If I have a mantra in photography it is, a good photo of a common subject is one hundred times better than a poor photo of a rare subject; that being said, a bad picture is better than none at all. This is a male Slate-colored Junco which is in the sparrow family. "A flash of white tail feathers serves as an alarm to other members of the flock. The Dark-eyed Junco was the most common feeder bird in North America during the 1996-1997 Project FeederWatch season. They mainly eat insects and seeds.
A group of sparrows has many collective nouns, including a "crew", "flutter", "meinie", "quarrel", and "ubiquity" of sparrows".

Looking for comments about this fairly new kitchen appliance from anyone who has one or who knows someone who has one. My question: do the cooked results taste as good as those fried in oil? I have only run into one person who had a comment - o.k. if you are cooking with health in mind; otherwise, forget it. I am not interested in health cooking as I eat what I generally want sans desserts. French fries and fried chicken are my main interests as I don’t cook those at home due to oil disposal issues.

There are plenty of models to choose from. I just don’t want a kitchen appliance not being used and taking up storage space.

I keep touting the old Minolta lenses from 1985 or so. I believe they even made their own glass back in the day. These are the older AF lenses made of metal (no D) I have the AF 70-210 f4 macro, AF 100 macro f2.8 and the Absolutely Amazing Minolta AF 35-105 macro lenses. I can’t believe the absolute beauty of the images, especially color, taken with these lenses compaired to my Sony lenses! Do any Lense manufacturers make their own glass now or is it the best bidder? Any Hogg’s have experience with Minolta lenses? It’s the Main reason I went to Sony when they continued the A mount system on their mirrorless cameras! All of a sudden many Minolta lenses are available immediately. I can get these lenses on eBay for a song and I’m sure they have adapters for other brands. You might be in manual mode but they are Definitely worth a look. They focus extremely fast on my A77ii using the old screw drive!

Anyone who thinks of themselves as an Artist, should get to know their Craft.
Sometimes the inexperienced consider a craftsman being the lesser.
Knowing how to expand the use of your tools, in ways others don't, or...
Knowing tricks of the trade, usually discovered by another craftsman's teaching,
these sorts of things have separated one's who just consider themselves artists,
with those who are artists who know their craft.
Of course, this applies to metal work, fine carpentry, pottery, painting, music, literature, etc. etc.
Oh, and photography.