Wildlife Photography

One of the things I love to do most is get out into nature.  And since you can't (and shouldn't, really) always bring nature home with you, I love to take pictures.  Plants, critters, landscapes; they're all waiting to get captured by the lens.  And with the advent of digital photography, huge memory cards, and the ability to auto-focus, I find myself with lots of photos of wild things and wild places.  They usually get dumped in a folder on my computer, and that's about it.  But recently, I grabbed a few Recoup (like Groupon, but supporting a cause) vouchers for hardcover photo books from a company called PhotoBin, and spent a pretty fair amount of time looking for some of the better shots to print in coffee table style books.  They came out pretty well, and I'm looking forward to sharing them with guests as they drop by the house.  But now that I've gotten some of my photos sorted, I figure the Interwebs would be a pretty good place to share them as well.

A male osprey (Pandion haliaetus carolinensis) faces off against a bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus).  More of this story to come.

Summer in the Butterfly Garden

Back in early May, I decided to give myself a birthday present and do something beneficial for my yard and wildlife by planting a butterfly garden.  I spent a large part of the summer tweeting about the Maryland native plants that I chose to attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds, but wanted to share a little more of the story here. I took what was the area I had been using as a tree nursery, and cleared a little more space for over two dozen species of native shrubs and flowers.  The plot went from this...

Things I Learned This Semester #30

I'll admit, I'm a bit of a collector.  And when it comes to my passion for natural history, there aren't many exceptions.  Fossils, plant specimens for the garden, even toys (I'm not proud... well, maybe a little); all collected.  And I love wildlife and wild places, so I collect them too.  But bringing home the Great Smokey Mountains or an American alligator is a bit of a stretch.  So I collect things like that in pictures.  I know some really talented photographers, and I'm not one of them. In my experience, I've learned it's not the lens or the camera; heck, with me it's not even the photographer.  It's all luck, in more ways than one. Being in the right place, at the right time. Being able to go to those places at all. Being able to see the things I've seen.  And sometimes, being able to bring them home with me. I'm a very lucky person, indeed.

More wildlife than you can shake a stick at, soaking up the sun on the banks of the St. Johns River in Florida.

Four Critters

A little over a week ago, I posted a ridiculously low quality image of the Spring Run at Florida's Blue Spring State Park, and told you all there were four critters in it.  As ambiguous as it was, I swear, they are actually there.  Take another look. Here is the huge version that hangs off the page.  Click it for a cleaner view.