Upde Designs

Happy Mother’s Day and Happy Sunday!

I have a variety of images for you today from my Green Island trip.

I couldn’t believe this Red-Winged Black Bird let me get this close.  I practiced my new stalking technique and this image was captured just before he took flight.  He was “spooked” by the sound of the shutter firing.  This is the next to the last frame I captured before he was gone.  I looked at my settings and this was taken around the 400 mm range of a 600 mm lens.  🙂

I haven’t seen any Sandhill Cranes for a couple of years now and these three were too far away to get a good image, but I was happy to capture this one.  There was water between me and them so there wasn’t any chance I was going to get any closer than this.

Green Island is such a fun place to visit.  So peaceful and pretty.   Generally there is a variety of wildlife interacting in the preserve and I’m sure a huge microcosm of insect life.  Sometimes I like to just sit and listen and watch.

I don’t ever remember seeing as many turtles at Green Island as I did this day.  It was a beautifully sunny day with temperatures in the 80s and the turtles were out in full force.  If there was a dead tree, branch, or rock sticking out of the water there were turtles on it.  If there isn’t room on the branch, no problem just get on top of the turtle below you.  🙂

There were several of these Blue-Winged Teal swimming around.  Most of the time they would take to the air before I even got close.  I got lucky with this guy.  His mate is out of the image.  They must have been out of sorts with each other because she kept her distance from him the entire time I was watching them.  🙂

Finally I’ll leave you with this image of another Red-Winged Black Bird.  I saw him sitting on this old post in the water and thought it made for an interesting image.  I know they are a common sight that we see everyday but like so many things in our world we take them for granted and so when I can, I like to capture an image of them to get a better look at God’s creatures.  🙂

That’s it for today.  Enjoy your Mother’s Day.  I looked for an image of my Mom and couldn’t find one.  I have hundreds of prints in the store-room.  I’ll find one and post it one of these days.

Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Be careful.