Picture-A-Week 2022 - Week 03

[pierces]

Pictures taken between Monday, January 17 and Sunday, January 23.

 

Halfway done with January '22 and you haven't posted a Picture-A-Week photo yet? Shame! 😉

 

Rules: See above

That's it. This isn't a contest.

All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising).

Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize.

The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays.

Post one. Post many. Up to you.

Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

[Docker123]

Monday was butterfly day in the Williamstown Botanic Gardens.

 

Red spotted jezebel

 

Wanderer/monarch

 

Dainty swallowtail

[cruises42]

White-tailed deer in our backyard enjoying some pumpkins!

 

 

 

 

[Bimmer09]

Hot and Cold at the Chicago Botanic Gardens

The hot was 62F and the cold 15F

 

 

 

 

 

Norris

[zackiedawg]

Well with Monday being a holiday, I had the rare chance to take some wildlife photos at the beginning of the date range for these weekly threads, rather than at the end!  So, here are a few of the shots from a lovely, cool, windy MLK day in Florida (mid-70s...Brrrrr!):

 

Closeup of an anhinga starting to show its breeding colors:

 

Big George, the boss-man alligator of the wetlands, rests atop the levee, while one of his harem, Gracie, stays respectfully lower near the waterline.  BTW, Gracie is a full adult alligator, around 7 feet...gives you an idea just how big George is:

 

Snowy egrets can walk on water...or run on it at least:

 

A tricolored heron flying low over the water:

 

Snowy egret demonstrating THEIR version of 'fly-fishing':

 

They love to do it...and you can't be more literal...they fly AND they fish, at the same time:

 

A glossy ibis, generally a brown looking bird, showing how they got the name 'glossy' - by catching the sun, the iridescent feathers show more colors:

 

Big zoom, huge crop!  At 600mm on an APS-C crop sensor, I'm framing at 900mm equivalent.  For a bird atop a tall pole 350 feet away, and cropping 300%, that makes this approximately 2,700mm equivalent, so I could try to see what this osprey was tearing apart up there - it didn't look like a fish which is what they usually eat (I can't rule out fish, as the park up under the talons looks like it could be...but the stuff hanging down didn't look like fish bits):

 

A great blue heron calling out loudly as it flies over:

 

An anhinga surfaces for just a second or two to toss its fish catch into the air and drop it down the gullet, before submerging again to find another:

 

The wood storks are back - several dozen nesting pairs showed up and started to build their nests:

[11Bravo]

We flew to Fort Lauderdale two weeks only to find out or cruise was canceled. So the same camera gear and drone I packed for the cruise was used in Yellowstone...

 

 

I took this with my drone. Drones aren't allowed in national parks, so I took this outside the park.

 

Roosevelt Arch - the northern entrance to Yellowstone.

 

This is a juvenile bald eagle, probably a year old. Their heads don't turn completely white until they are 5 years old. 

 

 

 

 

The bison use their heads to move the snow to get to the prairie grass to feed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coyote - he was really far away with a second one.

 

 

 

[Docker123]

 

Bookend the week.

 

Sunday night, 9pm. 83 of your degrees.

 

I went out to try and get some reverse sunsets over Melbourne, Not always working as one would hope.

 

 

 

[tallyho8]

I love photography on a hobby basis and have never bought any fancy equipment for my shots but I still get many that I have to get printed and framed. Here are a couple I took on my cruise from New Orleans to Cozumel last week. Let me know what you think of them.

 

                                                            Evening in Cozumel         

      

 

                                                                Leaving New Orleans

 

 

 

[pierces]

Our isolation-driven house projects continued this week. Reasons to isolate have mostly evaporated, but when something look good, everything around it that doesn’t look good looks worse. The “storage room” is now becoming a bedroom again after years of cluttered misery. The closet/cabinet area has been gutted, patched and made into a pristine canvas on which modern storage concepts were applied. Now I need to add closet doors and that means making stuff pretty. We chose maple, stained to compliment the floor and with maple boards costing what they do, I turned to maple plywood and heat-glued edge banding. Picture me with my trusty Sunbeam, ironing boards in the garage. Now take away the apron. I didn’t wear an apron.

 

Iron(ing) Man

 

 

 

 

Dave

Edited January 24, 2022 by pierces

[zackiedawg]

To bookend the shooting period, I got out again this past Sunday for some more shooting - though badly overcast, there was no rain, and it was very lovely and cold for South Florida, at a nice 59 degrees - perfect weather for miles of walking and carrying heavy 200-600mm lenses!  And it resulted in some pretty neat wildlife sightings, too:

 

First thing I got to see was the lovely and beautifully camouflaged American bittern again:

 

The green iguana was less than pleased with the weather - being cold-blooded, they have to get sun to warm up - with the temps in the upper 50s and a cloudy sky, there wasn't much sun to find, so this one turned his skin more black to absorb as much warmth as possible:

 

The big surprise find of the day was this strange camouflaged beast...I've only photographed them 4-5 times in my life, so it was a thrill to find this eastern whip-poor-will sitting quietly on the forest floor:

 

But then it got even cooler.  Just 40 feet away, another eastern whip-poor-will!  To see two in the same day was a first - and also lucky because these birds rarely move at all during the day, meaning you only get to see them from one angle.  Because this one was oriented in a different direction, you get a front view, and now a side view:

 

And though they mostly just sleep all day, being nocturnal, there's one sure-fire way to get one to open its eyes...just have a hawk land in a tree overhead and start calling...this whip-poor-will didn't move an inch, but those eyes went on full alert:

 

As if that wasn't enough for the day...it got even crazier right at the end of the day - a red-shouldered hawk came flying my way with a bird in its talons.  Once I got a chance to see what it was - I was surprised to see a rare bird was the victim - a least bittern...which is a little sad because I strive to see a least bittern, and now there's one less to see:

 

As the infomercials say...'But wait...there's more!'.  As if it wasn't enough to see a hawk flying past with a rare least bittern in its talons, a SECOND red-shouldered hawk saw the meal the first hawk had gotten, and tried to chase it down to steal it:

 

And he just about got it too!  The first hawk managed to keep his catch, and fend off the challenge, but it was a close run:

[ski ww]

There's an action shot you don't see every day, right place at the right time.

[icft]

Royal Caribbean ship leaving Cozumel January 18.

[icft]

Carnival Valor leaving Cozumel January 18

 

Edited January 27, 2022 by icft

[icft]

"Mountains" of northern Belize January 19.

[Oviedo32765]

Cops N' Cars for Kids is an annual fundraiser for the Oviedo-Winter Springs Optimist Club.  It is the largest car show in Central Florida with over 200 of the best classic and modern vehicles.  In addition to the car show, there was a huge turnout from law enforcement and fire departments from around the state with speciality vehicles, helicopters, and K9 units.