Putting out the bird feeder after a month away

Arriving back from a month is SA, we had a great time as we crossed the country. In particular the lake area at the TN-NC border - i have some photographs but they still need some work so i'll post them later.

The bird feeder hadn't been out for that time and i put it out the day after we returned knowing it'd take a while for the birds to find it again.

Lo, one of the first birds to show up was one i'd not seen before:

Rose-breasted Grosbeak, not a common bird in our area.

and

Indigo Bunting, also not so common in this area

A couple days ago we took a walk around Beaver Lake Dam, a lake on the outskirts of Asheville. A little more then a mile in circumstances, it is a wonderful walk and filled with birds, turtles and many other small animals. Here are a few:

Killdeer

i don't know what this is - do you?

nor do i know what this is - do you?

notice it is banded

As you can read i'm very much a beginner when it comes to IDing birds; all help will be greatly appreciated.

Animals, around San Antonio

Currently in San Antonio and a few days ago i was passing a mostly large empty field and saw two large birds. I knew immediatly what they were although i'd only seen their images in a bird book: Crested Caracara. I didn't have a birding lens and still stopped and got out my camera. The birds had been facing each other but began to walk away when i opened the truck to get my camera. Still, i got a couple of photos that clearly show their unusual coloring and size:

I drove home after these photos, retrieved my large birding lens and returned but they were no longer in the area. These are relatively rare in TX, mostly they live in Mexico and south of there. 

Around the house i photographed an Anole which is often called a Gecko but is not. I love these little lizards and this one was considerate enough to let me photograph him, or was it a her, somewhat closely.

and the scales are amazing

And one little very green frog:

Folders and files . . .

I recently decided to change my photographic filing system from a yearly catalog to a subject catalog. The initial results are that i have a thousand or so folders all in alphabetical order with many many different names on the folders. To get them organized into subject folders will take, god, i don't know ... maybe a year or two if i spend a couple hours a day working at organizing them. On one hand it is a never ending task and on the other i'm becoming familiar with photos i've forgotten i had. This is allowing me to throw out many files which are clearly not usable or (almost) duplicates of other photographs. Also, i've not been key wording photos which is essential if i want to locate them easily and this is a good opportunity add those words.

And the volume of photos has now grown to such a size that the 5TB hard drive will no longer hold all of them. So, i'm backing up to two 6TB drives with the master drive being 8TB. I'm sorta o.k. with only two backups but prefer three so at some point i'll purchase another 8TB ... the prices on them have dropped to such a low, there really isn't any excuse for a photographer not to have everything backed up to the degree she wants.

I'm still struggling with creating a NAS so i can access the photographs from anywhere outside the house. I just don't know enough about such to put it into action. If someone reading this knows about creating a NAS home system, i'd love to hear from you.

And that brings up the next item i'm struggling with ... this blog. I like this format as its easy to use, to put the photos in that i want to show, etc.. However, it seems next to impossible for others to comment and i don't know why. I just asked my wife to comment on this blog to learn how easy or not it is.

I need comments - its helps me know where i'm heading and how the road is holding up.

O.K., that's enough for now.

Really?

Ice

Yesterday, Sun, we work to icicles hanging off of everything. It had lightly rained during the night and then froze in the early morning hours. This is the first i've seen ice hanging from the bushes and trees and i got out my camera, etc and proceeded to create some photographs. I've not worked with icicles before now and didn't do a very good job considering how much potential there was. I only got one i liked:

And if you click on the upside down icicle, you'll see the neighbors house across the street at the top. I thought that might be happening when i was photographing but wasn't sure until i got it into my computer.

I did one other that was o.k.:

But like the ad says, "O.K. isn't enough" with which i certainly agree.

I'll continue practicing that kind of photography so i'm ready when the next rain freeze shows up.

Old building, Comal County, TX

For many years i have been photographing a couple old building located in between San Antonio and New Braunfels. When i was in college about 20 miles north of the buildings, they were function and the building on the left had (even then) an old fashion gas pump, the kind that has a glass bulb with a spinning wheel inside and the store was, more or less, your old country store.

This is the earliest photograph i have, June 2006. However, my memory is that i took many long before that and just can't locate them. Clicking on the image will give you a much better view of the buildings.

Four years later it didn't look too much different but ... i took the photograph in the afternoon and the sun was shinning on the front of the buildings.

The yellow realtor sign on the left building is gone but not much else had changed - the sunlight certainly made it look better.

In 2013, some of the bushes were removed from in front of the building on the right and this sign had been installed:

The building on the right was where the above sign was located

And all the realtor signs were gone and the front door of the left building was slightly open so i stuck my camera inside and took a few photographs without seeing what i was shooting until i withdrew my arm - this is what was inside:

Isn't that amazing ... just like old country stores that i grew up around in the 50's; the room next door, the one you can see thru the door, looked like this:

At that time the front of the left hand building looked like this:

'Nuff for now.

Geared Heads

These are 'geared heads', an adjusting via gears that i only learned about about 18 months ago.

Made by Manfrotto, a company i've never thought made very good products, these turn out to be quite good. When shooting macro items having to adjust the camera's placement by moving the tripod causes all kinds of necessary adjustments. I bought the smaller, on the right, geared head without doing much research to discovered the camera and rails i was using was too heavy for the head and when tilted downwards tended to literally fall forward, ie the gears didn't hold the tilt. Then i discovered they made different models for different weights and today i received the model that will, i hope, handle the weight of the camera, rails, lights, etc.. I was lucky and located a used one that was about 25% less then a new one. Over the next weeks i'll learn if i have finally bought the one that will work.

New Lens

Recently i purchased a new lens for the new Sony A7lll; 24-105mm ... sometimes called a 'walk around lens' as it covers the conventional usually shooting sizes. And its seems, at least initially, much sharper then the Canon lens of the same ilk - and that's what i was hoping. I used it for the first time today and here are a few of the images:

Carolina Titmouse and Wren

Probably the sign was put there to keep the mail person from 

overstuffing the mailbox

There were dozens of geese flying overhead as we went for a walk

Yum!

Back of House

Blue Jay

and sometimes the big birds use it

I'm pretty pleased with the first use of the lens ... what do you think?