THUNDERATION!!!

It was a loud and noisy Saturday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky as the city began its annual celebration for the Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May. It all began with a bang as the Kentucky Derby Festival got things kickin' with their annual Thunder Over Louisville air show and fireworks display.

The day began with the Navy's Leap Frog parachute team dropping out of the sky from about 10,000 feet...well at least that anyway. One of the jumpers waited till he was at about the 2,000 foot mark to pull his cord causing a lot Wows among the hundreds of thousands lined up along the Ohio River banks. From there they swirled around they came down on the Great Lawn where several hundred people waited for their arrival. Personally I was never one to want to jump out of perfectly good airplane. Now give me a ride on one of those fighter jets and I'm as happy as a clam......well a clam with an appetite for going at mach 10 with my hair on fire that is. These guys did know what they were doing though. I'm sure their number of jumps totaled into the upper hundreds if not thousands. For me however the best show was to come as me and my camera waited for the new kid in town.

This was the one I was waiting on, the F-22.

Now the F-22 is supposed to be a stealthy kind of fighter and on just about every radar out there it would be. Today, however, it came in with as little stealth as it could with both afterburners in the engines lit up about as bright as they could be. This bad boy would be on top of you before you even knew it if you were out in the middle of a field somewhere.

One things is for certain.The thousands lined up along the riverbank got a good look at this puppy as one of its high speed passes had it only a few hundred feet over the ground. I knew it drew a lot of 00Hs and AAhs from the groups that were around me......and a lot of ear holding too. He was definitely lit up like a Christmas tree on the 4th of July. There were a lot of other military jets the took to the skies too. The one at the top of the post is an F-15, one of my favorites at the show because the pilot turns into a showstopper every year with it's two big engines dishing out as much as they can give. Below this are several others that showed up for the big dance.

Now the first of these above is the A-10 Warthog. If you ask any Warthog pilot what they think of these plane they will tell you they never want to get out of the cockpit once they get inside. It may not be the prettiest in the fleet but it do be da baddest. After that is the B-2 bomber, which I must admit I was little disappointed in. Seeing the B-2 is always great but the pilot never took it out over the river and into the air show area. He made two small passes over the Indiana side of the river and then was gone. The next one, however, put on a real show. That is the F-16 Falcon. These guys are called the Ferraris of the skies and aren't afraid to light things up as you can see here. F-16 pilots are like Warthog pilots. They never want to get out once they get in.

Of all the things at this year's show this CH-47 Chinook impressed me the most. Actually it was more the pilot than the helicopter. Back in 1973 and 74 I was stationed at Ft. Campbell with the 101st Airborne Division and worked as a clerk with a batallion of Chinooks. I also got to fly twice with a crew chief I knew at the time. The pilot that flew this ship you see here was better than any I had seen at Ft. Campbell. He had this helicopter gliding across the river and through air as smoothe as a ballet dancer on a stage. If I were to ever going flying in a Chinook again I would definitely want this pilot behind the stick. It was obvious that he had put in thousands of hours flying one.

Of course seeing the Apache helicopters come is always a fine sight. The pilots of these didn't hold back any punches with these gunships and made the adrenaline gland go into hyper mode. The 'firebird' had everybody along the river bank standing on their feet and waving their arms in approval. The pilot also cooled them down a little as he dropped low enough to the water to provide a little cooling spray to the crowd....which they all absolutely loved.

After that came what everybody had waited for, the big fireworks show with more than 50,000 rounds of fireworks blasting into the air. From here on I'll just let you sit back and enjoy the show. The bigger Derby Festival events start Saturday. Here's hoping you have a blast.

The Nest - A Sad Update

The other day I posted the story of the two killdeer with the nest of four eggs and about how the killdeer acted as the Guardians of their brood. Today I must bring you a sad update. I told you about the storm on Tuesday that brought the big hail with it, some of the hailstones as big as golf balls in our front yard. Also coming with that was temperatures that dropped down into the 20's for lows for three days straight. We all know how Mother Nature can cruel at times and this was definitely one of those times.

This is how I found the nest this morning (Saturday the 7th). The eggs were gone. The killdeer were gone and all that was left were the rocks and the snow that had been dusted upon the spot from heavy snow showers the day before and during the night.

My estimate of what happened is this. With hail the size of quarters and golf balls falling from the sky at 120 miles per hour, I'm guessing the eggs were pulverized by the large ice balls. What was left of the eggs was then washed away by the heavy rain that came with it. To be honest I doubt neither the eggs or the chicks that might have hatched would have survived the cold temperatures of the next three nights. The first and second nights lows dropped to 27 degrees. This morning's low of 23 would have been the final nail in the coffin for sure. One this is for certain. The two killdeer would have no little ones to tend to this time around. Mother Nature has her way of doing things and nothing we can do can get in her way. Maybe she's just giving us a little example here that if she wants to make things rough on us she can do it. Maybe she's telling us to listen more closely. But that's just me.

