Its only my second time there in 20-some years. My wife's family used to go there every summer for the month of August, and shortly after we started dating her family had a large reunion trip to the island. It happened to be the first time I met any of her family, and there sure were a lot of them. That trip (which was in August, years ago) the weather was mostly good, this trip the weather was cold, windy and rainy. So by my scientific sampling the weather is rotten about 50% of the time. Doesn't this look like great beach weather?

Many of the developers of wind farms have begun placing their turbines in off-the-land locations. A large lake, for instance, would not take up land space and the winds are just as predictable. The Gulf of Mexico will have hundreds of wind turbines within the next decade. As to waterfowl being affected by the movement of the turbine blades, most birds would recognize the situation if the first bird were to be caught in the slowly moving blades. The rest of the flock would veer away and only a few animals would be harmed. In the case of Canada Geese, that would not amount to a large percentage of those animals that are considered pests where I live. There is also the assumption that migratory waterfowl would fly at that particular altitude. Some geese fly much higher as they migrate.

That IS pretty Annie. This afternoon I had 10 cardinals at my feeder. This was in between the invasion of starlings and grackles - hundreds of them swamping the feeder. When they invade my neighbor's feeders she wraps on her window to shoo them away, then they fly up to my place!

Casey -- beautiful picture, as always. Was it unusually cold when you shot that? We get skies that look that way when it is brutally cold in our area.