Upde Designs

Happy Friday ~ 364

Today is the first day of Spring – 2014.  Yesterday morning I awoke to a fresh layer of snow, about an inch, which made the morning commute enjoyable.  By the time I got South of the airport it was like it never happened.

Fun day yesterday.  Jeanne got back from her Mother’s somewhere around 10:00 a.m. and then she, Angie and the kids came to Maquoketa to have lunch with me.  We all decided to have breakfast and it was fun to watch Josh eat his pancake and eggs.  He devoured them in a very short time.  Angie said he loves anything that he can put syrup on.  🙂

I’ll finish up the week with some more swan images.  You remember earlier in the week I showed you the territorial dispute between two male swans.  After the skirmish the victorious male swan flew over his domain as if to survey all that he was master of.  The next image is of him setting up for a landing.  Full flaps as he creates a massive amount of lift with those huge wings and lets him settle onto the water softly.

When I got home last evening the winds were calm.  There was plenty of sunlight left and the temperature was a balmy 46 degrees.  So after greeting my bride I grabbed Phantom – 2 and took it out to the back patio for a quick flight.  I wanted to show you the 4 minute video but didn’t start editing it until this morning and of course that means not enough time to get it finished.  Maybe tomorrow.

Back with his mate the male swan did a number of puffing his chest and beating his wings just to show her how much of a man he was.  I’m sure she was duly impressed.  🙂

That’s it for today.  I still have several hundred images of eagles, herons, swans, and ducks but I’m going to take a break from them and look for other subject matter.  Too much of even a good thing is not necessarily  good and doesn’t help you to grow.  So maybe I can find something interesting this weekend.  If the weather is nice I’d like to practice some more flying techniques other than just going up to a high point, turning around a couple of times and then back down.  Next week (weather permitting) I would like to do a slow fly over the duck pond.  I think that would make a great video.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your TGI Friday and be careful.