Bombay Hook is a vast expanse of marshes, so much of the time the birds are visible but quite far off.  Most of the photos from this trip were taken with a Canon L 100-400 telephoto lens, which is an awesome lens, but there is still only so much one can do.  The first day was rainy so lighting was a problem as it just wasn't bright enough for those fast shutter speeds and low ISO's one would like, but some nice birding was done and a few decent pics came out of it.

​First up,  a great egret.  These birds are very common and this one was hunting for fish along a canal near the road.

Next up, Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge.

​BHNWR is a large federal wildlife refuge located in southern Delaware run by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.  The 16,000 acre refuge was originally purchased in 1937 by proceeds from the federal Duck Stamp program as a way to preserve a large breeding and migratory area for waterfowl.

​Most of the place is a great whacking tidal salt marsh, and while hunting is allowed and actively pursued by many at some times of the year, mostly the place is just crawling with birders.  Because, well, the place is a birder's paradise.  In the next few blog posts I will put up photos of some of the birds that we found there during the summer, as still have never had to pleasure of being there during migration.

​For now, here is a panorama photo of the Shearness Pool, one of several large, shallow pools that you can view from the access road.  Oh yeah, most of the birding here is done by car so no long hikes of doom!  But there are a few short trails to observation towers if you really want to face the swarming hordes of mosquitoes and deer flies.  Of note, you'll be fine once you climb up the tower and have mostly bug-free birding.

Okay, and one quick factoid.  The name Bombay Hook has nothing to do with India or pirate captains.  It is a perversion of an old Dutch name for the area "Boompjes Hoeck" meaning Little Tree Point.

So the BrickFair event is five days long, but for the first three days it is just for those who sign up to be part of the whole thing.  People who just want to come and see all the Lego creations arrive as "The Public" during the weekend.  So for three days there is lots of set up going on and events and talks all related to, you guessed it, Lego.

But come the weekend, thousands of people pour through to see all the Lego and buy things from the vendors.  This year I didn't have the time to take a lot of photos of all the constructions, but I took a few macro shots of some to show the level of detail put into otherwise giant Lego builds.
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A couple things were so big that I did have to take a quick photo
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So, while I did not have a contraption entered myself, I was part of The Great Ball Contraption (GBC) table.  I helped mostly with it when it was up and running during public hours to keep all the hundreds of little balls going around when they got stuck or popped out of a contraption.  Essentially each participant builds a little module that has a bin that catches the balls, something that moves the balls along, and then a way of spitting them out into the capture bin of the next contraption.  In this way a pile of people who have never seen each others creations can all show up and just align them one after another in a big rectangle and the balls will, in theory, just keep making a continuous loop.  In reality since every part must be Lego, they can and do fail after hours and hours of continuous running (a total of 13 hours for the event).  

During public hours, it is mayhem to try and keep every machine running, but there are a lot of folks helping out and many of the machines worked flawlessly. 

And that's it for BrickFair Virginia 2017.  Much fun was had and look for another blog post next year on the 2018 event!

Well it has been a while since I posted, as things got very busy.  But I am back at it and first up is to finish showing pics from BrickFair Virginia 2017.  So let's start with who goes to these things?  A giant convention showing off hundreds of amazing Lego creations and vendors selling Lego?  Well, sometimes it is easier to know your audience by reading the bumper stickers in the parking lot, so here is a trove of photos from the parking lot.  Enjoy.

​And finally, while not Lego this plate just says all you need to know about the driver
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Next up...  Photos from BrickFair 2017 at the Dulles Expo Center in Virginia.  I didn't make any of these Lego creations, but I enjoyed seeing them and will post some photos the next day or two.

Just a quick pic of a brown thrasher from northern Virginia

There are a number of species of these bluet damselflies, and I am not completely sure of these so just leaving it at genus level identification.  This pair was flying and perching among a lot of spider webs, which did not seem to bother them.

This youngster did not seem quite so adept around the webs.

Now with most of the young birds out of the nest and all, the adults of many species are in molt.  The warblers will become LBJ's (little brown jobs) and the male ducks will lose much of their coloration.  And here is a common tern molting from its breeding plumage to winter plumage.