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 second day of the Whooping Crane Festival continued with another boat tour after returning from the King Ranch and a quick lunch. The afternoon emphasis was on bird photography. The difference was subtle. The guide did suggest some settings to accommodate photographing in the very bright environment of a sunny day. I opted to take the normal opportunities to photograph birds as usual…but then took some photographic challenges too.
I started before we even boarded the boat. Grackles were taking snack packaging out of a trash can. The female seemed to be unimpressed with her partner’s antics.
I attempted to get a double-crested cormorant taking off from the water…managed to capture the form and splashes of water but the eye doesn’t show….plenty of room for improvement.
There were terns (probably common terns) diving toward the water for fish. I tried pointing my camera in that direction and pressing the button to take multiple pictures in fast succession. It was hard to hold the camera still as the boat moved! The shape of the bird as it nears the surface of the water was something I couldn’t study until I looked at my pictures on a bigger screen. This was my first attempt at photographing feeding terns!
The back of a white-tailed hawk – the only sighting of this species of the trip. It isn’t a great picture in the traditional sense….but it does tell a story. The bird was sitting in dead mangroves; the mangroves died during very cold weather a few years ago and recovery is slow; hurricane damage to the Aransas area would be even worse than before if one comes through before the mangroves can become established again.
The birds always seemed to be a little further away than optimal…and the boat was rocking. But I took pictures anyway: white ibis, little blue heron, osprey, great egret, and great blue heron. I tend to take photographs rather than make notes about what I am seeing…it’s easier with the camera already in hand!
And then there were the reddish egrets… with their pink and black bill.
And finally one started foraging…moving rapidly in the shallows. It seemed to veer off suddenly…something there that the bird didn’t expect?
I took group pictures of birds on small islands in the water…always interesting to see how many I can identify on my big screen later. In the one below, I see brown pelicans (adult and juvenile), American white pelicans, cormorants (double crested probably)…all in the foreground.
As I zoomed in on birds that were not in a group I noticed a black skimmer and some Caspian terns.
It’s always a thrill to see a bird I would not have seen without being on a birding field trip like this red-breast merganser. It was a single bird…swimming rapidly away from the boat…and I probably would not have noticed it without someone pointing it out. I’m not sure it was the guide or another participant that noticed it.
The same was true for another black-crowned night heron. I photographed one on the King Ranch in the morning! I was pleased that I was able to find and focus on the bird more easily than many of the others on the boat.
The light began to change as we neared the end of the day. There were enough clouds to try a non-bird landscape shot of the water the sky…a bit of land at the horizon.
I changed a setting on my camera to try an artsy image of a cormorant and the shore as we came back toward the dock.
And then the boat stopped just before we got to the dock….for dolphins. I couldn’t top my husband’s dolphin picture in the bow wave of the big ship, but it was fun trying to anticipate when they would surface!
And then one last picture before we got off the boat! It was a great second day at the Whooping Crane Festival. The next morning was an early one….getting on a boat at 6 AM to see Whooping Cranes in the Aransas National Wild Life Refuge. We headed to the hotel for an early evening to be ready for it.
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.
My daughter attended the American Astronomical Society meeting in New Orleans last week with her research students. She sent a few pictures of the place that reminded me of the two visits I made to the city years ago…and something added to the skyline more recently.
She took a walking tour of the French Quarter…and took a picture on the river as it ended around sunset.
The next day she photographed the sunset from her hotel window. Her room was on an upper floor and the window was grubby…but it made the picture look ‘painterly.’
The second picture (only a minute later) highlighted a strange shape with a blue light on the horizon. It looked like a spy plane at first glance! I did some research. It is the Bollinger Canopy of Peace that spans across The National WWII Museum’s campus…built after 2015!
The next day my daughter and her students (and some others from the conference) did a late-in-the-day visit to the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans. It was established in 1990 – long after my last visit to New Orleans for a Computer Measurement Group meeting in December 1981 (the first visit was in Fall 1977 for a King Tut exhibit).
It was fun to get her impressions of the city. A lot has changed in over 40 years, but the French Quarter is still the hub – hotels and museums and walking tours cluster around it. I also savored that both of us have the experience of traveling to interesting places as part of our careers.
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 optics of my camera allow me to capture images that are better than I can see with my eyes – flowers, insects, birds, cave formations and seed pods that fill the frame…driftwood isolated from the noise of other things around it….sculpture, glass, and fall gourds specially arranged….sunrises and a sunset….the beauty of a fall morning. Every picture is a memory moment – a visual that also serves as a reminder of a place and mood and relationship with the people that experienced it with me. The places were mostly close to home in southwest Missouri (art museum, meadow, caverns) but also St. Louis and along the route between home and Carrollton TX.
