Sandhill Cranes

 

I think I will hold back the story of this shot until tomorrow, other than telling you these are Sandhill Cranes on their way to roost in Indiana. If you know, you know. 

Tall Man

 

Tall Man on a fall Indiana Dunes Walk

Chesterton, Indiana: a timeless throwback

 

Chesterton, Indiana is a bit of a throwback town, just outside of Indiana Dunes National Park. It has an old-time charm and checks off all of the necessaries for a downtown: a bookstore, a craft beer brewery and restaurants, such as this Peggy Sue Diner, which serves excellent breakfast. Every trip to the Dunes needs a pit stop to the town for libations and supplies and I try to visit every time I go to the park. 

Fox Sparrow makes a visit

 

Always amazes me when I get a new backyard bird. Happens randomly of course and that is what happened yesterday when a Fox Sparrow decided to come by for a visit. That makes 34 backyard bird species for my suburban backyard. That is a far cry from what I would have thought pre-Covid. Of course, I have the bird feeders out, so that helps. But it is always fun to see a new bird. 

Eastern Phoebe

This Eastern Phoebe at the Houston Arboretum in Texas did me a favor and posed beautifully on that tree stump with the camera already all set up to blur out the pond in the background. You have to train these birds well to get shots like this. 

Fun with Filters

 

Here is a way to get more bird shots on the blog. Use a filter to generate a painterly finish to a picture of a Stellar's Jay taken in the visitor center parking lot of Bryce Canyon National Park. At the time, I wasn't a birder so I just took this shot because I saw a pretty blue bird. I think I knew it was a Jay, but I doubt I had ever heard of a Stella's Jay at the time. I enhanced and altered the background through Photoshop AI for fun. However, I left the filter off of the bird and the close in branches of the tree to give a 3D effect. Hope you can see it easy enough. 

One More Blue Sky New York City View

 

Here is one more NYC view from Central Park on an impossibly beautiful and blue sky fall day. 

Still Fall in NYC

 

I think my cell phone shots are too blue but it was a wonderful fall week in NYC. I was surprised by how much the fall colors were still on the trees, vs Chicago, which is well past peak. This is the shot of the pond in Central Park with Gapstow Bridge in the distance.  

Still Early Fall in NYC

 

Beautiful fall weather could still be found in NYC this past week with fall leaves still in mostly full bloom on the trees. A break in the action got me time to walk around a bit in Central Park, always a treat inside the hustle and bustle of New York City. This is a jpeg shot from my cell phone. The New York skyline in this direction has certainly changed over the years. 

Bulking up for the Winter

 

Yea, I know how that feels. 

Chestnut-backed Chickadee

 

On my EBird app, I saw that there were a number of birds from the Pacific Northwest that I have never seen before, located not far from me in an area called Discovery Park in Seattle. I headed there after work and quickly found several Chestnut-backed Chickadee, flying around from one branch to another hunting for small insects. Beautiful little bird, very similar, of course, to our Black-capped Chickadee, which comes to the backyard feeder everyday. Cute little bird and very common in the Northwest. The technology is amazing in assisting birders nowadays. You record what you see in EBird. Other birders see what you record and approximately where you were and then you go there to see if you can find the same bird. Then I use another app to listen to bird song and it helps pick out the birds that you are looking for. Mostly, I use the Merlin app for that. Then, when you take a picture of a bird and if you are not sure what bird you have, you can go to Picture Bird app to either confirm or show you what species you snapped. The combination of these three apps can take a person from just seeing or hearing a bird to an intermediate birder in a very short period of time. Just amazing. 

Seattle from Bellevue

 

I posted another version of this shot a few days ago but this one is zoomed in and I quite like the mountains in the background. It was from a different office building than the first shot and later in the day when the sky was clear from the morning fog. The Pacific Northwest is my favorite part of the country. 

Reflections of a Scrub Jay

 

My cousin Mark challenged me with a reflection shot yesterday with a shot of a squirrel grabbing at his reflection over water, so I decided to do the some thing similar with reflections. However, I don't have any reflection shots that I can recall so I created one from a recent fly by of a Scrub Jay in a clean white sky. So, my reflection isn't real (no AI on this one, but I did try) but it was fun to play with this shot to turn it into a reflection over water or something shinny.  It is a great shot of the Scrub Jay picking up some dinner that I took while in Portland. Scrub Jay's are western birds that fill the same niche as our Blue Jays do here. 

Seattle from Bellevue

 

Here is a view of Seattle in the distance from Bellevue, Washington, across the bay. You can see the Space Needle in the distance and even Mount McKinley behind the city.