After the drama and even violence of the past few images, I felt the need for something cute and sweet and with a little of pastel colors. Here, a Baltimore oriole is snacking on the nectar inside the blooms (or whatever it is that's in there), while keeping an eye on the excited photographers. Seen in the Warbler woods of Heinz Wildlife Refuge.

Somewhat to my surprise, it did well in PSA Nature Division exhibitions - despite the distracting leaves at the bottom and the overall level of noise. I guess the nature story is compelling enough.

I was so excited to see my first Flammulated Owl this week! He is right on a walking trail and only about 6" tall.

I knew where approximately to look for him from another photographer friend but this is such a busy area with hikers, etc. that some birders are worried that too many people will find out (I didn't post the location or tell anyone else, many know already as owls have been seen in the area before). Apparently people have posted his location on E-bird and some are making a trip from the coast to find him. They are a vulnerable species so care needs to be taken.

He is so camouflaged against the bark and leaves of a tree. Their eyes are nearly all black and they generally nest in old woodpecker holes or cavities in dead trees, but they will use nest boxes where provided.

Taken at Rutland Water Nature Reserve

Hi friends, it's been a while since I've been on flickr and I almost forgot they switched to the new layout. I decided to take a couple weeks off and that turned into almost two months... I've been shooting just not posting. I cant wait to see what everyone has been up to. In the nearly two months off I've totally reworked my processing work flow and wanted to do it without any outside influences and I feel I have got it dialed in. So I guess I've been in a transitional phase you could say.

This is a shot from the Washington coast after a hike out to hole in the rock. I look forward to getting back into the flickr groove and am excited to see what you all have been up to.

Don't get excited, this is not from this year. I saw some others posting images from previous years, as a way to lick their wounds for not being able to go this year. I thought it was a good idea. I always have reserves of images that almost made the cut from previous years. This image is from 2019.

I think we are going to see a trove of images from trapped photographers. Many B-roll images will finally see the light of day. Oregon just announced that they will now keep their parks and trails closed until September!!!! To the photo vaults then. Lets see what has been waiting their turn...

From a ferry sailing through the Norwegian fjords

We are excited to announce the opening of a new residential island called Saint-Chateau, inspired by the French Antilles and the style of Martinique and St. Barth's. This island is designed to offer a unique tropical living experience to its residents.

Saint-Chateau's port is a true gem, with Antillean and colonial style buildings where people can live in apartments and houses. Additionally, the port offers a few habitable yacht berths for residents who want to live on the water while enjoying the nautical lifestyle. Residents will also have the opportunity to customize their yachts to their personal tastes.

In the heights of the island, you will find typical houses of the region in banana and rum plantations. These magnificent estates will be available for rent for residents who want to live in an authentic setting.

Experience the perfect blend of breathtaking beauty and awe-inspiring surf breaks. St-Chateau boasts an abundance of sandy beaches and crystal-clear waters, providing the ideal playground for surf enthusiasts of all levels.

We look forward to showing you Saint-Chateau and offering you a unique tropical living experience.

The reservation list is now open, if you want to secure your future home contact Victoire Sire or Francois Humburg directly in-world. We have a limited number of units, so the first to arrive will be the first to be served. Thanks for understanding! ❤️

Coming VERY SOON!

Le Chateau is a modern tale of luck, grit, know-how and the magic that arises when an assortment of eccentric characters come together to live in this GODDMAN COMMUNITY!❤

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Swing%20Island/50/109/34

Music theme : youtu.be/zY7NTVaeXA8?list=PLv4qErvsYmfbJWB2YBeCXfSVwrxZb1jyb

Kemphaan kleurrijk 150523(1xxxxx)

A rich purple color winding out of a soft but clean white. No Photoshop. This is the actual purple color. Amazing what nature can offer.

AAAA!! New Sponsor alert!

I'm so excited to be part of the ALOE Blogger team. Tysm xoxo!

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Find this at the Kustom9 event til August 10th! ♥

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Top: B o n n i e . Jihyo Top [ Waifu Fit ]

Hair: V C O . MAO hair

Glasses: Random Matter - Alminas Glasses

Butterfly: H A Z E L . Butterfly Pack

Sandals: H i v e . Vacation Vibes

Body: eBody Reborn w/ Waifu Boob add-on

Picture taken at Soul of Dreams

Colossus in neon by Jeff Johnson, Live Worms Gallery, North Beach, San Francisco, October 2006.

While I've seen my share of ruby-crowned kinglets, not many share with me their crown ... for which they're named. I think that he was excited to see us. :-)

© Debbie Tubridy Photography

A Tufted Titmouse watches with great anticipation as some peanuts are placed out after heavy rains over the past days.

