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With intermittent sunlight and rain this morning, I raced outside with coffee and camera and cardboard. These are the crocus bulbs we planted that the wild rabbits or hares haven't eaten.
Belly shot with elbow tripod.
Thanks for looking. I wish you health and safety! Happy International Women's Day!
Well, this is the family of Greens, you probably know these nice people. You don't?
Generosity, hospitality, sadism, good sense of humour, knowledge of black magic and forbidden occult arts - there are many good qualities that made this family famous.
Oh, and their granny bakes gorgeous cookies, just come and taste, if you dare.
Nukka and Mouse are sisters - posing for a picture in Wallgau Bavaria / Germany - close to the border to Austria.
What I really love about taking my camera on the streets is that streets and the people on it always have something to surprise you with. Some amaze you by their style & fashion, some by their beauty, and some by the way they are interacting at that very instant!
"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience." - Mitch Hedberg
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This didn't come out exactly as I would have liked, I've wanted this shot for a while, so I'm disappointed that it didn't come out exactly as I'd envisioned but what can you do?
A busy day at work so time flew by quickly and when I finally ventured out of the office the temperature had risen dramatically and the sun was shining, which made for a very enjoy walk to the car.
Hope everyone has had a good day.
Click "L" for a larger view.
I took this photo in a zoo some three years ago, but, while I came back to it a couple of times, I didn't quite know what to do with it. In colour, it just didn't work, and somehow, I overlooked the obvious solution, black and white. In any case, here it is, stripes and lines.
Kittens and cats at Crafty Cat Rescue in Ann Arbor. Volunteering at the Crafty Cat Rescue in their new digs in Ann Arbor. These are wonderful cats and are
looking for a good home. These photos are from Thursday February 19, 2015.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
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And to make an end is to make a beginning.
T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdfzNMV52Q#t=34 (Ella Fitzgerald Sings "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?")
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My best wishes to all of you for a New Year much better than the old.
Ebony And Ivory live together in perfect harmony
Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord why dont we?
We all know that people are the same where ever you go
There is good and bad in everyone
We learn to live, we learn to give each other what we need to survive together alive...
(Ebony and Ivory by Stevie Wonder)
From US Forest Service
The zebra longwing butterfly or zebra heliconian, Heliconius charithonia, is unmistakable with its long narrow wings, which are striped black and pale yellow. This species is common in Mexico and Central America and it is also found in most of Florida and in some areas of Texas, where it can be seen year round.
They fly slowly and gracefully and are not easily startled. They gather in roosts to spend the night returning to the same place daily; all this making it easy to observe them. After mating the female lays eggs on one of several species of passion flower plants Passiflora. The caterpillars feed on these plants and acquire some of their toxins; this makes them distasteful to predators. The striking colors and pattern of the adults advertise their toxicity (my addition - keeping predators away).
An unusual feature of the longwing, or heliconian, butterflies is that the adults are relatively long lived. Most other butterflies live only a few weeks, but heliconians continue to live and to lay eggs for several months. Their tropical or semitropical habitat makes this possible; furthermore the feeding habits of the adults are important in prolonging their lives. The adults feed on nectar of flowers, like most other butterflies, but a special characteristic of heliconian butterflies is that they can also feed on pollen.
Most butterflies can only sip fluids with their specialized mouth parts, but the heliconian butterflies take some pollen as well as nectar. Their saliva enables them to dissolve the pollen and to take their nutrients. Pollen is very nutritious, rich in proteins, unlike nectar which contains almost no proteins, just sugars. This diet allows the butterflies to prolong their lives and also enables them to continue producing eggs for several months. As a consequence they are more dependent on flowers than other types of butterflies and this makes them good pollinators.
Again, my addition - Here the Zebra is feeding on a Firebush.
I'll add a photo showing the full wing below. If you increase the photo above you can see the red dots close to the body of the Zebra.
We had the pleasure of spending lots of time next to this mom and her cub. The cub was almost as big as the mom. We stopped to take pictures of them as they were cuddled up napping together and decided to eat lunch next to them. As we were eating our sandwiches and watching them out the tundra buggy window, they woke up and starting moving around a bit. I dashed out on the viewing deck to get a bit closer, but many of my shots did not turn out. I think that my lens may have been fogged up. Luckily, I got this shot and a couple of others near the end of their cuddling. When mom finally got up and moved away from her cub, the cub did some playful stretching and rolling for us.
