Aw Nuts

It's amazing what you hear in the forest right now outside my house. Tock, tok,twish and Tock, tock and twack. The ripe acorns are falling every few minutes or so and hitting tree trunks and branches as they fall to the leaves or my deck waiting for them below. This is an important event for deer, bears, squirrels and a variety of birds like Band-tailed Pigeons which gorge themselves on acorns. They can fuel up and store up on mast to help them survive the upcoming winter. Mast is the fancy name for the acorns and nuts of forest trees. Some years there can be an abundance of acorns like this year. Some years it can be pretty lean. Many people are of the belief that a heavy fall of acorns indicates a big winter ahead with lots of rain and snow. We shall soon see in the upcoming months if they are correct. May you have a blessed day, chris This image was created with a Canon 7D and a Canon 28-105 lens at 105mm set on a Manfrotto 055 XPROB tripod with a Bogen heavy duty ballhead. Camera settings used were AV mode, ISO 800, F 8.0 at 1/25th of a sec.