The photographic opportunities bulged with the addition of a trip to St. Louis along with the monthly trip to Texas…. local walk abouts in our yard and neighborhood…the Lake Springfield boathouse too. They all added up to a lot of zoomed images taken with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS). I enjoyed choosing which ones to include in this month’s post!
After our visit to the Jewel Box, we spent the rest of the day at the St. Louis Zoo. We parked in the south parking lot and noticed the animal sculptures as we made our way to the bridge that leads to the zoo entrance.
The giant tortoises were out and the smallest one was moving about. I noticed one of the larger ones had a hole in its shell; was this tortoise shot at some point in its long life?
The Reptile House was one of our early stops beginning a big loop around the zoo (starting up hill first). The lizard peeking out of a tree in its habitat was one of my favorites.
At one of our first breaks, there were large catalpa trees with the long seed pods still green. It was good to see healthy catalpa trees again; my maternal grandparents had catalpas around their home and business in the 1960s --- seeing the trees triggered fond memories.
The Flight Cage is the oldest part of the zoo; it was built for the 1904 World’s Fair. There were quite a few birds in the large mesh-enclosed area.
One of my favorites was a wood duck. Was the eye injured or is that just the way a wood duck eye looks when it is closed/half open?
Leaving the flight cage – there are mosaics of natural areas.
Cranes were in habitats with other animals. I enjoyed getting different views of the one bird as it was feeding.
In the big apes area, my camera’s zoom managed to get a gorilla in the back of the habitat…looking serious and scratching his brow.
Flamingos and other water birds enjoy lakes with islands at the zoo…visible but able to get further away from noisy crowds. The pelicans are rescued birds (i.e. are birds that have a significant enough injury that they couldn’t survive in the wild).
I enjoyed the ways the zoo uses nature themes in their structures….and that they have solar panels too!
There is a carousel. It looked to be well-maintained but not busy when we were there (hence the pictures).
Of course – there is also ‘wildlife’ in the zoo that just finds the zoo a good place to be!
We enjoyed the people watching as much as the animals at the zoo. Some children obviously were locals familiar with the zoo and enthusiastically making their way to their favorite exhibits…couples with babies in strollers (with visions of the time their child would be old enough to make requests)…families clearly on vacation…older people – sometimes with grandchildren, sometimes as couples or small groups using the zoo as an interesting (and safe) place to walk.
It was a hot day and by about 3 PM we were ready for a cool down. We retreated to our hotel for a few hours before walking to a Lebanese restaurant for an early dinner. It was a day well spent.
I picked some favorite photos from the year for a slide show. They are all outdoors. Thematically there are birds and insects more often than lizards or turtles. Some are documentation type pictures and others are artsy. They were taken in four states: Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, and Texas. For some reason – the fluffed up Eastern Bluebird is my favorite. Enjoy the show!
17 images in the zoom slideshow for October 2022. They are from Carrollton TX, Detroit MI, London ON, and Nixa, MO…maybe more locations than any month since before the COVID-19 pandemic!
October is a transition month with leaves beginning to turn colors and fall…more to come of that into November. For now – enjoy some late blooming flowers and animals active on warmer days.
The elderly mulberry with a thermometer is close to the garden room. The days I was in Carrollton TX in September started in the 80s and got up to the 90s every day! We did everything we needed to do outdoors before it got above 90! The sprinklers are keeping up although some plants have not recovered from the many days of 100+ temperatures with almost no rain in the first months of summer.
The chives are blooming with seeds beginning to form. By next month, the seeds should be visible. Crepe myrtle and hibiscus and cosmos weathered the heat…got enough water to make it to September and still bloom.
The surprise of September (for me) were orange spider lilies. Evidently, they have been there for years, but I just wasn’t visiting at the time they were blooming. They look great in the garden and can be cut for dramatic and long-lasting bouquets.
I captured a tiny landscape found in the garden: wandering jew, a yellow mulberry leaf…framed by a hose.
Lizards like the garden. I saw one in a sunny patch of grass…then on the trunk of the sweet gum. His coloring helps him blend into the tree bark better than the grass!
More tomorrow on other plants of the September Garden….
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.
Top 25 birds of the week: September 2021 – Such a variety of birds in the world!
The Love Stories of Sleepy Lizards – An Australian lizard…they are monogamous and have a surprising threat display. They have been studied for over 40 years.
Searching for the Fisher Kings – The Calusa of south Florida…a capital on a man-made island made of shell. Surviving the Spanish but not the British.
New Coal Plants Dwindle Amid Wave of Cancelled Projects – Good! We need to be ramping up generation of electricity with renewables….and dramatically reducing the methane released by the oil and gas industry in their extraction processes…and then begin to reduce our need for oil and gas in areas that can be electrified (like transportation and heating/cooling).
Explore Life Under the Microscope with the Winners of the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Contest – Photomicrography frequently creates art from reality that it too small for our eyes to see without the magnification and specialized equipment.
August 2021 global climate summary – From NOAA. Two global maps (temperature and precipitation). Where I live, August was hotter and slightly wetter than the average (averages from 1981-2010 for temperature…from 1979-2020 for precipitation).
People synchronize heart rates while listening to stories – Thinking about the brain as part of physical body….looking at the brain-body connection more broadly.
Study Links Transportation Noise to High Rates of Dementia and Alzheimer's – From Denmark.
Indigenous Resilience Center Launched at the University of Arizona – My daughter did her graduate work at University of Arizona; I’m glad they are launching the center to find and implement culturally appropriate solutions to the challenges of climate change.
The chemistry of dahlia flower colors – Also explains why there are no blue dahlias.
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
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