They eventually got up and the cub moved closer to the tundra buggies in front of us to check them out. Oh how I love bear cubs!
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. ©2017 John Baker. All rights reserved.
Sunset ~ Florida Everglades U.S.A.
Summer 2015 ~ Palm Beach County
Fire-light Sunset ~ South Florida
(five more photos of this night in the comments)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everglades
"Twist and Shout" [live] - The Beatles - 1963
Out late to try and capture some northern lights, they were really playing hard to get, so much so that I once again decided to pay more attention to the foreground of the scene, With the village lights shining onto the foreshore and a 20 second exposure the rocks really were lit up well. And the aurora did make a small appearance :)
Sitting down looking not too happy he was on his way to Amsterdam Central by ferry. I thought his face told a big story but I can only guess what his background was and where he was going.
97302 and 97304 wait on the chord at English Bridge Junction, Shrewsbury underneath the semaphores with 6W70 Talerddig to Bescot empty autoballasters waiting for a Bescot driver to take over.
They arrived around 3 and a half hours early, so I missed them on the Cambrian. So I was glad the Bescot Man took his time taking them over! Sunday, 23.2.14
We had a terrible storm here yesterday afternoon as we were driving home from the Central Coast and I couldn't get on the internet all night. I thought our computer may have been damaged, but it seems to be working fine today.
We went up to visit Peter's Dad and I took along my new lens - Tamron 150-600 mm to try it out. I am really pleased with the quality of the lens - this photo is SOOC, only resized in Photoshop. I sold my Canon 100-400 to buy the lens as I found it was not really long enough for Africa and I was hoping I wouldn't be disappointed. I am not.
One lives and one dies. I'm just going over some old travel shots before this years travel starts. I have such a achieve of photographs from around the world. Going back over them is like opening a book for the first time.
This was taken on the north west of the south island in NZ. The landscape was jaw droopingly stunning everywhere.
For this week's Flickr Friday theme "collections".
My little collection of blue and white Russian pottery figures marked "USSR", which I picked up at car boot sales a few years ago.
At home Hamworthy 11.12.2015
I do not know how to paint this. I do not know how to frame it. It has colours and these colours come in definite shapes and these shapes diverge. I count them through the window. I count them out with you incessantly, patiently, methodically, my arms crossing yours and we laugh. Staring at you as you rest undisturbed, I sweat on my tries and progress is made, the wings of control refracted against the sandstorm blocking our view. If you knew and if you could see them one by one with precision you would say they encompass the candid horizon. And as our vision dissolves and your flesh evaporates between my hands in a blast of gold and anger, impatient and subdued like quartz improperly cut by the hands of a child, these shapes collapse.
Now you can tell if I had the respect due to my ancient fathers, to my own father, the respect for his dying face, the face I ought to shave in his sick days with the affection soon to become memory vague, I would lay my hands onto your blind hazel eyes and let go. But I have no such respect and I have not aged as you wished. Yes, I know, so many times, to the obnoxious closing of our lips, to exhaustion, to the annihilation of senses you have told me that I was wrong. And yes, I was wrong. And yet, as the blade cuts us and our blood goes on to feed the next round of stars, your lunacy fits in nicely with mine.
That is my life, cherished and inevitable, missing, as the shades of our guilt repel the listening wind that yes, one more day, one more time, more promises to fill our basket and be the one branch that keeps the other branches up, facing the warmth of our wounds, screaming where sound won't travel.
Now you can tell these repetitions, these harmonies, the blood stains on your teeth I scrape avid with mine like chords entangled between the eyes of a spider, the blinding white clouds coming down from the sky ravenous for your skin as you sleep and his face comes to visit you, a condensate of magnesium and granite. In his last days, looking as he does from behind the window, never condescending, alien and detached in every meticulous way, waving his left hand right into your face and you stare at his estranged old eyes, judging and heavy, his relentlessly beautiful eyes. And I wave for my eyes to be yours and stare at his face as he shakes you and snaps his arms and scares with the harsh and incoherent slap of his voice and what I see is the face of a man who does not know.
It is a chant that keeps me alive, the notes of a broken language, the shades of a forgotten circle of mania. There I stand by the window as the sins get accounted and paid for, there I stand as the leftover storm crashing down in waves and the smell of indifference fills the air and you sing without a word, without a voice, without reason.
Note for Group Admins: The author of this text is myself.