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

Bill Hilton wrote:

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

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


Beautiful photographs and I particularly like your innovative
'thumbnail is a crop' presentation.

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

I've been photographing a fantails nest (a very small insect eater).
This is the third batch of chicks they've reared in the nest this
season already and it's still high summer here.

The nest is located in rafters of an old dairy shed festooned with
clematis so light levels even on a bright sunny afternoon are very low.

Image quality consequently isn't great (shallow DOF, high ISO,
borderline shutter) but perhaps someone will find the sequence
interesting all the same?

http://www.pbase.com/mapleglen/image/54217914


Rob.
--

On 1 Jan 2006 09:51:32 +0100, Rob Davison
wrote:

The nest is located in rafters of an old dairy shed festooned with
clematis so light levels even on a bright sunny afternoon are very low.

Image quality consequently isn't great (shallow DOF, high ISO,
borderline shutter) but perhaps someone will find the sequence
interesting all the same?

http://www.pbase.com/mapleglen/image/54217914


Very nice. A warm and intimate feeling with the light effects.


Cyli
r.bc: vixen. Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli
email: lid (strip the .invalid to email)

Bill Hilton wrote:
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



I caught this article just this morning...


Birds take to city life at sanctuary
------------------------------------

PHARR, Texas – Allen Williams loves his solitude, but he loves company,
too. And he finds both on his 2 1/2-acre refuge in the middle of Pharr,
in the Rio Grande Valley. The bird lover and professional landscaper
created a wildlife sanctuary in his back yard.

Birdwatchers travel from all over the nation to sit in Allen Williams'
back yard in Pharr, Texas, and watch for migratory birds to perch in the
trees and bushes.

Allen planted 55 species of trees, shrubs and plants, put in waterfalls
and sprinklers, plus food sources.

The lower Rio Grande Valley is a major migratory flyway, but would birds
stop here, just blocks from downtown, as Allen hoped?

Yes! In 1992, a slate-throated redstart landed – a first for this part
of the country. Cedar waxwings were spotted.

In 2004, a Central American species, the black-headed nightingale
thrush, came calling. It was the first ever spotted in the United States
and was way north of its usual migration stop. When word of the sighting
hit the Internet, Allen got calls from across the country. Soon his back
yard was filled with birdwatchers. It's been a refuge for birds and
humans ever since.

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

Migratory warblers and robins, even hawks, are fairly common sights in
the yard, while rabbits, lizards and an occasional opossum scamper along
the ground.

Ruth Hoyt, a renowned professional wildlife photographer, stops at
Allen's yard monthly. Sometimes, she comes alone with her cameras; other
times, photography students accompany her.

"The habitat, amount of ground cover and canopy are conducive to
attracting birds," Ruth says. She has captured many of Allen's rare
species on film.

The busiest months at Allen's sanctuary are October and April, but
there's usually something to see year round. It's free, though he asks
for a $10 donation to maintain the grounds.

A rare blue mockingbird stops by on occasion, and you just never know
who else you'll run into.

"We have people who come here from around the world," says Allen.

So migratory birds are watching migratory folks (and vice versa) in one
bird lover's back yard, in the middle of a city.


--
jer
email reply - I am not a 'ten'

"Roger N. Clark (change username to rnclark)" wrote in
message ...
Regarding a "cruise to Hawaii", I assume you mean a cruise between
islands after you fly there, correct? While I do know the
islands fairly (I lived there for 7 years). I have never done
a Hawaiian cruise, but I can answer other questions about
Hawaii.

I mean a Hawaii cruise that starts and ends in Los Angeles. My wife has been
wanting a trip to the islands for a long time, and I said "When they build a
bridge." I then found out that you can cruise from either LA or San Diego,
so no bridge required!