Sequoya State Park (near Wagoner, Oklahoma) is about 3 hours from where we live. We opted for an overnight trip last week – staying at one of the duplex cabins in the park. It was a reconnoiter type of trip: how many birds would we see (and the vantage points to see them) and were the onsite cabins/amenities OK (and should we look at other state park destinations in the future). Our arrival was well before check-in time, so we walked down to Inspiration Point. I spotted a damselfly on the walkway almost immediately.
The big event of that walk was a kettle of American White pelicans over the lake. They were far enough away that the images were not very good – but it was fun to watch them swirl – noting how the light made them almost impossible to see for a few seconds; then they would turn and were easily seen.
The fall foliage was just beginning.
There was a rock ‘table’ with stones situated for seats under two trees!
We visited the nature center then drove to a parking area to hike the Fossil Trail that hugged the eastern side of the peninsula. We were rewarded by views of pelicans and cormorants (probably double crested) – still too distant for good images but I liked the color the light gave the water.
There was the usual shelf fungus, insects (katydid…and something that bit me), lichen, plants going to seed…all under a forest canopy with a little fall color.
We were out again at sunset near our cabin – overlooking the western side of the peninsula and the lake beyond. The sky was perfectly clear so there were no interesting reflections off clouds; I included silhouettes of trees instead! There were gulls coming to roost on the water as the sun went down.
Tomorrow the post will include sunrise at Sequoyah!
July has been hot…though not as hot as Texas. I’ve appreciated being home. The month started dry but then suddenly we got 2 inches of rain in 2 days after teasing with clouds and forecasts for rain that didn’t materialize. We have a good vantage point for the sunset over the neighborhood pool house from our patio.
I saw a large red-eared slider on the move across the neighbor’s yard behind our house; it appeared to be moving in the general direction of the ponds. By the time I got out of the house with my phone for the picture, the turtle was at the tennis court…and quickly discovered the fence barrier. I noticed that the back of the turtle appeared wet; I wondered if it (she?) had been laying eggs – maybe in some damp, mulchy place. I assume the turtle managed to get back to the pond; I didn’t stick around in the heat of midafternoon.
About a week later I walked out into the eastern side of our yard to photograph the sunrise from two perspectives over neighbors’ houses.
More recently I took a morning walk around the ponds. We have more Purple Loosestrife that ever this year at the edge of the ponds….which is not a good thing since the state says it is “a noxious weed in Missouri and should be removed as quickly as possible.” Maybe it takes some finesse to remove it with propagating it? I hope eventually we’ll eradicate it and plant something native – like buttonbush (one of my favorites).
Note that the second picture (above) is near the willow tree…the one that had grown around a stake. There seem to be more plants around the base of the willow this year than I noticed last year.
Asian honeysuckle – another non-native invasive plant – is also growing in clumps around the pond. I wonder if there are children that pull the flowers to taste the nectar? I remember doing that as a child…and taught my daughter to do it too!
There are maple seedlings that are growing in the areas that don’t get mowed and a small clover hill that is full of blooms even with the occasional mowing.
I tried an artsy picture of the sun glint on the water silhouetting the shore vegetation. It looks like a picture that could have been taken at night!
Bullfrogs are some of the more recognizable sounds at the pond. It is harder to see them. This one was under one of the loosestrifes. I heard another one not far away while I was photographing this one.
As I headed back to our gate, I saw a robin on our fence…observing me!
July is a great month to be outdoors in the morning…but the afternoons have been stifling – good time to be indoors with air conditioning.
There were two sunsets I captured before Christmas when I was in Carrollton TX. The first is from my parents’ house….framed by neighborhood trees. The second is from a hotel parking lot on another evening; on a hill, and a lot more clouds to reflect the light…a very different sunset with very intense color.
After Christmas, I was up early enough to photograph the sunrise from my parents’ house on two mornings. I got almost the same view. Clouds made a big difference.
My favorite sunrise picture was on the same day as the second picture above – but includes tree silhouettes. I like the colorful backlight.
Sunrise is my favorite time of day…full of hope for the new day…celebrating the joy of being a morning person.
The week in London, Ontario was a different sort of week away from home. I had anticipated several aspects and intentionally took steps on others.
More alone time. My daughter was busy with her conference, and we had separate hotel rooms…so I was alone more – and I anticipated that that it would be that way. I brought activities with me for the time the hotel room and planned at least one activity away from the hotel room for each day. Because it was cold in the morning – I usually waited to leave the hotel until mid-day. I saw the sunrise from the hotel window almost every morning and
a few sunsets with the moon visible too.
