What a cute town! Great shots of it too. This one could be in the contest to be in your calendar. OK, so you have a second calendar of birds but maybe you also need a third calendar of shots of towns only.

Took a tern for the better!

Wow, and she still married you! How hard was it to get her car back?

John Rogers Cox? It does have that quality alright. I was lucky to notice this and get the shot in. The sun was clouded over within the next minute.

Habitat, habitat, habitat. Actually it’s not the first though. I’ve seen several at a distance, but none close enough to be worth a shot.

You can’t beat having the right tool for the job.

I think it was probably an industrial structure of some kind. They’ll never fix it now - the age for places like these passed long ago.

Not as bad as it looks. The grass margins and center strip were usually high enough to make a decent walking surface.

"She’s quite upset because she’s locked out. I get a sick feeling in my stomach as I reach into my pocket and find the keys there, where they’ve been since I took them from her to go back to get the camera."

I went to graduate school several hundred miles from where my then-girlfriend (now wife) lived. I'd occasionally take the train up to visit for a weekend. After one such excursion I drove us back to the train station in her car. 45 minutes or so into my return journey I stuck my hand into my jacket pocket. You can guess what I found there...

Somewhat surprisingly to me, she never made an issue of it and never even mentions it when we're reminiscing with friends.

It reminds me strongly of the painting "Gray and Gold" by John Rogers Clark, a copy of which hung over my parents' couch for longer than I've been alive. My Dad grew up as a Kansas wheat farmer during the Depression, and the painting's drama resonated strongly with him. He was a literalist; I doubt he was ever aware of the allegorical interpretation that goes with it.

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1943.60

Hard to believe there were 153 others before you got one of these.

Looks as though it'd have been a grand place in its day. Now that it's been open to the weather for a while, probably more of a tear down than fixer-upper, though.

Judging by the size of the pile of shells that bird's aptly named and very good at what it does.

Ick.

That's an amazing shot! Nicely done!!