It’s been a frightfully warm winter, but not so warm as to completely melt the ice on our fair city’s beloved municipal pond near a couple of our public schools. Frances Short was an “educator and city councilperson” in Flagstaff. (For more information, click here.) The pond and its immediate environs are home to waterfowl … More Waterfowl on Frances Short Pond (Flagstaff)
One of my favorite places in Flagstaff is Frances Short Pond. It is a hotspot for members of the Order Odonata— dragonflies and damselflies like the one below, which is, I believe, a “bluet.” But now the show I promised—a shaky video of two orange dragonflies and their mid-air mating dance. The still photos on … More Dragonflies mating mid-air
The other day, I came in from a photographic moment down on my knees in the front yard. This put my legs in direct contact with a pile of dead plant matter. So I should have seen this coming— a hitchhiker apparently crawled onto my blue jeans. So it was not until I came inside … More Hitchhiker butterfly
Anywhere you see hawks you are likely to see them being chased by smaller birds and not just chasing after them. The following photos (some of which are links to wilcephotos.com) tell two stories. The first story consists of a single photograph of what we might expect to be most common—a bigger, more carnivorous bird … More Hawks: Chasing and Being Chased
On a recent trip to the wonderful Sedona Wetlands Preserve, described in a previous post on this blog, I shot video footage of a fascinating group behavior by ducks, specifically Northern Shovelers. Shovelers are “dabbling” or surface-feeding ducks. The species has evolved a collaborative feeding strategy. Swimming in what John Andrew Eastman calls a “pinwheel” … More The Ducks That Swim in Circles
If you have never heard of Curve-Billed Thrashers, you probably don’t live in or near a desert. But if you google “default desert bird” you’ll see a lot of text etc. devoted to Thrashers. Unfortunately, the phrase “default desert bird,” with or without proper attribution is a misquote. At least Wikipedia rightly cites Dunne as the … More What Wikipedia calls the “default desert bird”
The “DBG” is a source of endless pleasure, a space of glorious plants that attract equally wondrous birds and butterflies! Here are three shots from a recent visit. Stay tuned as I post more photos from this visit to the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona. Click here to visit my professional photography page and … More Arizona Desert Botanical Garden 11/24
Sunday October 18 was a stormy day in much of Arizona. As afternoon turned to evening, storm clouds were trying to hang in there but were beginning to break up. That led to an amazing sunset, at least from what we saw in central Arizona as we drove from Flagstaff to Phoenix.
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 … More How great to have an arboretum nearby
I was looking through some photos that are up to a decade old today, because I remembered some of them fondly. Three cameras are represented here— a Konica-Minolta DiMAGE Z6 (2004-2008), a Fujifilm Finepix S6500fd, and my current Canon Powershot SX50 HS (with just a few shots between the Finepix era and the Powershot era … More Looking back: New and old photos
Some, including Kathryn Knight in the Journal of Experimental Biology, say they do. And during our visit to Phoenix yesterday we were overwhelmed with the heat, especially as we tried to amble around the Arizona Desert Botanical Garden. The roadrunner pictured here might have been feeling the heat, too. Or I might have caught him … More Do birds pant in the heat?
