April 22, 2018

Ducklings

April 22, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

There were two cohorts of Mallard ducklings at Josey Ranch lake in Carrollton TX last week. I walked saw them on two different days – one group had 7 ducklings and the other 8. There are some larger turtles in the lake that might be a threat while the ducklings are so small – but the parents (sometimes with extra helpers) were attentive and keeping the ducklings in the shallow water away from deeper water where the turtle could pull them under.

Most of the time the ducklings stayed together. There were several instances that it appeared that the female was making sure all of them were still with her! There seemed to be more males that females around the lake and all the adults seemed to be near where ducklings were.

Enjoy the ducklings – one of the sure signs of spring!

April 21, 2018

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 21, 2018

April 21, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Adventure Photographer Captures Majestic Scenes of the Natural World – Starting out this group of gleanings with some eye candy!

Arctic sea ice extent at 2018 winter maximum was second smallest on record | NOAA Climate.gov – It will be interesting to see what happens to the Arctic this summer since there was less ice this winter.

With a Green Makeover, Philadelphia Is Tackling Its Stormwater Problem - Yale E360 – This article discusses what Philadelphia is doing…also what Philadelphia has learned from other cities. Dealing with stormwater has become a challenge in many urban (or suburban) environments….and rain gardens, green roofs, wetlands, and other techniques are leading to more sustainable solutions.

More Reason to Leave the Car Behind When Visiting the Columbia River Gorge - News | Planetizen – Have to keep this in mind for a vacation to the Northwest.

A North American Climate Boundary Has Shifted 140 Miles East Due to Global Warming - Yale E360 – Quite a few of my family members live in the Dallas area…and they are now on the dry side of the boundary!

Basking sharks gather in large groups off northeast US coast: Group sightings are fairly rare -- ScienceDaily – Opportunist data gathering…maybe someday it will be clearer why they happen with the second largest fish in the world.

Google X Spinoff Dandelion Raises $4.5 Million To Explore Residential Geothermal – Residential Geothermal primed to become mainsteam?

Birding For People Who Do Not Like Lists – Cool Green Science – This is me…a birder that does not like lists. I’m just thrilled to watch them…trying to get good photographs of them.

More than 50 new Nasca Lines, found with the help of GlobalXplorer and citizen archaeologists | TED Blog – citizen scientists searching satellite images.

Top 25 Wild Bird Brood Parasites – National Geographic Blog – I never can resist the collections of bird photographs….even these that are brood parasites.

April 20, 2018

Road Trip to Texas – Part 2

April 20, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

The next morning, we were up and having breakfast shortly after it the service opened at 6 AM. It was a cold start to the day – a frosty morning in Dickson Tennessee. The sun was just coming up through the trees we loaded the car and headed out about 6:30. We’d were already on central time so would not benefit from a time change on this leg of our trek.

The first rest stop was about an hour later. I cheered when the vending machines had my favorite caffeine drink (diet Pepsi). The day was still chilly but not frosty. The rose bushes at the rest stop were full of buds.

Our next stop was the welcome center after we crossed into Arkansas. It was a newer facility with some interesting architecture and posters; my favorite poster was the one of ‘mud bugs.’

We had a long wait on the highway that added more than an hour to our drive; a truck had lost part of its load and a crane had to be brought in to move it off the roadway. When we went by all the traffic was slowly funneled by on a shoulder. We recovered with a barbeque lunch near just before we got to Little Rock.

Then it was on to Texarkana and the welcome center for Texas. It’s a little tricky to exit the highway for the place…it was large with relatively few people around.

The next stop was the old-style Texas rest stop with tile mosaics unique to the place. The surprise of the stop was the historical marker; my sister recognized the name from her genealogy work!

The last stop of the trek was just before we entered the Dallas traffic…wanted to make sure we were in good shape for the final push to our destination.

April 19, 2018

Road Trip to Texas – Part 1

April 19, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

I drove from Maryland to Texas with my sister earlier this week….a 2 day trek. We left my house about 6:30 AM and headed west on I70 rather the dealing with the traffic around Washington DC. I am getting very familiar with the South Mountain rest stop since this is the route to the Pittsburgh and State College as well. This trip – it was in the low 40s and wet. The daffodils were blooming.

