Lots of birds in the Zooming slide show this month – from the Whooping Crane Festival in south Texas as well as Josey Ranch (Carrollton TX), the Springfield Botanical Gardens (Springfield MO) and Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge (near Sherman TX). I find myself picking images that show bird behavior rather than portraits.
There are spring flowers in this collection as well…more of those coming in April!
Enjoy the March 2024 slide show!
Our last field trip at the Whooping Crane Festival began with another early morning because we had to drive to the place (taking the ferry to cross from the barrier island). We arrived just a few minutes before the gate at Fennessey Ranch was opened for our tour group (not the first in line but not the last either).
I took a few pictures in the soft morning light: prickly pear cactus with brambles and a bird house, the layered reflected color of sunrise with the moon, and then some mourning doves in a nearby tree just as the sunlight hit them.
We waited a bit for the trailers with haybales for seats to arrive; we would tour the ranch in the trailers pulled by a pickup truck.
A few minutes into the tour there was a song sparrow in sunlight surround by mossy limbs.
I found photography from the trailer even more difficult than the bus at King Ranch. We did see wild turkeys and a bobcat…..but I wasn’t able to get a good line of sight with my camera. The bobcat was very hard to spot until it moved!
I did get some good shots of two crested caracaras high in a tree. Were they a mating pair? The birds tend to be solitary except with their mate and offspring. Since I was almost under the birds…I took a picture of the talons.
There were a few wildflowers blooming.
One of the places we stopped included some sandhill cranes in the distance. There were feral hogs near them, and the birds flew off when the hogs got too close. The ranch does sponsor hunts of feral hogs…hopefully lowering their numbers.
The ranch has nine linear miles of river frontage on the Mission River. We stopped at a place where there is a blind and feeder. Only cardinals came to the feeder the morning we were there.
I opted to photograph more wildflowers and a post emerging from the water with what looks like barnacles (I forgot to ask if the river was tidal).
I also looked at the bank on the opposite side…lots of vegetation to the river’s edge in most places although there were places where cattle probably came down to the river. The bank on our side of the river was much steeper. It would be interesting to see the flood model for the ranch.
The Fennessy ranch field trip was a good winding down for our festival attendance. I learned that hayrides on trailers behind pickups over bumpy roads are hard on my back…probably won’t do that again. We headed toward home. I was looking forward to Czech pastries in West, Texas on the second morning of the road trip back to Missouri.
We were at the dock for the 7 AM departure of our boat on the third day of the Whooping Crane Festival.
I took a few pictures before we boarded – the moon over the harbor area.
Our destination was the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge where Whooping Cranes feed in the marshy/shallow areas…only visible via boat and it took over an hour to get there from Port Aransas. We passed familiar areas early on and saw a group of American white pelicans, morning light with moon setting over the shore, roseate spoonbills and white ibis in the distance, and the Aransas Pass Lydia Ann Lighthouse.
Then we entered an area that was different than our previous tours and more open water…with occasional platforms with cormorants and great blue herons hunkered in the chilly morning wind. There was a tall bridge as well.
Then there started to be a lot of small islands full of birds: Cormorants, great blue herons and brown pelicans. One area seemed to have a lot of great blue herons and I wondered if the island was their roost. There were also groups of laughing gulls. (Click on the small images to see a larger version.)
And then we started seeing Whooping Cranes. Even at a distance – they are easy to identify because they are so large…and so white. The young are rusty looking – particularly their heads. Many sightings were of 3 birds: 2 adult birds and a colt; it must have been a good year for increasing the whooping crane population!
There were other birds to see too between whooping crane sightings – roseate spoonbills, green-winged teals, willets, American avocets, more great blue herons, buffleheads, cormorants, an osprey, and reddish egret (that took off as a wave covered the spit of shells the bird was standing on).
I took some closeups of some shells…out of the water at low tide.
I also realized how wakes of boats impact the shoreline…why there are often blocks on the shore to reduce the erosion wakes can cause. It doesn’t take a big or fast-moving boat to cause damaging wakes in smaller channels.
