Salton Sea Shorebirds~

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Snowy Egret hunting for dinner,

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plunges his beak,
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and pulls out a fish!
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Night Herons, White Faced Ibis, Snowy Egrets and Great White Herons, block my path!

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424 different bird species have been identified at The Salton Sea, including this handsome Snowy Egret with striped stocking legs.
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The placid Black Bellied Plover eats bugs in the sand,
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while White Pelicans lumber off as I near.
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They soon skid back,
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flashing irked looks my way!
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Great Blue Herons watch as if saying, “I’m a very big bird, you better be careful, if you come my way!”
Cheers to you from the wintering shorebirds at The Salton Sea~

Happy Holler Christmas to You!

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Folks at The Holler celebrate Christmas in a Big Way!
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One of our neighbors fills their multiple acre property with hundreds of decorations.
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Each year there are more!
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Many of them have moving parts. There is a almost life size Santa flown airplane with a runway that lands!
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Some are twenty feet tall and the lighted trees are taller!
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And this is all done by one Hollerite family!
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Christmas is serious out here. I think the coyotes are impressed because they don’t chew the electric cables and coyotes chew EVERYTHING!
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To be honest I get the Christmas bug too…..
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But not to the same impressive degree!
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Happy Holler Christmas to you and yours!

Changes to WP Reader~

https://en.blog.wordpress.com/2016/12/14/reader-refresh-2017/

I had to search to find this. Are you aware of the changes to the WP Reader? They are compressing and chopping posts in the Reader to accomplish what they call “streamlining” so the viewer can scan more posts more quickly while seeing less of your content in their reader. What WP is doing is giving your post much less than half the room it used to have in the reader, sometimes only two lines of text if you don’t have photos.

They are also now inserting blogs they promote in your Reader. So they are taking up the room they are saving by compressing your posts in the Reader with blogs you are not following and they are promoting.

This seems manipulative and non-transparent on WordPress’s part and not in the best interest of bloggers.

Rapture~

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Elusive raptors
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when glimpsed (juvenile bald eagle)
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create

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rapture.

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Intelligent
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detached
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observant.
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Bald Eagles remind us of what we value.

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Cheers to you from the eagles who look to us for their survival~

Note: Bald Eagle populations were decimated in the wild in the United States. Careful environmental conservation measures and biological reintroduction efforts have helped restore bald eagle populations. Dismantling environmental protections may bring bald eagles back to the brink of extinction and beyond. Their survival is up to us.

Standing Up For Yourself~

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This little Yellowleg gave me quite a scolding for coming near him!
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He may be little, but he’s tough and quite loud, and he stood his ground!
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Eventually he settled down with me around.
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I understand he feels territorial.
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There’s lots of birdies at The Salton Sea,
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and a little Yellowleg needs to hold his claim.
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Cheers to you from the wintering birds at The Salton Sea~

M n M’s~

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Look who dropped by The Holler today, M n M’s, Mother Nature’s Maids!
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They keep things clean around here,

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but don’t like me coming near.
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They open their wings to seem imposing,
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while Holler trash they are busy disposing!
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Good birds, they keep the sunflower field tidy.
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Yep, we have sunflowers in December!
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The birds & the bees love em.
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I couldn’t just leave you with photos of vultures could I?
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Cheers to you from The Holler Housekeepers and some December sun~

Rocky Relationships~

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are particularly hard,
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subject to extreme ups and downs,
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making you feel perpetually unsafe,
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like you might, at any minute,
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fall off a cliff.
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People often wonder,
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why be in such a relationship?
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They may not share the love of the challenge, the discipline, the risk.

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Cheers to you from beautiful Utah and the remarkable rock-hounds who choose to defy gravity & win~