People walking around with stuff on their head
View allAll Photos Tagged Their,
________________________
The Secret of Making Progress is to Get Started
- Mark Twain
________________________
I spotted this Tortoise and his Human Pal taking an ocean-front walk along the cliffs of Palos Verdes California. One thing about California, you will usually find something interesting or unusual, even when you're not looking for it : )
The Tortoise:
Tortoises are "cold-blooded," meaning their body temperature varies with the surrounding environment. They are also herbivores, meaning they eat plants. Tortoises are found in a variety of habitats, including deserts, forests, grasslands, and swamps.
There are over 300 species of tortoises, and they come in a wide range of sizes. The smallest tortoise is the speckled padloper tortoise, which is only about 4 inches long. The largest tortoise is the Galapagos tortoise, which can grow to be over 150 pounds.
Tortoises are long-lived animals. Some species can live for over 100 years. The oldest known tortoise is a Galapagos tortoise named Jonathan, who is over 190 years old.
Here are some interesting facts about tortoises:
Tortoises have been around for over 200 million years.
The largest tortoise ever recorded was a Galapagos tortoise named "Johnathan" who weighed over 500 pounds and was over 190 years old.
Tortoises are very good at conserving water. They can go for long periods of time without drinking.
Tortoises are not very good swimmers.
Tortoises are very social animals and enjoy spending time with other tortoises.
Tortoises can be very affectionate and make great pets.
-Google Bard
(Sony, 200-600 @ 241 mm, 1/3200 @ f/8, ISO 4000, edited to taste)
When the first snowdrops shyly show their little heads from the sunlit spots. I love how the sun's rays warm my face so I can feel a tingle on my skin. In order to bridge the long time until then, I have created a refuge here that tells me that spring will soon bring nature to bloom with all its beautiful colors.
Credits
VIERA set @ Anthem
Hyenas live together in clans. Their dens are community dens, the puppies of a clan grow up in them together.
Contrary to their reputation, spotted hyenas are excellent hunters.
They are fascinating animals with a distinctive social behavior.
I like them!
The world is like a book and those, who do not travel, only read the first page.
All rights reserved. © Thomas Retterath 2021
Dipper - Cinclus Cinclus
aka Water Ouzel
Dippers are members of the genus Cinclus in the bird family Cinclidae, named for their bobbing or dipping movements. They are unique among passerines for their ability to dive and swim underwater.
They have a characteristic bobbing motion when perched beside the water, giving them their name. While under water, they are covered by a thin, silvery film of air, due to small bubbles being trapped on the surface of the plumage.
Dippers are found in suitable freshwater habitats in the highlands of the Americas, Europe and Asia. In Africa they are only found in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. They inhabit the banks of fast-moving upland rivers with cold, clear waters, though, outside the breeding season, they may visit lake shores and sea coasts.
The high haemoglobin concentration in their blood gives them a capacity to store oxygen greater than that of other birds, allowing them to remain underwater for thirty seconds or more, whilst their basal metabolic rate is approximately one-third slower than typical terrestrial passerines of similar mass. One small population wintering at a hot spring in Suntar-Khayata Mountains of Siberia feeds underwater when air temperatures drop below −55 °C (−67 °F).
Dippers are completely dependent on fast-flowing rivers with clear water, accessible food and secure nest-sites. They may be threatened by anything that affects these needs such as water pollution, acidification and turbidity caused by erosion. River regulation through the creation of dams and reservoirs, as well as channelization, can degrade and destroy dipper habitat.
Dippers are also sometimes hunted or otherwise persecuted by humans for various reasons. The Cyprus race of the white-throated dipper is extinct. In the Atlas Mountains dippers are claimed to have aphrodisiacal properties. In parts of Scotland and Germany, until the beginning of the 20th century, bounties were paid for killing dippers because of a misguided perception that they were detrimental to fish stocks through predation on the eggs and fry of salmonids.