And then we took a break as we headed back to Port Aransas – no more photos until the jetty with the usual brown pelicans.
We got back to the dock with plenty of time before our afternoon field trip for lunch; we then headed back to the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center.
The second activity of the Whooping Crane Festival for us was a Sunset Dolphin Cruise…in the late afternoon of the first day of the festival.
The angle of the sun made the water look bluer that it did earlier in the afternoon. There were plenty of brown pelicans about.
The moon was visible in the clear sky…above shoreline construction cranes.
Cormorants were using structures further above the water than earlier in the day.
I took several pictures of the Aransas Pass Lydia Ann Lighthouse as we passed by.
The high point of the trip was dolphins surfing the bow wave of a big ship coming through the channel. My husband managed to get a picture of three leaping out of the water!
By the end of the cruise the sun was sinking fast into the haze.
We headed to the hotel to rest up…be prepared for the early start of our second day at the Whooping Crane Festival.
The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.
Surprisingly vibrant color of 12-million-year-old snail shells – Polyenes (includes carotenoids) preserved almost unchanged…and found in fossils.
Asbestos: The strange past of the 'magic mineral' – Asbestos was woven into textiles fit for kings and used for party tricks. One 18th-Century philosopher even slept in a night-cap made from it. It was also used to make the funerary shrouds for monarchs; because it didn't burn, it helped to keep their ashes separated from the rest of the pyre. An account from Ancient Greece describes a golden lamp made for the goddess Athena, which could reportedly burn for a whole year without going out and had a wick made from "Carpathian flax" – thought to be another name for asbestos. In 1899, an English doctor recorded the first confirmed case of a death linked directly to the material – a 33-year-old textile worker who had developed fibrosis of the lungs. In the UK, all asbestos was banned in 1999, but much of the asbestos added before this date remains in place – as buildings degrade, it is posing a significant health risk.
Rise of Peru’s Divine Lords – Hilltop sites in the Andes…early examples of divine lordship - a form of leadership that would endure in Peru for more than 1,000 years.
Amid Record Drop in Fossil Power, Europe Sees Wind Overtake Natural Gas - The E.U. power sector is undergoing a monumental shift - fossil fuels are playing a smaller role than ever as a system with wind and solar as its backbone comes into view. Coal generation fell by 26 percent, while gas generation fell by 15 percent.
Student Design Competition: Integrating Solar and Agriculture - Some 2.8 gigawatts of agrivoltaics exist across the U.S. Many combine solar energy with pollinator habitat and sheep grazing. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is looking for new design proposals from graduate and undergraduate landscape architecture students to push the agrivoltaics envelope!
The Moon Is Shrinking, Causing Moonquakes at a Potential NASA Landing Site - Researchers examined data on moonquakes detected by lunar seismometers, which have been on the moon since Apollo program astronauts left them there more than 50 years ago. They also used mapping data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to identify the telltale creases on the moon. Through modeling, they linked these faults to seismic activity.
Texas Reservoirs Reach Dangerous Lows - In Corpus Christi, on the south Texas coast, authorities last month stopped releasing water aimed at maintaining minimum viable ecology in the coastal wetlands, even as oil refineries and chemical plants remain exempt from water use restrictions during drought. On the lower Texas coast, the Rio Grande has not been flowing consistently, and Colorado River water releases have been minimal as that river faces shortages farther upstream.
Extreme Birding: Gull Watching at the Landfill - You can find gulls around North America (and many parts of the world), including in interior states. At least 28 gulls can be seen in North America, with additional vagrant species showing up from time to time. Individual species look different depending on age and other factors. A gull goes through three feather molts in its first year.
Poisonous Seed Stash Discovered in the Netherlands – Black henbane contained in a hollow goat (or sheep) thigh bone sealed with a plug of black birch bark…from AD 70-200.
