The zoomed imaging from this month were taking in my daughter’s yard in Springfield MO, my yard in Nixa MO, Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge, the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield MO, the Lake Springfield Boathouse and the Texas Welcome Center on US 75. It was not a big photography month. I expect February will have more if the weather does not cause cancellations of winter hikes I have planned.
The slideshow for this month includes some pictures I took at the Rio Grande Birding Festival in November but didn’t get posted about until this month. There are a few pictures from my visit to Dallas and the holiday lights too. Enjoy the slideshow!
I forced myself to pick 2 pictures from each month to feature in this post. They were taken in my yard, at the Springfield Botanical Garden (and the butterfly house and Japanese Stroll Garden there), my daughter’s yard and during my travels for prairie walks in SW Missouri, to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in NW Missouri, Chicago IL, Branson, and the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas. They are all taken outdoors! Enjoy the slideshow.
The week at the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival was a big one for photography. It was hard to choose from almost 5000 images for the month. I finally managed to select 26 favorites…birds dominate but there are a couple of dragonflies and three reptiles (a lizard, a snake, and tortoise). I’ve included a picture of Reunion Tower in Dallas as my husband drove us through the city (I opened my window) and a tiled bench at one of the rest stops. We had our first frost at home.
Seventeen pictures for October. They are mostly from Missouri and some left from September in the Chicago area.
I’m saving the fall foliage pictures until November; I suspect that the fall will be subdued because it has been so dry since mid-summer but I am on the lookout for opportunities to photograph the occasional spectacular tree!
Looking back at previous Octobers…
In 2024, I was enjoying Missouri Master Naturalist Core Training and an Identifying Woody Plants field class at Missouri State University.
In 2023, I made my first visits to the Shaw Nature Preserve and Butterfly House near St. Louis; there was a Chihuly glass exhibit in the Missouri Botanical Garden. My parents were still in their home, and I was enjoying birds in nearby Josey Ranch park.
In 2022, I travelled to London, Ontario with my daughter…passing through Detroit on the way. It was our first fall in Missouri.
In 2021, we made our last visit to Longwood Gardens from our home in Maryland and I photographed a lot of waterlilies. At the time, we didn’t realize it would be our last fall in Maryland.
In 2020, we were still doing most things virtually. Most of the pictures taken at home…a lot of birds at the feeders on our deck and colorful leaves. There was one trip to Conowingo Dam but the only picture in the post is of a stern looking Great Blue Heron.
Lots of locations for the September zooming pictures: Josey Ranch Park in Carrollton TX, scenes from Chicago, Illinois interstate, home, and the Butterfly House in the Springfield (MO) Botanical Garden.
There are the usual flowers…butterflies, birds, cats…and a Chicago skyline.
Enjoy the September 2025 slide show!
All the images I selected for this month’s zooming post were from places around Springfield MO and Berryville AR. The subjects were:
Juvenile birds (cardinal and robin) and an adult hummingbird
Flowers and plants (pokeweed, naked lady lilies, zinnias, crape myrtle, cone flowers, daylily)
Caves (Cosmic and Onyx)
Caterpillars (spicebush swallowtail and zebra swallowtail)
Butterflies and moths (spicebush swallowtail, red spotted purple, cecropia moth, luna moth
Juvenile racoon
Edge of a golf course scene
The picture of the juvenile robin was taken through a window and with camera settings that gave it a hazy look to capture the ‘feel’ of the day – it was a very humid August day! The one of a bench looking out onto a golf course was an attempt to capture the morning mood as we prepared to leave our Berryville hotel; it was a warm, sunny morning…full of bird songs…a good beginning of the day.
Enjoy the August 2021 slide show!
The places for this month zoomed images include: my neighborhood/yard, Fantastic Caverns, my dad’s assisted living home, Springfield Botanical Gardens, and Lake Springfield Boathouse. It was a good month to be out and about in the morning…before the heat of the day! The early summer flowers doing well: arugula, cone flowers, day lilies, sunflowers, prickly pear cactus, button bush, and Missouri Evening Primrose. Enjoy the July 2025 slideshow!
