Viewing the trail through a different lens

Originally, I was going to title this entry, October 7th, 2021, but people might not understand. Either way, I'm going to have to explain the significance of this date because it pertains to this blog entry. On that date, I took my last photo with my Canon EOS 80D DSLR camera. At the time it was a conscious decision because I was out on a hike in Chiricahua National Monument in southeastern Arizona. I'd noticed that I wasn't getting good quality images mainly because the lighting was harsh and so I switched to my iPhone for the remainder of the trip.

I didn't figure that it would be over 2 and a half years until I picked up that camera again, but it has. What got me thinking about picking the "Big Boy" up again was the videos I took last week of the coyotes that many of you have seen on my Instagram or Facebook feed. Although good, had I had the Canon, I would have been able to zoom in a lot closer to the coyotes than I could with the phone. I'm also not saying that I'm going to go back exclusively to the Canon as there are benefits to both of them, which I will detail below.

I have been taking photos since I was in third grade (so almost 60 years). My parents bought me a camera, probably for my birthday or Christmas that year. It took roll film, so it wasn't a Kodak Instamatic. This one had a steep learning curve to it, especially for an 8 year old, but I was up to the task. Eventually, I bought my first DSLR camera when I became a photographer for my high school yearbook. My wife bought me a better camera as a wedding gift and eventually I made the switch to digital. Needless to say, I've been a photographer for most of my life and I have a love for photography.

Which brings me back to last week when I spotted those coyotes. The iPhone is good, actually great for landscape photos in my opinion. Its zoom has gotten so much better, but you still can't get really close shots of wildlife using the phone. And so I dusted off the "Big Boy" and started looking it over to remember the ins and outs of DSLR. The batteries were dead, so that was the first order of business and then I waited for a good day when I knew I was going to go out on a hike. That ended up being this afternoon and these are three of the shots I took along the way.

With the iPhone, I wouldn't have even bothered with the bird on the trail. It would have been too far away, even with the phone's zoom and if I'd gotten closer, it would have flown away and I wouldn't have much. I would have had the same problem with the butterfly. Animals have proximity zones. You get inside their zone and they take off. With the telephoto lens on my Canon, I can get much closer to get a good shot without entering their proximity zone.

With the gopher snake, I know I wouldn't have been able to get close enough to it to get the tongue shot that I got. I kept getting closer to it and eventually I entered its proximity zone and it turned around and headed into the brush. I'd taken lots of photos of it before it turned around and hightailed it out of there, but I didn't know exactly what I had until I was able to look at the shots on the computer's big screen. I had several good ones, but this one was just fabulous.

So in the long run, I'll continue to use my iPhone for most day to day photos, but the Canon is my "Go To" for wildlife photography.

It's Your World

It's Your World, or more precisely, my world, which is the theme for P.J.'s monthly photo blog. I looked at the photos I took this month, and it really wasn't many, but there were enough photos that show a good portion of my world, and so without further ado, here's my world and welcome to it.

1. Geocaching

I seriously doubt that I could go an entire blog entry talking about things in my life without writing or at least, commenting on geocaching. I spent last weekend in Paso Robles, mostly geocaching, but also attending an outdoor wedding. Needless to say, I had some free time on my hands and so what better way to fill up the time than going out and finding hidden treasures using just a GPS receiver? I mean, it's better than watching football all day.

This particular shot was taken at an earth cache entitled McKittrick Oil Seep. For those of you uninitiated, an earth cache is a geocache where you learn some geology. You answer some questions about the area and hopefully see some cool geology in the process. This one was one of the better ones I've done, as it involved an oil seep similar to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, although not nearly on the scale of the tar pits. The photo shows an oil seep at the side of the road (yes, that's oil, just coming up out of the ground). There were several other seeps on this side as well as several more on the other side of the road. There was also a seep coming up in the middle of the road just to the right of the shot. I had to watch where I was walking since I didn't want to step in any of the oil and get tar on my shoes. One of the questions I had to answer was if I could see any animals trapped in the tar. I didn't see any, but I actually have seen a mourning dove trapped in the muck at the La Brea Tar Pits, which I offered up as part of my answer for that question. 