We got to I81 and headed south through West Virginia and then into Virginia. The welcome center in Virginia is a green facility….and has the big LOVE in front too.

The next stop was as an older Virginia rest stop but is one of my favorite with a terrace for picnic tables. We talked fast to get some exercise…and because it was too cold to dawdle.

The next stop was for gasoline. The flowers in the wooden pot were past prime but I appreciated them anyway. The Prius was doing well although the wind was beginning to pick up and I was aware that I was gripping the wheel a bit too hard.

We had food for lunch in the car so used the stops for walking around. There were daffodils again at the next stop.

Finally, we got to Tennessee. The rest stops along the interstate have a log cabin side and rock cabin side. I like the rock side since they are rock from the immediate area.

We were making fast stops because the temperature was dropping. There was a dusting of snow along the highway between Knoxville and Nashville! The wind was gusting and made it feel very cold.

The last stop before we got to the hotel in Dickson, TN had a different kind of rock and a historical marker for Senator Albert Gore Sr…and the interstate highway system.

Tomorrow I’ll post about the second day of the road trip.

April 18, 2018

Washington DC in Traffic

April 18, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

We have been in and out of Washington DC 3 times over the past couple of weeks for sightseeing and getting a guest delivered to/from her hotel. We don’t make the trek very often, so we notice the uptick in traffic every time we go; it’s stressful. I was glad my husband was driving rather than me both because of the heavy traffic – even during non-rush hours – and because I could take pictures of what we were passing by. With all the stops, there were plenty of opportunities! If the car is moving – I always take pictures through the windshield but can use the side windows if the car is stopped. Enjoy the slideshow below that I captured as we made our way through Washington DC.

April 16, 2018

Ready for Butterflies

April 16, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

Last week, I went to the hour-long class for volunteers for Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy. It was a refresher about how to handle the containment of the butterflies in the conservatory and the stations within the exhibit. The exhibit opens on April 18th and opens one hour earlier than it did last year – taking advantage of the cooler temperatures in the morning during the hot summer. The exhibit was under construction during our training, but it was already obvious that Wings of Fancy is going to be as wonderful as it has been in past years.

As I walked out to the parking lot, I noticed that the skunk cabbage blooms are finished, and the green leaves are all around the bald cypress…which is still bald.

There were grackles all through the woods near the parking lot…making a lot of noise on the spring day. They use their whole body to make their call!

April 15, 2018

Backyard Walk – April 2018

April 15, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

We had some warmer days late last week and I walked around our backyard to photograph it’s status. The violets are blooming. Sometimes the scent of them wafts through the air. They like the areas where there is lots of leaf mulch.

The red maple has bloomed, and the samaras (seeds) are forming. Our tree is in further along that the one at Belmont; the microclimate where it is growing is warmer probably.

Do you see the yellow haze under the trees in our forest? That’s spicebush. I think almost all the understory trees are that plant. The others have been killed so heavily browsed by the deer that they haven’t survived. I’m going to make an effort to inspect the spicebush this summer….hoping to find the caterpillars of the spicebush swallowtail butterflies. I am pleased that we have so many food plants for them.

April 13, 2018

Hurray for Spring Field Trips!

April 13, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

This week I volunteered for school field trips with the Howard County Conservancy – three mornings in a row. The first two were 5th graders at Belmont. I did two hikes with groups of about 10 students and their chaperone on both days. The school buses arrived on time and both groups wanted to head to the forest.

Along the way to stopped to see a pecan tree and a southern magnolia with lots of seed pods around its base. The students measured and described nuts, husks, pods and leaves…and then it we moved to the forest where we found millipedes and a tiny red mite. The spicebush was in bloom. It’s an understory tree so the students could take a close look at the flowers, see the stoma in the bark (white dots) and smell the ‘spice.’ They were thrilled that the trees are surviving in the forest behind Belmont…and that means there will be food for the swallowtail butterfly caterpillars as the days warm and the leaves emerge.

There was a bird in a high tree as we started the hike back from lunch. We thought it was a crow…and then it flew and ‘cawed’ to confirm.

As we waited to regroup in the field we compared seeds of sycamores and sweet gums…and picked out the sycamores in the distance along the drive into Belmont.