Ocean Sponge Skeletons Suggest a More Significant History of Global Warming Than Originally Thought - An analysis of six sea sponges—centuries-old creatures with an internal chemistry that holds secrets about climate history—points to global temperatures already having increased by 1.7 degrees Celsius due to human activity --- that’s more than scientists currently agree upon….so there is a flurry of activity to corroborate the finding.
The back of my parents’ house faces south. I’ve taken a few minutes to photograph the sky several times recently. I appreciate the trees close enough to make interesting horizons for sunrise and sunset pictures…sparse enough to show plenty of color.
The sunset was one that happened early in the month. My parents and watched it from the garden room…and I stepped outside to take a picture.
The next two were taken just after 8:30 in the morning….after a lot of the morning flights had taken off and the moon was still up.
I photographed a sunrise too. I used to try to hide the power lines but opted to feature them inn this image. There are still leaves on some of the trees (silhouettes); fall chores happen in December in this part of Texas!
The beauty of the early morning in Texas - Hagerman and Josey Ranch and my parents’ yard….the wildness of Shaw Nature Reserve (near St. Louis MO) in the early afternoon…the joys of nature in my neighborhood (Nixa MO). These are the locations where my selections of zoomed images for September were made. The month was very much between summer and fall – starting hot and getting a bit cooler as the month progressed, still very green but the occasional beginning of fall color. Enjoy the September slideshow!
My monthly trip to Carrollton TX was warped because it was so hot. I took the shortest possible rest stops on the drive down – didn’t make the usual stop at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge because the temperature was already over 100 degrees. I did stop to buy some barbeque brisket to enjoy the next day with my parents (reheating rather than needing to cook).
Since I didn’t stop at the Texas Welcome Center – my sister’s picture of her beautyberry had to suffice as the documentation for what the plants look like in August.
On the way home the temperature was a little milder. It was in the low 70s when I left to drive back home at 6 AM! There was a full moon that I photographed when I got out of the car to close the garage door using the keypad.
The day was great for soaring birds. I saw two large kettles of turkey vultures– swirling around and around…upward and then gliding down – along the highway between McAlester and Tulsa OK.
I did a lot of my growing up in the 1960s; the US space program had an impact on my education and perspective of the world so when I found 3 books of images from NASA in the 1960s available on Internet Archive for easy browsing- I savored the memories of seeing some of those images in newspapers and magazines shortly after they were taken. The images looking back at Earth from space were so different than the previously available aerial photographs taken from planes or balloons. Now we take for granted the satellite imagery in our everyday lives (for example, Google Maps satellite view). The NASA programs in the 1960s were steps along the technological path. A lot has happened in the past 50 years!
(click on the sample images to see a larger version…and the link to look at the whole book of wonderful images)
The optical (and then digital) zoom on my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) is used on almost every picture:
To do composition in the field rather than cropping later
To get close without physically being close
To see better than I can with my eyes (using the camera like binoculars)
My favorite image this month is the backlit dandelion puff. Enjoy the March zoomed images!
The bulbs are up in our Missouri yard but making slow progress toward blooming because we keep having cold days! There are irises from a previous owner; I added more last fall along with daffodils, crocus, and allium. There is something growing low and around the irises that is very green (I suspect it is a weed/invasive but I am leaving it alone because I like its greenness).
The hyacinths are up and one tried to bloom. Most are still waiting to raise their buds above their leaves.
I am waiting to cut the decorative grass until late May…give insects overwintering there a chance to hatch and provide food for nesting birds.
The robins are back, of course. They don’t come to our feeder (they are not seed-eaters), but they are in our yard finding food – a good indicator that the yard might not be overwhelmed with chemicals. I am keen to let it grow as naturally as possible since I want birds and pollinators to be healthy here.
I have a clearer view of the sky in this house than I did in Maryland; the trees are not as dense or large. There is a river birch and oak in our neighbor’s yard that might provide an opportunity for a picture of the moon resting on branches…but I didn’t catch it this month. My camera’s night scene setting did a relatively good job of getting the moon in focus (Canon PowerShot SX70-HS on a monopod…me standing in my yard a few feet from my home office).