In the past, I've done earth caches in all different kinds of area, some in caves, many out in the desert, and some at the beach. They are just another aspect of geocaching that I enjoy.

2. Hiking

My goal has been to get at least 5 miles of walking in per day as part of my daily health regimen and hiking in the hills behind my house or elsewhere happens quite frequently in the mix. At the beginning of this month, I wrote about my backpacking trip in the Sierra in August. Most hikes are not that extreme, but most will be strenuous. I want to stay in shape and live a long fruitful life.

I'm planning another geocaching/camping roadtrip next week where I'll be hiking in Saguaro National Park and Chiricahua National Monument, both of which are in Arizona. I had a student about 15 years ago ask me about Chiricahua National Monument and when I told him I'd never been there, he spent the better part of an hour extolling the beauty of that particular spot. When a 13 year old kid is that excited about something outdoors like that, you pay attention and the park has been on my radar ever since. Next week, I'm visiting, actually camping there and will also be doing some hiking.

3. Meep Meep!

Several years ago, we had a roadrunner living in the neighborhood. Apparently, it was living in the backyard of the house across the street from us. Ironically, the first day that I saw it back then, the very next day, I saw a coyote wandering down the street. Coincidence? I think not, but I digress.

Anyway, the roadrunner disappeared after a couple of months. Perhaps it had run out of lizards to eat there and so it had moved on to greener pastures. I like to think that it was just living the life in our little foothill community, enjoying what the neighborhood had to offer. Interestingly, because of the number of times I spied this particular roadrunner, I was able to hear it squawk a couple of times. No, it doesn't beep like a car as Warner Brothers would like you to believe, but I'm thoroughly convinced that the makers of the movie Jurassic Park, patterned the calls of the velociraptors in the movie after roadrunners.

Earlier this month, I was heading out on a hike and I opened our backdoor and what did I see, but this roadrunner sitting on our fence. Fortunately, I didn't spook it and I was able to quickly get my phone out of my pocket and get a couple of shots of it before it hopped the fence and then proceeded to cross the street over to our neighbor's yard. Whether this is the same roadrunner or a different one, I'm not sure but I hope to see it again. 

4. Butterflies

Over the years, there's a certain theme to my photos as I'm an avid wildlife photographer. The neighborhood birds and insects always interest me and I can usually be assured that I'll see some lizards scurrying out of the way as I walk the neighborhood. Then, in the spring and summer months, it's snake season and I'm getting a reputation as the snake whisperer.

But as always, if I can get a shot of a butterfly, I'm all over it. This American Painted Lady was flitting all around my backyard yesterday and once again, I didn't have my Canon handy, so I had to make do with the phone. Surprisingly, I was able to get quite close to this one and get some pretty good close up shots of it. This one wasn't in the best of shape, as you can see by its battered right wing, but it was holding its own quite well. I am curious since the painted lady migration that we get here in Southern California should have already happened. Did this one get knocked off course? Or is this one just a free spirit doing its own thing? This little bit of additional color in the back yard was welcome regardless of where it's supposed to be.

5. And more animals

As noted above, I enjoy taking photos of animals. If I can get the shot, I'll try to do the animal justice. Since it's getting cooler here as we've inched into fall, the snakes aren't out and about anymore, but the tarantulas have started to come out. I spotted this one a couple of days ago on one of my walks. It was just out for a mid morning walk, just like the rest of us. I grabbed a couple of shots and then thought about what I wanted to do next, so I put my foot in front of it hoping that it might crawl over my foot (yeah, I can already hear many of my friends saying out loud, "Are you nuts?").

Well, the spider didn't want to have anything to do with me, so it just stopped and we were pretty much in a stand off, but then I decided to get this shot, since it gave some scale to how large the spider was. In fact, this is actually on the small size for this type of spider, so I'm thinking this is a youngster.