I took pictures of the lilacs planted in symmetrical plantings in front of the manor hour as I walked back to my car after the last hikes. The buds for the flowers were not numerous and I wondered if a recent frost had damaged them.

2018 04 IMG_9815.jpg — The third field trip of the week was for 3rd graders and was at Mt. Pleasant Farm. The students arrived in school buses and the normal chaos ensued to divide into groups.

The topic was ‘habitats and home’ which is always a great topic for a hike but particularly in the spring. The hike included observing blue birds and tree swallows jockeying for the bird houses along the trail. My group stood on a little hillock to observe the action. The tree swallows seemed to have staked a claim but weren’t building their nest there yet.

I completely missed the wood frog orgy in the little pool in the Honor’s Garden this year. It evidently happened on some warm days we had back in February! There are a lot of tadpoles in the pool now and were part of the lesson for the students during the non-hiking part of the morning.

Three days – six hikes….Hurray for spring field trips!

April 11, 2018

Cherry and Plum Blossoms

April 11, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

We have a cherry and plum tree in our front yard…and they are both blooming at the same time this year. In past year the plum has been almost finished before the cherry tree peaks. The up and down temperatures this year has acted to synchronize their blooming.

2018 04 IMG_9751.jpg — The cherry tree still has some buds. It always surprises me that the buds look so pink but the petal are almost white.

The cherry tree is an older tree and has more lichen growing on it.

The plum has pink buds and the color is retained in the open flowers.

2018 04 IMG_9762.jpg — The leaves of the tree are red too so there is no greenery around the plum blossoms.

These trees are the best part of our spring front yard!

April 10, 2018

In the Middle Patuxent River

April 10, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

Last weekend I participated in the quarterly water quality monitoring of the Middle Patuxent River at Robinson Nature Center. The temperature was in the mid-40s it felt warmer with the sun shining and the river level less breezy that the top of the nearby hills. We hiked down taking a short cut through the forest and crossed the river.

The crossing was a little tricky for those of is with boots (Me and several others) rather than waders but we made it across with only one person getting water in one of her boots. There is a whale-shaped rock that is a landmark for where the quarterly surveys take place.

We used D-nets and tubs to collect macroinvertebrates from leaf wads and riffles. The leaf wad my partner and I worked on had lots of little critters, a very large crane fly larvae and a frog. Everything went into the tub except the frog which we put back into the river (not a macroinvertebrate….and not easily contained anyway). After collecting for over an hour we headed back across the river to the lab with buckets to search through of macroinvertebrates to identify.

20180408_141036 clip.jpg — Back in the lab we emptied the buckets into smaller plastic bins and started separating the macroinvertebrates into ice cube trays for identification. We were after diversity and numbers of macroinvertebrates, so we were sifting through everything very carefully. I used a macro lens attached to my cell phone camera to get a few pictures.

There were a few things that were not macroinvertebrates but they were in the sample which were generally bigger than the macroinvertebrates and moved around a lot – a little distracting while we were searching. Several of us had salamanders (me included) and one person has some small fish!

Our team lead completed the form to submit for the monitoring session; the river scored about the same as the last sampling in January which is better than 85% of other Maryland water sources. Hurray for the river!

April 09, 2018

NASA Visitor Center

April 09, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

Back in the early days of HoLLIE classes, we met in the parking lot of the NASA Goddard Visitor Center before going to our class; it was before it opened so I wanted to go back to see the visitor center exhibits. Last week – it happened. It was a cloudy morning with rain in the forecast. The center opens at 10 and I was there a few minutes afterward. There were only a couple of other early visitors.

I decided to do the outdoor Goddard Rocket Garden and Astobiology Walk first – since I wasn’t sure the weather would stay dry. Did you know that grooved pavement used for airport runways and other pavements was the result of a NASA Wallops Island study from the 1960s?

I took a lot of pictures of the astrobiology walk and made a slide show of them below (use the arrows to go through at your own speed).

My favorite displays were the two showing banded iron specimens.

Inside – there was a full-side mechanical prototype of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). We saw the operational control room for the mission during the HoLLIE class. It’s quite a thrill to know that the mission is ongoing – knowing that my daughter was an undergraduate at Cornell when LRO reached the moon and she helped with some of the initial image calibration since she had developed calibration skills in her part-time job calibrating images from the Mars rover.