Overall – I like our new location…and plan to spend a lot more time in the yard when the temperatures are a little warmer.
Last month when I was in Carrollton, my daughter texted that the moon, Venus, and Jupiter were visible in the west. I went out…it was a clear night…and the horizon was clear enough to see all three. I opted to take a picture of the moon since my camera could focus on it well enough to see some craters. It also reminded me of the Alice in Wonderland Cheshire Cat – where the cat’s body has disappeared and all that is left is its iconic grin.
I went outside just after sunrise to photograph the fog; there had been no color with the sunrise because the fog was so dense. There was an advisory for the morning commute and I was glad I didn’t have to leave the house. Then I looked up and saw that the sky was quite blue and the moon distinct! The blanket of fog was clearly thin and close to the ground!
I am a morning person. This time of year, I am always up before the sunrise and ready to welcome the light of the new day. A colorful sunrise is always welcome but sometimes clouds and fog can be just as interesting because they alter the perception of surroundings. Noticing the beginning of the day…however the increase of light happens…is the best way to start my day.
I picked some favorite photos from the year for a slide show. They are all outdoors. Thematically there are birds and insects more often than lizards or turtles. Some are documentation type pictures and others are artsy. They were taken in four states: Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, and Texas. For some reason – the fluffed up Eastern Bluebird is my favorite. Enjoy the show!
I noticed some color in the evening sky from my office window and went outside to capture the color…which was already deep pink…the bright disk below my horizon, the trees and neighborhood pool building silhouetted.
I looked up further in the sky and noticed the moon already visible…and my camera managed to focus!
What a nice bonus for a sunset!
The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.
An effective new treatment for chronic back pain targets the nervous system – A 12-week course of sensorimotor retraining had a positive effect and participants reported improved quality of life one year later (i.e., the relief was lasting). Hopefully the results can be replicated, and the treatment applied to a broader population. There are a lot of people with chronic back pain!
New Study Links Cat Hormones and Gut Microbiomes to Their Social Behavior – Hard to resist a cat story!
Millions of Americans have long COVID. Many of them are no longer working – 4 million full-time equivalent workers out of work because of long COVID (conservative estimate…and that 2.4% of the US working population). There is a push to provide accommodation in the workplace but some of the symptoms are so severe that the person cannot perform the work they did before and maybe too disabled to work at all. No wonder unemployment is low, and some jobs are not finding applicants. Because long COVID is new, it is unclear when, or if, this population will recover enough to re-enter the workforce.
Arche Roach: the great song man, tender and humble, who gave our people voice – An obituary – and history of aboriginal people in Australia over the past century or so.
The promise and danger of Scotland's bog – 80% of the UK’s peatlands are degraded and in deteriorating condition. They store a lot of carbon…motivating restoration efforts. It takes decades to reverse damage done in a short time by a few ditches and a grid of planted saplings.
New molecule may prevent age-related diseases and increase life expectancy and wellness – A group of molecules that enable cells to repair damaged components has been identified….and efficacy was demonstrated in a model organism. The researchers and Hebrew University’s tech transfer company are moving toward pre-clinical studies.
Parts of the moon have stable temperatures fit for humans – Pits and caves that stay roughly 63 degrees Fahrenheit! There are still big challenges for living on the moon: growing food and finding sufficient oxygen, for example
Coming wave of opioid overdoses 'will be worse than it's ever been before' – Fentanyl and carfentanil…combined with methamphetamines and cocaine. The accelerated rates of overdoses are happening everywhere according to a Northwestern Medicine study.
Inside King Tut’s Tomb – New research using the tomb walls to understand the real-world turmoil cause by the death of the young king.
Cocoa shown to reduce blood pressure and arterial stiffness in real-life study – Cocoa flavanols only decrease blood pressure if it is elevated! I enjoy my morning dark chocolate (70+% cocoa) squares…a healthy way to begin the day!
