A tail of a rattle

Gerald and I were invited to camp with friends at Empress Alberta last weekend and what a wonderful weekend it was. Good friends, good food, good times birding and not to forget a heart thumping gazelle leaping experience of almost stepping on a rattlesnake while photographing a Gray Catbird down by the river. And no, there are no photos of the rattler. Now I tell you I was keeping an eye out for snakes so was very surprised that I did not see it till after its tail rattle shook and it slithered they are so wonderfully camouflaged. My husband laughed at my sportily retreat. but my goodness this snake was thick and big, though not to sure how long it was as it slithered of into the grass while I spring-boked to the vehicle. I am no snake lover and have decide that open prairie is not the place for me, besides there are six foot Bull snakes there which they say will chase you, yuk! Noway, nadda!  Though I am not fond of snakes I do appreciate that they have their place keeping gophers in check and note, rattlers are endangered due loss of natural habitat. A photographer from the area said that rattlers will swim up onto her kayak when she is out on the river, I never knew rattlers would swim.

 The infamous Gray Catbird

 Mourning dove blends into the terrain.

Prairie flowers, it would have been lovely to see cactus in bloom but its a tad early for that.

This was a long shot on a hillside by the river so a tad soft but look at the colours, delicious combination.

 Pronghorns were few and far between, just the odd loner out in the field, second photo cropped.

Cultivated Prairie.

Next post will be some of the Prairie birds we captured.

Enjoy, have a great weekend, and share a hug!

More photos from the road-trip

It is so wonderful having readers correct when I miss-identify a bird. Thanks to John I re-looked through my five bird books then I ended up going on line this morning and found a downloadable four page "peeps identification". So corrections were made to last post.

 I love Gadwall's, they're subtle, soft looking and elegant.

 Post-hopping Meadow Larks. He would sit atop the fence and sing away then fly into the field and sing there then back to another fence post then back to the field, etc.

 Savannah Sparrow

 Not a clue as to who this is, but my does he camouflage well with the stubble.

 Blue-winged Teal showing his blue lapels.

Green-wing Teal drake and hen. Below photo shows the hens wing bars with green speculum flashing.

Northern Shoveler drake and hen. These ducks are easy to identify by their wide bills. They are surface feeders.

 Abandoned farmstead. I have heard that Vultures make nests in some of these old buildings and the way to tell is guano build up on the window sills.

 Mallard hen. 

I should have posted this in the last post with the male, oh well, she's here now.

 Coot, don't you just love those wonderful limey green legs. I need to post one that shows their feet, they are unbelievable.

I find I did get a female yellow-headed blackbird. 

I still have photos to edit as I took about 2000 shots, eee-gads thats a lot of editing.

Enjoy.

Of Wildflowers and Dreams

Jackies Wildflower Dream

acrylic, 5x5

This little 5x5 inch painting took a while to complete as I repainted the background three times. At first it was an abstract background with bold yellows. Well that proved too much for this wee bunny, so I over coated with dark blue, that too was overpowering. Once I settled for soft blue I then decided Jackie needed some wildflowers to sit amongst. Isn't she a delightful charm. 

One Prairie Aster began to pop its head from the cool earth to greet the morning sun only to have our resident Jack eat it back slightly lower than ground level. I may not ever see it grow but at least its being enjoyed. Next Asters definitely get planted in the back out of bunny reach, which reminds me we have to block the rabbit hole in the fence before my native sunflowers get found out. The joys of nature and planting Native plants is wonderful. We thought we were planting for the birds to find out that we are also planting for jackrabbits as well as native bugs and bees. So all in all its a wonderful learning experience; and I don't mind sharing the Asters as without a resident Jack or Jackie I would not have had the chance to paint their portraits.

Big hugs and may your life be blessed with the joys of blossoms Native to your abode.

Carries Sunshine Goat

I can finally post this painting that I did for my beautiful daughter-in-law.

Carrie's Sunshine Goat

Painted on 8x8 canvas in acrylic. 

We were graciously given an impromptu tour of a farm a few years back where they had a variety of goats, some of which were fainting goats. Is this a fainting goat, I think so but cannot be a hundred percent sure as the updated version of iPhoto cannot read notes from the older iPhoto. So I conclude that computers make more work, not save on workload. All my paintings and photos had pertinent info saved to the notes which transferred to the discs which this newer version cannot decipher. Photos come up but  titles, sizes, info is poof! So what I now propose I do is after photographing my work is to print out the image with all the pertinent info so that I have a tried and true method of saving information. Back to the basics of paper and pencil.
While in university I enrolled in a museum studies program and it was interesting to find out then that technology i.e. computer saving systems and retrievals have aptly lost much information due faulty disc, eroded discs, etc that at the time museums were going back to the quality method of pencil and paper, after all we know that good paper lasts a few hundred years.
Anyhow, back to Carrie's sunshine goat. I painted the goat amidst native prairie sunflowers as they are so cheerful. I just love the sunflowers. We planted some common native sunflower plants outside the back entry this year and I can hardly wait till they shoot up and pour forth blossoms. Last year while out photographing flowers at the Edmonton Naturalization Garden I noticed that Goldfinch love the seeds. So we also planted some in the back side yard where I like to sit. I was warned they spread quite well by tuberous roots so by the back entry we will need to put down some edging to keep them contained so I can plant some other flowers as well, but in the back side yard they can have their way.
have a wonderful day, hugs!