Population:
UK breeding:
6,200-18,700 pairs
Formerly killed in huge numbers for their fur, especially during the 1920s and ’30s, koalas dwindled in number from several million to a few hundred thousand. In the southern part of their range, they became practically extinct except for a single population in Gippsland, Victoria in Australia. Some were translocated onto small offshore islands, especially Phillip Island, where they did so well that these koalas were used to restock much of the original range in Victoria and southern New South Wales, Australia.
For some that phrase would describe their eyes after a late night of partying and ringing in the New Year. For me on this first morning of the 20s, it meant first-light reaching Towers of the Virgin in Zion National Park.
Being a native East-Coaster, who has transplanted to life on the West Coast, I still feel that the New Year occurs when the crystal ball drops in New York, and that's the end. So, with the aide of staid Springdale, Utah, it was easy to get an early bedtime on New Years Eve so we could begin the trek to the Canyon Overlook Trail at 6:00 AM to catch first-light and sunrise from this vantage.
The trail is a relatively flat mile hike with a few tricky spots where the ice and slickrock conspire to give even the most sure-footed concern in the dark. Once we reached the overlook, I was a little concerned that our cold trek may have been for naught, due to the heavy cloud cover. Though they were thick overhead, there still was some clearing to the East, along the sun on the horizon to light a narrow band, reflecting off the cloud bottoms and warming the sheer rocks faces of the Temple of the Virgin ahead. This image was captured about 10-15 minutes before the local sunrise time, and is considerably brighter than what we saw with our eyes, due to the 20-second exposure.
Once the actual sun rays reached the Temple directly, the light only lit the areas seen here in red for less than 5 minutes before disappearing above the clouds for the remainder of the day.
Recognition:
Merit, Nature/Landscape category - JAN 24 PPSDC Image Competition, San Diego
Selected for Display, Color Scenic Landscape: Winter - JUN-JUL 2023, International Exhibition of Photography, San Diego County Fair, Del Mar Racetrack and Fairgrounds, CA
Switzerland, May 2021
My best photos are here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
My latest ANIMAL VIDEO (warning, it's a bit shocking): www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2-Xszz7FI
You find a selection of my 80 BEST PHOTOS (mostly not yet on Flickr) here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/western-green-lizard-lacerta-bi... (the website exists in ESPAÑOL, FRANÇAIS, ITALIANO, ENGLISH, DEUTSCH)
ABOUT THE PHOTO:
So this photo is a bit of a novelty for me - at least here on Flickr, but it's also a journey back in time in a sense. I've always loved b/w and sepia photography; already as a very young teenager I would go out into the woods with an old Pentax Spotmatic (which I had nicked from my father) whenever it was a foggy day to shoot b/w compositions of sunbeams cutting through the ghostlike trees.
I used films with a sensitivity of at least 1600 (for those of you who remember what that means 😉 ), and the resulting photos had an incredibly fine grain which I loved; I blew them up to the size of posters and hung them on the walls of my teenage man-cave next to Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Slash.
But then I abandoned photography altogether for 20 years, and when I finally picked up a camera again, it was one of the digital kind. Now neither film nor grain played any role in my photographic endeavours - let alone b/w compositions: because the reason I fell in love with shooting pictures once more was the rare and incredibly colorful lizard species that had chosen my garden as its habitat.
It's this species - the Lacerta bilineata aka the western green lizard - that my photo website www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ and also my Flickr gallery are dedicated to, but I've since expanded that theme a bit so that it now comprises the whole Lacerta bilineata habitat, which is to say my garden and its immediate surroundings and all the flora and fauna I find in it.
I like that my gallery and the website have this clear theme, because in order to rise to the challenge of portraying all aspects of a very specific little eco system (which also happens to be my home of sorts), it forces me to constantly explore it from fresh angles, and I keep discovering fascinating new motives as my photographic journey continues.