There was even some fall foliage visible from the window.
I made a lot of Zentangle tiles, wrote more than 3,000 words per day, and read novels. My favorite morning time was sitting with my feet in the sun coming through the window…feeling warm and cozy….reading novels. It was good to have a week to simply spoil myself.
Walking everywhere. I originally thought I would take the car and visit some parks in the area, but I opted instead to just walk everywhere. I went to Covent Market frequently but also down to the Thames River path, to Banting House, to Museum London, to the RBC Center. And my daughter and I walked to buy at least one meal a day…mostly take out but we ate twice at Crabby Joe’s Bar and Grill. The COVID-19 infection rate was lower in London, Ontario that most places in the US, but we were still being careful – masking when we were in indoor public places.
The slower pace of walking allowed me to see more things – the street sculpture and murals I posted about earlier…and the changing color of leaves.
From my hotel window, I noticed the street sweeper machines in the early morning…and the streets did seem cleaner than in the US. I appreciated being around people after the aloneness of the hotel room….people watching as I walked:
The city’s homeless were evident in this downtown area; some had strollers or battered trailers to pull behind a bicycle to carry their things. One slept in a sunny doorway of a building before the store opened.
There were waves students that came for snacks or lunch from the local high school…some in uniform and others not.
One evening there must have been an event that required costumes since there several people walking along in exaggerated outfits and makeup.
Part of the street was closed to vehicular traffic and there was a mini-concert one evening there.
The picnic area at Covent Garden had an Autumn Festival at mid-day on our last day in London, Ontario. They had decorated with squash and gourds…country music filled the air. People were enjoying the sunshine, music, and food.
The street was modified for handicapped access and there were people in wheelchairs maneuvering easily through the area. I also noticed a few sight-impaired people. The crossing lights made sounds as well as visual countdowns.
The hotel next to ours had a fire alarm and people streamed from the building…multiple fire trucks arrived. A person in our hotel lobby commented that he was getting his passport just in case the fire spread. But it was all over quickly. We never saw any smoke or fire.
Less online time. I intentionally spent less time online. I didn’t take a complete break, but I wasn’t checking news or email frequently…and I didn’t turn on the television at all. The strategy made for a calmer…less stressful week.
Canada. I found myself looking for differences between where I live in the US and London, Ontario. It seemed that the small city was cleaner than similar places in the US and that the downtown area was more vital…that infrastructure was in better shape…basically that the government was more effective. In general, people seemed less stressed. Yes – there were people looking at their phones, but they didn’t seem as distracted by the device – the high school students were generally spending more time talking to each other than looking at their phones!
One of my themes going into the week was thinking about what I want to change. I thought about it…but didn’t come up with definitive answers. I’m changing the idea to ‘what I want to change in 2023’ to give myself a little more time to decide.
When my daughter told me about a conference she was attending in London, Ontario in early October, I volunteered to go too – doing half the driving. Flying directly to the place was expensive and flying to Toronto necessitated some form of transportation from there to the smaller city (rental car, bus, or train). She liked the road trip idea, and I booked a room in the same hotel where she had. We opted to make the 14-hour drive over two days with the 1st day being the long one in each direction. Her employer provided a rental car.
My husband took us to pick up the rental car on the morning we were leaving. My daughter forgot her coat (and the forecast in Canada indicated she would need it) so a stop by her house delayed us a little…but I had an opportunity to enjoy the fall roses near her driveway and
The spectacular pods on her magnolia. Maybe we can harvest some of the pods when they have the red seeds in them to use in December decorations.
The first-day drive was a long slog – over 9 hours – and we passed from Central to Eastern time. We arrived at the hotel at sunset.
We had chosen a restaurant for dinner…but it had closed about 20 minutes before we got there! Fortunately, there was another one nearby that worked out just as well.
The next morning, we were up early. My daughter splurged on a huge cinnamon roll from the hotel’s breakfast. I had my usual dark chocolate then ate the rest of the carrots I had brought for the road (finishing everything that needed to be kept cool). We stopped at the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory and Belle Island Aquarium…on the island in the Detroit River (more about that in subsequent posts). We had lunch on the patio at Ivy Kitchen in Detroit (Jefferson Street) afterwards. My daughter ordered a mimosa and was challenged for the rest of the lunch with wasps taking an interest.
We made it to London, Ontario by about 4PM having crossed into Canada at Sarnia and unpacked in our home-away-from-home for the next week. Since the rooms had kitchens, we bought a few groceries.
A week later, we go up before the sun. I took a picture of the sunrise just before I headed down to the parking garage with my luggage.