There was also an exhibit of the new James Web Space Telescope – comparing its mirror with the one on the Hubble Space Telescope.

There was also a fun exhibit with two cameras and monitors. One was an infrared camera. It picked up the residual heat from ones feet on the carpet as one walked away from its field of view!

I bought a Cassini Grand Finale t-shirt for my daughter at the gift store; she used some data from Cassini for a couple of papers while she was an undergraduate. Hurray for good experiences!

April 08, 2018

Fishmobile

April 08, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

The Fishmobile is a bus fitted with aquarium tanks for live exhibits of animals from the Chesapeake Bay and bookcases/walls of related materials. It’s a field trip that comes to the school! Groups of 10-12 students take about 15 minutes in the bus to see everything…spending another 15 minutes outside getting more details about horseshoe crabs. There were 4 classes of 4th graders that came through in 2 hours!

I managed to take pictures of some of the animals in the Fishmobile before the students arrived. There were small horseshoe crabs – the smallest being a little larger than a quarter. They were active all over the bottom of their tank.

The oyster toadfish was not happy after the first few groups and retreated to the back of the tank. I was glad I got a picture of him.

The lined seahorse was one that was harder to photograph. It was a good discussion starter since the seahorse depends on the grasses in the bay and is becoming more numerous now that they are recovering. I was impressed that the 4th graders were aware of the grasses even if they didn’t know about the seahorses.

The only animal in the Fishmobile that the students could touch was the diamondback terrapin. They were told to use 2 fingers gently on his back…because he can bite! He evidently is very accustomed to handling…and he has a name: Larry. There was a baby diamondback terrapin (hatched last fall) in a neighboring tank that didn’t move around very much.

There was also a small box turtle and a mystery box with a box turtle shell. We prompted the students that tried the mystery box to feel whether the shell was flat or domed…and then to look at all the turtles on display to identify what kind of shell was in the mystery box.

The fish that had a name linked to history was the hogchoker. It is a flounder like fish that lives in the grassy areas of the bay. When the colonists collected the grasses to fee to their pigs, sometimes this fish was harvested with the grasses….and choked the pig that tired to eat it. That’s how it got its name.

The bookcases had jaws from a modern shark…and a fossil tooth, a dolphin skull, and the molt of a horseshoe crab. There was a wall of various kinds of trash with estimates of how long it took to degrade. Plastic water bottles and fishing line take 100s of years!

April 07, 2018

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 7, 2018

April 07, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

How Do We Carry Our Shopping Home Now? | CleanTechnica – I’ve been using my collection of reusable bags for years. Some of them are over 10 years old and still in great shape. Occasionally, I still get a Lightweight Plastic Bag (or a newspaper in plastic, or other plastic bag packaging) which I take back to the bag recycling bin at my grocery store. I’m always sad when I set a grocery cart full of stuff in the plastic bags…hope none of them escape into the environment.

A Harlequin Duck’s Long Cross-Country Migration – Cool Green Science – A bird banded in Glacier National Park migrated to Long Island! Zoom lenses on cameras and binoculars make it possible to record banding info from a distance.

BBC - Future - The small Scottish isle leading the world in electricity – Eigg has an off-grid electric system powered by wind, water, and solar…they average 90-95% renewable energy. The time of year they tend to need back up generators is in the spring.

Implications of access to high-quality fruits and vegetables: Quality has potential to impact consumer selection and consumption in rural areas -- ScienceDaily – There has been a lot of discussion about food deserts in big cities – places that lack affordable, high-quality food. It appears that food deserts occur in rural areas as well.

Top 25 Endemic Wild Birds – National Geographic – The weekly bird photography fix! The chickadee we see frequently in our areas of the Mid-Atlantic of the US is endemic to our part of the world (and is one of the 25 pictured).

New Beginnings: Cherry Blossoms and Helen Taft's Landscape Diplomacy – Some years we manage to see the peak of the cherry blossoms around the tidal basin in Washington DC….but every year we enjoy the cherry tree in our front year. It is always at least a week later than the ones in DC.

