Testing

This is a test.  Hmmm, perhaps Blogger is now playing with Picasa again.  I shot this bald eagle this morning while on my way to the Earth Day celebration at Oscar Scherer State Park.  I drove around a corner and there he was, feasting on a roadkill armadillo.  I couldn't pull over fast enough, believe me.  I started shooting as soon as I got out of the car, but he flew off before I could get too close.  But then I noticed that there were two eagles feasting on the armadillo, and the second one didn't seem to pay me too much mind.  I was able to get within about thirty feet without spooking him, and even walk around to the side where the light was best.  With my long lens, I was able to get right up on him and crop out the road in the background.  Very, very cool.

Shutdown

In anticipation of the government shutdown tonight at midnight, they've already gone and drained the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Hopefully they'll reach an agreement on the budget and be able to refill it. I guess if midnight comes and goes without a budget, they'll retract the Washington Monument into the ground and lower the garage doors between the columns on the Lincoln Memorial so no one will be able to look at them. Unfortunately, with the limited walking around DC I was able to do yesterday after arriving, it looks like they've already had to remove most of the cherry blossoms from the trees, as well as most of the green leaves. Now that's a tight budget!

(Problems still persist with Blogger not talking to Picasa.  Pictures may not display properly.  If they appear cut off, try clicking on them to see the full picture.  Google claims to be working on the issue.)

The Pentagon Pictures

OK, long story short. I'm in DC for the weekend. My first stop after getting off the plane at Reagan National was two stops up the blue line at the Pentagon. I went to the 9/11 memorial on the far side of the building. I shot some pictures of the benches that make up the memorial, then I started taking some shots of the block on the side of the Pentagon itself that is engraved September 11, 2001. After only ten or so pictures, a policeman wanders over and tells me I can't take pictures of the Pentagon and demands that I delete all my pictures. After a few half-hearted arguements, I comply.


But as I sulk away, I think to myself, those pictures aren't really deleted, they're just marked as deleted. So I pop out that chip and put in another one to shoot in any direction but the building. When I got back to my friends house tonight, I downloaded some recovery software, and viola! There are the deleted pictures. And here are three of the pictures that the Pentagon police didn't want you to see. Threat to National security? Hardly. Just some shots of a charred piece of sandstone through a pentagonal hole in an iron fence. Enjoy!

5 & 6

I went to the big airshow in Lakeland this weekend, Sun-N-Fun, second largest in America, and maybe the world. Five different visits over three days may be a bit too much for any one human, but I did it. I'll post pictures as I get time, but this shot of the Blue Angels in a perfectly angled dirty pass may be my favorite of all that I took. Enjoy!

Hmmm, the picture isn't showing up.  Stupid Picassa/Blogger issues again.  I think I've got it posted via another link, but let me know if you can't see the picture.

The Big Moon

Perhaps you heard some of the commotion about this past Saturday's full moon being the biggest one in 18 years or some variation there-of. Turns out that because the moon's orbit isn't perfectly circular, it occasionally gets closer to Earth, and that's what happened during this full moon. So it appeared to be about 14% larger in the sky, which is really not enough of a difference to tell with the naked eye. But it was nice and bright, and it gave me an excuse to go out and shoot some pictures. I wish I had remembered earlier in the day, I would have tried to get a nice cityscape or something with the moon in it. I spotted it rising over the middle of the road I was driving down, and it was quite the impressive site, but there wasn't enough time to whip the camera out and shoot it. This shot was from about 20 minutes later as it finally rose over the other condo buildings in my complex. Everywhere I looked, people were outside looking at the giant moon. But I was the only one with a long lens trained on it. :)

Happy Anniversary To Me

Today marks the sixth anniversary of my blog.  Since this day back in 2005, I've been bringing you all sorts of stuff from old  records to photos of neat things and places to more Christmas music than you can shake a stick at.  I don't think a sixth anniversary is all that auspicious, so I'm not going to write up some big huge retrospective or make a series of lists commemorating my 10 favorite posts or ten favorite pictures or any such nonsense.  Just a quick note to pat myself on the back, and to say thank you to all of you for visiting.  Here's to six more years!

Head Down

I don't know when the last time I showed you a grasshopper was, so here's one for you. I didn't turn the picture over because that's the way I shot him last weekend at Robinson Preserve. These guys don't hold still for long, so I was more than happy to take what I could get, right or wrong side up.

Back At Work

Here's another shot of that hawk that hangs around at work sometimes. Here he's sitting on top of the power pole behind the building, looking back at me as if he didn't want his picture made. He must have decided shortly thereafter that he really didn't want me to take his picture, because he flew off and I didn't see him again anytime soon.

Sibling Rivalry

I'm still fighting with Blogger to try and get it to post pictures directly from Picassa. This one is acting like it's going to work, so perhaps I've fixed it. Maybe. Anyhow, I took this picture a couple of weekends ago at the Venice Rookery, a great place to spy on birds as they raise their young. In this case, it's a great blue heron with some loud youngsters. You can easily pick out the youngsters as they're the ones with the crazy haircuts. I guess all kids are the same across the different species.