Which brings me to the horse pasture you see in this photo. This playground for happy horsies lies just outside my garden, and it normally only interests me insofar as my green reptile friends claim parts of it as their territory, and I very much prefer it to be horseless (which it thankfully often is).
Not that the horses bother the reptiles - the lizards don't mind them one bit, and I've even seen them jump from the safety of the fly honeysuckle shrub which the pasture borders on right between the deadly looking hooves of the horses to forage for snails, without any sign of fear or even respect.
No, the reason I have a very conflicted relationship with those horses is that they are mighty cute and that there's usually also foals. The sight of those beautiful, happy animals jumping around and frolicking (it's a huge pasture and you can tell the horses really love it) is irresistible: and that inevitably attracts what in the entire universe is known as the most destructive anti-matter and ultimate undoing of any nature photographer: other humans.
Unlike with the horses, the lizards ARE indeed very much bothered by specimens of loud, unpredictable Homo sapiens sapiens - which makes those (and by extension also the horses) the cryptonite of this here reptile photographer. It's not the horses' fault, I know that, but that doesn't change a thing. I'm just telling you how it is (and some of you might have read about the traumatic events I had to endure to get a particular photo - if not, read at your own risk here: www.flickr.com/photos/191055893@N07/51405389883/in/datepo... - which clearly demonstrated that even when it's entirely horseless, that pasture is still a threat for artistic endeavours).
But back to the photo. So one morning during my vacation back in May I got up quite early. It had rained all night, and now the fog was creeping up from the valley below to our village just as the sky cleared up and the morning sun started to shine through the trees.
And just as I did when I was a teenager I grabbed my camera and ran out to photograph this beautiful mood of ghostlike trees and sunbeams cutting through the mist. There had already been such a day a week earlier (which is when I took this photo: www.flickr.com/photos/191055893@N07/51543603732/in/datepo... ), but this time, the horses were also there.
Because of our slightly strained relationship I only took this one photo of them (I now wish I had taken more: talk about missed opportunities), and otherwise concentrated on the landscape. It was only later when I went through all the photos on my computer that I realized that I actually really liked those horses, even despite the whole composition being such a cliché. And I realized another thing: when I drained the photo of all the color, I liked it even better - because there was almost a bit of grain in it, like in the photos from my youth.
Since then I have experimented quite a bit with b/w and sepia compositions (some of which I will upload here eventually I guess), but this photo here is the first one that helped me rediscover my old passion. I hope you like it even though it builds quite a stark contrast with the rest of my tiny - and very colorful - gallery. But in the spirit of showing you the whole Lacerta bilineata habitat (and also in the spirit of expanding my gallery a bit beyond lizards and insects), I think it's not such a bad fit.
As always, many greetings to all of you, have a wonderful day and don't hesitate to let me know what you think 😊
... but still a joyful sight ;-))
(even after these unbearably hot months of summer)
Japanese Anemones / Herbstanemonen (Anemone japonica)
in Botanical Garden, Frankfurt
If you love them like I do, you'll find more anemones in my personal "from-spring-to-autumn" Anemone Collection.
At the very end of the dunes stands the old watchman who do feels the tension and the unrest while he looks the surrounding at ease.
At his feet the tide is rising and the sea lips and murmurs slowly through the sand.
In the distance he hears the growling waves appoaching..........
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
With their shaggy coats of reddish-brown fur, white underbellies, and striking white patches above their rumps, the waterbucks stand out against the savannah grasses. Their long, pointed ears and curved horns add to their distinctive appearance. Waterbucks are well-adapted to their wetland habitats, with specialized hooves that help them navigate muddy terrain and a water-repellent coat that keeps them dry. Watching these graceful animals graze and move through the grasslands is a true delight for any nature lover.
Ol Pejeta Conservancy is a wildlife conservancy located in Laikipia County, Kenya. It is home to a diverse range of wildlife including the "Big Five", as well as chimpanzees and over 300 bird species. The conservancy is also a leader in innovative conservation techniques and community development programs.
