many and they are getting too big for the pond in Debary.