Animals – CFFC

Cee’s Fun Photo challenge last week is Animals. This is a subject I have plenty of photos for. 😀 I went through my archives for this. Most of these, I haven’t shared on my blog before.

This was my rooster, Kellogg. And this happened by accident. I was aiming for a more distant shot but he was fascinated with the camera lens. One of my first ever successful close-ups.

Another of my first successful close-ups.

One of my grandma’s neighbors sometimes lets his horses in her pasture. And I took the opportunity to get some horse photos.

Armadillo! It’s hard to get a headshot because they always bury their faces in the dirt looking for food.

I met this goat at a family reunion. The people who live next door to the building the reunion was held in had goats.

Here is the other one.

I was getting photos of mushrooms growing out of a dead stump and found this cute little guy blending in. Almost missed him.

Opposum! I called this one Philip.

Just hangin’ out. XD

Turtle taking a bath in the mudhole! I hope he wasn’t eating my tadpoles…

Last animal – Jackie taking a snooze on my bed! And my old plush animals in the background. 🙂

Hope you all are having a great Monday! ❤

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Close Up Of Flowers – CFFC

I wish I had been thinking about this, or I would have saved my lovely lilies for this challenge. I’ll reshare a few close-ups of flowers from earlier this year at the end of the post. 🙂 This is in response to Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge. 😀

Found this lovely Rose of Sharon hibiscus bush at my great aunt’s house. It’s as tall as the house! I guess no one ever pruned it. I plan to get some cuttings to see if I can start my own bush. ❤

My black-eyed Susans in our garden.

Eggplant flower.

Miniature rose. I call them candy-cane roses because that’s what they remind me of. But the tag didn’t say if they had a name for the color, only that they are miniature rose bushes.

More miniature roses. ❤

Vine-type roses from my great aunt’s house, originally posted here for an installment of Treasure Tuesday.

Close up of my mom’s daffodils, originally from this post, My February in Photos.

Close-up of a Sweet William, originally from this post, Meeting Sweet William and Miss Spiderwort.

Water drops on a lily, originally from Lovely Lilies and Beautiful Butterflies.

Look forward to the next challenge tomorrow!

A Pile Of Clouds

This is in response to Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge, Piles or Stacks. 🙂 The clouds the other day looked like they were piled on top of one another. It was so cool. And even cooler for me because with my new glasses, the edges of the clouds were so clear and the edges so sharp. 😀 (I always thought the edges of clouds were fuzzy so this was a little bit shocking to discover. 😆) I took quite a few photos and wanted to show how the pile of clouds changed over time:

If you look closely at the top right of this photo, you can see a dragonfly that photobombed me. 😁 I have other photos that I took of him in between taking photos of the clouds that I’ll share later. 😉

Isn’t it amazing how they change? It’s so fun to cloud gaze. ❤

A Golden Sunset And Other Nighttime Photography

These are photos that I hinted at last week that I was posting this week – photos of a sunset, taken over a 30 minute period of time. It’s so interesting to see how the colors changed!

The sunset started with beautiful golden colors!

When I backed off the zoom, it didn’t look as golden; but you can see the purples and pinks overhead.

I also love how the clouds were kind of layered on the sky.

This is an attempt to reflect the sunset off the mudhole. It kinda worked…? 😆

It was still very golden near the horizon.

And so pink and purple overhead!

But then, the pinks and purples overhead started to creep into the golden layers. It was so captivating!

And it happened so quickly. The pink and purple horizon only lasted what seemed like ten minutes. I didn’t have a watch out there with me, so I’m just guessing.

The pinks and purples started turning gray…

And then the sky just looked gray until the sunset was over. And this has been a visual storytelling of a sunset. 🙂

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Also, because Cee’s challenge includes night-time photography this week, here are a couple of bonus photos that I took on different nights. These are among the first photos I took with my new camera back in September of 2017.

Turning Over A New Leaf…

…and some old leaves too. So, in all seriousness: leaves and trees are fun to take photos of and I do so often, which makes Cee’s Fun Photography Challenge subject of leaves and trees perfect for me.  🙂

Leaf arrangement

Leaves on moss

This leaf blew against a tree and got stuck on the bark.

Looking up into a tree at night

Sunrise and trees – the background washed out, but I love how the colorful leaves look in the foreground.

A single leaf on the gravel driveway

Two trees at sunset at my grandmas.

A little plant trying to grow from under a layer of leaves and sleet.

A leaf fell and stuck in the snow.

Trees with a cloudy sky.

Trees at sunset

And lastly, a sneak-peak at next week’s photo post – sunrises and sunsets. This one fits in either post because there are also trees, so I decided to share it here as a teaser. 🙂

Amphibians, Reptiles, And Opossums… Oh Dear!

I love wildlife. 😀 Here is a sampling of what I’ve seen:

Box turtle bathing in the mud hole.

Ribbon snake in the leaves.

Salamander in a dustpan – I found this little guy under my cat’s water dish, hiding from my cats. So naturally, I rescued him and took photos.

Lizard lounging on logs.

Frog just hanging out.

Phillip the opossum. He visited enough that I gave him a name. 😂

Oh dear…

Literally. When my mom went outside to get the newspaper, she was greeted by a herd of deer. There were four, but I only got close-ups of three before they ran into the woods.

I wonder if they were saying, “Oh, humans!” 😂

Birdwatching

I noticed during the time we had snow, the birds looked hungry. So I decided to feed them.  And then I thought it might be fun to take photos of the birds that came. With the new camera that my parents gave me for my birthday, I can zoom in on birds without scaring them away. Or well… that was the idea. I forgot at first that I could zoom in that much so I tried to stay nearby. That’s how these two photos happened:

Oops. Sorry birds. 😂 Anyway, then I grabbed a chair and went to the other end of the porch to sit down so that they would not get so frightened. The photos got much better after that.

I think that cute grayish little guy is called a Tufted Titmouse.

And I thought that this was a black-capped chickadee, but it turned out to be a Carolina Chickadee. Maybe.

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A few weeks later, I was at it again. I believe this is a White-Throated Sparrow. It was dawn, and the bird was too far away for the flash to help, except to make the bird’s eyes light up. XD

There was a bird that I couldn’t identify that steals my cat’s food on a regular basis, and I was determined to get a photo of it.

After getting the photo, I finally found out what it is: a Red-Bellied Woodpecker!

Here it is eating my cat’s food. Silly thing. That can’t be good for it…

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Knowing that Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge – Birds was coming up, I went outside yesterday to see if I could grab any more photos of birds. Here’s what showed up for food yesterday:

This is a juvenile male Northern Cardinal. I was so happy to see him! I didn’t get a shot of his parents, but they attacked any other bird that got too close to their baby. 🙂

This is one of the birds who dared to get to close to the Cardinal – a Blue Jay! This was the best shot I took of him. He was shy and stayed in the trees. Couldn’t blame him – the Cardinal’s parents were really protective of their baby and took a lot of it out on him. 😂

I think this is a Carolina Wren.

I’m not sure about this one; it looks a lot like a Hermit Thrush, but there is a splash of yellow under the wings that it doesn’t look like a thrush has.

This one took a while for me to identify. I think that this is a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker.

This is my first time seeing one; it was exciting!

And my favorite shot of him – here he is actually drinking sap out of a vine!