Bird

Notes:
2009-06-13
Beechwood Cemetery
Nikon D300 18-200mm @200mm 1/320s ƒ9 iso200

Light

Notes:
2008-06-01
Notre Dame Des Sablons, Aigues-Mortes, France
Nikon D300 18-200mm @18mm 1/40s ƒ3.5 iso800

Poppy pollen

Notes:
2009-06-05
Public garden
Nikon D300 50mm 1/800s 5.6ƒ iso200

Friday cloud blogging and 6th pic

Notes:
2009-05-23
My parent's field
Nikon D300 18-200mm @18mm 1/640s ƒ13 iso200

The other day Derrick from Melrose Musings [link] posted a challenge wherein he had to post the 6th photo from his 6th folder then tag 6 others. Derek modified the challenge for his post, and he extended it my way ... :) I'm also modifying it a bit here as my photo folders aren't in a usual sort of order and have text files mixed in as well. So I went w/ the 6th photo in the 'to blog' folder (as you can see from the screen grab), and since it was a cloud photo decided to wait 'til today to post. This is a shot taken from the plane window (sorry xup!) when we were coming into Venice, June 2008. The sun rays were breaking through the clouds.

The Fun Dip / LikMAid / Lik-A-Stik* tree is blooming again

Notes:
2009-06-10
Black Locust trees in the Ornamental Gardens
Nikon D300 18-200mm for all
And it smells sooooooo good
(*Blogged about these sweet-smelling blossoms a couple yrs back [link]. The flowers smell like the candy, hence the name.)
Click bottom photos for larger view

Updated 2009-06-10 at 1500h. I pulled out the two photos I have of the tree shot and put them together. The photo on the left was taken June 4, the one on the right June 10. Click for larger view.

Grackle silhouette

Notes:
2009-06-08
On the roof
Nikon D300 18-200mm @200mm 1/1000s ƒ18 iso200
We have two grackle nests, along w/ a robin's nest and the dove nest, in the front yard. It's babybird central out there.

Success!

Notes:
2009-end of May, beg of June
Climbing hydrangea
Nikon D300 18-200mm
I mentioned a while back that a dove family had set up house in this nest in the climbing hydrangea at our front door. The last time they tried using the nest, the results were not good: the egg fell out and broke on the step before the baby bird had a chance to grow. We were concerned when we spotted an egg on the door step at the end of May (egg photos upper left, lower right were taken May 29th), but slightly optimistic as the shell wasn't cracked but as you see above. I googled to see if this was a good sign and apparently it's called pipping, where the baby bird pokes away from the inside until the shell parts (yay!). Still, we didn't see anything that would indicate a baby bird in the nest for quite some time, until June 6th in fact (the photo on the upper right was my first view of the little gaffer). The baby is growing very fast now, and to see the adult dove try to sit on or cover him is a funny sight: the adult dove sits up quite high and it's obvious that sharing that wee nest is becoming difficult. (The most recent photo is the bottom left, which I took a couple of hours ago.) It's been such a delight watching this unfold ... :-)