A Fine Day for Clouds

It was a fine day for clouds. I love clouds and I am getting together a collection of cloud images. AJ, who was with us at our Blip-Meet the other day in Wellington showed me a great app that she has on her iPhone. It is “Cloud Spotting” and looks to me like an excellent way to learn to identify various types of clouds. I may try it out in the New Year. (I am hoping that AJ will become a Blipper too.)

So today was one of clouds, big fluffy ones interspersed with bright hot sunshine. We had a heavy shower of rain during the afternoon which was just about enough to damp the dust on the shingle area where I park the vehicle down by the Taylor River.

Talking of the Taylor River I tracked down the carcasses that Fergus rolled in. They just had to be something pretty big…far bigger than a mere rabbit….from the smell and state of him. They certainly were big, very big. One was a very large wild pig and the other was part of a deer carcass. They were extremely rotten and crawling with fat maggots. Yuck. I had tied the dogs to a tree then let my nose lead me to the smell. Phew…it was horrible.

Once home I phoned the Park Ranger and described the location of the carcasses. I told him the smell would lead him there. He, the poor man, had the nasty job of dealing with them. Murray phoned me back this evening with a progress report. He has covered the area with earth as a stop-gap measure and will see to the proper removal later this week. Poor Murray. He has to deal with this sort of illegal dumping of carcasses all the time. Most New Zealand hunters are very responsible and dispose of left-over carcasses appropriately. It is just a few really dumb hunters who act badly and cause big problems with waste. Alas, those few can give other decent hunters a bad name.