Life in our backyard

Black-capped ChickadeeMy favorite thing about spring is ramps--a kind of wild garlic spinachy thing that goes great in omlettes or just about anything, really. I also love to put the telephoto lens on and take pictures of any birds not scared away by seeing me outside for the first time in months!

This new bird gallery has shots taken during about an hour outside recently, watching the birds feed and the ramps grow, listening to the woodpeckers laugh and some other birds playing Marco! Polo!...

As I mentioned in the organic gardening blog, I'm always amazed at the garden life that survives the winter. Hell, I'm amazed that anything survives outside for a winter. But the garden is under a nice warm blanket of snow, but the birds that stay all winter just have to be tough! I know the chickadees can lower their body temperature when it gets really cold, but the other tough guys, like the woodpeckers, have to just rough it.

Maybe that's whey they're laughing at me! "Look at the wimp! Finally comes out when it's warm!" Guess they didn't see me out there BBQing when it was 0 degrees that one day.

Bird Wallpaper Backgrounds for Computer Screens for Free

A Red Bellied Woodpecker (which should be called an Orange Mohawked Woodpecker) that we call Ziggy.This new telephoto lens is aviarily awesome. I can stand at my window, hidden by the drapes in my little bird blind, and take great close-ups of the over 40 species of birds that visit the feeder on our back porch. While I've been able to enjoy close-up viewing with binoculars, it just doesn't compare to being able to sit down and study the detail of a close-up photograph of a bird, where you can see details like individual feathers. Or, in this case, a tongue!

This is a red bellied woodpecker, but as you can see, the coloring is orange, and there's a little splash of it on the belly, so hence the name. Many birds are named what they're not, and we've created little pet names for them ourselves. The purple finch is really burgundy, so we call them the red-wine-dipped finch. We call the red bellied woodpecker an orange Mohawked woodpecker. This is the female, who's mohawk doesn't cover her whole head like it does on the male. We call these guys Ziggies, after Ziggy Stardust, the David Bowie character.

This picture is cropped to better see the detail. The large version has space to the right and left, which makes it perfect for bird wallpaper (you can align your icons on either side of the bird). I've posted several bird wallpaper pictures to be used as bird backgrounds for computer screens, all taken with the new telephoto lens.

Remember, the versions of these high resolution nature photos are 1600 pixels wide. For the full, 3888 pixel wide versions, just contact me and we can work something out. I'm usually happy just to get credit and a link, per the creative commons license.

Under Water Photography from Mike Eilers

A sea turtle off the coast of Maui Hawaii, photographed by Mike Eilers.My friend Cherie, who runs the Hale Hookipa Inn, a Maui bed and breakfast, recently sent me these great underwater photographs from her friend Mike Eilers, who has graciously agreed to let me post them here. Mike's an avid scuba diver and snorkeler, and a pretty good photographer, as you can see here. Cherie blogged about these shots on her Maui blog (Hookipa Aikane, or home sharing friend).

This computer backgrounds gallery has a shot of a humpback whale off the coast of Tahiti. The other shots, like this one of the sea turtle, a close up of the sea turtle's face, a parrot fish, and spinner dolphins, were taken off the coast of Maui.

We have very high resolution versions of these underwater photographs. If you'd be interested in using them for any reason other than personal, please contact me, and I can get in touch with Mike to see if you guys can work something out.

Fall Colors in Upstate New York

Flower with fall colors in upstate NY.Here are some high resolution nature photographs of fall colors from our backyard upstate, near Cooperstown, NY. These last few weekends are always busy ones at my brother-and-sister-in-law's restaurant, The Rose and Kettle, as the "leafers" are up in force to see the beautiful autumn colors, and that surprise bit of snow the other morning!

I have some more pictures to upload to this gallery, so be sure to come back in a few days (we recommend subscribing to our feed) to see if I can get around the technical problems with uploading.

Kauai Hawaii Pictures

The Hale Kilo I'a (House Where You Watch Fish) is a Kauai Hawaii beach house vacation rentalAs an internet marketer who helps my clients get higher search engine rankings, I manage to attract some pretty cool clients. One of them is the daughter of Academy Award Winning art director Tambi Larsen (see this earlier post for his art). She rents their former home on Kauai as a Hawaii beach house vacation rental.

Obviously, I'd prefer to go to Kauai, stay in the house, and take awesome pictures of the island myself. But these are trying times for us, so, I kept bugging Pamela to do it, and now she has! And, wow... seriously... Here's the gallery of her pictures of Kauai. Amazing.

While it's probably hard to take bad shots of a place like Kauai, I'm sure it's done all the time. Crappy camera, people too lazy to get out of the car, greasy fingerprints on the lens... All kinds of things can go wrong when you're trying to take pictures of some of the most beautiful scenery you've ever seen.

And then there are the times when you get it right. Pamela has probably taken hundreds of pictures of the ironwood tree that is in the yard, right next to the beach, just steps from the house. But it wasn't until she walked out there with her new camera, in just the right light, and took this picture that it all came together in a kind of perfection that, well... just look.

An Ironwood Tree between the beach and the yard of the Hale Kilo I'a Kauai Hawaii beach house vacation rental.

Click on through to the Kauai Hawaii picture gallery, or go to the Hawaii beach accommodations website, where you can download the full-size high resolution pictures of Kauai.

Landscape Photography of Bear Mountain Wyoming: More High Resolution Nature Photos

Bear Mountain Wyoming

After getting gas in Park City Utah, where we marveled at the size of the Olympic Ski Jump ramp (terrifying, really), it was too dark for any more pictures, we took some anyway, as you can see in the last post about Nevada and Utah. We spent the night in Rock Springs Wyoming, where we'd love to go back and explore some day, since the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area is there.

We were headed for Mount Rushmore, so we turned north out of Rawlins, WY, up US 287. Out to our right was Bear Mountain, actually a range of mountains that stuck up out of the high plains with the kind of majesty that one expects from eastern Wyoming. We certainly understood the term "big sky country" which is, of course, a Montana term, but applied to the high plains of Wyoming very well. These high resolution nature pictures of Wyoming were taken by Robin, the master of hurry-up-and-take-that-picture-and-roll-up-that-window photography.

Our next stop? Mount Rushmore and the first snowfall of our trip!

Through Nevada and Utah: More High Resolution Nature Photos

Near Winnemucca, NevadaAfter sailing through Reno, we stayed in the worst motel ever (epic fail), and then hauled ass across Nevada and Utah, then into Wyoming. During the daylight we saw some beautiful scenery, from the high desert of northern Nevada, to the Bonneville Salt Flats (which reminded me of one of my favorite movies, The World's Fastest Indian), through Salt Lake City, and into SW Wyoming. The variety of scenery within one day was absolutely amazing.

Looking back on these pictures now, I'm really glad we took the northern route. We got to see some great scenery that we'd never seen before, and these high resolution nature pictures turned out great, even though we rarely stopped to take them! Robin is an absolute wizard when it comes to getting great shots out of a fast moving car, and having the window open in northern Nevada in early April is a great way to get me to slow down!