Wishing you all a healthy and prosperous New Year and the warmth of good friends to share it with. Me and Pooh inside keeping warm while the "bird man" looks after our feathered friends on this very wintery day.

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.

Yeah, I am getting help in the back yard. The Asplundh Tree Expert Co. is out cutting tree limbs in the neighborhood to help with electric lines and branches. This tree is actually on the neighbors lot, but totally overhangs my back corner. This guy is up there trimming. :) YEAH! well, just climbing here and finally trimming!

Not my picture, but taken by local newspaper in Gadsden. I grew up going to the falls as a kid. Crowds of onlookers gathered to take pictures and shoot videos of Gadsden's Noccalula Falls this morning, swelled by heavy rains and shooting steam into the air. They received 20 inches of rainfall over a 24 hour period during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, according to the county's Emergency Management Agency