Inland the wind picked up and it was as if the heaven leaden sky would compress everything in its way.
The reed bent so far as if it were trying to break free from the earth to flee.
The last rays of the sun would soon give way to a macabre darkness........
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
... but still beautiful with springlike garden bokeh!
For a safe and healthy HMBT !
Tulips / Tulpen (Tulipa) in a vase
captured in our garden - Frankfurt-Nordend
If you love tulips, have a look at my personal Tulip Collection
their eyes don't light up when you walk through the front door :-)
Robert Brault
rose, little theater rose garden, raleigh, nirth carolina
For Memorial Day.
Thanks to FOCUS Magazine for including this pic in your amazing edition June 2021 as winner in the contest "The Military".
P1360724 - Purple Moorhen - Size - 45 - 50 cm
# 364 - 05 Aug '2019 - 20:03 (14:33 GMT)
Purple Moorhen (Porphyrio poliocephalus) - is a species of swamphen occurring from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent to southern China and northern Thailand.
Also Know as - Purple Swamphen, Grey-headed Swamphen, ...
WONDERFUL FACTS - The Slow Loris is one of the rarest primates.
Their closest relative is the African bush babies.
Slow Lorises may be slow, but they can travel around 8 kilometers in one night.
They are related to monkeys, apes and humans 🐾
Possible - Have A Look At -- My Creative Galleries -- Thank You Dear Friend 💞
Happy birding 🐧
Mechelen - Zandpoortvest
Copyright - All images are copyright © protected. All Rights Reserved. Copying, altering, displaying or redistribution of any of these images without written permission from the artist is strictly prohibited.
” Their hands steady on my shoulder as I ride for them. Though they not know that when I ride it isn’t for show ….. I ride for the escape, to flee my chains, To ride the wind and outrun the rain I ride for being grateful I am still alive ”
Rest hope you all enjoy amsy work as always ^^
Amsy ♡
The small peony tree in our backyard gets about three large blooms every year, and if I'm not on the ball, I miss them, as there are other plants in front of it. I was looking for them, and two days ago, voila! There they were in all their beauty, only to last a few days.
This is a seven image focus stack.
Near and dear to my heart is the Golden-crowned sparrow. Their fall arrival in Sept and October and early spring departures signal the hard to notice seasons of the steady climate of my region of California. They were coming to our property before we ever lived there. A large flock would show up and forage off the hillside which had plenty of scrub to hide in, overgrown grasses wild rock plums and large old berry bushes...and after our arrival, a winter garden filled with insects and developing shoots! Then sometime in April-May, they would disappear, along with their most poignant call, heeding the urge to return to their breeding grounds in Alaska and Canada. I am hoping at some point to get to Canada to see their nesting grounds and reconnect with these old friends!
Here is their call if you are interested...and thank you for the visit!
Northern Gannets are monogamous and mate for life, very much like albatrosses. Pairs form, and renew their bonds, at the breeding colony, called a gannetry, which may contain thousands of pairs in close proximity to each other. Young birds also return to the colony in their second or third year, forming “clubs” of birds that rest together and begin to learn the local fishing routes. Males begin to claim a breeding site in a colony in their third or fourth year, shaking their head side to side frequently, biting the nest site itself, and stretching the neck toward females that show interest. Clashes between males over nest sites can be intense, with bills locked and much pushing at the cliff edge; injuries are not uncommon. Once partnered, male and female greet each other at the nest site each time they reunite, the males shaking the head, the females offering the nape for the male to nibble. They also engage in so-called “mutual fencing,” wherein they face each other, often touching, calling, shaking heads side to side as their bills clack together, bowing, and finally preening each other’s neck. Both parents care for and feed the young, taking turns on fishing excursions that may last several days. Both sexes defend the nest and chicks aggressively against other gannets, using threat displays such as jabbing with the bill.
is THEIR photography is not art :-)
James Elliott
HFF! Character Matters!
tulip, sarah p duke gardens, duke university, durham, north carolina
Taken under my apple tree, the colours in the background are from the fallers which the blackbirds are slowly working their way through.
