This newsgroup seems a bit dead at the moment so I thought I'd pass
along this URL and maybe prod some others into posting images from
their areas ... in June 2004 my wife and I got new digital cameras a
couple of weeks before a trip to Alaska's Pribilof Islands, where we
were planning on photographing puffins and other sea birds. Since one
of the best ways to screw up a trip is to take a new camera you are
unfamiliar with we decided to practice a bit on the local fauna before
heading north.

By becoming members of a local Botanical Garden we could get dawn
access twice a week so we joined and lugged our new cameras and 500 mm
lenses down there to get some practice ... by then it was pretty much
the end of the nesting season and AM temps were rapidly approaching 105
F but we managed to get some decent bird images and decided to do it
again in 2005, starting much earlier in the spring. By the time we
were finished (when it was 110F by 8 AM and few creatures stirred) I
think we actually got better images from our extended "backyard" than
we did in Alaska (though no puffins .

The web site link below has some images from those early AM trips,
which usually lasted from 6-8 AM ... we didn't shoot at zoos or
aviaries or over feeders, just walked carefully around desert gardens
and took pot-luck on whatever wild critters came along, mainly birds
but also snakes and tortoises and balls of fur ... we also found
another spot about 20 minutes from home, where we shot the burrowing
owls frames ... so all of these images were taken a few minutes drive
from home, with the exception of the 'hummingbird-in-flight' shots
taken in Santa Fe, NM in July 2005 over the course of one afternoon and
one morning.

Hope you like these shots ... and what's in YOUR backyard that you
would care to share?

http://members.aol.com/bhilton665/desert/

Bill