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Sedona Wetlands: Birds and bees and butterflies
After some 20 years of meetings and countless hours of planning, the City of Sedona has developed a unique—and prize-winning— wastewater treatment facility. The treatment plant itself was finished some four years ago, but the unique thing about it is what happened next— channeling the highest quality treated water (meeting A+ Effluent Quality Standards) into…
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How great to have an arboretum nearby
It seems to me that supporting one’s local arboretum is a darned good idea, if one is lucky enough to have one. The Arboretum of Flagstaff is part of a network that includes the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix (dbg.org). That’s doubly convenient for us, since we travel to Phoenix from time to time. Four…
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Madison Dragonflies Mating
I intend these photos as a “study”— an exercise producing a series of sketches, but in this case photographic sketches. Most of my photos reflect a great gift of tolerance, if not quite trust, on the part of the photographic object. I came across these conjoined dragonflies in the corn fields that make up one…
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Morning Heron
Our stay in the Madison, Wisconsin area afforded us glimpses of birds large and small, such as this Great Blue Heron, flying over a pond that was still enough to reflect its image. Click here for more images from our Midwestern sojourn in September.
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Spider At Home In Its Web
Encounters with various sorts of creatures, all beautiful in their own way, were among the highlights of our recent trip to Iowa and Wisconsin, including this spider in its web at Ledges State Park Madrid, Iowa (not far from Des Moines). Click here for a range of photos from our trip to Iowa and Wisconsin…
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Moon, September 27, 2015
How could one resist photographing the moon on this special night, the night of the complete lunar eclipse? I was in Wisconsin for the big astronomical event. These three photos capture the moon as seen looking southward from the shores of Lake Monona (Madison) before the eclipse began (photos 1 and 2, when the night threatened to…
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Yellow-rumped warblers
Over the years, I have seen far more “Yellow-rumped” or “Audubon’s” than any other warbler species, and I’ve seen them from Florida to Arizona and California. Yet the pleasure in seeing these warblers with four yellow patches (on the throat, wings, and rump) never goes stale. These photos feature the same individual, perched on a…
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Encounter with a Coronado Skink
We’ve been taking advantage of a series of hikes organized as part of the Roving Rangers Program — a wonderful service offered through a collaboration of the US Forest Service and the National Park Service in the Flagstaff area. The last such hike we took led us along the Hidden Hollow trail, where we came upon…
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What’s the beetle doing to its companion?
This brief video (about 7 seconds long) captures a pair of beetles, apparently “Darkling Beetles” (family Tenebrionidae). It shows one beetle touching the other with its antennae. The video was shot September 5 on Fatman’s Loop trail (Mt. Elden area of Flagstaff, Arizona). I removed the sound track and edited out most of the effects…
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A summer of learning: Butterfly upperwings and underwings
My first “wow” butterfly moment in the summer of 2015, described in Butterflies Part I, was really about butterflies and moths, and their antennae. The second moment of amazement is this realization: One butterfly, and in fact each individual wing of that one butterfly, can be very different when seen from above or below. Their…
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A summer of learning: How to tell butterflies from moths
It has been a summer of wonder and amazement, based on apparently chance encounters of this insect or that. But of course what we see— if we are watching—reflects what is here for now, in this season (or sub-sub-season). And so, it seems that one week, quite suddenly, our Cheshire neighborhood (Flagstaff, AZ) was home…
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A Humming-good story
On Tuesday (8/18/15) my early morning walking feet took me to a strip of land covered with wildflowers like scarlet bugler penstemon and gilia. I have been visiting the strip for a week now because it’s a common place to find hummingbirds. And of course the hummers visit the strip because of the wildflowers. At…
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Despite wonders of California wildlife, home is sweet
Family events kept us quite busy in Laguna Beach and Claremont, California, but Sarah and I had a bit of time to walk, and that means taking pictures. The trip home took us through the Mohave Desert, and later to Kingman, where we spent the night. From a rest area along US Interstate-40 in the…
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Laguna Beach sojourn
I’ve spent the last week in southern California— in Claremont (subject of a future posting) and Laguna Beach, a lovely smallish city lapped by the waves of the Pacific Ocean, some-time home to dolphins, with attractive old cottages in the town above, overlooking the ocean. Photos from this trip can be found here: http://www.wilcephotos.com/Beyond-northern-Arizona/ I…
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Hummingbirds!
I’ve pasted a photo of a hummingbird perched on a pine branch in our (Cheshire) neighborhood in Flagstaff, AZ. How can one NOT love hummingbirds! I’m including a link here to a photo of another female broad-tailed hummingbird in what is probably an even more typical hummer habitat— a field of free-ranging if not “wild”…
outdoorswithcamera
photographic encounters with earth and sky and all the creatures that live there, plus what thoughts & feelings they inspire
outdoorswithcamera 