And there you have it. This was my take on the them, "It's Your World" this month. Please stop by P.J.'s blog to see how other people interpreted this photo challenge and please drop a comment below.

And then there were 6

Here's a quick update on our bird situation. Yesterday and today were quite dreary and we got over a tenth of an inch of rain today. I hadn't seen any activity in a couple of days, so I decided to check on the nest. Definitely signs of activity as the nest is more feather-lined, but the most important evidence of activity is the number of eggs. Now, instead of the three that I noted on April 7th, there are 6 individual little eggs. With 14 to 16 day incubation periods, these little guys, if they've been taken care of by their parents correctly should begin hatching in a couple of days.

I will be monitoring, from afar, the progress over the next couple of days. Here's hoping the weather starts to warm up, but we have a 30 to 40% chance of some more rain on Monday, so these little ones are going to be in for a chilly first couple of days of life.

Birds in the Breezeway

About two weeks ago I noticed a bird flitting around in the breezeway between our garage and the main part of our house. Now, there's all sorts of stuff in the breezeway, mostly geocaching stuff, but there's also several containers, boxes, buckets and baskets. This bird, or actually these two birds kept flying in and out of the breezeway and eventually I figured out they were building a nest somewhere in the breezeway. By just sitting there, I also eventually figured out they were building the nest in the wicker basket. The lid to the white plastic bucket in the photo had been casually thrown into the wicker basket and it created a void underneath, with an opening about the size of a small bird, but not large enough for most predators. It was really a perfect place for them to set up housekeeping.

And of course, because I'm me, I had to see what the nest looked like and so I carefully lifted the plastic lid. Immediately, the bird that was sitting on the nest flew off leaving behind a perfectly empty nest. So, they were still in the process of building their home and hadn't settled down to family life yet. I carefully put the plastic lid back down and hoped that I hadn't scared them off from their nest. 

Fortunately, I spotted one of them the next day with more nest building materials, so I knew that their home was still being built and I hadn't scared them off. I'm pretty sure, based on everything that I've researched, that I have a pair of Bewick's Wrens nesting in that wicker basket. For a timeline, the first photo was taken March 27th and the second photo was taken on April 7th.

A couple of days went by and I stopped seeing the birds, so I was worried that they may have abandoned the nest, so I gingerly checked it again. No birds were in the nest, however, as the photo indicates, there were three little eggs now residing there, which meant that momma and papa were probably close by. As you can see by the first photo, they really did pick a choice location, as the spot gets a lot of warmth from the afternoon sun, which means they don't have to spend all their time sitting on the nest. I'm not sure of this particular bird's nesting habits, but I know other birds routinely leave their nests, so it's kind of nice that they're going to be naturally heated while the parents are away.

Last night, April 8th, I was sitting out in the breezeway talking with a friend of mine on the phone and I heard animal rustlings. This, in itself is not surprising, because we have quite a number of different kinds of animals that have come through our back yard from time to time, from squirrels and lizards, to possums, skunks and raccoons, not to mention a flurry of different kinds of birds. So naturally, I looked to my right to see what was making the noise and one of the wrens was sitting on the edge of a plastic bucket about two feet from where its mate was probably sitting on the nest, so I definitely know they're actively taking care of the eggs now too. 

For scale in your own mind, the cup of the nest is about 2.5 inches in diameter with an overall diameter of the nest on the order of about 5 to 6 inches. Although the photo doesn't show it very well, there are three eggs in there and who knows if they've laid some more after that photo was taken a couple of days ago. Incubation for the eggs is roughly 14-16 days, which means they could begin hatching as early as this upcoming Tuesday or as late as the 21st of April. Needless to say, I'll be keeping you posted as we await the chirping of little ones coming from the interior of that wicker basket.

Now I need to dig out the large bird feeder and fill it with some appropriate seed for the parents to use. And I also think that if everything had been put away correctly, they'd be nesting someplace else, so I guess it sometimes pays to be a little bit messy or disorganized.