One in a lifetime, I re-edited these two drakes, one an American Wigeon and the other a Gadwall, both in breeding plumage. I have been around a long time, and not much rattles my cage, but I was excited about this one in Ct. While the two will sometimes hang together, the odds of me getting this shot with two drakes in great lighting and no wind are slim to none. That is the what and why I do wildlife photography. Thank you. I photograph all in Southeastern Ct. with a Canon 5D M IV and Canon 100 to 400 Il.

A little Pine Warbler rapidly downs some tiny berries.

We're very excited to announce Candy Fair 2014 designer applications will be opening May 1st through June 1st, 2014

This years Candy Fair will be October 3rd - October 17th, 2014

We'll be opening applications early because we have a lot of plans for this years Candy Fair and last year we had hundreds of applications. We're going to be taking a month just to go through and decide on stores/sponsors for this years fair. We will be capping at 100 stores not including our 8 sponsors. Stay tuned more info coming May 1st, 2014! Bloggers we will be doing things a bit different this year so stay tuned to info in regards to that coming May 1st as well!

We're very excited for this years fair and although its a ways away we've already been planning for months. <3

-MelissaJeanne Flores & Danica Saerwen

Candy Fair Organizers

These Terns were loving chasing the waves and catching eels too.

Last Saturday, Northern Ireland had it's first snowfall this Winter.... I was so excited when I looked out that morning and saw these zonking great snowflakes falling... by 10am it was like a blizzard... naturally, I headed off to my favourite place... Parkanaur Forest Park!

The deer were huddled in a corner and there was no way I could get near them, so I settled for taking shots of the trees :) My Canon was going to get destroyed by the elements and instead I used my mobile phone, my new Samsung Galaxy S5... not bad actually, cos you can still make out the massive snowflakes falling in front of the trees!

I apologise for not being around on Flickr over the past month or so, life has been tough, and it's been a pretty rough year, but 2016 is just round the corner and it can only get better!

I don't know if I'll get back on before Christmas, so if not, I want to wish all my Flickr friends a Very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I have loved seeing your work and reading your comments on mine, thank you for taking the time to check them out :)

Have a lovely safe and blessed Sunday!

Let's try this again.

I decided that the best thing to do in regards to starting again was talk to my wife before starting this thing up for real. The last one was hard because of the pressure I put on myself to do so much, and this time it's gonna be different. I'm not worried about style points, i'm not worried about photoshop, i'm not worried about learning curves....in fact, i'm not worried about anything at all.

I'm doing this for me. For fun. And that's about it. I'm not going to be posting every day, and some days I may post more than one to get caught up. I will take things as they come.

Expect nothing from me, but take what you can get ;) I may not even finish if I don't feel like it.

Oh, and it's open-topic, whatever I want...me, kittehs, puppehs, flowers, my toe, the sky, cars, other people...whatever I want. If you don't like that, go somewhere else...

ok, ok, no, please, stay....

:)

Oh, look who else started!!!

Lisbon

This little Tufted Titmouse is fired up about something. Carried that green wild grape around forever. Our beautiful world, pass it on.

www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=178769&id=564977070&am...

Here are a few more pic of yesterday's jump. It was fabulous and I will describe it more once I have got over the post jump Party :-) Thank you for all your donations. I'm keeping the site open for another few months in case anyone else would like to donate.

www.justgiving.com/Diane-Noles

Hi guys! We are super excited to be in Uber this round with 3 new releases!!

Eye Cherry are some super cute booties that can be customized via the included HUD and is compatible with Lara, Venus, Isis, Freya, Physique & Hourglass!

Brainstew Hoodie can be found in 16 different colors and each solid purchased comes with a bonus graphic! The hoodie can also be customized via the included HUD. :)

Stars Cargo Pants can be found in 16 different colors and is customizable via the included HUD. Stars is also compatible with Lara, Venus, Isis, Freya, Physique & Hourglass.

Thank you so much everyone for your incredible support!!! We here at Vinyl are so incredibly thankful & blessed ♥

-Suko & Vinyl team ♥

Perched

This young Red squirrel appears to be enjoying its first venture out in snowy conditions.

The relationships between the general population in Israel and the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community are always tensed: The general population feels the Ultra-Orthodox do not contribute enough (don't serve in the army, don't participate in the work force); while the Ultra-Orthodox feel their values (mainly studying, and worshiping the Lord) are not honored.

Naturally, things become even more tensed these days when the country is under a shutdown (#1 in the world, in the number of cases relative to the size of the population) while some Ultra-Orthodox think that praying together in a synagogue is more important than the regulations (The result is that though they are 10% of the population, they are about 30% of the cases, if not more).

