An advantage of having a pond behind our house is that I can spend ample time observing the wildlife that comes here, and there is plenty to learn from them! I am featuring the Green Heron (Butorides virescens) this week. … Read More

Just as I did a year ago, today it’s time to shell-ebrate World Turtle Day (May 23). This year, I focus on the Red-Eared Slider (Trachemys scripta elegans) or Red-Eared Terrapin. These are a subspecies of the pond slider (Trachemys … Read More

The Black-Necked Stilt (Himantopus mexicanus) is an elegant aquatic bird in the Americas and Hawaii. Its bright pink legs are proportionately longer than any other bird except the flamingos. They measure around 13 to 17 inches (33 to 43 cm), … Read More

Lens-Artists Challenge #349: The First Thing I Thought Of… I did a double-take when I first saw this scene at the Leonabell Turnbull Birding Center (Port Aransas, Texas). Does the duck think no one sees it? Well, maybe so, as I … Read More

Lens-Artists Challenge #347: Break the Rules! Before I found out there were rules in photography, I was simply shooting what I liked. I agree that rules help make a shot a better image. However, there are times when your intuition speaks … Read More

Lens-Artists Challenge #346: Cinematic “From the shadows, it emerges – the ultimate crime-fighting machine.” [End of scene] When Sofia set this week’s challenge to Cinematic, I wasn’t sure what I would do. I thought about using photos from movie sets. … Read More

The Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) is a bird in the thrush family. That brilliant royal blue and red-brown or rusty chest form a beautiful color palette present in the male. The female still exhibits some blue, but it is paler … Read More

Last Saturday, my master naturalist class visited Berry Springs Park and Preserve to observe birds. Although there had been storms the previous night, the rain had stopped by mid-morning. When we started walking around the park, this beautiful barred owl … Read More

“It is in the wild places, where the edge of the earthmeets the corners of the sky, the human spirit is fed.”[Art Wolfe, American photographer and conservationist] What is wild? A dictionary definition includes living in a state of nature, … Read More

Lens-Artists Challenge #341 – Personal Favorites Now and then, I change a folder’s content with images that I use as background desktop images. Generally, I rotate photos from recent trips. More recently, I have been using photos I featured in … Read More