Google Maps routed use toward the border crossing between Windsor and Detroit rather than reversing our previous route. The route was like an interstate the whole way! A few things were different: the road number was on a crown rather than a shield, the ‘food’ symbol on signs included a cup/saucer with the familiar knife and fork, the speed limits were in KM and the gas plumps dispensed L of gas!
My daughter was driving so I was able to take pictures of the Detroit skyline while we went over the Ambassador Bridge back into the US. There was more traffic at the Windsor-Detroit crossing and it took longer than the Sarnia crossing a week earlier, but the ETA that Google had calculated for us must have taken it into account since we arrived at our hotel only a few minutes ‘late.’
The route crossed Michigan, Indiana and into Illinois. We were back on Central time.The next day was a shorter day and we got off early…arrived home in Missouri by noon! Both of us were keen to do laundry and otherwise get back to ‘normal.’
More posts over the next week about what I did in London, Ontario!
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!
After the walk-through and a quick lunch, my daughter drove me to the title company. I had a large cashier’s check in my purse…was looking forward to the closing to hand it over. The seller completed their portion shortly after I arrived. My segment did not take as long as I remember from previous houses; it turns out that buying a house without a mortgage requires a lot less paperwork (and signatures)!
It occurred to me that this is the first time my husband and I own two houses (i.e., no mortgage on either one)!
After the closing, my daughter and I returned to her house then both drove to the new house (me in my heavily loaded car) to unload everything…in preparation for my first night in the house. It was going to be a lot like camping with an air up mattress on the floor for a few days. After my daughter left, I settled in – listening to the sounds of the neighborhood getting quieter as the light faded, the clouds dark. I was up early the next morning – heading out to buy groceries and a few other essentials to have before the movers arrived.
Little did I know that morning – it was the calm before an increasing a flurry of activity as the day progressed.
So much to celebrate in August….
Drive through West Virginia. The beauty of the interstate in West Virginia (I64, I79, I68) that is part of my route from Springfield, Missouri to my home in Maryland is something to celebrate. It is full of curves, forests, mountains….and not a lot of traffic. It’s easy to enjoy as I drive.
Cloud at sunset. Maybe it is being in the right place at the right time to see it that makes this a little celebration for me! This was taken from my office window.
Home again. I like to travel…but every time I do, I celebrate coming home. This time the delta variant ramped up while I was traveling and was relieved to get home…glad that my precautions on the road (vaccination last spring, masking, hand sanitizer, air purifier in hotel room, eating outdoors or in the car/hotel room) evidently worked.
Macro photography. My husband got me started with new gear and I’m improving although I am still at the stage of celebrating every in-focus image I get.
Stopping my diet Pepsi habit. I am celebrating more than 2 weeks free of my habit….still very consciously avoiding soft drinks completely!
Sunny day that was not overwhelmingly hot. We’ve had so many very hot days…that it was a treat to have one that was pleasant outdoors. My other strategy is to get some outdoor time before 8 AM before the day heats up.
Farmers Market. It’s fun to shop for veggies straight from the farm. In August, the cantaloupe, watermelon, tomatoes, and peppers were all tasty. The watermelons may be what I celebrate the most.
Zentangle tiles make on the deck in the early morning. A celebration pf creativity to start the day.
Spaghetti squash custard. Yum. I celebrated the flavor and texture of a simple custard.
Video of a Monarch butterfly emerging. Probably the high point of August for me. I’ve always wanted to capture the moment. And this time I did!
Sometimes the end of the daylight is spectacular…..and I celebrate when I look out the window at just the right time. The pictures in this post were taken back on February 5th. It seems like we’ve been cloudy/snowy since then!
Both pictures were taken through my office window.
The sycamore is on the left of this picture. The branches pointing downwards are a broken branch that has been in the tree for most of this pandemic year – firmly wedged. I like the network of silhouetted branches with the billowing orange and pink and blue of the sunset.
Looking a little more to my right – the sycamore is out of the way (almost…there are a couple of branches in the upper left of the picture below) and the tulip poplars that are further away are on the horizon. I liked the upper levels puffs of pink in the darkening blue.
Somehow sunrise and sunset are both special times of the day…they frame the day in beautiful beginning and ending. Clouds can block the color or I can miss the time…but there is always the potential. These moments of day fill me with appreciation of the Earth – our place in the universe.
I took fewer pictures in December…and shifted toward macro rather than zoomed. It was an indoor month because of the cold and the activities associated with holidays. Still – there were pictures of birds and snow – sunrise and sunset…the wintery scene. I’m going to bundle up to take more walks even in the January cold!
So much to see from my office window….
