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© 2011 Aelin Quan – All rights reserved - Réf. 111120
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One of my works shown at the Spring Art Walk this month. Hope you'll like it !
Textures : thanks to funerium on DeviantArt
Two geese out for a stroll captured at a pond where we maybe shouldn't have been, but were. :) Hope everyone is enjoying a peaceful Sabbath and a happy weekend!
Mummies of a young girl and boy from Chancay, Peru from 16th century in Carmo Convent Archaeological Museum in Lisbon, Portugal
Note the eye size difference between these chicks, born about a week apart. The food the parent is offering appears to be a dragonfly nymph.
Taken 1 July 2021 at a lake in Anchorage, Alaska.
Friends gave us a pot of flowers planted in colours of purple, green and white: geraniums, petunias, variegated ivy - and these lovely tiny flowers, verbena I believe, which in particular took my eye.
Xerochrysum bracteatum
Golden everlasting
Paper daisies
For 'Looking Close on Friday', theme: 'Two of a Kind'
for: today's Smile on Saturday theme
a sometime occasion gift from Clare who was always imaginative at choosing them to send to us
thank you for all visits, faves and comments
Happy weekend!
Twofer Two tandem bicycle being used as a store display, looks like a lot of fun, found in North Carolina.
Distinctive pair and . . they both are designed to use their razor-sharp wheels to cut slices through pizzas! But these two specific bikes will not be used for that and instead will be enjoyed TOGETHER as a pair of lovely and unique objects.
Theme: "TWO-GETHER""
Thank you for taking the time to view this photo, faves and comments from you are greatly appreciated.
The natural world, moreover, is still undergoing a transformation for which the word “drama” is more appropriate than a term like “design” or “plan.” The theological significance of our focus on drama rather than design is that a drama can be the carrier of a meaning that presently lies hidden in the future…
… Theology, as I understand it, looks for the presence of God not in the breaks but in the blossoming of nature…
… Traditional theology’s lack of interest in the cosmic journey is forgivable, of course, since only after Einstein could it have learned that the entire universe is a continuous narrative and not just a platform from which to launch our spiritual adventures.
-God after Einstein What’s Really Going On in the Universe? John F. Haught
with a Grevillea Moonlight flower that the birds knocked out of the bush.
Looking Close... on Friday: Two
Salida rápida en solitario para probar mi nuevo filtro Haida de 12 pasos...la verdad que me dá buenas vibraciones
When a few flowers died in each of two bunches of flowers I was given, I merged them together and think the colours go well.
Day 17 post-op yesterday and I took a walk down the road, with Ray and 2 crutches for company (although I can now manage fine with 1 indoors) my target being to the local church and back. It was slow, the traffic a bit noisy to somebody unaccustomed to walking out but there is a handy seat near the church.
Once home, Ray checked the distance and found I had walked just over half a mile - well pleased!
I was staying in a cabin near the continental divide, and awoke one morning to a perfectly calm, clear sky. I decided to drive before dawn to Two Medicine lake to capture the reflection of Sinopah Mountain at sunrise. However, as I drove into the site, the wind increased to the point where the waves were breaking on the lake and my vision of the perfect sunrise was shattered. Here's what I salvaged, with the stars in the sky and the light on the cliffs.
Portal Falls is located at Mt Whitney the highest peak in the Sierra Nevada range as well as the contiguous United states at 14,505 feet. Whitney portal Road that takes adventures up the mountain dead ends at a campground, picnic area, two waterfalls, and trails that traverse Mt. Whitney. The area is a beautiful place and was exceptionally cooler than the temperatures at lower elevations, we are experiencing triple digit weather right now. Wish I could have stayed there instead of heading for home.
Two old steamers 2890 & 52322 passing through Bury Bolton Street Station. East Lancashire Railways. (1505)
These two little flowers, had come out, at about the same time, both were in the same position and orientation, so I decided to take a picture of them both with the same prominence.
Estas dos pequeñas flores, habían salido, prácticamente al mismo tiempo, las dos estaban en la misma posición y orientación, por lo que decidí hacerles una foto colocando a las dos con el mismo protagonismo.
Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius)
My best photos are here: www.lacerta-bilineata.com/ticino-best-photos-of-southern-...
More TICINO/TESSIN Wildlife Photos (all taken in my garden in Monteggio/Ti, Switzerland): it.lacerta-bilineata.com/ramarro-occidentale-lacerta-bili...
If you're interested, you'll find a more detailed closeup here (it's the 8th photo from the top): www.lacerta-bilineata.com/western-green-lizard-lacerta-bi...
My latest ANIMAL VIDEO (it's very brief but pretty unusual: a tiny wall lizard attacks two young great tits): www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQqkSsyrm7E
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHOTO: MY LONG AND ARDUOUS JOURNEY TO BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY
If you've set yourself the challenge of exclusively shooting the wildlife in your own back yard, you might find - as I did - that bird photography is really, really hard.
It's not that reptiles are easy to photograph either, mind - but at least the ones in my garden stay (for the most part) on the ground, and one can learn how to carefully approach them with a camera. They're also clearly egoists, which from a photographer's point of view is is a great character trait: if a lizard detects a human in its vicinity, it's only interested in saving its own skin, and it won't alarm its buddies.
But birds... oh man. Over the years, my feathered friends and I have developed a lovely routine that now defines our peaceful co-existence. As soon as I as much as open a window (let alone the door), I'm instantly greeted by an eruption of panicky fluttering and hysterical shouts from my garden: "SAVE YOUR WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND FLY FOR YOUR LIVES: THE HAIRLESS, PINK MONSTER IS COMING!!! (Yes, I speak bird, and I know that this is exactly what they are shouting 😉).