One more from the Bronze frieze at St Pancras International Station .
With the Easter holidays approaching it is a time all over the country to get the railway tracks and works done ..so if you are travelling after this evening be prepared for massive delays and cancellations !!
As for this title , next year in January , the tracks under the Mersey Tunnel are due for replacing ,so hopefully the Mersey Ferries will be geared up for extra passengers ,as for the road tunnels, well it will mean congestion most of the time I would think ....
Old Truckee Road, Sierra Valley, CA
This female Southern Red-breasted Sapsucker is building an inter-subspecies family with a male Northern counterpart shown in a separate picture earlier. Their nest is nearby and she is out gathering food for their chicks.
These red-bellied woodpeckers have some really neat black and white striped designs on their back and tail.
The Painted bunting is a small brightly-colored member of the cardinal family. The males are brightly colored with blue, green, red and yellow plumage. Females and juveniles are bright green with pale rings around their eyes. The male is considered by many to be North America's most beautiful bird, and they are one of the most popular visitors to bird feeders. Painted buntings are one of the most spectacularly colored and visually impressive birds in the United States and are the only U.S. bird with a blue head along with red underparts.
Painted Buntings are still fairly common, but populations have been dropping for several decades. The North American Breeding Bird Survey estimated a decline of 62% between 1966 and 1995, but the 1966-2014 survey does not find significant decreases, suggesting that populations may have stabilized, or at least the decline has slowed, since 1995. Partners in Flight estimates a global breeding population of 13 million, with 80% spending at least part of the year in the U.S., and 51% in Mexico. The species rates a 12 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score, and is not on the 2014 State of the Birds Watch List. Painted Bunting is listed as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List.
Found this male in Lake Wales, Polk County, Florida.
Autrefois, les radeliers de la Durance transportaient par flottage les grumes de bois nécessaires à la construction des maisons des cités provençales et à la construction navale de la Marine Royale notamment pour les chantiers de Toulon et de Marseille. Il leur fallait plusieurs jours pour rallier la Provence depuis les Hautes-Alpes, debouts sur les radeaux, sans autre protection que leur courage et leur détermination. C'étaient souvent des paysans qui trouvaient dans cette activité un complément de revenu.
Aujourd'hui, les radeliers qui veulent perpétuer la mémoire de cette activité disparue depuis plus d'un siècle, passent plusieurs mois pour reconstruire des radeaux selon les techniques de l'époque. Cette année a eu lieu la 22ème reconstitution historique entre l'Argentière la Bessée et Embrun. Mais le niveau de l'eau de la Durance est très bas, à cause de la sècheresse. Hélas, le radeau de tête a heurté des rochers et s'est mis en travers de la rivière au niveau d'Embrun, empêchant la poursuite de l'événement. Pas de blessé, heureusement ! Cet incident rappelle combien cette pratique du flottage du bois sur la Durance était périlleuse.
Pour en savoir plus sur la pratique du flottage : www.persee.fr/doc/mar_07584431_1999_num_27_1_1681
et sur la reconstitution du flottage sur la Durance : www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbPxm5vFmjE
Formerly, the rafters of the Durance transported by floating the logs necessary for the construction of the houses of the Provençal cities and the naval construction of the Royal Navy in particular for the sites of Toulon and Marseille. It took them several days to reach Provence from the Hautes-Alpes, standing on the rafts, with no other protection than their determination. They were often peasants who found in this activity a supplement of income. Today, the rafters who want to perpetuate the memory of this activity, which disappeared for more than a century, spend several months rebuilding rafts using the techniques of the time.
Their mating song is hauntingly beautiful to me. They only sing this way during mating season and raising of the young. They make a tweeting sound the rest of the year.
I found a youtube video of the male singing here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWVa08fpnXg
They sing in my yard all during spring.