Mutual Of Ernie's Wild Kingdom

Sometimes, you just get a lucky shot. I had waded into the water a short ways yesterday at Robinson Preserve to get a picture of an osprey. As I was shooting him, I heard some people in kayaks behind me describing some fins in the water, wondering if they were sharks or dolphins. Since I was in the water already, I hoped they were dolphins, and that turned out to be the case. The osprey flew away and I turned my attention to where these fins were, and suddenly the water just offshore seemed to explode with activity. I pointed my camera in the right direction and saw a couple of dolphin fins sticking up from the shallow water. I started tracking them and shooting, and this is what I got. Two dolphins were playing with some fish, sheepshead to be exact. As you can see in this shot, he's tossed the fish completely out of the water. Those two pelicans saw what was going on and were high-tailing it to the spot to try and get some free lunch out of the deal. I kept shooting the dolphins for as long as I could, but this was the only time I caught them with a fish out of the water. It was a pretty impressive sight.  I'd post more pictures, but Picasa still isn't working with Blogger.  Must be a problem on my end.

Blogger v/s Picasa

Well, I'd made plans to throw up some more pictures tonight, another band from Rockabilly Ruckus, some shots from the Cortez Commercial Fishing Festival this past weekend, maybe some new shots of the hawk at work, and even some really far away shots of today's launch of Space Shuttle Discovery, but Picasa won't talk to Blogger to upload pictures.  I hate when that happens.  Maybe it's just something wrong with my computer, but I've tried all sorts of stuff from rebooting to clearing the cache, and nothing seems to change the behavior.  Maybe things will be better tomorrow.  Until then, I apologize for the lack of new stuff.  I had such a great week going, too.

Rockabilly Ruckus-Act Three

The third act of the night was actually a repeat of the first act, the one I skipped over earlier. It was a group of five pre-pubescent girls who dressed up and sang some songs to a pre-recorded tape. No idea how they got added to a bill of hardcore rockabilly acts, but they were cute. Closest they came to actually singing a rockabilly song was Jailhouse Rock. Other than that it was pop songs from Rockin' Robin to We Got The Beat. The audience sang along and everybody got a big kick out of it. They even snuck in a few costume changes. I imagine there were some proud parents in the audience.

Mossy Sunset

Here's a quick view of sunset through a moss covered oak tree, shot the same day as most of the bird pictures I showed you today. This was over a month ago, but I'm just now getting around to sharing the pictures. I think I take way too many pictures, since it takes me months sometimes to find time to sift through them. Hope you enjoy the sights, though.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I don't think I've ever seen this many turkeys together. Right alongside the trail on afternoon at Circle B Bar Preserve, there they were. I couldn't even get them all into one shot. There are more of them to the left of this frame.

This was as close as I could get to them, and that was with a 400mm lens. I tried to give them a wide berth and get in front of them, but they wouldn't have anything to do with me.

Before I could get around them, they took off running, and just a second or two after I took this shot, they were airborne and gone.

When A Body Meets A Body

I wish I'd gotten a better picture of this encounter, but I'll take what I can get. While walking down a path at Circle B Bar Preserve in Lakeland, I spotted a raccoon up ahead. He crossed the path and disappeared. Couple minutes later I hear the unmistakable shuffle of an armadillo in the weeds, and soon I spot him. But I wasn't the only one who spotted him. The raccoon popped his head out of wherever he was hiding and started watching the armadillo as well. I'd hoped the encounter would last a little longer, or that the two would get closer and perhaps there would be some sort of altercation, but it wasn't meant to be. Having satisfied his curiosity, the raccoon disappeared again and the armadillo went on his merry and somewhat oblivious way, probably never having noticed either myself or the raccoon.

Red-Shoulder

I may as well throw in a red-winged blackbird for you while I'm posting bird pictures. Nice light on this one, you can see the black feathers quite nicely. Sometimes they just show up as black blobs with a red and gold spot, but this one came out nice. Again, from the Circle B Bar Preserve in Lakeland.

Snow Bird

Yes, we have lots of pelicans in Florida, but not like this, or at least not all of the time. Most of the year, Florida is populated by brown pelicans, but during the cold months, we get large flocks of these white pelicans down from up north. They seem to prefer the fresh water, but you will occasionally find them in salt water. Brown pelicans are the opposite, they like the salt, but sometimes you'll see some inland where the water is fresh. They're just all mixed up somehow. As you can see, the white ones aren't entirely white, they've got some black accents under the wings that gives them a distinctive look when they're flying. And that bump on the beak is some sort of sex thing. The males get it during breeding season, and then it goes away. Perhaps the females find it attractive.

Caw!

It's really hard to get a good picture of a crow. They're all black and the exposure rarely comes out correct. I think this one is pretty good. The iridescence in the feathers is a nice touch. But what can I say, it's still just a common crow. Or is it? I think a crow has a stubbier, darker beak. What does that make this? I'm thinking it's a grackle, a boat-tailed grackle to be specific, a male boat-tailed grackle to be even more specific. So many birds, so little difference.

Little Bit o' Tern

Hailing again from the Circle Bar B Preserve in Lakeland, this is a bittern. You don't see these guys very often, yet in just a few feet of trail, I spotted three of them, getting decent shots of two. Hard to tell from the pictures, but these guys are frozen in place, hoping that you won't notice them in the weeds. Well, I say frozen. They will actually sway back and forth a little, trying to mimic the motion of the weeds in the wind. It sort of reminds me of a house cat that thinks it's hidden, but selective breeding has caused it not to be very well camouflaged. Anyhow, just another bird in what must seem like an endless parade of them around here. And yes, there are more to come.

M R Ducks

Trolling though all the photos I took last month but never shared, I'm into the ones from Circle B Bar Preserve in Lakeland, Florida. More birds up there than you can shake a stick at, but I gave it the old college try. These ducks were standing in formation on a dead tree for some reason. You never can really tell what's going through a ducks mind. But I thought it made a neat picture.