More o’ dem birds


While World Migratory Bird Day yielded just one bird for me, the previous couple of days were a lot more productive, as my brother and I did a short trip out to Washington, North Carolina, and points further east. Here on the waterfront of the town, a nest box for purple martins (Progne subis) shows a lot of activity, in a prime location where there were plenty of riverside read more

A lot of bird photos

On an outing back, once again, to Jordan Lake (we’re in a rut) this past Friday, the bird activity was higher than it’s been all year, so far anyway, but unfortunately a bit distant. I shot a very large number of frames, but probably better than half will be discarded too much of it was either trying to snag the actions of a distant subject that couldn’t be seen read more

April? I thought you left already

April is now toddling off into the past, never to be seen again or at least not for another eleven months depending on your interpretation (or remaining perpetually according to yet another,) and so we arrive at the end of the month abstract. Which looks amazingly like thus:


The sunset didn’t perform all that well this day, but the double-crested cormorant (Nannopterum read more

That’s a bit better

I was out on two photo excursions earlier this week, and the first made me distinctly aware that something was wrong with my autofocus. Well, mine was all right, but the camera’s was off noticeably, for damn near every frame. I provide some examples:


This is full-frame, and while it’s taken at 600mm, the osprey (Pandion haliaetus) wasn’t that far away – read more

Not from Earth Day

I have not been staying on top of the various April holidays, and today (which is indeed Earth Day) is rainy and blergh out there, so we’ll have a variety of photos obtained earlier that I finally got around to editing. Let’s see, let’s see, what have I been taking recently?


Over at the neighborhood pond, a trio of yellow-bellied sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) read more

Birds and snakes, an aeroplane…

… and Lenny Bruce is not afraid.

Now that I have that earworm firmly established, let’s get to the pics.


A few days back we got a ton of water dumped on us here in central NC, like most of the country I believe, right after temperatures had gotten above 25°c, then dropped precipitously (sorry) during and after the rains. Yesterday, with the sun out and the temperature read more

Shipping out

Yes, another month is kaput, and that means a photo dedicated solely to this, because it’s a tradition on the blog now and we all know how important such things are. That’s right, not at all even slightly a little bit. But we’re still gonna do it, as if extra-terrestrials aren’t watching us and shaking their cephalothoraxes.


Yeah, we’ve had similar before, read more

A low bar

As mentioned earlier, Friday’s outing also produced some sunset colors – more so than normal, but that’s not hard to do in this region of NC, at least. Somebody set the ‘Clearing’ setting for the sky to ‘Sunset’ and so the skies are typically wiped free of clouds at about that time. This time around, the cache was a bit slow in emptying and there remained read more

On our way

While we had several warm spells far earlier than normal, interspersed with some overnight lows dropping below freezing, I think spring is getting a toehold now, and the critters and plants are on schedule. The Insoluble Mr Bugg and I went down to Jordan Lake Friday for a late afternoon and sunset shoot, and there were a few subjects to be found, though it’s not quite the active season yet. read more

Mixed luck

Widely mixed, even.

So Buggato and I had another outing yesterday, once again to Jordan Lake because, while plants are indeed budding out around here, full bloom is a ways off meanwhile, we’re keeping an eye on bird activity at the lake. And in some cases, it was active.


While seeing double-crested cormorants (Nannopterum auritum) is fairly easy down there, yesterday read more

1 2 3 4 5 10