Only 5 days in the islands, one day each at five different ports. I have
signed up for a glass bottom boat ride, a windowed submarine, and a snorkle
trip in the various ports, and bus tours also, but I don't know what to
expect. I have ordered an Aquapac camera bag that is supposed to allow
underwater use of small cameras, but I worry about quality. We take pictures
to just document and refresh our memories of what we see as we travel, so
really good is not a requirement, but I do like clear, in-focus prints.

Lewie

Bill

great stuff. I think we all too often overlook our back yards. Hope your
trip goes well.

regards

Don from Down Under.
"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

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.

regards

Don

Mmmm..........must be something about grass and a fence.


"Rob Davison" wrote in message
...
Bill Hilton wrote:

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

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


Beautiful photographs and I particularly like your innovative
'thumbnail is a crop' presentation.

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

I've been photographing a fantails nest (a very small insect eater).
This is the third batch of chicks they've reared in the nest this
season already and it's still high summer here.

The nest is located in rafters of an old dairy shed festooned with
clematis so light levels even on a bright sunny afternoon are very low.

Image quality consequently isn't great (shallow DOF, high ISO,
borderline shutter) but perhaps someone will find the sequence
interesting all the same?

http://www.pbase.com/mapleglen/image/54217914


Rob.
--

"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.

regards

Don

Mmmm..........must be something about grass and a fence.


"Rob Davison" wrote in message
...
Bill Hilton wrote:

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

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


Beautiful photographs and I particularly like your innovative
'thumbnail is a crop' presentation.

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

I've been photographing a fantails nest (a very small insect eater).
This is the third batch of chicks they've reared in the nest this
season already and it's still high summer here.

The nest is located in rafters of an old dairy shed festooned with
clematis so light levels even on a bright sunny afternoon are very low.

Image quality consequently isn't great (shallow DOF, high ISO,
borderline shutter) but perhaps someone will find the sequence
interesting all the same?

http://www.pbase.com/mapleglen/image/54217914


Rob.
--



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.

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.

Personally, I'm a firm believer in finding something to photograph no
matter where I am, including home. When the weather is especially crappy
that might mean literally *in* my house :-)

I ticked off a gal in another group a while back...she lived in Iowa or
somewhere in the midwest and was complaining that there was nothing to
photograph there but those big field sprinklers. I told her that she
quite simply wasn't looking hard enough or, for that matter, looking at
all.

Traveling to make photographs is always going to be a crapshoot. You
have no real way of being sure of what the weather is going to do. You
aren't close to familiar enough with the area to know where the really
"good" spots are. You could easily plunk down a pile of money on getting
there, hotels, car rental, eating out, etc. and not get a single shot
that you wanted to get. You have none of these problems staying close to
home, you don't have to pay for a plane ticket, rent a pillow, or worry
that you'll get sick from the food. You can look out your window and
decide if the light is what you want or not, and if it's not, there's
always all day the next day. You can spend a weekend driving around
finding new spots and you can do that the next weekend and the next and
the next. You can buddy up to people who spend a lot of time on the road
or in the field. My day job is pushing trucks in the oilfield. My guys
let me know when they spot just about anything. I get phone calls all
the time telling me, "Hey, there's a big herd of whatever X miles east
of town". I have a photographer friend who's pals with a BLM ranger
here, he gets a call when they do wild horse roundups. Somebody who's
just passing through here, they don't have this kind of information
available to them. It makes perfect sense that the best photographs
you'll make are photographs taken in an area that you know like the back
of your hand.


--
Angela M. Cable
Paint Shop Pro 8, 9, X Private Beta Tester
Neocognition, digital scrapbooking source:
http://www.neocognition.com/

PSP Tutorial Links:
http://www.psplinks.com/

5th Street Studio, free graphics, websets and mo
http://www.fortunecity.com/westwood/alaia/354/

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.
--

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

Not all of us are *******s you know......except when we're losing a match
;-)



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.
--

Nice garden Rob. Must be a lot of work at times!
I do intend to come south to the land of the long white cloud sooner or
later. Won't promise I'll be visiting though.....but appreciate the
invite.....I take it you run the place as a B&B?
Jasen