January 30, 2024

Zooming – January 2024

January 30, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

January was a very light month for photography; I was recovering from the stress of being away from home and made 2 short trips to Carrollton very focused on helping my parents adjust to their new home and preparing to sell the house they had lived in for over 30 years. Even with fewer images to select from – I savor the 9 selected as the best for the month: birds and snow and sunrises….and a surprised flower (taken near the end of December just as the first hard freeze was sending the Carrollton TX area into winter). Enjoy the January 2024 slideshow!

January 28, 2024

Snowy Day on our Patio

January 28, 2024/ Gwen Morrison

The birds were very active at our feeders recently with the temperature in the single digits (Fahrenheit) and the wind blowing up to 16 miles per hour! Multiple perches were in use much of the time. The house finches were the most numerous but there were sparrows (white-crowned) and a woodpecker (hairy?) and a female Northern Cardinal too. It was quite a feeding frenzy!

I was taking pictures through an office window with a screen so the pictures have a softened focus. Sometimes birds were still enough for portraits (female finch, male woodpecker, white crowned sparrow, cardinal).

I attempted a picture of sparrow through vegetation….and liked the artsy veil that the automatic focus produced with the challenge.

Of course, there were other items catching snow around our patio – the chiminea, the holly trees, the gnarled vine to the side of the stairs to the deck, a paver near the almost covered lambs ear, fall leaves in the bottom of the wagon. I stepped outside to take these pictures….and all the birds flew away!

The birds returned within minutes of my exit from the patio back to the warmth of my office.

December 05, 2018

Festival of the Cranes – part 11

December 05, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

After the fly out, we spent the rest of the morning driving slowly around the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge wildlife loop. We used our car as a blind since it was still cold, and we were seeing quite a lot right along the road. A meadowlark with plumped feathers posed for a portrait.

A coyote crossed the road and continued to follow its nose. We never did see what the animal smelled.

A lesser goldfinch was eating seeds. The refuge leaves a lot of standing seed plants for birds like these.

A pair of white crowned sparrows watched us from a snag.

The sandhill cranes were in the fields – enjoying the bounty of the refuge provides. Historically more of the cranes continued to Mexico but the Bosque’s management program provides reliable food for them through the winter…and the cranes stay.

We found our way back around to the flight deck ponds and got out to watch the birds on the water. We watched the mergansers, other ducks and snow geese. Something startled the snow geese and they all flew away except for one that was struggling in the water. At first, I thought it was somehow stuck in the mud because the bird seemed to be trying to take off. Then it had a muscle spasm and moved its head to point to the sky in an awkward way. Within a minute the bird was still. Later in the afternoon I found out that the bird had probably died of avian cholera. The snow geese on the refuge are plagued by this disease and the refuge managers collect carcasses as quickly as possible to control the infection, but it’s a challenge with the birds being in such proximity to each other on the ponds. There are instances where birds have died in flight.

It was a rather sad end to the drive around the wildlife loop but thought provoking. Refuges are not safe havens from disease and they are limited enough in size that congregations of birds are larger than they might have been before the diversion of the Rio Grande for other uses.

November 25, 2018

Festival of the Cranes – part 6

November 25, 2018/ Gwen Morrison

After the Point and Shoot Photography field session, I headed to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge's Desert Arboretum. The entrance was hidden by the large tents put up for the festival expo and a classroom, but I managed to find it. There was already a larger group than I expected for the tour. The garden has been developed over many years by botanists and horticulturalists from seeds. I didn’t take many pictures during the tour since there were so many people --- waiting until the area was quiet again afterward. Most of the plants were cacti and agave; I took two pictures that were other types….the legume type plant for the color of the flowers and the other for the fibrous tendrils.

Now to the cactus. There were several kinds of prickly pear – many that still had fruits. The horticulturist talked about the various kinds of spines and that some were so fast growing that they had to be pruned. I noticed one that had been pruned and that spines had grown on the cut surface – probably to keep animals from borrowing into the soft flesh of the rest of the plant.

The barrel cacti are colorful – fruits and spines. One specimen had yellow spines and fruits. Barrel cactus have been collected by so many people as whole plants rather than just the seeds which has caused some to become almost extinct in the wild…but prevalent in gardens. They evidently grow easy enough from seeds…with patience.

There were several kinds of cholla. My favorite had red fruits.

The agaves have prickles on their edges and a sharp point on the end. There was a century plant that had bloomed two years ago but didn’t produce any seed since there was not another century plant nearby to cross pollinate it. The parent plant died after it bloomed but there is a ‘pup’ coming up under the dried parts of the parent plant…a little clone that will maybe grow up to bloom.