With their nocturnal habit and owl-like appearance, Tawny Frogmouths are often confused with owls, but are actually more closely related to the nightjars. Their feet are weak however, and lack the curved talons of owls.
The Tawny Frogmouth is found throughout Australia.
The bulk of the Tawny Frogmouth's diet is made up of nocturnal insects, worms, slugs and snails. Small mammals, reptiles, frogs and birds are also eaten. Most food is obtained by pouncing to the ground from a tree or other elevated perch."
Photographed Maleny, Queensland, Australia.
Steve Hitchcock © All rights reserved
people leave their mark,sometimes small, sometimes big / Menschen hinterlassen Spuren, manchmal klein, manchmal groß
Scenic south West coastline. The fiords of New Zealand are all located in the southwest of the South Island, in a mountainous area known as Fiordland. The spelling 'fiord' is used in New Zealand rather than 'fjord', although all the maritime fiords use the word Sound in their name instead. The Marlborough Sounds, a series of deep indentations in the coastline at the northern tip of the South Island, are in fact drowned river valleys, or rias. The deeply indented coastlines of Northland and Auckland also host many rias, such as the Hokianga and Waitematā Harbours. New Zealand has fifteen named maritime fiords, listed here from northernmost to southernmost. 13677
Thistle is the common name of a group of flowering plants characterised by leaves with sharp prickles on the margins, mostly in the family Asteraceae. Prickles can also occur all over the plant – on the stem and on the flat parts of the leaves. These prickles are an adaptation that protects the plant from being eaten by herbivores. Typically, an involucre with a clasping shape similar to a cup or urn subtends each of a thistle's flowerheads. The comparative amount of spininess varies dramatically by species. For example, Cirsium heterophyllum has minimal spininess while Cirsium spinosissimum is the opposite. Typically, species adapted to dry environments have greater spininess. The term thistle is sometimes taken to mean precisely those plants in the tribe Cardueae (synonym: Cynareae), especially the genera Carduus, Cirsium, and Onopordum. However, plants outside this tribe are sometimes called thistles, and when this is done, "thistles" would form a polyphyletic group. A thistle is the floral emblem of Scotland and Lorraine, as well as the emblem of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Biennial thistles are particularly noteworthy for their high wildlife value, producing such things as copious floral resources for pollinators, nourishing seeds for birds like the goldfinch, foliage for butterfly larvae, and down for the lining of birds' nests. 12710
RKO_9885.
Copyright: Robert Kok. All rights reserved! Watermark protected.
More of my work and activities can be seen on:
Please do not use my photos on websites, blogs or in any other media without my explicit permission.
Thanks for visiting, commenting and faving my photos. Its very much appreciated!
Their bright orange head and bill make them a standout among other ducks. We were so excited to photograph two at once. The Common Merganser is a fish-eating duck that rides low in the water on freshwater lakes and rivers. The female Common Merganser has a solid gray body with a reddish-brown head. She has a narrow, red, serrate bill and white chin-patch at the base of the lower mandible.
We know rainbows for their renowned beauty and for the fact that they form when the sun hits water particles in the sky at 22 degrees usually in mid morning or late afternoon. But, there is a whole lot more to a rainbow than what many may know. It is a symbol to remind the world that God would never flood the whole earth ever again. We know the science behind a rainbow and many other natural wonders that leave us breathless. What we don't realize is that creation responds to its Creator. Rainbows form across the sky as a reminder and a promise. Winds come to a calm by a word from the mouth of Jesus. The whole Earth and everything it contains was formed by a word spoken from its Creator, the LORD of all of heaven and earth. What is so special to me about rainbows is that they truly have symbolized promises made to us and answered prayers from God. I asked for a rainbow on my engagement day and there was a rainbow, I asked for a rainbow over a lake on the day of our wedding shower and there was a rainbow over a lake on our wedding shower as a promised reminder of the covenant to come.