Before I miss Valentine's Day, I'm gonna take another shot at adding to my blog. It's easy to forget about doing this since I have only self-imposed deadlines. Well, actually no deadlines at all. It's just a matter of posting something whenever the spirit moves me.
When I was doing a monthly web page a couple years back, I used to send people a reminder that I had put up another page. I stopped doing that when I started blogging. I figure this is mostly for my own benefit, since not too many other people, besides Dickie and I ever see it. It kind of gives me a running calendar of my photography.
Occasionally, I'm tempted to branch off into other things, like ranting about the war or politics, but that mood usually passes when I remind myself that I don't have any better answers than most people when it comes to things like that. Sticking to posting my photos keeps me on firmer ground.
I've had some good luck lately when it comes to taking pictures of birds. Dickie and I were down to Shollenberger Park a couple times since the last time I posted anything in this blog. Here's a shot I got of a young red-shouldered hawk in our last trip down that way:
A couple days ago I was out by myself in our local Foothills County Park when I noticed some small birds picking the new buds off some oak trees. There wasn't much sun so I didn't think I had too much of a chance to get a good shot, but it turned out that I was wrong. Of course, I had to take about twenty shots to get this one, but it's a dandy. I thought the bird was a flycatcher, but I learned from some experts that it's a bushtit. Bushtits travel in groups and flit about quite quickly so it's hard to focus on them. I'm proud of this one:
I was out by myself again this morning, since Dickie's struggling with a cold, and ran into this bluebird in the small park a block away from our house. He flew away before I could get very close, but I was carrying my 400mm lens so I could crop and still get a fairly clear photo:
An even happier moment came for me when I discovered that our Killdeer have returned to the local school grounds. Every year they make a nest in a gravelly area adjacent to the parking lot. Last year they skipped out. I think they chose a spot farther down the road because we did see that they had young ones they were shepherding in a horse corral down that way. In any case, here's one of the birds I saw this morning:
That's about it for this time. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone who reads this.
