JDW Photos and Life

The last of the hummer photos for this season. Like the bird in the last photo, I'm out of here and your inbox is now free of clutter until who knows when. Thanks, Doug White https://jdwarchive.blogspot.com/

Some of the more challenging shots of hummers center around the feeder wars. Like most wild animals, protection of food resources is part of nature. I only put out 2 feeders this season and one of them has been guarded by a single male essentially the entire time. Every once-in-a-while, a second bird may be able to feed at that location. The other feeder has birds around it all the time. Often, there is a bird at all 8 locations. There are still wars between individuals but there are also periods of "calm" resupply. The wars happen incredibly fast. A hummer may come in hovering for a second and then attack or get attacked. It is difficult to keep the camera focused on a bird with that much movement and even more difficult to capture the moment of conflict. The combination of a long zoom lens plus an open aperture results in a very narrow depth of field such that a bird just an inch out of the focal plane will be blurred. All that said, these are some of my favorite shots. Wat...

And a few more.... I remain amazed at their beauty and incredible flying skills. Thanks, Doug White https://jdwarchive.blogspot.com/

An unexpected bonus from our move to College Station 12 years ago was being in the path of hummingbird migration. We were able to enjoy them twice per year as they travelled between Mexico more northern states. The past two years have been a huge disappointment as we saw very few hummers. The past two summers were also brutal in terms of heat and drought. The summer this year has been great with very few 100+ days. We are still dry but nothing like the past two summers. The hummingbirds have also returned as we transition into the fall. I'm guessing we have about 20 birds around our house. A few years ago, we had 50+ and were making sugar solution by the gallon. I am just happy to see them return in numbers greater than 5. We are probably approaching the end of our fall visit and I realized I had not taken a single photo of them. I have 100's (probably 1000's) of hummingbird photos from previous years. Why do I need more? However, I know that most of y'all enjoy them an...

So "everybody" took photos of the Super Blue Moon on August 19. The "Super" part was due to its orbit being closer to the earth than normal. The "Blue" can have two definitions. The more common definition is the second full moon in a calendar month. Obviously this moon did not fit that description given the August 19 date (moon cycle is 29.5 days). The second definition is a fourth full moon in a seasonal quarter. I didn't know about this definition until I investigated a little. Learned something new...... A few days prior on August 17, we were taking a boat ride on Cow Bayou in Bridge City. The moon looked great so I snapped a few photos from a slow moving pontoon boat hoping for a reasonable shot. The moon phase showed 95% visible. In my opinion, I like partial moon shots better than the full moon shots. Look at the extra detail we can see on the craters when they are on the edge of illumination. The sunlight is hitting the peaks of the craters and ...

We took a quick overnight trip to Bridge City this weekend to visit our friends Al & Michelle. Al had been telling us about this white squirrel that he would sometimes see in his yard so I brought the camera just in case. With good fortune, I was able to capture a few frames from its short visit. None of these shots are as close as they appear in the photos. I used a 560 mm lens and still needed to crop the photo for detail. This guy was skittish to say the least. I guess when you wear a white coat, you know you can't easily hide. What they thought was just a white squirrel (assumed it was the slightly more common  leucistic) turned out to clearly be albino. The squirrel has the characteristic pink eyes and pink skin of an albino. They had not been able to get close enough to see the detail you see in these photos so we now know. The first photo is our favorite. It was one HOT day and this post was in the shade by a little bit and probably cooler that the squirrel's body. T...

I decided I needed to touch base after a pause. While in Kentucky, we visited a horse farm and their flower beds had a nice activity of bees. As it turned out, there was essentially no other photo opportunities that made me want to take horse photos as the tour never stopped to get scenic shots and the barn shots were blah. So, you get to see a bee on a flower shot. These three pictures are the same photo - just cropped different. Neither detail shot has been enlarged (actually both are reduced for e-mail). Yes, this is a hand-held shot. Do you prefer the composition seeing more flowers or the detail seeing bee hairs, wing detail, and flower pollen? If I had to choose, the detail shots win since the flowers are past their prime in the hot summer temperatures. Thanks, Doug White https://jdwarchive.blogspot.com/