Needless to say, with the exception of the redstart I already showed here, all my efforts to get the kind of detailed shots I usually strive for with my nature photography ended in complete failure and utter disillusionment. I was ready to give up on stalking the winged misanthropes in my garden altogether, but then winter came - and changed everything.
One day this past January I observed my neighbor Signora P - a kind, elderly Italian lady - putting something on the low garden wall in front of my house. At first I thought she was just putting some treat there for her cat Romeo; the young tom patrols that wall constantly (it's his favorite spot in the garden, and during the warmer months he usually lurks in the thick foliage next to it to prey on lizards).
But once I detected a lot of movement on that wall through my window, I understood she had put a little pile of bread crumbs there; she was feeding the birds who soon arrived in flocks. This was certainly well-intended on my neighbor's part, but her noble action came with a catch, and I'm afraid quite literally.
When I took a stroll through my garden the next day I discovered a suspicious amount of feathers on the ground next to the wall. Romeo had apparently switched from his low-calorie summer diet (lizard) to more energy-rich meals consisting of "fowl" (it was winter after all, so from a nutritionist's point of view this made sense).
I would find fresh traces of Romeo's victims (mostly feathers, but also the odd wing) in my garden over the following days; so my first intuition that my neighbor was feeding her cat hadn't been that far off after all, as Romeo was now clearly being "served" fresh birds on a daily basis. And although the hungry visitors seemed to be aware of the danger and became slightly more prudent, they just couldn't resist the tasty snacks Signora P put on that wall - and neither could Romeo.
It was obvious that I had to act, but talking to my neighbor - who is as stubborn as she is kind - would have been futile, I knew that much. I pondered the matter long and hard - until a light bulb went off in my head. The idea was genius. If successful, what I had in mind would not only increase the birds' chances of surviving Romeo's appetite, but also greatly benefit my own photographic endeavors.
I started to enact my master plan the very next day by buying a giant bag of bird feed (consisting mainly of sunflower seeds) from the store. Then I dragged a huge piece of a tree trunk (approx. 120 cm in height) that we normally chop firewood on in the shed out into the garden and emptied almost half of the bag's content on top of it. Signora P's buffet for birds (and cats) was about to get some serious competition 😊.
My reasoning was as follows: not only would the birds be lured away from the fatally low garden wall to a place where they were safe from the cat - there was nothing around that tree trunk that provided cover for a predator, and the birds had a nice 360° view around it at all times - but I was also able to photograph them while hiding in the shed.
However, in order for my plan to work there was one little extra measure I had to take, and it was one that risked lowering my own life expectancy considerably once the owner of the property - my mom - discovered it. You see, our shed is completely windowless, so if I wanted to use it as a blind, I had no choice but to cut a hole into one of its wooden walls... which I promptly did (I figured all's fair in love - and photography 😉).
Granted, I have absolutely zero carpentering skills, and it showed. That hole was an ugly mess: the shed's wall seemed to have had an encounter with Jack Nicholson's ax-wielding lunatic character from the film 'The Shining'. Needless to say, I was incredibly proud of my work (I mean, come on: there now was a hole where before there wasn't a hole, and it was big enough for the lens of my camera to peek through, so it was mission accomplished as far as I was concerned).
Now all I had to do was wait for the birds to discover the tree trunk. In the meantime I started to mentally prepare myself for the inevitable confrontation with my mom and go through possible explanations for that splintering hole in the wall (it was either gonna be a rabid woodpecker attack or an emergency rescue mission with a feeding tube for a little kid that had accidentally locked himself inside the shed - both seemed valid options, though I slightly preferred the locked-in kid due to the involved drama and heroism 😉).
A whole day went by, and not a single bird visited the sunflower seeds. I had expected that it might take a few hours until the first of the ever curious great tits or blue tits would show up, but given how tiny my garden is, an entire day seemed excessive. Then another day came and went: the birds kept flocking to the bread crumbs on the wall, and my tree trunk kept collecting dust. To add injury to insult, a few fresh feathers on the ground were proof that Romeo was still feasting.
It was incredibly frustrating: I provided my winged guests with a much better view - plus a higher chance of surviving the cuisine - than Signora P's place; I risked (almost) certain death at the hands of my own mother (OK, the act of vandalism on the shed I had committed for my own benefit, but still), yet the birds kept ignoring me.
Then, after three days, just before sunset, I spotted a single blue tit on the tree trunk picking away at the sunflower seeds.
When I got up the next morning I immediately realized that the loud noise that accompanies each and every tit activity had shifted from the wall to the shed. At last the dam had broken: there was a flurry of movement around the tree trunk, and I counted at least 5 different species of birds feasting on the sunflower seeds.
From day 4 onward my plan worked beautifully: the birds now indeed mostly ignored Romeo's "snack wall" and kept to the tree trunk. And yes, I was able to play peeping tom from behind the shed's wall and photograph them!! 😊
Thus, dear readers, I finally managed to produce some acceptable bird photos, and I had even saved my feathered friends from a deadly foe in the process. All through winter and spring I took advantage of my new bird hide, and in late May I started mixing some cherries with the sunflower seeds. The idea was to attract a Eurasian jay (Garrulus glandarius), and as you can see, it worked!
It took me almost three weeks and more than a few tricks to capture that clever fella, but given how long I've been rambling here already, that's a story for another day. As for my mom, she still doesn't know about the hole in the wall, so please don't snitch! 😉.
I hope you like the photo and wish you all a wonderful weekend! Many greetings from Switzerland, and as always: let me know what you think in the comments 🙏 😊 ❤!
P.S. if anyone has their own funny tale about the obstacles we photographers are prepared to overcome for a desired photo, please write it in the comments: I love such stories 😊
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