Month: April 2015

California poppies are my favorite wild flower.  I have always loved them in part because I thought the California poppy was my birth month flower.  The August flower is a poppy but not the California poppy (eschscholzia californica)  but rather the red papaver rhoeas, the poppy we know from the In Flanders Fields poem and the paper poppies distributed to commemorate soldiers who have died in wars.

On my walk with Mady at Miner’s Ravine on Saturday, we found a few clumps of California poppies among the more prolific purple wildflowers there.  We even found a bright orange poppy colored harlequin beetle, an Asian relative of the lady bug, on one of the poppy petals.

Their feathers are a breathtakingly glorious pink.  There is nothing as stunning as seeing a flock of roseate spoonbills flying overhead…that is if they are far enough away that you don’t notice the odd facial expressions or that beak.  What is with that beak?    When they wade in shallow water dipping their beaks in after small mollusks and crustaceans, they maintain their balance and do not seem particularly awkward.  But after spending a couple of days observing them at the Smith Oaks Sanctuary on High Island near Galveston, TX  in March, I realized that they are really quite ungainly birds and they have the oddest facial expressions.  While perched on thin branches at the rookery, they were constantly bobbing and swaying in an effort to maintain their balance and stay upright on the branches.  It was quite comical and fun to watch.

It was cloudy and cool Sunday afternoon and just before the sky opened up and deluged us briefly with some welcome rain drops, the light on my roses from the overcast sky intensified the colors making for a glorious Easter Sunday display.  The most splendid were Betty Boop and Rio Samba.  I created a couple of collages in TurboCollage to show off their beauty.

While Mady dragged me along the trails at Miner’s Ravine Saturday afternoon, I managed to get her to stop long enough so I could take a few shots of the wildflowers in bloom before she continued her relentless tugging at the leash. Most of the wildflowers we saw were shades of purple.  We saw an Elegant Brodiaea with a skipper feeding on it.  Next, we saw a field of Ithuriel’s Spear followed by a field of vetch and one of lupine.  A lone stalk of Ithuriel’s Spear was visited by a pipevine swallowtail.  It was nice to see so many wildflowers in bloom in the midst of our drought.

My friend Peggy asked me to take some photos of her new puppy, Rosey, an adorable Heinz 57 pooch with poodle, dachshund, and who-knows-what-else heritage. As I told Peggy, photographing the constantly in motion Rosie was at least as difficult, if not more so, than my recent attempts at photographing flying egrets and roseate spoonbills in Galveston a couple of weeks ago. The good news is that I’ve been enlisted to take monthly updates, at least for a while, so I hope that my technique, and thus my photographs, will improve over time. Because we were indoors, I resorted to flash, both to get better light and to stop the motion. On this day,Rosie’s favorite toy seemed to be her rope.

In the first shot, she looks at me as if to implore me to not take away her rope. In the second, she looks up at Peggy, waiting for the game to begin. In the third, it’s full on rope-a-dope.

Bobo appears to be wondering why Mady’s water dish is so much bigger than her own. This was Bobo’s second foray across the floor Wednesday morning. In her first, she marched right up to Mady, who is now terrified of Bobo, and glared. On this trip, Bobo marched into the kitchen where I was doing dishes; I don’t think she’s done that before. I decided to grab the camera and I was hopeful that I could capture Bobo harassing Mady but Mady stayed well away from Bobo, behind me, the entire time Bobo was examining the water dish. In both instances, Bobo didn’t fly off the cage which is how she usually ends up on the floor. I heard no frantic flapping so I’m pretty certain she climbed down to check things out. I was really quite surprised to see her walk into the kitchen. I’m lucky, as is she, that I didn’t step on her.