US electricity use drops, renewables push fossil fuels out of the mix | Ars Technica – Total electrical generation was down 1.5 percent in 2017. Coal and natural gas declines were more than that with renewable energy projects coming online. Energy efficiency has made a difference! Another article reported that some utilities are planning for the uptick in electric vehicles to cause the trend in electricity generation to turn upward again. Right now – it seems like people that buy electric cars are often the same people that install solar panels; that could result in no uptick to the draw from the electric utility.

The Life Issue | WIRED – A collection of thought provoking articles about ‘what it means to live in an age of improvisation.’ I started with the articles about the 55-infinity age group.

Microscopic Images of Seeds • Insteading – hmm…maybe I’ll take a magnified look at seeds before I plant them in my flower beds.

Meditate regularly for an improved attention span in old age – Nice to know that something enjoyable immediately is also good for the long term too!

April 06, 2018

Brookside Gardens – April 2018

April 06, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

The day after we were at Arlington Cemetery, we walked around Brookside Gardens. It is one of my favorite places to take visitors to our area. We decided to walk around outdoors first.

2018 04 IMG_9591.jpg — There were several kinds of deciduous magnolias blooming. Last year many of them were caught in a late frost so I was glad to see them.

The crocus and snowdrops were done for the year but there were other bulbs providing color and there will be tulips soon; they are just beginning to send up their buds.

I saw a stump that I hadn’t noticed before beside one of the paths I use frequently. It’s rotting from the outside in!

Now sprouting plants draw are colorful…draw attention with their textures as well.

When we went inside the conservatory, the warm moist air felt good after being out in the cold. There was a lot of work going on in the building. The room where the butterfly exhibit will be by the end of the month was completely closed and the other room was getting some new plantings. I noticed that the large white bird-of-paradise plant had a lot of dried flowers and a few that were still fresh. We warmed up – made a quick stop at the gift shop – and were on our way – pleased with our morning out and about.

April 05, 2018

Arlington National Cemetery

April 05, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

Earlier this week we walked around Arlington National Cemetery. It’s a place we take out-of-town guests occasionally…more when we first moved to the area than recently when the traffic between where we live in Maryland and Washington, DC/Arlington, VA has increased so much. It was easy enough getting there the morning we went – easy to park in the garage near the visitor center. It was a little colder than we anticipated and there were busloads of students and tourists both arriving and leaving as we walked toward the visitor center. There was a short line to go through security and then a lot of people inside the building.

2018 04 IMG_9515.jpg — I was glad to walk through the doors to the cemetery side of the building! The first sight I photographed was the sculpture that was there….something to look at and appreciate.

2018 04 IMG_9529.jpg — The long rows of white marble tombstones flow in every direction broken my trees and walkways. The deciduous magnolia were the main trees in bloom. Arlington House is closed for rehabilitation and we didn’t walk up to it; the flag was at half mast in front of the house so there must have been a funeral near the time we were in the cemetery.

Just below Arlington house is the John F. Kennedy grave site. Every time I have visited Arlington Cemetery this has been a place to see. This time I also turned around and photographed the Washington and Lincoln Memorial and one of the famous Kennedy quotes.

The guard was changing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We arrived a little after it started so I was not able to get a good picture. As it finished, and we turned to leave I enjoyed the frilly daffodils and understory of violets in front of the balustrade.

We walked back through the cemetery and I managed to take pictures of Lincoln Memorial as we drove over Memorial Bridge. There appears to be some renovation work going on with this monument too.

April 02, 2018

HoLLIE – Week 8

April 02, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

The Week 8 of HoLLIE (Howard County Legacy Leadership Institute for the Environment) class was a week later than originally planned because of our late season snowstorm. As I passed the gate and started up the drive toward Belmont Manor, I realized that not only was it the last day of class, it was also the last days of the ash trees in the park. The trees along the drive had been marked since the beginning of class and there was a truck already in position to start cutting one of the larger trees down. After I parked, I took pictures of one that has already been cut along the road between the manor house and the carriage house. The emerald ash borer has changed the landscape of our area of Maryland.

The last two environmental lectures were “Why protecting the environment is really about protecting our own health” and “The relationship between climate and weather.” The lectures were followed by a segment reflecting on leadership strengths and ‘what’s next’ for the class cohort and feedback on the class overall.

