Around The Yard

I haven't taken a lot of pictures lately.  I thought I  might try my hand at it.... get a bit of practice. Clicking on these photos will open them in a new window on Flickr and will give you a slightly larger view of the pictures.

I love cloud watching.  I liked how the clouds swirled.   It did not rain.. just a few clouds around. 

Those are the gourds we put up years ago for purple martins. The purple martins scouted, but chose not to nest.  A pair of Great-Crested Flycatchers have nested in the gourds every year.  They poke nesting material in each gourd in hopes that you won't figure out which nest their babies are in.  The nests usually contain a snake skin.  The parents are very mindful of humans and will usually fly into the trees if a human is seen. They nest in April and leave sometime in August.  I do not know where they migrate to and from.

A Ruby-Throated Hummingbird visiting the feeder.  The feeder is in the shade most of the day.  It is difficult to get a good picture of one.  I think this one turned out okay.

I encourage you to visit my friend Dorothy's blog Counting My Blessings and watch her video of the hummingbirds feeding right out of her hand.  Just amazing!

We only have the one family of hummingbirds and they usually have two babies.  This is the time of the year they go into a feeding frenzy.  I wish we had as many as Dorothy.



This Northern Cardinal seems to be saying "do you mind?".  I was in the house with the windows closed and my really long lens on my camera aimed through the dirty windows.  Birds have the most amazing hearing... they hear every click of the camera.  They have great vision too.

I hope you enjoyed these snapshots.  I enjoyed taking them :-)

Clouds -- The Seven Wonders Of The World - Saturday Evening Post

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Clouds --

I was reading in The Saturday Evening Post this morning an article about clouds entitled The Cloud Watchers (click the link and you can read part of the article). The article brought me back to my childhood days when we would lie on the grass in the backyard and look up into the sky and find people, animals and objects in the clouds. Oh what fun we had with our imaginations! With our children I did the same thing with them. It was such a joy to listen to them as they found teddy bears, hearts, tanks (you know the military kind) and even Wonder Woman!

On our trip out west last year (seems funny to say that; it seems like only yesterday) I was cloud watching and I espied The Star Trek Enterprise... beam me up Scotty! Sometimes I get a bit excited about seeing things and forget I have a camera, so no picture of that cloud.

The picture below is one of my favorite cloud pictures from our trip. It was taken at one of the thermal pool areas at Yellowstone National Park .



We had fair-weather clouds for a bit and then the dark clouds started rolling in. We managed to eat our picnic lunch before the rain hit.

At the end of the article in The Saturday Evening Post were a few links to sites about clouds. One of the links is to Cloudman . I read over Mr. Day's Tips on Photography . On this page he is talking of a film camera, but it all applies to a digital camera too.

The hardest part of photography for me is composition. For some people it is just natural... for me I have to think about it.

More links from the article:

• Cloud Appreciation Society

• For Spacious Skies

Also for sky pictures you might want to take a look at NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day .

I want to share a video that was sent to me. I really liked it and hope you enjoy it too.




I mentioned The Saturday Evening Post above. It is the only magazine that I read cover to cover. We give it as Christmas gifts every year to my Mama and Frank's parents. I think they would be very upset with us if we missed a year. My Daddy used to love to read the magazine too... he usually went through and read the cartoons first :-)

Make it a great day.

Here are a couple of quotes from Cloudman's site:
Just "Look Up and See" the Beauty of the Sky.
Discover the "Greatest FREE Show Above the Earth".