Fly Tying: Casual Dress Nymph

Nice Step By Step Casual Dress Tutorial by Goldenstone FF

Many years ago (1980), I bought Polly Rosborough’s Fuzzy Nymphs book and of all his flies, the Casual Dress Nymph was most appealing and successful for me. I highly recommend the pattern. The color scheme is traditionally as depicted. The tail can be the original fox fur or hackle fibers or rabbit fur guard hairs. Above I used the brown hen hackle barbules. In some instances you will see it without a tail and suggestive of a Caddis pupa. Tumbled down streams or retrieved upward through stillwaters, it is an excellent nymph pattern. 

Photography (An Old Handle & A Western Poem)

THE CHUCK WAGON By Bruce Kiskaddon (1935)

I liked them old hands with their gaze cool and level.
They furnished the subject fer many a tale.
It was little they feared either man, beast or devil,
Them riders that follered the chuck wagon’s trail.

But the time I liked best, as I clearly remember;
Is one every cow puncher likes to recall.
When the work was all finished along in November,
And he follered the chuck wagon home in the fall.

Photography & Mug Shots: Dapper Australian Crooks!

Many Vintage Mug Shots from Australia at Twisted Sifter

Eugenia Falleni, alias Harry Crawford (1920) is interesting.

Lest we forget the female crooks…here is a Twisted Sifter link for the gals that dare I say look like that they were “rode hard and put away wet” so to speak.

Nature & Photography: Familiarity Breeds….Contentment….Kind of

Several of you here feed Hummingbirds. My Mom-n-law has quite the loyal following of hummingbirds that seem quite comfortable with up close viewers. I shot this through the window inches away with my cell phone. East wind was blowing hard against the window/feeder/bird. The feeder was empty. Oh my, a calamity to the caring bird lady! The feeder was filled in short order.

Our Hummingbirds, at our home, are much more skittish and rarely captured so easily in an image. Perhaps it’s the two cats lurking nearby, tails switching back and forth, crouched and stealthily wishing they were outside.