The resident Blue Jays come through several times a day. During the summer months I can only photograph them on the deck or at the bird bath. Now that the leaves are off the trees it is easier to spot them in other places in our back yard.
The Northern Cardinal pair are regular visitors as well. I see the female more often than the male.
The Carolina Wrens are around all during the year. They are easiest to photograph at the feeder since they are preoccupied with getting seed – stay for more than a few seconds.
The Chipping Sparrows and Tufted Titmouse are at the feeder almost every day. The titmouse often takes its seed to the gutter above the feeder to open the hull to get the good part.
The White-Breasted Nuthatch, House Finch, and Carolina Chickadee are all regular visitors.
American Goldfinch and Downy Woodpeckers are in our area all the time but they come to our deck and feeder infrequently.
There are birds we see primarily during migration times. Red-winged Blackbirds are at the neighborhood pond all through the year but only come to our feeder and forest in flocks during the fall and spring.
Sometimes we have Brown-headed Cowbirds around in the spring (laying eggs in other birds’ nests) but in the fall we just see them as they move through in small flocks when they stop to raid the birdfeeder.
Our resident Red-bellied Woodpecker comes to the feeder often. Right now - the female is all we see. Earlier this year there was a male and I hope there will be a pair next spring…another chance to see young birds.
The squirrels come to the deck for water and the seed under the feeder that the birds have scattered. Sometimes they try to dump the feeder but are generally not successful.
Now that the leaves are off the trees it is easier to see the Mourning Doves in the trees. Just before I wrote this post, I counted 7 doves preening in trees behind our house!
The sunsets are visible from my office window as well. The challenge is to look for it at the right time.
My favorite picture ‘through the window’ this month is the last big leaves on the sycamore. It was taken on the 23rd. One of the leaves fell shortly after I took the picture but one is still hanging on.
Another month…a selection of zoomed pictures. The only picture of the group taken a little further afield than we’ve been since the beginning of the pandemic is the rather stern looking Great Blue Heron which was from our field trip to Conowingo Dam. There will be a few more such field trips in November as we build up our confidence to make the treks safely. Enjoy the show!
It’s so easy to capture the backyard happenings through the windows of my office or breakfast area.
The sunset was colorful through my office window on the 1st day of the month….a fabulous beginning.
There were the usual birds around the deck – Mourning Doves
And Carolina Wrens.
There is a female Red-bellied Woodpecker that comes to the feeder frequently…picks out the sunflower seeds and scatters the other kinds for the birds below.
The White-breasted Nuthatches often seem to follow the woodpecker. There are at least two of them and they have plenty of assertive poses…always fun to watch.
When multiple birds are at the feeder – it is easy to compare relative sizes: Finches, Carolina Chickadee, Chipping Sparrow.
After I mowed the leaves – I noticed that the lawn mower left a pattern in the yard. The grass was a bit wet so the mower left an impression. The picture was taken about 24 hours after I mowed.
When I empty the seed from then feeder before refilling it, the chipmunk often shows up before the squirrel! It’s fun to watch. The day was cloudy when it visited the deck recently and I got a lot of blurs because of the reduced light…but these images were clear enough to post.
Overall – a good month of photographing the scene through the windows in the back of our house.
Cut flowers only last a week or two. Sometimes they dry and retain a more subtle beauty. They are fragile. I’m going to make up a dry vase of flowers that have made it to this state. They could last the rest of the season.
Others collapsed when their stem stops transporting enough water to keep the flower upright.
I decided to photograph the petals of this flower – in various configurations. The grid is the paper cutter base (I use it to cut Zentangle tiles from light weight cardboard or card stock); the markings are ½ inch.
I got more than I had bargained for when I discovered a small insect on the flower as I took the petals apart. The jeweler’s loupe was close, so I took some pictures of the insect using that magnification…also on the paper cutter base. It appears to be covered with pollen!
These flowers will never produce seeds – which might have been a possibility if they’d stayed on the plant. The ones that don’t dry will go in the compost now…the ones that go into the dry flower arrangement will be enjoyed a little longer.
Ohara Koson art. Internet Archive has a collection of 185 of his prints available here. I picked several of my favorites from the collection to include here as samples. He was a Japanese artist active in the late 1800s/early 1900s. A little art….every day.
The Umbrella Academy. My husband and I are enjoying the new season of the series. We limit ourselves to 2 episodes per day to make the activity last a little longer…add it to the variety of our days rather than binging on it all at once.
Sunset. I finally looked at pictures taken recently in my camera…and found pictures I took of the sunset the day before the tropical storm came through. Noticing something beautiful toward the end of a day always makes the rest of my day seem better too. A good crescendo isn’t alone, it makes what comes before special too!
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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