Time for a fun new game.

Yesterday on my walk I tried out the zoom on my new camera, it has a whopping 20x optical zoom. So take a look at these sets of pictures, they were taken from the same spot only seconds apart. The only difference was the first was taken at full width, the second on full zoom. No digital zoom was used in this experiment.









There are couple more sets on my Flickr and you can really see the difference better at the larger photo sizes available there...So check it out.

Heron

It's been very nice weather here for the past couple of days. Temperatures in the 70's and a brisk breeze. Since I had this camera to try out I've been taking the dog on a long walk the past two mornings to try it out. Unfortunately we are having some internet connectivity issues so it's taken me longer than expected to put them up.

This one I took today. I was passing by a pond and saw the head of this dude poking up over the hill. I was able to walk a little closer to get more of his body in the shot, but since I had the dog with me I really couldn't get much closer without spooking him.

Otis Jr.

When Roland came home the other night he saw this little fella, who had taken up residence in our front hall. I still have no idea how or when he got inside. He is one of the weird semi-transparent lizards that only come out at night. Kinda creepy.

Muscovy

This is what passes for a duck around here. They are actually domesticated animals that have set up a feral population here. They are not terribly afraid of people and like to congregate around strip malls looking for handouts, yet they are protected by state law so no hunting or hurting them.

With feeling

I still sometimes have a hard time believing that I live somewhere that if we had a house I could wake up, look out the window, and see this.





I thought the reflection of the heron in the first picture was pretty cool. I was also suprised that they turned out quite so well because I was facing into the sun and was using my hand as a shield over the lens.

Brown Anole?

I did manage to go on a walk today. It was a close thing at the end there as it got very warm on the last quarter of the trip. My path goes past the nature center where I do some volunteering and I saw this little one hanging out on a rock under the gate.

Orange

There have been a lot of pictures of Bleys lately and not so many of the local nature. A lot of this stems from the fact that it is getting hotter and hotter and my daily walks are dwindling in length and sometimes don't happen at all. I did catch this common gallinule the other day though. It was using one of those fake Canadian geese as a perch. Again this is one that is much easier to see if you visit my flickr.

I didn't make that up

I think this is a yellow bellied sap sucker (female), but it wasn't willing to let me get any closer. It's a little hard to see in the picture below, but if you embiggen it or, even better, look on my flickr version you can see it a bit better.

Bat

It got a little chilly here last night and this morning and consequently some of the indiginous insect life was a little sluggish. I found this ba-giant dragonfly on the landing outside our apartment. It didn't (couldn't) move so I ran back in and got my camera. I would guess that it was around 9cm long!



I kind of like this picture even if it is a little out of focus.

Vengeance

Another bird that let me get very close was this little blue heron. It was so beautiful, and it's bill was iridescent blue. Maybe it's because blue is so rare in nature (birds, flowers, and such), but it just catches your eye when it does occur.




I think this is one of my favorite pictures that I've taken.

Glide

I don't know what was going on, but I managed to get really close to some birds the other day. This was a great blue heron that was a little leery of me, but more interested in fishing in the shallow water.


And then a closer shot of the bird.

Aware

People have been commenting (on my blog and on the phone) that they enjoy seeing the area where we live. This (and a hand-me-down pocket sized camera from my parents) has encouraged me to take more pictures and post them here for those people to enjoy. I've also noticed that having the camera and thinking about taking pictures has helped me get my eyes off the sidewalk in front of my feet and looking around...



...well most of the time.


The first picture is just a median along the road I generally walk along in the mornings, although It's getting to the time of year when I just can't do it anymore. The second picture is of a butterfly wing that was on the sidewalk. A little weird because, clearly, some butterfly somewhere isn't doing very well, but the contrast struck me.

Shutter

I hope ya'll like the nature pictures because I've got more. I snapped this one of some sort of bird of prey (hawk, eagle, osprey?). I thought it was cool because the sky was so clear and blue.



Update: Some help from a fellow scuba-boarder and my mystery is solved. This is vulture...probably a turkey vulture.

I also got a few of a neat tree in bloom that is along the route I normally take in the morning. I thought it was just lovely with the pink flowers and green leaves contrasting with the blue sky. I couldn't decide which picture I liked better so I'm putting in both and you can decide.

Some help please?

No walk today, it is and was raining buckets. But, I also saw this bird on yesterday's walk. I think it's a Lousiana Heron, but I'm just not sure. Any ornithologists out there?


I also had a dentist appointment today for a routine cleaning. I'm going back next week for him to play with one of my cavities. About 2 years ago the original filling had cracked and I had it re-filled. Then that tooth started to be really sensitive to cold and to a lesser degree heat. I went back and the dentist thought maybe it wasn't filed down properly making my bite not line up. So he filed it down a bit and that helped some, but still not great. So now this dentist is going to pull out the old one and try again. It would be great if worked!

Repeat

All my plants have arrived now. They are all potted up and I'm just waiting for some growth now. Since they were all dormant bulbs or seeds it will probably be a week or two before I see anything. My sister posted pictures of her bulbs which are starting to appear and it made me miss having a patch of dirt to play in...in a zone that I'm familiar with. I really don't know much about zone 10 gardening.

Out on a walk this morning I saw another Great Blue Heron. It was all tucked away in this neat little foliage alcove. Very cool (although much better embiggened).

A little bit of this

Some more wildlife has been spotted. This time it includes a male anghinga drying itself near the aquatic center and a widdle bitty lizard hanging out in a transformer(?) box at our complex. Both are much better embiggened.



In other news, I will be flying back to Michigan on Wednesday. I'm going to be staying in Muskegon to help out with Marcie's baby which should be arriving not long after I do...maybe. Who knows with a first baby. I'm actually going a bit early so I could get a decent price on the ticket. She is due on the 19th and right before that (when I would normally have gone) is Valentines Day creating some rather steep prices. I'm avoiding all that by going a bit early. Now I just have to decide if I'm going to rent a car and go over to Muskegon on Wednesday or have Karl pick me up at the airport and wait there until Friday when my Mom can come over to get me and take me across the state.

Pictorial

Over Christmas my parents gave me my mom's old camera. My old camera is awesome and I still use it quite a bit, but hers was much smaller and skinnier than mine allowing me to slip it in a pocket or my purse. So this morning I took it along on my morning walk with Bleys to document some of the neat-o wildlife I see around here. This morning we saw...

A great Egret and what I thought were some white ibises but they don't have any black on the wing tips*. Also a great blue heron hiding at a bend in the canal. There also about a ba-gillion tennis balls in the water because a little upstream along this canal is a tennis center.


An female anhinga (cousin to the cormorant) also known as the darter or snake bird. It was drying it's feathers presumably after a dive this morning. The second picture is a little grainy because I was using the enhanced zoom on the camera. I was trying to show what the anhinga was perched on. It is a canadian goose decoy that people put out in the water to discourage ducks from hanging around.


Also recently, some cool art has been installed along Sportplex Drive. Two sweet metal sculptures have appeared near a school crossing.


And last buy not least I was walking along and suddenly it was like being in Animal Crossing. There was this little tiny palm tree that looks just like when you plant one in the game and it isn't full grown yet.


*Update: They are, in fact, White Ibises.