THE GUARDIAN

The other day I was working a high school baseball game and got to the field a little early like I usually do. While I was putting my gear together I heard the familiar sound of a squealing killdeer, one of my favorite birds on the planet. The reason for all the squealing was found pretty quickly. This one and its mate had a nearby nest and was throwing fits because of all the people around for the game and walking and whatever else they were doing.

These killdeer had plenty of reason to be upset because they were trying to take care of four eggs in their nest. Killdeer don't make their nests in trees but on the bare ground. because of their speckles they're very hard to see. The nest was on some rocks next to the running track and mixed in with rocks so well they were very hard to spot. I didn't want to make her too mad at me so I used a long lens to get all of these pictures, especially with the eggs, this one's mate was flying around us like an F-16 fighter jet and you didn't know if you was going to dive bomb you or what.

After taking the pictures of the eggs I backed away and this one came swooping in to claim its turf around the next. I expect it was also trying to figure out who the long haired guy with the very long snoot for a nose was as well. I really think the killdeer knew I wasn't there to hurt it or the eggs but it really concentrated on me for the next several minutes while I got on my knees and keep shooting pictures. Anytime I move the bird's eyes moved with me. When I backed away a little more it moved in closer to the eggs seeming maybe a little more comfortable with the situation.

I stood up to try to get some pictures looking down and she didn't seem to care too much for that as she spread her tail out showing those bright orange feathers. She really didn't squeal at me but I think she knew I was catching her drift as she kept an eye on me the whole time. When I backed away she pulled the tale in back to normal. Meanwhile its mate continued to fly back and forth, making all kinds of commotion to draw me away from the nest.

I walked slowly to the other side of the nest

and it was at this point when she had finally got tired of me being around and she went into the act that their the most famous for. She took a few steps onto the asphalt and began acting like she had been oversome by some injury, her wings spread out and both side and making a sound like she was in pain. It was one of their most used defense systems. The broken wing act. This was her best way to pull me away from the nest.

It was also what I was hoping to photograph as well and I was hoping she would start her little charade. As I pulled slightly away from the next she took a few more steps then stop and flap her wings on the rubberized asphalt. The sound of herself in pain also continued as she tried ton confuse me and make me feel sorry for her. Anytime I moved toward her she moved a little farther out, hence when she moved then I was moving away from the nest. It was also making her more comfortable that I was leaving her eggs alone.

When she finally thought I was far enough away from her brood she got back up on her feet but kept the act going. Finally I was far enough away and she jumped up and flew back to the four eggs. I had what I wanted in the way of pictures and decided to leave her alone, although with the number of people at the game I'm sure she felt a whole lot better after everything was over and there weren't anymore people around.

Today as I'm typing this is the day after the big storm with the big hail. Most of the areas had at least quarter size hail. I haven't had a chance to see if the eggs survived the storm or not. Not only that but with temps diving down into the mid 20's the next three nights it makes me wonder if they will survive. As we all know Mother Nature can be pretty cruel at times. Hopefully these eggs and little ones will survive.

HAIL YEAH!!!

Yesterday we had our first big storm of the spring season and as usual I was on the back porch to watch it all come blasting in. This storm was with a system that is going to change things the next few nights and bring back some winter weather. This storm had already created some history for itself as it approached with more warning boxes than I had seen in almost 3 years. The brighter area of the storm in this picture just below center brought more than just a little wind and rain.

As it got closer it looked like it was going to go about a mile north of us but then made a sudden right turn like cells of this nature do sometimes. That put it right over our house and it unloaded with not just wind and rain but with some big stuff falling from the sky. As first the hail stones were marble size but they just kept getting bigger and bigger. Before long the stones were quarter size then more than an inch. The clunking on the side of house and the roof made me wonder what was going to come down next.

The wind picked up to gusts of between 40 and 45 mph and the hail continued to get bigger. After a few minutes some of the stones were as big as golf balls (1 3/4 inches) and you could have used a 9 iron on them. After a few minutes of that it settled down but only for a short period. Another smaller core flew over and unleashed another barrage of hail but the good thing was it was only pea size. In total the hail came down for pretty close to a full 20 minutes before it settled into just rain and lightning.

I braved it enough to go out and pick up a couple of the bigger stones. The biggest stone in this picture is just over an inch and a half but many of them were very close to two inches in diameter. With a 40 mph wind backing them up it definitely would have hurt had you got hit in the head. One county a few counties over got half more than 4 inches in diameter, definitely enough to knock you out if you got hit. Now it has turned cold and temps are expected to be in the 20's during the next few nights. Any flowers out there now better get somebody to hug them for a few days. They're going to need it.