I think that today was my worst day on flickr with respect to Bad Pandas :-(

I've always wanted to get a picture like this. I was so excited when the fog bank rolled in after sunrise. The funny thing is that the two dozen or so other photographers at Kerry Park this morning all left as soon as the sun rose. There was nobody else here when I took this. If they had only stuck around a little while longer.........suckers!

Saturday October 27th, 9:20 a.m.

Wow, I guess this is an hour and ten minutes after my previous photo. I must've hung around freezing my ass off and breathing fog longer than I thought. No wonder everyone else left. It was well worth staying though, it was obvious that the sun would eventually burn back through the blanket of fog.

Here I am, standing on the shoreline just after 3:30 in the morning, the horizon is already ablaze with colour, I’m excited. My tripod is already out and waiting for the camera as I rapidly change my lens under the illumination of my head torch, I’ll use my super EF16-35 f4L, I’m excited. I look for an early composition, these rock platforms look fantastic, leading lines galore carved out by millennia of sea erosion, I’m excited. It’s still low light, to keep that colour on the horizon I need a ND grad, I decide to use a medium 2 stop to lift the foreground darkness, I’m excited. I frame the image, check the settings, f11, calculate the shutter speed, back to ISO 100 and bulb, this is fun, I’m excited. The first photo taken with a 76 second exposure, I check the results but no pressure it’s still 40 minutes from sunrise, did I say I’m excited. The first photo of the morning, the day before the summer solstice, the time is 3:40.

So I work at Enchanted Forest. Which is like this little theme park, but today we're having this music festival! So all over the park are going to be a bunch of random local bands playing all day, so theres going to be sooo many extra people in the park. Its pretty much going to be all hell breaking loose at Enchanted Forest and I am so stoked. :)

But anyways, they did an article on it in the newspaper. I guess I'll have to update you all on how it went tonight :)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So it wasn't quite as hectic as I was hoping. Dang. But still a very nice change from the usual day. I definitely enjoyed it - as I sat in the Entrance booth taking tickets and explaining repeatedly what we were doing I got to listen to various acoustic bands not too far away. So I was happy :)

Excited

Male Red-legged Honeycreeper with his little crest raised in excitement. Costa Rica, Boca Tapada area.

Bald Eagles mate for life. The females are usually larger - perhaps the one on the left. She was perched alone with command of the beach below when her juvenile offspring caused her to momentarily "jump" to avoid his erratic landing. Her protests were notable and loud enough to summon Dad who also got in on the act. The youngster found a place to land a couple of trees down.

I generally don't get too excited about the computer I use but this is the exception. For Christmas, my computer techno-savvy son built me a new computer from the ground up and that's it, on the left. The case sides are glass panels, one I've opened to cut down on the reflection and better show the components. I posted a shot of the video card and here it is in operation. The end game is this runs/processes much faster than my current laptop, has sufficient storage and really does look cool, IMO!! BTW: That's his cat Mouse in my Photostream.

This is a good stopping point for most but some may care to read further for the technical details:

The main issue with my current laptop is that it only has 256KB of solid state (SSD) storage for the programs which is maxed out and 1TB of hard drive storage that holds a half a year of photos, the rest of the 8 TB library, resides on an external hard drive. In addition, Photoshop uses the external drive for scratch work and that slows things down especially the rendering of focus stacked images. This machine has 3 X 1TB SSD drives and a built in 18TB SATA hard drive that I can keep the complete library on. Photoshop runs exclusively on the solid state drives and is processed through the 8GB GeForce RTX 2070 Super Graphics Card. The main processor is a AMD Ryzen 7 3800x 8-core Processor @ 3.90 Ghz cooled with a NZXT liquid intercooler. Supporting the processor is G.Skill Trident Z RGB Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 SRAM. The main power comes from a Corsair SF 600 Power Supply. All in all I'm very happy with the specs and in the end, my son was right, I did need a new computer!

Brown Hares getting excited

Male Hooded Merganser, Shollenberger Park, Petaluma

Willfield Camera Club outing to Twycross Zoo.

Common Monkey Lizard (Polychrus marmoratus) - Cordillera Escalera Conservation Area, Peru

I was very excited to come across this common monkey lizard (Polychrus marmoratus) as its only the 2nd one I have seen here in Peru. I found the first early on and didn't get any wide angle photos which I immediately regretted, now more than a month later I got a chance to make up for it! These lizards are amazing; they spend their time up in the trees, slowly moving around, ambushing prey. They are well suited for an arboreal existence as their tails are long and atleast semi prehensile and their hands and feet are quite dexterous and able to grasp small branches and twigs, they remind me very much of chameleons in their habits and lifestyle. I suspect they are much more common than they seem but since they rarely descend to ground level they are infrequently seen (atleast by me).