Hacked

This is not about computer problems, but of things I've seen in my neighborhood park recently. A year ago, we went in to lockdown and this park was pretty much my world for a couple of months. The last photo I took before lockdown was on March 11th and the next photo I took while out on a walk was March 22nd. It was shortly after that date that I started noticing the birds and butterflies in my neighborhood and got out my big camera and started documenting them. This particular park was where a goodly amount of my shots were taken.

In the past week or so, "gardeners" came through and pruned the trees in the park. Please not I put gardeners in quotes, because in my opinion, they did a hack job and I believe the city is just paying them one and done for this job. It's rather obvious that the trees in this park don't get pruned on a regular basis, based upon how they were pruned this time. If you look closely, you can actually see the rubber band that was used when this tree was younger to hold it to the stake. No one was watching and maintaining this tree during the early years and the branch grew around the rubber band. Now that's a week spot on the tree and it's probably a good thing that the branch was cut because it probably would have broken later on. I get it with the trees as the city's tax dollars only stretch so far and this is probably a cheaper fix than to high a full time gardener for each park. So let's just pay someone to trim back the trees every five years or so. What worries me about this is how much is this going to affect the bird habitat that has been established over the past couple of years? 

On my walks recently, I've been able to pick out the calls of the spotted towhees, a bird that I got several good shots of last year, so they're still around. The scrub jays are here as you can always recognize their calls as well. What I haven't noticed yet is the return of the Western bluebird or the Northern Mockingjay. Of course, if my first photo after lockdown was taken until March 22nd, then there's still time for them to come back. This particular shot of a Western bluebird was taken on May 11th. I just hope the habitat they were enjoying this past year wasn't so totally disrupted that they don't come back. I guess time will tell on that one.

Trust me when I write that I will continue to document the birds in the neighborhood as they make their returns from parts unknown.

Keeping busy

It's the end of the month (wow, it almost felt like a normal month) and it's time, once again for P.J.'s monthly photo blogging challenge. This month's theme was keeping busy and the tough part of this month was to narrow down my selections to just five photos and I actually cheated a little bit on one of them since it's a collage, but you'll see why I did it in the story. This is also the 1 year anniversary of my retirement of teaching. May 31st last year was my last day on the job and ironically, I was much busier in the early part of this first year than I am now, but then again, you could say it's a different kind of busy. Here's my five photos interpreting the theme of Keeping Busy.

1. Environmental art

I viewed part of this theme as not necessarily all me keeping busy, but seeing how others are also coping with this. I go on photo walks on a daily basis around my neighborhood and one of the neighbors just up the street from us has been creating some environmental art as a way to keep busy during this strange time we're having. She walks around the neighborhood looking for stones that she can use in her art projects. She told me she has a mental image of what she wants to create and then goes out looking for stones to help her create her image. She glues the stones to a tile and inlays the tile along the sidewalk in front of her house. This is the third of about 7 or 8 she has created over the course of the last month or so. There is a piece depicting a couple canoeing, a child holding a bunch of helium balloons and a couple backpacking. The backpacking piece just showed up this morning and she has room for about 3 or 4 more pieces along this part of her front yard. Since they live on a corner, I'm hoping she continues with this around the other side of their house.

2. Cairns

Another house near us has created cairns using their existing rocks, at least I'm assuming they're only using their existing rocks. But as you can see, they have a lot of rocks in their front yard in which to choose, so I think I'm safe in assuming this. The cairns actually have changed a number of times over the course of the month. I suspect that others in the neighborhood either are attempting to add to the cairns, or are just deliberately toppling them over. Either way, I've noticed that they take different heights and positions, so the owners don't seem to be deterred by their cairns changing shapes. They also have a rather large collection of gnomes and buddhas in the front yard, many of which are also balanced on some of these stones. You can see examples of both of these in the background of my second shot.

