And a dragonfly:

I’m pretty sure this is some kind of bee.  The little flower it’s on is probably less than an inch across:

This is something else that looks like a bee, but it is so much smaller.  It might be one of those flies that mimics bees.  It seems strange to say this, but sometimes I wish I knew more about bugs!

Finally, a picture of some butterfly weed, being pollinated:

–Sue

Mockingbird

Today I’m off to Northfield, Minnesota, for a quilt show.  It’s always fun to see what other quilters are working on, and a great chance to be inspired.

–Sue

Tree leafing out

A juvenile White Ibis at Paradise Pond.  He will “fish around” with his whole beak in the water looking for a tasty morsel:

White Ibis, Juvenile

Charlie’s Pasture is a newer nature preserve site in Port Aransas.  It’s on the other side of the island and run parallel to the shipping channel.  It too is only about five minutes (or less) from here.  We took a l-o-n-g walk there yesterday from the city swimming pool to almost the end of the walkway and back, which easily took us at least a couple of hours.  It was a beautiful spring day in Texas.

My first bug pictures of 2011!  A damselfly on the sidewalk:

Damselfly

A bee (or a fly that imitates bees) on a teeny, tiny flower (the bee was maybe 1/3″ inch long).  Gotta love the zoom!

And a photo of four of the thousands of pelicans we’ve seen streaming north in long strings along the coast:

More later…

Sue

There are a lot of great blue herons along the Gulf of Mexico, and this is nesting time.  We often see them at home, feeding in the shallow ponds.  It’s fun to see the herons across down here on their nests.  Can you see them in about the center of the picture?

A close-up view of the same pair of great blues on their nest:

Great Blue Herons on their nest

Awww….

Great Blue Heron pair

And I love this photo of the heron, looking a little wild…

Posing for the camera

You just have to love these precious birds, they are so much fun to watch.

–Sue

Last week I saw a Least Grebe.  They are quite uncommon, but native to this area.  This week I saw a Pied-Billed Grebe.  The pied are more common, and a little bigger.  Their bill is also thicker with a stripe, while the Least Grebe has a quite narrow bill plus that distinctive golden eye.

The grebes spend nearly all their time in the water, rarely flying or on land.  They don’t walk well due to the location of their legs — far, far back on their bodies.  They are excellent divers.  As my nephew Bill pointed out the other day, when they were preening by stretching their necks out towards their tails, they are actually getting at an oil duct that’s by their tail.  It is parafin-like, and they use their head to distribute this oil onto their feathers, making them more water proof.

I thought it was interesting to see how high this Green-Winged Teal raised herself out of the water during her bathing process. 

And as she settled back into the water, she gave us a nice peek at those beautiful green feathers:

I love this picture of this turtle.  The turtles are beyond abundant at Paradise Pond this year.  This Red-Eared Slider looks like he could come right out of the picture:

Well, I’ve bombarded you with enough pix for today.  I have some warbler pictures, including a mystery female I’ll ask for your help on, but I will save those for tomorrow. 

Give-away starts Monday!

–Sue

YES,  I DID finish my PhD (Project half Done) quilt in time!!!  I’m almost caught up on my sleep, and everything else in my life is very behind, but I have a large quilt very done.

And I love it.  I started it in 2003, in 2004 it went on a shelf and has been aging to perfection until this year when several of us decided to get out an old UFO and finished it!  What a good feeling.  And check out the socks! 

Here are twelve of us (there were 13 counting a late arrival):

And on the Photo Friday front, yesterday I was watching a blue jay taunting me, flitting from tree to tree, always too far away or behind a branch, or “look, I’m up close in a tree and you don’t have your camera”, and then he was gone!  There was also an osprey circling the pond, mostly white bird against snow-covered white roofs across the way — no photo.  I was feeling a little discouraged.  Two birds we rarely see so close, and no photos.  Then I saw something dart past into a tree by the side of the house:

A downy woodpecker!  You can see we just have a little snow that stuck onto the grass yesterday.  We are cold enough to keep snow now (boooo), with a current temperature of 14 degrees. 

By the way, I’ll be adding individual photos of the PhD finishers with their quilts when I add a new tab to the top of this page called PhD (aren’t I original?).

Thanks for stopping by!

–Sue

The challenge was getting the camera to focus on the bird, not the tree branches, and I didn’t think it would work to holler out, Hey, You, would you mind stepping out from behind the branches, fluff your feathers, and turn a little to the left?  He already looked a little pissy.  (And I know this isn’t a great shot — I’m WAY past the 12x optical zoom and well into the digital zoom, probably up to the full 48x.  That results in the grainy look.) 

I had the same problem in Texas with this tri-colored heron.  You would have thought he was avoiding the paparazzi!  Or maybe he was just shy.  And by the way, did you know paparazzi is plural and paparazzo is singular?  The useless things you learn when you check your spelling!

You can see by the sharpness of the photo that I was much closer to this bird and didn’t have to go into the digital zoom.

So when you get a picture where you can see the camera chose the wrong object on which to focus, just try again and again, if necessary.  You can usually land a shot on the desired subject.

–Sue

Here is a Great Egret coming in for a landing.  I was up in kind of an observation tower when I took this photo:

And another pelican picture — this guy is coming in for a landing also.

And speaking of landings, this was our view as we were coming into Minneapolis:

We broke through one layer of clouds, and we were in a clear space between the clouds.  Very cool:

This trip we saw millions of either small butterflies or moths.  They had kind of the coloring of a Monarch, but not quite.  Must have been migrating.  I have also never seen so many dragonflies. 

You know how you often see them flying “together”?  They were impossible to photograph in flight, at least for me, but here is a pair at rest:

Something else we saw at the birding center that we hadn’t seen before was this blue crab.  He was very big, and you can see by his “dust” trail, he really does move sideways!

–Sue

However, I did take a picture this week I really liked, and I thought it would be a good time to revisit a couple of points, and I’m providing links to previous posts where I told you everything I know (and probably more) about these features.

For this picture, I used …

1. Prefocusing by pressing the shutter button half-way down
2. When I was prefocusing, I made sure I was focusing EXACTLY on one of the little crab apples
3. I was zoomed out to 12x optical zoom (which is the maximum on my Panasonic Lumix before it switches to digital zoom)

I really like these pictures where only the subject is in focus and the rest of the background kind of goes away.  It reminds me of a watercolor. 

I don’t get as pronounced an efffect with my little Canon, and I think it’s related to the amount you’ve zoomed in.  It may have to do with the size of the lens, as well, because this camera has a bigger lens on it.  This would be a good place for my disclaimer:  I’m not an expert.  I just like messing around with camera stuff.

–Sue