Long Island Time

Did you ever notice that no matter how long you make your family vacations, you never have more time to actually relax?! I think we learned that important life lesson over again on our recent whirlwind tour of Long Island & vicinity. It was hectic but fun, and wonderful to see everybody. In what is turning out to be typical for this summer, we had only one day of sunshine out of 8 full days on the island, but we made the best of everything. Highlights included an Isbrantsen/Rising family reunion, an extended stay on Oak Island, visits with both Great Grandmas, a busy day exploring Shelter Island and the north fork w/ Grandma Chris, a birthday BBQ for Andy and Dan, strawberry picking and petting zoos, playdough and playgrounds and pizza with the cousins, meals out with college friends in NJ & LI, and a few stolen moments of birding here and there. Whew, time to breathe again. Here are some photos from our vacation!

Walking the boardwalk at Oak Island

Isbrantsen/Rising Family Reunion

Aiden enjoying himself; Aunt Debbie holding baby Elizabeth



Face paint much?

Party's over

My boys on Father's Day morning - go away!!

Dadoo with his FD Tie

Kulis Family grandchildren (and great grandchild)

Kenny & Zanne

Allison and Jeannie

Aiden getting tickle tortured after saying "GO RED SOX!"

Hannah has dessert

Back out to Oak Island

Holtsville Animal Farm

Old MacDonald and his crazy goats

Morton Wildlife Refuge, where songbirds eat out of your hand

Trying to lure in a bird

Cardinal

Andy photographing a Wild Turkey family

turkey chicks

At Morton

The beach at Morton Wildlife Refuge

Greenport, LI

Strange bird statue in Greenport

Playdough with cousins William and Emma

Hug for Great Grandma Guppy!

Aiden and Great Grandma Guppy

Strawberry picking in Riverhead. Strawberries were buried in fields of chamomile and pineapple weed.

Happy Birthday Andy!



A little birthday birding...

A Red-Headed Woodpecker, best bird of the trip!

Piping Plover at Jones Beach

Kayaking at Oak Island

Oak Island fun on our one day of sun...

Grandpa Dada and Aiden catch stuff in the thingy

Dan and Munson being cute

Brady and Randy

Elizabeth and Aiden

The end!

Dragon Hunting!

Andy and I recently went to a training for the NH Dragonfly Survey, which is a program run by NH Audubon that is trying to catalogue all the dragonfly species in the state. We went because Andy in particular has been really interested in dragonflies for a long time, and despite having several decent field guides, we always find them so difficult to identify and can barely ever get a solid ID on one. So we thought we'd learn a little something. And we did. We also got ourselves a citizen science project that we'll be working on over the next few summers hopefully. We're going to try to catalogue all the dragonfly species that exist a a very cool bog just a few miles down the road from us in New London. Last sunday was our first real foray into this new "fieldwork."

I'm glad there weren't any REAL entomologists anywhere around, because I'm sure we looked absolutely ridiculous leaping and lunging at the whizzing dragons while trying to stay on the narrow bog bridging. It's quite an art to catch a dragonfly. Good luck to you if you try to nab one head-on, their compound eyes can see that coming in the spectra-vision of a thousand lenses. The best way is to watch the flight pattern of a particular dragon for a bit, and then scoop him up from behind just after he's passed. Ha ha, don't try this at home. Andy managed to capture quite a few dragons, but I was pretty hopeless and only came up with one capture on our first excursion. Most of what we caught were all the same species, but we did identify 2 different species with some measure of confidence. One thing we did learn at the training- you have to actually CATCH them to ID them 99% of the time (so THAT's what we'd been doing wrong all these years...).