3. Angry Bird©

About three weeks ago, I noticed this Angry Bird© plush toy appear in our local park. I figured it would last a day or two before someone would pick it up and take off with it, but it kept showing up every single day in a different part of the park. Eventually, it made its way out to the front of the community center, where I figured, for sure, it will disappear as soon as a worker sees it just lying amongst the shrubbery. Nope, it continued to be busy and move around and I started documenting its movements as it spent each day in a different part of the park. Several times, I thought it was gone, but it showed up again, or I'd just missed it the last time I was out walking in the park. The park is a fairly large park and there's lots of nooks and crannies in which to hide something like this, but someone or several someones are having fun kicking it around. I guess that's why it's probably an Angry Bird©.

I thought about taking it myself and making a photo journey of it as I wandered about the park, but my wife convinced me that the spirit of the Angry Bird© was that it needed to just move naturally, by others, not manipulated by me, so I left it for others to move around. The only manipulation I did with the bird was to place it upright before taking its photo.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to spot it for the last four days and I'm worried that it might have flown the coop. It's gone MIA previously since I first noticed it in the park, but this has been the longest period of time that I haven't been able to see it somewhere in the park. Ironically, the last time I did see it was back in the far reaches of the park, that very few people go to, so I don't think it was regular foot traffic doing it in. There is a day care on the other side of the fence from where I last saw it so perhaps someone thought it was from there and tossed it over the fence. I went and looked over the fence this morning to see if I see it, but it didn't appear to be there. Hopefully, it'll show up shortly in another part of the park, but if it doesn't, I hope whoever took it will give it a good home.

4. Birds

In this post, I talked about the different kinds of birds I've been noticing in the neighborhood. I've been keeping myself busy rediscovering my DSLR and the main subject over the past couple of months have been birds. The same park where the plush toy had been found is also a great area to go bird watching. I discovered why one day while I wasn't in the park, but the day that I took this shot of a western bluebird. This shot was taken in the front yard of a house that abuts to the rear end of the park. On the park side is a nice fifth of a mile trail that winds in and out of some citrus and juniper trees. Five times around and you've walked a mile and probably seen a lot of nature.

Still, I kept thinking there seemed to be an inordinate amount of birds back in this area. Then I started noticing a peacock call. Hmmmm. So as I was out walking, I spotted the bluebird and got several good shots of it and the owner of the house came out and we had a nice conversation about birds in general. And yeah, he has a peacock in his back yard and so spreads seed around quite generously, which attracts other birds including the western bluebird pair.

So because of the neighbor keeping busy taking care of his own flock, I've been kept busy taking wildlife photos. We sort of have a symbiotic relationship, although he's not really getting much from me, but I seem to benefitting greatly. As noted in my other post, my overall knowledge of birds has increased in the last couple of months and I've been able to up my photography game as well. It's keeping me busy and I'll take that. Walking around outside is much better that sitting home inside on your butt all day long.

5. Speaking of butts

This particular nesting site is in the opposite direction of the park where I take most of my bird shots, but the acorn woodpeckers holing up here some to like this particular tree. There are a couple of different nests inside this tree, not all of which are acorn woodpeckers. 

Over the course of my many daily walks, I'd see the woodpeckers  flying to and fro from other trees back over to this one, but could never spot where their nest was until one day a week ago, when I came upon the tree from a different angle than what I'd normally been approaching the tree. That made all the difference in the world. I watched one of the two parents swoop down from a neighboring palm tree, alight on the trunk of the tree and then quickly disappear inside the hole. I feel fortunate that I was actually able to get this shot, but those two parental birds were busy flying here and there taking care of their young. I guess it's a concentrated burst of parenting as opposed to a longer period that we do over the childhood of our own offspring.

And there you have it, my five photos interpreting the theme Keeping Busy. Please stop by P.J.'s blog and check out some of the other photographer's interpretation of the same theme.

Bird Watching

As noted in my last post, I don't claim to be a bird expert. I have a book that I rely on for most of my identifications and when I can't figure out what I've seen with my camera, I turn to several people on-line who I know are more well versed than I in identifying birds. What I have noticed during my daily walks is there seems to be a lot more birds out and about. It's either that, or I'm just more aware of them because I'm walking nearly the same route every day now.