If it itches

 If it itches...

Scratch!

On our way home yesterday from delivering painting to Calgary we headed east of the city and were blessed to be able to watch American Avocets, Black-necked Stilts and Tundra Swans on a large body of water between Calgary and Strathmore. There were many other skilled aviators present such as pin-tail, red-head, and canvas-back ducks which were far out of camera range. I did have one killdeer, one Willet an I believe a Greater yellow-legs fly past me.

I had strained my back once again so had to shoot from the road while Gerald was able to go down into the ditch and hide behind a fence post. Needless to say he ended up getting far better shots than I as mostly the distance was a mite to far a reach for my 300m lens and when the birds were in good shooting range there were two fences blocking clear shots as you can see below.

I got pretty excited though as I've been wanting to see black-necked stilts for some time now so it was wonderful to take an hour to watch them feed and flit about. It made for a nice break from driving.

I find this shot interesting as the American Avocet on the left has blue-gray legs, The black-necked Stilt in center has pink legs and on the right is I believe a Greater Yellow Legs, hence has yellow legs. What a colourful trio. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Hugs!

New Camera, New Adventures

My sweetie bought me a new Canon 7D and a quality Manfrotto pan-head for my mono-pod. I am pleased to announce Don's Photo is now our go-to camera store. The staff and manager there are fabulous, we had good laughs, received good information and, wow, we were treated with upmost respect and courtesy. Wow. After messy dealings and disrespect throughout last year from a previous #@*& camera store of which I had been a faithful buyer for ten years I can honestly say that switching to Don's Camera was a refreshing experience to say the least.

Now the learning begins once again.

Here are a few images taken this weekend, enjoy!

Blue-bluest blue bird having an afternoon snack.

Amazing rich coloration in the male Mountain Bluebird.

Northern Harrier, male.

Its unbelievable to watch Harriers hunt. They actually hover on thin air like a sky strung mobile. I've noticed that they seemingly stop and hang with their tail-feathers spread, fanned wide as in above photo; otherwise when they fly their tail-feathers are tight together as in the below image. They are also masters of low surface skimming flights, wingtips seemingly grazing the straw strewn fields as they search out gopher holes from above.

The Odd couple. 

It would seem these two are differing subspecies (see differing neck length and thickness) but they don't care what anyone thinks, they have each other and love bonds them together. Watching geese this early in the season made me realize that for geese fore-play is a joint venture of frenzied head dunking and splashing and these two gave quite the performance. See the water droplets.

 Split Ears Jack.

Jackie Rabbit sporting the new fashion craze of clipped ears and wearing a lovely short sheared hip-length tan jacket with white hare pantaloons. Ah, spring is here.

Resident Robins have returned, I hear them calling in the wee hours before daylight. Its a joy to wake to birdsong, much nicer than alarm clocks for sure. Just look at the vibrant colour of the beak, by summer it will subdue to a soft pale yellow or greyish coloration.

Have a wonderful week, enjoy the natural and give yourself a hug.

The Beautiful and Surreal

Sunday we woke to blowy snowy sleet, choice was stay home and warm or make peppermint tea and biscuits and go out birding.

 A twitching wonderful time in a surreal dreamy misty landscape.

Seems as though all the birds have arrived at once. Migration is in full swing, this was a mixed flock of American Tree Sparrows, Juncos, a few Robins and some small birds I could not identify.

Suddenly quiet, the small birds seemed to vanish in an instant.

The reason why, this Harrier hunting the fence line. The snowfall layered the air in soft gauze; quite dreamy. The Redtail hawks are back and apparently the Harriers never left as winter season was quite warm with food plentiful.

Junco on the bottom left and American Tree Sparrows.

Flights of snowbird delight, I thought Snow Buntings would have headed north by now so this was an aerial treat.

Irruptions of introduced starlings abounded, though no good photos as once they dove into the stubble they resembled dirt clods. Though I love their reflecting rainbow colour it is sad that starlings and house sparrows (another introduced species) tend to push out native birds. If nothing else man sure has been prolific at altering and unbalancing ecosystems.

Gaggles of Geese, look at these silly ones waddling down the road.

 Murder of crows.

We saw fields filled with hundreds of robins, I love their bright yellow-orange spring beaks. 

And who else do we find, one lone beautiful tail wagging Meadow lark.
Such a beautiful day. With wind gusts and sleet which stung the face I had to hide against the lee side of the car to get this shot and it was all worth it.

My textile piece is now in Calgary and will be hung soon, thank you so much Diane for taking it on since we had to cancel our trip south. I love being a member of Emmaus Fine Art Group, even though distance sometimes present a few glitches with getting pieces to Calgary it seems that Creator always places someone in our lives to help out. Life is good and friends are a blessing.
Enjoy the wonders of spring.
Hugs!