Hummers on the Wild Blues
Friends, I call these wild Iris, the wild blues although when they have been out in the sun, they soon fade to a light blue or white. This ruby-throated hummingbird was jumping from bloom to bloom. He would periodically disappear into the willows and when he exited he flew above the iris in a u-shaped diving back and forth. I witnessed a male showing off for his girl. Although this shutter speed 1/1000 of a second is fast enough for most flying birds, hummers are too fast to freeze without special means. Their wing speed is 50 flaps/second and they do hum when they fly hence their name, hummingbird. til Tomorrow MJ
Bobolink
Friends, this beautiful bird is a bobolink, a male in breeding plummage, the yellow on the back of his head is a defining mark. After the summer solstice, he will become just another drab brown bird, but now in his heyday, he is busy showing off for the ladies. They nest on the ground, mostly in grassy fields, but the cutting of hay crops have dented their population. Here in Crex, the grass is allowed to grow forever and i find bobolinks occasionally. Emily Dickinson writes of their boisterous nature:
The Bobolink is gone -The Rowdy of the Meadow -And no one swaggers now but me -The Presbyterian Birds-Can now resume the Meeting-He boldly interrupted that overflowing Day-When supplicating mercy-In a portentous way-He swung upon the Decalogue-And shouted let us pray -Emily Dicinson
I love the last line. til Tomorrow MJ
Loon Babies
Friends, this loon parent is feeding his/her chicks, the fish is as big as the chick, no wonder those chicks grow so fast. I watched while mama loon carried the chicks on her back and at 3:30pm she called to the male, soon the male appeared and both parents dove below the surface finding food to feed the chicks. They put on quite a show but i was stretching the limits of my telephoto lens to record these proceedings. I have gone back on two other occasions but they have moved out to the center of the lake. This image is a little lacking in quality but does show the “decisive moment”. til Tomorrow MJ
Clouds of Summer
Friends, I think images of the sky are somewhat universal, this sky could probably be seen anywhere in the world. We saw numerous thunderhead-filled skies when we traveled in New Mexico last fall. Unstable air like unstable people can be found where ever the hot air meets the cold. We see our share of these clouds in summer and i like to collect them, the more textures, the better for me, til Tomorrow MJ
Redface the Magnificent
Friends, this beautiful roan stallion is called Redface, he is a herd stallion with about 6-8 mares running wild in the North Dakota badlands. He was peacefully eating his grass and raised his head briefly to see what i was doing but very relaxed with a piece of grass still peeking out from the corner of his mouth. i am experimenting with a frame and signature for my work as someone suggested that a signature will protect the image from “pirating”. I just want to share, not too concerned about deviousness, but a signature on a piece of art also shows that the photographer was proud of the work enough to attach a name to it. In the old days (before my time), women did not sign their art, and many of the watercolors of Medora De Mores are not signed. Medora and her husband the Marquis DeMores, were early historical figures who were instrumental in establishing the town of Medora. Medora is the gateway to Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I will address this history in a later post. til Tomorrow MJ
Weekly Photo Challenge:Today
Friends, Today i was chasing birds at Crex Meadows, a good day to get some great images and to play with Photoshop. This Eastern Kingbird was an attitude shot and the background was just plain water, so i changed it to white to emphasize the bird pose. Using the Digital Basics Tutorial from Arthur Morris, Birdsasart, i am constantly learning new things to enhance my photography. Maybe this image needs a frame??, til Tomorrow MJ
A River flows through it
Friends, a river view in the badlands at the point where Knutson Creek enters the Little Missouri River. This spring the water was quiet and very peaceful, unlike last spring when a hundred year flood had turned this scene into a raging torrent. This river is about 560 miles long with headwaters in Wyoming, moving north into South Dakota badlands, north into the North Dakota badlands and north to empty into the Big Missouri River. My Grandfather tells of escaping a massive flood with his wife and young son on the back of a single horse. In their marriage book, my Grandmother had written “this was damaged in the flood of 1910” . The power of water. til Tomorrow MJ
Petrified Forest
Friends, on our recent trip to the badlands, we were fortunate to find one whole day when rain and thunderstorms were not in the forecast. The walk into the Petrified Forest is only 1.5 miles but the terrain is very rugged and for me it was challenging. We spent about five hours in the sun and wind, hiking in and exploring the ancient ruins (trees). These trees were a tropical redwood and are 65 million years old. Younger than the dinosaurs but older than the mammals. The top stump is about six feet tall and sits high on a mud pedestal that will eventually erode away and dump the stump 🙂 into the valley below. The bottom image shows a stump that is about six feet in diameter. til Tomorrow MJ
Sunset Glory
Friends, this sunset marked the end of a glorious day of photographing wild horses, wild flowers and exhausting hikes, all up and down, no level country in these hills. I used to run up and down, now i crawl. This was taken from halfway up Buck Hill (no i drove up), and the evening was cooling down from a 80 degree daytime heat. This heat is dry and is very comfortable to those of us who are subjected to high humidity most of the spring and summer. til Tomorrow MJ
Flehmen technique-wild horses
Friends, these two handsome guys are both rolling their upper lip in response to a smell. This is called the flehmen technique, and stallions quite often exhibit this behavior when a mare is in heat. These two stallions are unique in that they run their mares together in one group. The top one is Singlefoot and the bottom image is Redface. There is sometimes some squealing when they meet head to head, but the dispute never seems to come to blows. til Tomorrow MJ
MJ Springett 