Before "shelter in place" I would do more of a hike than a neighborhood walk. I saw things, but because of the areas I would walk I can honestly say I wasn't looking for the subtle beauty of small birds, but more likely the overall beauty of a landscape shot. That's one thing I've been working on since this confinement took hold. I've not been able to hike my normal routes, so I've found other areas that I know have wildlife and go back to those repeatedly in the hopes of getting some good shots, like this shot I took a couple of weeks ago of a lesser goldfinch.

I've actually learned where I can find certain birds. I know where the western bluebirds hang out and can usually get a shot or two every day I go there. A couple of weeks ago, I saw a pair of spotted towhees and a friend of mine told me they are usually heard, not seen, so I guess I was lucky. Except that I now know what their call sounds like and it actually alerted me to their being around. Because I've become more aware of bird calls, I now know what spotted towhees sound like and I've been able to get photos of them more than once.

This morning, I spotted this California scrub jay as it was searching the area for food. I'm not sure if that's a peanut that someone left, or if it's just a large seed from a nearby plant, but I learned today that these kinds of jays can still vocalize quite well, even with food in their bills. It gives an entirely different meaning to "don't talk with your mouth full." 

The jays tend to hangout in a certain spot in the neighborhood. Multiple times I've gone back to a certain spot and found several scrub jays hanging out looking for food. The mockingbirds and sparrows, on the other hand, seem to be just about anywhere and my wanderings have also alerted me to where a nest of acorn woodpeckers are. I have seen the mother and father coming to and fro from the hole in the top of this particular tree and I've heard the babies every time either parent shows up with a mouthful of food, but I have not been able to get a shot of them yet. They are pretty quick and the hole in the top of the tree is difficult to spot. I think I need to bring a ladder out sometime to get me closer to the action, but I think the neighbors might find that a little strange, especially since the tree is a couple of blocks away from where I live.

Suffice to say, you might expect to see more bird photos in the next couple of posts, mainly because I'm getting a lot of birds at the moment.

My World

I don't participate every month is P.J.'s Monthly photo blog, but this month's theme (Your World) made for a fairly easy set of photos. I know I really should attempt them every month, so I'll try to do better in the coming months. I've picked up my DSLR again since I've been in "shelter and place" and I have a lot of photos to choose from this month. I think I could probably come up with at least 10 different shots, just from my walks around the neighborhood over the past month, but here's my 5 that captures my world this month.

1. Weathervane

I'm a sucker for cool things like sundials and weathervanes. This particular weathervane is located on top of a house north of me, but in the same general neighborhood. Since I don't take the same route, I don't see this every day, but I noticed it early in the month and thought I really should take a photo of it, since it represents some interesting architecture, especially for Southern California. You don't see too many of these and I like that it gives off a New England kind of vibe. The only give away is the palm tree in the lower left hand corner of the shot. I could have edited that out, but that would have meant cropping some of the cupola out and I wanted that to be the main focus of the shot, and so the palm tree remains.

I remembered the next time I was out to take a photo of it, but the quality of the iPhone shot wasn't what I considered good enough, so I ended up throwing those shots away. I don't take the DSLR out every day, so the next time I walked around the neighborhood with the DSLR, I made sure to walk up that particular street. Because the weather had changed, we had some clouds in the sky which made for a more pleasing background to the shot.

2. Amusement Park

Twenty years ago, I was really into Roller Coaster Tycoon and particularly, Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (RCT2). The game is one of many out on the market that allows you to play amusement park scenarios, while creating an amusement park, maintaining a budget, building roller coasters of various kinds and making sure your peeps are happy. The thing about Tycoon 2 that made it so good as you could also create buildings into your park and really make your park look like the real deal, with interesting architecture and themed areas.

