This weekend, the local honeybees were giving some echinacea blooms in our yard a good workover, so I thought I was overdue in documenting their work.
Normally, the bees seem to prefer working solo. But even though we’ve got a swath of echinacea for them to work on, sometimes they need to “double up” in order to keep working. I used an Olympus E-M1 and 60mm macro for this shot, BTW.
We managed to sneak away for a few days’ vacation this past holiday (in the U.S.) weekend — for its cultural amenities, we chose Chicago. But this little guy (gal?) was just waiting for breakfast outside our hotel room window our first morning in town:
It must have been a good judge of real estate, as its web was littered with the remains of past meals. I thought the local buildings made a nice colorful backdrop (not too cluttered, though, when you put them out of focus):
If you’re working on your own case of GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome), I took these with an Olympus E-M5 camera equipped with a Panasonic Lumix 12-35mm lens. A potent combination, if you ask me…
Life’s been a bit busy for us lately, but we managed to run off into the mountains for a little R&R over the July 4th extended weekend. Â One of our stops was the neat little ghost town of Ashcroft, near Aspen. Â On our way through the sights, my daughter alerted me to this little hummingbird perched on an old bit of wood.
Fortunately for me, this little guy was very patient on his perch — alert and watchful, but never startling or making any apparent move to fly off.
A white tiger at the 2013 Colorado Renaissance Festival in Larkspur, Colorado:
Admittedly, white tigers are eye-catching, and maybe their presence at shows like this somehow supports or encourages conservation. Â But the reality is that white tigers are Bengal tiger mutants not normally found in nature — and they’re only still around thanks to generations of human-induced inbreeding. Â They are often used by zoos and other shows (most famously, Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas) to draw in visitors — but the breeding of white tigers has been banned by the American Zoological Association (AZA) since June of 2011.
Seen at the Denver Zoo:
The Blue-breasted Kingfisher (Halcyon malimbica) is a tropical bird, and hunts insects along the edges of rivers and streams in the rainforests of western Africa.
This is a Japanese Beetle (Popillia japonica), in case you’re unfamiliar with them — beautifully colored, with their iridescent shells offset against the flower petals’ colors.  But hell on roses (and grapes, and birch trees, and…).
Japanese beetles are apparently not a big problem in Japan — they have many predators that help keep their numbers under control. Â But since their arrival in the U.S. early in the 20th century, they’ve been expanding their territory from their original “beachhead” in New Jersey. Â Courtesy of the warming climate, they made it to Colorado a few years ago. Â Luckily beetle traps are available via the internet, since local home and garden stores apparently haven’t taken notice of their arrival. Â Yet.
Seen in the War Memorial Rose Garden; Littleton, Colorado.
From a recent road trip into Kansas:
I met this gent at the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita. I got the definite impression that he wasn’t terribly happy about my presence…
I saw this on my most-recent trip to New Orleans, and just had to capture the scene:
This is one of the horses employed in pulling tourists around the French Quarter in carriages. I took this shot early (for NOLA) in the morning, which seems to be the best time of day for non-crowded street photography there. The sidewalks and streets have been washed, most visitors are sleeping off the previous night’s revelries, traffic hasn’t really started — a great time for a stroll.
At any rate, I still can’t decide if this is the horse’s “world weary” look, if he’s pondering the upcoming day’s work, or if he’s just lost in horsey daydreams of grassy fields and running free. In any event, a fitting subject for an environmental portrait…
I spotted this little scene up in a tree at the Green Gulch Farm, near San Francisco, California:
The spider didn’t seem to mind the soggy weather a bit. Should you find yourself in the San Francisco area (in particular, in Marin county), we’d highly recommend a stop at Green Gulch Farm. The people there are friendly, and it’s a wonderful quiet place for a stroll (even on a wet day)…
Grizzly bears are some really amazing creatures — smart enough to act a bit like humans, unpredictable enough to be hazardous. When we were in South Dakota earlier this Fall, one of the residents of “Bear Country, U.S.A.” was having a grand old time playing with a chunk of wood in his pond.
It was almost like watching a kid play with their bath toy. A big, furry, lethal kid, that is. Should you like a closer look, I’ve included the two images making up the diptych below.
I was really happy with how these turned out, I don’t get much practice with splash photography — much less out in the real world (vs. in a more controlled setting).
