Cuteness Overload!

House Martins - the youngsters in the nest call on every adult, whether it's their parent or not. They really are quite comical.

Please see my Photographs at:

www.jamespdeans.co.uk

Nesting in New London...:))

Looking Close... on Friday: Eggs in Black & White.

Just an ordinary egg in the nest of a Grey Fantail. They do such a tight, neat job!

Nature reserv in Välen

For the crust:

2 Pie crusts

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Fit the 2 piecrusts in a deep 10” baking pan

Bake crust for about 10 minutes

For the baked apples:

6 apples

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup fresh or thawed cranberries

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

Stir together ½ cup brown sugar, ½ cup cranberries, cinnamon, nutmeg and a pinch of salt.

Peel apples and scoop cores.

Fill hollows with a heaping tablespoon of cranberry mixture.

Transfer to a 8X8 baking dish. Dot with butter.

Bake in over about 25 minutes (8 minutes in the microwave).

For the pudding batter:

½ cup flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

1.2 teaspoon cinnamon

pinch of salt

2 Tablespoons unsalted butter

1/3 cup milk

1 large egg and 1 egg white

Whisk together ½ cup flour, baking powder, and 1/4 teaspoon salt.

In a separate bowl, whisk egg yolk with remaining 1/2 cup sugar until combined.

Whisk in flour mixture, then melted butter and milk.

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold into batter.

Pour batter into warm crust.

Nestle apples into batter, spooning cranberries and juices on top.

Bake about 30 minutes. Let cool before serving.

Serve with ice cream.

Unfurling of a Birdsnest Fern frond.

Macro Mondays: Green

Processed with MOLDIV

Last summer's nest and now sitting empty in the middle of January. I'm glad the wild winterberries were still on the vine and uneaten, giving a nice balance to the image.

Enjoy.

Pure MAGIC ;-)

I know most of you wonder why NO PEOPLE in this shot ....even I wonder...LOL. Well it was just one of those moments, one late evening. Also this is a bit different in scale and exposure/detail from what one may see of other shots of this place.

This is not the traditional frontal angle, more from the side and head on , close up at full 14 mm and focussed more on the exposure/detail.

DRI from multiple exposures, with spot focus for foreground and the nest.

Sometimes it take an engineer's perspective to build something out of this world, so this bird hired the best to accomplish what you see here.

At work today, it was annual green and gold bell frog audit day. The total frog count was zero. I did found this very interesting nest among the bull rushes.

Great egret, breeding color

focus-stacked from 6 shots and edited to bring out the shrooms

I was recently at a large Garden Center to buy a tree for our yard. As I was walking around picking out which one I wanted I suddenly heard the telltale warning cry of a Killdeer 10 feet away from me.

Sure enough, a Killdeer Mama had decided to nest right out in the open and under a group of trees that were for sale. She quickly left her nest to lure me away with the classic broken wing display, their instinctual behavior when the nest is threatened. I snapped a couple pics of her four eggs (and an adopted white stone as a fifth!), then moved on. I checked on her 10 minutes later and she was happily sitting on her eggs, keeping them toasty warm :)

拍这张的时候，想起了大学宿舍里的一个朋友，叫02.

A kite seller near the Beijing National Stadium

A wild carrot or Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota, Apiaceae) flower in a soft bokeh.

The wild relative of the cultivated carrot (D. carota subsp. sativus), the wild carrot originated in temperate regions of the Old World but has naturalized in much of the world and is now considered a cosmopolitan weed and an invasive exotic species in many regions.

Terrell's Island Preserve

Omro, Wisconsin

JL222759m

Kid found this bird's nest on the ground. I think this is great craftsmanship and architecture.

We have a cardinal pair that have made a nest in our Forsythia bush by our garage. I saw the female leave the nest and I quickly snapped this iPhone picture of the three-egg clutch. This is the first time I have seen a Northern Cardinal nest and we're delighted to witness this cycle of life :)

This was suspended high off the ground and is quite large.

Smile on Saturday: Focus on F

Saturday self-challenge: Half full, half empty

It was with both sadness and delight that I discovered this little bird's nest, dislodged by the wind. A delight to see it half full with filling and feathers, but sad to see that its still half empty, without the eggs and parent bird to complete the cycle.

(Hope this fits the Self -Challenge theme without stretching it too much!)

An adult female bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus, Accipitridae) with two recently hatched eaglets rest on the nest after feeding.

I am pretty sure that the babies hatched April 14, the day I took this photograph.

Uihlein Waterfowl Production Area

Winnebago County, Wisconsin

AP402305m

A birds nest in my old back yard in Detroit

I was told there is no smog in China, but I may encounter some mist. There as no need to go looking for the mist, because it seemed to find me without any bother. I visited the Olympics site on a day when the mist hung particularly close to the ground.

Won Four Seasons Award in CONTROLUCE B&W ON LINE PHOTO CONTEST, Autumn 2012:

www.cfcontroluce.it/_autumnaward2012.html

Looking close...on Friday: Crazy Cupcakes

Even as night falls, Birdie keeps watch on her nest. Why, oh why did she think the Carrot Forest would provide good camouflage, when Easter is coming and the Bunny will soon be looking for eggs for his basket? The Carrot Forest is his favourite hunting (and snacking) spot!

Cupcake with icing nest and eggs by: ThimbleCakes, Ottawa.

Scene is about 20 cm/8 inches across.

Birdsnest Fern

Beautifully grooved cups, grey spore bodies (peridioles) like little lentils, and shaggy brown hairs on the outside, all in a cup about 5-8 mm wide.

Nests of a colony of Southern weaver birds, seen here by a lake in Paarl, on the Western Cape of South Africa.

Noticed on yesterday's walk just how the power lines framed the birds nest.