The images I selected for this month’s Zooming post reflect the places I have been recently: the Butterfly House as the Springfield Botanical Gardens, my neighborhood and my home, the Ed Clark Museum of Missouri Geology in Rolla, the Dickerson Park Zoo, the Schuette Prairie, and the River Bend Nature Center in Wichita Falls TX. That’s quite a lot of variety during a single month! Enjoy the June 2025 slideshow!
May was full of blooms both in my yard and places I visited close to home: Springfield Botanical Garden, Springfield Nature Conservation Center, road cuts along US 65, Harold Prairie, Noah Brown’s Prairie, and Linden’s Prairie. I am realizing that the work I did to create a new shade garden (with American Spikenard and hostas growing in pine needle mulch) is a magnate for fledgling/juvenile robins….such a joy to see them from my office window. The month was a great one for being outdoors – even if it meant dodging thunderstorms!
Springtime photography….is April the best month? It seems like that might be true this year. The photographs were taken at the Springfield Botanical Gardens, my yard, the Missouri State University Campus, my daughter’s yard, Onondaga Cave, and 2 volunteer activities. There were so many images to choose from; I selected 23. I used three different cameras – iPhone 15 Pro Max, Canon Powershot SX730 HS, and Nikon Coolpix P950. Enjoy the slideshow!
I selected 22 images for this month’s zooming post. 7 were taken during our road trip to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge (going through Kansas City), 5 during the road trip to the Orchid Show (St. Louis), 5 at home, 3 during a hike at Cedar Gap Conservation Area, and 2 in Dallas. March was a good month to be out and about…typical for early spring!
There seems to be more going on this winter than usual. Most of the pictures I selected to represent February were taken within a 100-mile radius of home in Nixa MO…except for a few at the Josey Ranch ponds in Carrollton TX. There were some warm days…and some snow. Some of the bulbs are coming up --- growing slowing in the still frigid temperatures that keep coming. Enjoy the February slideshow!
January was a busy month but not one that included any big photography opportunities! My selections for zoomed images this month have some themes: sunrise/sunset, snow, birds, and lights. They are mostly from Missouri (although there are two that are left over from my trip to New Mexico in December that I didn’t post about until January). Enjoy the photographic mosaic.
20 images – using the camera’s zoom to fill the frame. The moon in a dark sky, sandhill cranes at sunset, a Japanese lantern with yellow ginkgo leaves around its base. There are lots of favorites in this set for me.
Themes for the zoomed images of December: fall/winter and birds.
Locations: Springfield, Missouri and Socorro, New Mexico.
On one of the mornings I had an early Physical Therapy appointment, the temperature was in the teens and sunny. When I parked, I noticed the car parked next to me had frost on all its non-vertical surfaces. I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures with my phone!
A little magnification made the variations in the crystals more visible. Some looked like feathers, others like brittle stars from the sea. In some places the crystals had become so dense that they became an aggregate. The sun was beginning to melt some of the crystals; I thought about why some areas were melting and others were not.
A few seconds of photography and I hurried into the building feeling grateful for the little bit of creative time – one of my favorite ways to start the day.
The zooming images for November are mostly a celebration of fall in our area of Missouri. There are a few animals in the group that could have happened at other times – a robin bathing in a stream, a grackle at our feeder, and a small red-eared slider in our neighborhood pond.
Can you find the poison ivy seeds (hint…they are white), the glorious fall Virginia creeper, a chestnut husk, 4 kinds of oak, and a maple?
I enjoyed searching out little bits of nature to photograph…fill frame…using my camera to ‘see’ better than I do with just my eyes. My camera’s optics are the great enabler!
All the pictures in the slideshow were taken in the Springfield Missouri area: my home, the Missouri State campus, Lake Springfield, Busiek State Forest…the majority were during Missouri Master Naturalist or Identifying Wood Plants class field trips! October was a great month for being outdoors. Enjoy the slideshow of zoomed images!
Lots of photography done since my last Zooming post. There was travel to Arkansas and Texas…and then the classes (Missouri Master Naturalist and Identifying Woody Plants at a local university). I’ve used all three of my cameras this month: Canon Powershot SX70 HS (bridge), Canon Powershot SX730 HS (point and shot) and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
September has been a busy month, and I am still trying to settle into the higher level of activity away from home! Enjoy the slide show for September 2024….
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Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from last month:
Copyright © 2025 Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
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