2018 03 IMG_9506.jpg — The grand finale of the day was seeing the baby chicks and a visit to Myrtle Woods Farm which would become their home: pigs, chickens, hoop houses with veggies and edible flowers….fields with high fences to keep out the deer ready for planting. Its 9 acres of farm surrounded by housing developments!

I’m still reflecting on my follow-up to the class. I’ve done the easy thing of signing up for a few more volunteer activities like what I do with the pre-K through high school field trips with the Howard County Conservancy. I’m exploring other volunteering that diverges from my education focus up until now and am not sure yet on the direction I will take….something that is directed more toward adults or communities rather than children and their education – probably.

I judge the value of a class these days by how much I act upon what I learn afterwards. By that measure – HoLLIE is headed toward the top of my all time list of actionable classes!

March 31, 2018

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 31, 2018

March 31, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

4 Psychology Lessons That Can Teach Us About Inspiring Climate Action | CleanTechnica – Good ideas – particularly if anticipating a lot of disagreement or people being too depressed about the prospect of the future for Earth to take action.

Top 25 Wild Raptors – National Geographic – From around the world…no bald eagle in this group of photos.

After 250 Years of Dams, Rhode Island River Restored for Migratory Fish – Cool Green Science – Maryland is also removing dams. Bloede’s Dam (see blog post about it here)

Hummingbirds Make an Incredible Journey North – Cool Green Science – This little birds make a very long journey. Hope our recent cold weather has not made is a problematic year for them.

Saving Terrapins From Drowning in Crab Traps – Cool Green Science – Hopefully this can be a success story for terrapins around Long Island…time will tell.

Elusive Deep-Sea Anglerfish Seen Mating for the First Time | Smart News | Smithsonian – I’d only see pictures of dead specimens or drawings. The 2.5 minute video shows a living fish moving slowly through the water with filaments that glow surrounding it. Still very fierce looking but also a slow moving graceful beauty.

Drug-related mortality rates are not randomly distributed across the US -- ScienceDaily – The map says it all. The hotspots for drug-related deaths in the US are not necessarily where historically high drug use happened.

The 20 most beautiful libraries in the U.S. - Curbed – I’ve only been in one of these: the reading room of the Legal Research Library at the University of Michigan; it was part of the campus tour when my daughter visited the university before she added it to her short list that she would apply to for her undergraduate studies. I remember it being very quiet even though people were walking around – cork floors are quiet floors!

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Much Larger and Chunkier Than We Thought | Smart News | Smithsonian – Ugh! It was bad even before the more precise measurements came in. There has to be a way to start cleaning it up and keeping more garbage from getting into the ocean.

Landscape Photography Series Tells “Winter’s Tale” of Snowy Forests – Hopefully we’ve had our last bought with snowy weather here in Maryland. I do enjoy the snowy forests…for a little while.

March 30, 2018

Sunrise Alarm

March 30, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

After I posted about the sunrise back on March 18th, I remember a time when I wondered why there were not alarm clocks that would be relative to sunrise rather than the same time every day. Well – there are apps for that! I found several when I thought to check and chose Sun Alarm from Volker Voecking Software Engineering. I set the alarm on my phone to go off at 10 minutes before sunrise for my location.

I usually get up earlier than the alarm…but find that I am seeing more sunrises because I look to the east when the alarm goes off. Seeing a beautiful sunrise is a boost at the beginning of the day that is always welcome. The picture I’m including with this post was taken last Tuesday…about 9 minutes before sunrise.

March 29, 2018

Zooming – March 2018

March 29, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

I use the zoom on my camera for some many reasons – to frame the picture I want (taking out some items in the foreground),

To get a shot that looks close up without having to get close to the object either because what I want to photograph is too high, there is a barrier, or I don’t want to go traipsing through ice and snow.

Sometimes I use the zoom to get a better view than I can get with my eyes – particularly with wildlife that would not sit still if I moved any closer to them.

March 28, 2018

Birding through a Window – March 2018

March 28, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

I was out and about more during March than earlier in the year so I wasn’t around to see birds through my office window as much. I did catch the birds that seem to always bee around: the blue jays,