My trek from Springfield MO to Carrollton TX was on a blustery March day. I wanted to leave a bit before 7 AM…the recent switch to daylight savings time meant it was very dark at that time!
The only picture of the travel day was from the sun room of my daughter’s house as I ate my small breakfast and noticed that the moon was very bright in the tangle of trees.
My route was west at first, so the moon was in my view as long as it was dark, and a colorful sunrise developed in my rear-view mirror…then a very bright day (I was glad when the sun got a little higher and wasn’t shining straight through from the back of the car).
The driving was easy….all interstate this time because of a stretch of construction and a missed exit in Tulsa for US 75. Instead of turning me around to get on the usual US 75 south, my navigation system recalculated to keep me on the interstate to Oklahoma City and then down I35 to Carrollton TX. At first all was well, and I noticed lots of new calves in the fields (and an amorous pair of adults), soaring birds (mostly vultures but there were some hawks as well).
The challenge began after I passed Oklahoma City and was heading south on I35. There were still lots of calves in the fields to notice, but the road had multiple active construction sites that narrowed the highway to one lane in each direction. The wind had picked up as well so between construction zones when the speeds picked up again, I didn’t want to be anywhere near a truck; the wind was causing the big rigs to move around a lot in the lane. I had to consciously relax my hands rather than gripping the steering wheel!
The delay was not too bad. I arrived in Carrollton about 30 minutes later than the original projection. Without the construction zones, that route will be my preferred one between Springfield and Carrollton because it is all interstate…no speed traps going through towns like on US 75. The Oklahoma interstates don’t have as many rest stops (West Virginia is the best state for rest stops on my recent road trips) so most of the stops are at fast food places or truck stops…not very scenic. The road itself is not bad…through farmland and then the Arbuckle Mountains which make for curving highway…fun to drive when it isn’t too windy. Once we move to Springfield…I might leave even earlier to make some stops in places I experienced as a child (like Travertine Creek)!
This time I was glad when the drive was over…primarily because the wind was so strong. There was a wind advisory for the whole area that extended into the next day too. Fortunately my parents trees have been pruned professionally….do downed limbs. I was glad to not be on the road for more than a week when I head for home (Maryland).
Brookside Gardens ‘Garden of Lights’ is a Christmas tradition that we restarted this year after a year away because of the pandemic; now that we are fully vaccinated and boosted, we are venturing out -- slowly. Tickets are required this year to control the crowd size and there is no model train exhibit in the conservatory. Our time slot was immediately after dark which worked well for us. It was in the mid-30s when we got there; we bundled up and headed into the gardens; I wore my mask even though we were outdoors the whole time since it was in the mid-30s and the mask keeps my nose warm!
The sky was slightly overcast. I noticed the crescent moon several times…never sharp because of the clouds but always there.
The caterpillar is looking good. We entered through the mouth and came back from the other end after we’d made the loop around the lights.
The rainbow was static this year….no ‘lightning’ flashes from the cloud. I took pictures of it from several perspectives. The night scene mode on my Canon bridge camera (Powershot SX70 HS) which takes several images then stacks them into one did reasonably well with all the displays.
In some cases, it provided a very intense ‘plant’ image. This bush had blue lights which appear as brilliant ‘flowers’…the green is the bush’s natural leaves!
The dragon with baby was in its usual garden room…no smoke or sound effects as it has had in some previous years.
There was a new orb sculpture in one of the rose garden fountains – perhaps part of the renovation. It will be interesting to see how it looks in the warmer months of the year with water.
Giant dragonflies were high in the trees.
There were also the usual animals: giraffe, dolphins, snail, and lion….among others.
The whole landscape of the gardens was full of lights…all with a garden theme. The spider web was very well done this year.
During our walk, the happy noise of children responding to the lights surrounded us. They were bundled up in snow suits or riding in strollers wrapped in blankets. There was one young child carried facing outward by its mother that made an awesome happy sound and waved his arms…everyone around laughed with him and his parents.
This year might have been the all-time best experience I’ve ever had at Brookside’s Garden of Lights.
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
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