What's in YOUR backyard? (photos from the desert)

Jasen wrote:

[...]

I take it you run the place as a B&B?

No! There's enough trouble in feeding and watering myself... :-)


Rob.
--

Rob

hope to take you up on that one day. Keep shooting.

regards

Don
"Rob Davison" wrote in message
...
I wrote:

Looking through those makes me wish (again) that New Zealand
was blessed with a more colourful and varied bird and animal life.

"Don" wrote in message
...

Rob

as a keen photog from across the ditch, I am surprised by your statement
about NZ. You have photographic riches to die for! I am trying to get
the bread to be able to drop over just for your scenery alone. I am told
this by some fairly knowledgeable orno's that when it comes to variety of
bird life, it doesn't get any better than Oz, and I certainly wont
dispute that. However, if you want scenery then your neck of the woods is
pretty bloody good.

Jasen wrote:

I'll second that Rob, and I am an Aussie. NZ is fabulous for senery and
heck, it does still have some pretty good bird life even though it may
not be the same as Oz and you have to really look for it.

What's this, Aussies saying nice things about NZ?
Are you lot getting ready to wipe the sportsfields clean with us
again or something? ;-)

I do take your point (and Bill Hiltons original one) about not taking
what is under your nose for granted.

The scenery is okay and NZ native birds can be interesting in a drab
olive sort of way - but a Tui or a Bellbird can't begin to be
compared to a hummingbird!

We've a few of the European finches established, but only a few.

Thing is, if green grass is all you're used to you'd crawl across broken
glass for a sunset in the 'red centre' or something as exotic and
spectacularly different as Mr Hiltons desert fauna...

I'm fairly lucky with my backyard. We've a place a little like the
one 'Jer' posted about (though without the crowds and without the
huge flocks of migrating birds). My mother spent about 30 years
handrearing, training and free flying exotic parrots. I've scratched
out some ponds with an old secondhand excavator and there are a fair
few wild birds that make use of them now. Plenty of opportunities and
if you frame carefully at sunrise even the neighbours farmed red deer
can almost look like they're wild.

If either of you do make it across the ditch and down this way
(I'm at the cold, wet end) call in and say hello. Same goes for the
northern hemisphere crowd too.

- In case anybody thinks I'm touting for business here there's no set
charge to look round the garden and we don't charge for photographs
(I'm firmly in the 'nobody owns the light' camp). I do enjoy meeting
people who notice and appreciate nature.

http://www.mapleglen.co.nz/

Waterfowl include Oystercatchers, Plovers, Stilts, Scaup, Grey Teal,
Black Swans, Paradise ducks and Blue Herons (plus the ubiquitous
Mallard & Canada Goose).

Parrots free: Lovebirds, Rosellas, Lorrikeets, Kings, Twenty eights
(...what is with that name?), Indian ringnecks, Quarrian.

Native: Tui, Bellbird, Native Pigeon, Fantail, Grey warbler, Waxeye.

A crawl around the rest of my pbase galleries will reveal most of the
above along with my paucity of talent...

Wishing you good light,


Rob.
--

Jer wrote ...

Birdwatchers travel from all over the nation to sit in Allen
Williams' back yard in Pharr, Texas ...

Thanks for posting that ... we hope to visit south Texas in April to
photograph at some of the Lens and Lands sites and will stop by this
place if we have time and can find it A couple in SE Arizona did
something similar a few years back, setting out feeders in their
backyard for their own viewing pleasure (going thru hundreds of dollars
of feed each month) and later welcoming fellow birdwatchers who stopped
by to join them ...

"My wife gets a little tired of the visitors, but for the most
part, they've been respectful," Allen says.

The Arizona couple said they enjoyed having 10-20 fellow enthusiasts in
their backyard each morning but when a national magazine published a
story about them they soon had up to 200-300 people per day trampling
the grass and clogging their toilets, and soon it wasn't fun anymore
.... they eventually had to close the gates and change the number on
their house to discourage folks Hope I get to visit this one before
the party is over.

Bill

This is about 12 miles from my backyard, well it is every winter.
http://www.gllangley.com/geese.htm


"Bill Hilton" wrote in message
ups.com...
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

Wow, pretty nice! Can we park our Mini-RV in your backyard for a while. LOL
Paul Wilson
PhotoStockFile.com


On 1/14/06 10:35 PM, in article , "gll"
wrote:

This is about 12 miles from my backyard, well it is every winter.
http://www.gllangley.com/geese.htm


"Bill Hilton" wrote in message
ups.com...
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

Here's a great blue heron (first I've seen up close) catching a fish
about 45 minutes from home:
http://www.edgehill.net/1/?SC=go.php&DIR=California/Bay-Area/Mt-Tam/2006-01-29-muir-woods/heron&PG=1&PIC=2