ACT Photographers
View allAll Photos Tagged act,
Last year, we had many green herons at Koll fishing. Drew crowds of photographers. This year, I've just seen this one. I was fortunate enough to have it near shore when it went fishing, and got some shots of its success.
Balancing Rocks in the Ottawa River.
Remic Rapids Park is situated on the shore of the Ottawa River, Ottawa, Canada.
To enhance the park’s beauty, artist John Felice Ceprano has created balanced rock sculptures on the river’s edge since 1986. The artist uses fossilized and colourful rocks found on the shore to build these sculptures by hand. They provide a free and exploratory public art experience that complements the park’s natural setting.
Smile on Saturday: balancing act
Thank you for all visits, comments, favs - appreciated. Have a happy weekend!
Gannet - Morus Bassanus
Bempton Cliffs
The gannets are large white birds with yellowish heads; black-tipped wings; and long bills. Northern gannets are the largest seabirds in the North Atlantic, having a wingspan of up to 2 metres (6.6 ft). The other two species occur in the temperate seas around southern Africa, southern Australia and New Zealand.
Gannets hunt fish by diving into the sea from a height and pursuing their prey underwater. Gannets have a number of adaptations which enable them to do this:
no external nostrils, they are located inside the mouth instead;
air sacs in the face and chest under the skin which act like bubble wrapping, cushioning the impact with the water;
positioning of the eyes far enough forward on the face for binocular vision, allowing them to judge distances accurately.
Gannets can dive from a height of 30 metres (98 ft), achieving speeds of 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph) as they strike the water, enabling them to catch fish much deeper than most airborne birds.
The gannet's supposed capacity for eating large quantities of fish has led to gannet becoming a description of somebody with a voracious appetite.
Gannets are colonial breeders on islands and coasts, normally laying one chalky, blue egg. Gannets lack brood patches and they use their webbed feet to warm the eggs. It takes five years for gannets to reach maturity. First-year birds are completely black, and subsequent sub-adult plumages show increasing amounts of white.
The most important nesting ground for northern gannets is the United Kingdom with about two thirds of the world's population. These live mainly in Scotland, including the Shetland Isles. The rest of the world's population is divided between Canada, Ireland, Faroe Islands and Iceland, with small numbers in France (they are often seen in the Bay of Biscay), the Channel Islands, Norway and a single colony in Germany on Heligoland. The biggest northern gannet colony is on Scotland's Bass Rock; in 2014, this colony contained some 75,000 pairs. Sulasgeir off the coast of the Isle of Lewis, St. Kilda, Grassholm in Pembrokeshire, Bempton Cliffs in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Sceilig Bheag, Ireland and Bonaventure Island, Quebec are also important northern gannet breeding sites.
Young gannets were historically used as a food source, a tradition still practised in Ness, Scotland, where they are called guga. Like examples of continued traditional whale harvesting, the modern day hunting of gannet chicks results in great controversies as to whether it should continue to be afforded exemption from the ordinary protection afforded to sea birds in UK and EU law". The Ness hunt is currently limited to 2,000 chicks per year, and dates back at least to the Iron Age. The hunt is considered to be sustainable, as between 1902 and 2003 Gannet numbers in Scotland increased dramatically from 30,000 to 180,000.
Population:
UK breeding:
220,000 nests
I’ve been collecting beach glass for as long as I can remember!
Piled up for Smile on Saturday theme, Balancing Act.
HSoS 😊
Die V100 093 der ACTS war an einem sonnigen Tag in Februar 1999 mit einem Müllzug aus Wijster unterwegs zu Groningen Losplaats. Im Bild hatte der Zug das Ziel gerade erreicht.
Met de huisvuiltrein uit Wijster was de ACTS V100 093 op een zonnige dag in februari in 1999 onderweg naar Groningen Losplaats. Op de foto is de trein net aangekomen.
ACTS engine V100 093 was headed for Groningen Losplaats with a freight train carrying domestic waste (from VAM in Wijster) and is seen here on a sunny day in February 1999 after just having arrived.
For roughly 2 seconds Danni was perched atop her dog Boo.
Dad was just off to the left and kept her from toppling over.
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 from 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 😊
The Fink Water Jug, designed by Robert Foster, is now regarded as the flagship of the Fink collection and has been described as an Australian design icon.
I took this image within the National Gallery of Australia gift shop.
St George in the East
Situated in Cannon Street Road, Whitechapel, London E1 0BH.
It was built between 1714 and 1729 with the funding from an Act of Parliament. It is one of the six London churches designed and built by famous architect Nicholas Hawksmoor.
The church was very expensive to build, at the cost of nearly £20k, it was designed to seat over 1,000 people.
In and around 1800, major work was done on the entrance steps. In 1820 a new vault was added, also the churchyard was drained. In 1829 the church was re-roofed. In 1871, box pews were removed in order to install new seating.
In 1880, 5 Venetian glass mosaics were installed in the apse, illustrating passion and resurrection scenes. The organ which was in poor state had to be rebuilt and between 1881-1886 this was completed by the firm Gray and Davidson.
In 1941 during the blitz the church received a direct hit from a bomb. The interior was destroyed by a severe fire that swept through the building. Fortunately the walls and towers survived intact. The mosaics were also saved but had to be restored.
A new interior was completed in 1964, designed by Arthur Bailey. The design, a much more simple plan.
Scenes from the film ‘The Long Good Friday’ were filmed in and around the churchyard.
Gradually, with ever decreasing visibility, or by a sudden black-out? Or, by an intentional and stage-managed theatrical act (think of David Bowie's last video showing him disappearing into a cabinet)? How will we be going and disappearing from Flickr? What will happen to the visual wake we are leaving behind? Fuji X-Pro1 plus Fujinon XF 1.4/35.
© WJP Productions 2025
The Dutch proverb "de aap komt uit de mouw". Literally translated: "the monkey leaves the sleeve". It means the truth is revealed.
Created for the Magnificent Manipulated Masterpieces
159th MMM Image of a Cosplay girl
Thanks to Paul Young for Cosplay Girl.
Background images reworked from Cirque de Soleil screen shots.
Tattoos by Lottas Act
This Great Blue Heron landed in the top of a cedar tree but the branches were too flimsy to support its weight. So he struggled to maintain his balance. It was rather entertaining to watch for about 30 seconds until it flew off to find a more stable perch.
We observed this fun behavior at The Nature Conservancy's Cheyenne Bottoms Preserve in central Kansas.
A wonderful cloud filled sky at Flamborough Head, East Yorkshire .
THANK YOU FOR YOUR VISITS, COMMENTS, AWARDS AND FOR ANY INVITES.
Sunday's forecast for Glen Affric looked promising for some potential mist so I managed to persuade Iain (Highlandscape) along for a sunrise shoot. We were initially restricted to some 'minimalist' mist shots, disappointed that the mist and low cloud blocked any chance of some sunrise colour. However, all was about to change as the sun broke through the mist tops, with the next 30 mins or so providing some of the best light and environmental conditions I have witnessed,
An older grizzly cub, walks along the top of a log by the shoreline of Chilko Lake, BC, with fall leaves and grasses in the background. Grizzly cubs stay with their moms for 3 years. This cub was probably born in the spring a couple of years ago, so it is 2 and a half years old.
10/09/2021 www.allenfotowild.com
... for the Carnation. It's Act I for the button because it's the first time I've photographed it. :)
The button is French and dates from the 1900s. It's hand painted and has areas of both champlevé and guilloché enamel.