There are other programs out on the market now, but there's also OpenRCT2 which emulates RCT2 perfectly as long as you have the original disks, however it also comes with enhancements that allow you to play in Sandbox mode. In other words, instead of playing scenarios, you can just create your own landscape and build your own park. Needless to say, I've been playing a lot of OpenRCT2 the last couple of months and this is a screen shot of a flying roller coaster (one where the peeps lay down and it makes it feel like they're flying) that I built in one of my sandbox mode games.

3. Family FaceTime

Our immediate family is spread out with some in the Bay Area of California and the rest of us down here in Southern California. Under normal circumstances, I probably would have visited my daughter when she had her birthday at the end of last month, but couldn't due to shelter in place, so we FaceTimed. That has grown into a weekly event so that everyone can touch bases with each other and enjoy each others' company. My daughter suggested that we have weekly themes. Last week, it was crazy hats, this week, it was Toga. It's amazing what a couple of actual olive branches from the tree in the back yard and a sheet will do to help you win the theme for the week. 

This image got posted on Facebook earlier this week and everyone has had a good laugh at my expense, but it was worth it. I got my wife to smile/laugh in the background of the photo as well, so it's all good.

4. Ornithology

I don't claim to be an expert on birds, but I do have an interest in them and with spring here, there are lots of birds out and about, probably more due to the lack of people out and about. If the theme for the month had been birds, I would have been able to have five different kinds of birds with ease. I have a book that was published by the National Geographic Society entitled Field Guide to the Birds of North America and it has been quite helpful in letting me identify most of the birds I've seen while out on walks around the neighborhood. This spring, I've seen California Towhees, Spotted Towhees, a Cooper's hawk, hummingbirds, scrub jays, two different kinds of sparrows, two different kinds of finches, and several Western Bluebirds, such as this one who posed ever so nicely on a branch in the park just north of my house. 

I'm pretty sure the Spotted Towhees and the Bluebirds are both nesting in some trees in the park. A friend of mine says that I've been lucky with the Spotted Towhees as they are usually heard and not seen, but I've been able to spot them on two different occasions. There are more than just a couple of bluebirds in the park. I've seen at least three different ones, which is why I'm fairly certain they're nesting somewhere in the park as well.

5. Earth Day

This year was the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day. I was in 6th grade at the time, so yeah, I know I'm old. Once again, under ordinary circumstances, I probably would have celebrated in some other way than sheltering in place, but there's not much I could do at this particular time. And so I take photos.

Besides birds, the insects are also out in force, particularly, the ladybugs. Insects and creepy crawlies give me different sorts of challenges, as unlike birds, you can usually get quite close to insects. I've been using a variety of lenses to take photos of ladybugs, honeybees, bumblebees, butterflies and other assorted insects and arachnids. This particular shot I used my 250 zoom macro lens to get up close and personal with a couple of bugs doing what nature intended them to do. I'm very pleased with the focus on this particular shot.

And that, my friends, is my interpretation of the theme, "Your World" for P.J.'s Monthly Photo Blogging challenge. Please click on the link and see how other people interpreted the theme of their world. As always, please feel free to comment. I won't bite.

Bluebirds

We have several kinds of blue colored birds here in Southern California. The most common one that I've seen where we live is the California Scrub Jay, a brilliantly blue colored bird with a raucous screech. They inhabit the foothills of our local mountains and are found in abundance. As you move upslope in the mountains, you'll start to encounter the Stellar's Jay, which is similar to the Scrub Jay, except that the Stellar's Jay has a crest on its head and its head is colored all black.

A couple of days ago, I was wandering around in the park just north of my house, keeping my social distance from others enjoying the nice spring weather. I heard first, then saw this pair of Western Bluebirds. There were actually two pairs of them and I ended up getting shots of both females and one of the males. There are three types of bluebirds in the United States, Eastern, Western, and Mountain bluebirds. Eastern and Western are similar looking, but the Mountain bluebirds are almost totally blue, which is how I knew these were Western bluebirds because of their orange tinged belly feathers. I was able to get several really good shots of the females, but this is the best one I could get of the male as he was playing hard to get with my camera. Sometimes that happens when you're dealing with the natural world.