Santa Fe Birds

Was in Santa Fe last week and where i was staying had three bird feeders hanging and they were heavily used. So i sat out back with my camera and big lens and took a few photos of them.

Western bluebirds which are quite different from the Northern Bluebirds around here:

The Western Bluebirds resemble swallows, a little bit, particularly the male above. That is a couple above with the female on the right and the male on the left - they were around the suet (which is what they are eating) everyday.

Quail ... rather different looking from the ones that lived at GGF which had the strange looking topknot. I wasn't very happy with the image but it was the best shot. The is: The scaled quail (Callipepla squamata), also commonly called blue quail or cottontop

from Wikipedia. Cottontop seems most appropiate.

Curve-Billed Thrasher ... a rather intense looking bird which did not hang about as the other birds did and i was lucky to get this shot.

And one of my favorite birds whose name i have to look up ... 

White Crown Sparrow, i think.

Behind ...

Am feeling behind on a variety of photographic fronts: haven't posted last week's gallery and haven't been spending an hour or so per day on reorganizing the files - without which the whole change over from date to category is fairly useless. Sigh, can't tell if it is a time issue or i'm just lazy - probably some of both.

We have an Amaryllis blooming and i've, again, trying to capture some of its bloomin' center. Here's the first effort:

It came out pretty (click on it to see it in large form) but the stamen and pistil could be sharper so i'm gonna tackle that shortly. This is a 40 photo image.

In the backyard, there are more moving critters (which i love seeing) and the first below has taken me a variety of shooting to capture. It is very shy and runs aways at the slightest noise:

A groundhog. There are a lot of them in Asheville. In the top image you see its paws just below its chin. It ate constantly and always seemed to have its mouth full. It was eating a particular plant, sorta a weed with purple flowers, not clover; at least not the clover plant that has been identified to me as clover. Will look up the plant he is eating.

Birds

Birds are passing thru on the way north now ... while most of these can be local, the Cedar Waxwings are clearly moving north. These are the first i've seen in NC.

And this showed up yesterday and while native to this area, i rarely see Flickers here. This is a female Northern Flicker, yellow shafted which you can see in the second photograph.

These are always here and are so large they are easily confused with Ravens, however, they are Crows: These are amazingly large birds!

Cotoneaster

Today i have spent most of the day working on macro-photographing an cotoneaster bonsai i started growing last year and now it is growing small blooms and those blooms are opening.

This is the very small bloom on the upper left

and i've wanted to photograph it throuout the day as the different pieces uncurl and stand upright and eventually they will bend outwards.

Humm, this has been six hours 'tween the two shots and there's not so much difference ... i'll see what happens overnight.

Oxalis

I've never tired of seeing this blooming plants. I don't have any now but there are some on order that will be shipped once the cold weather warms up a bit.

O.K. ... 'nuff of the shamrockie flower for now. (no, it is not a shamrock, but often called that as the leaves look like shamrock leaves).

Fluted Black Elfin Saddle mushrooms

I knew i had these photo somewhere taken five or six years ago along the Meeker Slough. I had never seen such mushrooms before and was amazed how much they looked like dog scat. Really! I returned to the same spot the following year in hopes of seeing them again and getting some more photographs of them but never did see them again. They are amazingly ugly, which is a kinda beauty —

I did post them in Live Journal when i first photographed them but haven't been using LJ for some years now. The information on them says the tops, not stems, are fine to eat ... however, the stems can be a bit toxic and give one a stomach ache, hence most people don't eat them.

And the wonderful traditionally looking mushrooms:

More Redbuds

Couldn't figure out why the colors were different as they are the same blossom, just a different angle of view. Then i remember: the first image were lights that are daylight balanced but not strobes (don't flash); and the image above was shot with a twin flash designed for macro work. So i think the above image is the more correct color. Am learning that when i shoot that close to an image the colors change both in intensity and hues. It is why so much money is spent on fancy lighting so that the colors of the it image matches the color of the item - not always so easy to do.

Now for something completely different ... i'm sorta in bird-love with the Pileated woodpecker; yesterday, there was one on the old tree in the backyard:

Love 'em!