Second Mountain

Just a few miles to the North of where I live is the Second Mountain Hawk-watch where I visit as often as possible around this time of year to see the migrating Hawks pass along the Appalachian Ridges. It's called Second Mountain because its the 2nd mountain over from Blue Mountain which is named because it usually looks a blue color from the valley below. The drive up to the Hawk-watch is a dirt road, steep in places but you don't need 4WD to get up there, Ferrari's and Lamborghini's would have a problem so I leave them at home.

Second Mountain 

2nd Mountain Hawk Watch

Second Mountain

Pterodactyl

Oh! I'm sorry did I get the name wrong. I really meant Pelican and not Pterodactyl, though you could easily mistake the 2 as I'm sure Pelicans are direct descendants of the prehistoric Pterosaur. Either that or Hollywood used the Pelican flight as a model for the various movies that featured Pterodactyls. When a flight of them pass by you can easily imagine them as being a prehistoric flying dinosaur. Lovely birds. The first two are from the California coast near Malibu and I think are of non breeding birds. The portrait is from Florida of a bird in breeding plumage.

Brown Pelican

Brown Pelican

Brown Pelican

Photograph Manipulation

Being a computery type individual I like playing with the photographs I've taken. I like manipulating them almost as much as the taking of them. In a different way of course and maybe not as thrilling as waiting inside a hunting blind for a Black and White Warbler to come out into the open so you take his picture. I do enjoy it using the computer to enhance them though. Everybody has heard of Photoshop these days, you must have seen the pictures that the Kartrashians pump out daily. They must have a whole department of Photoshop people working overtime the amount of manipulation that Bessie the Cow needs. Anyway don't get me started on stupid people.

Heres a before and after shot that I was playing with.

Before

Elegant Tern after

  

Tufted Titmouse

One of my favorite yard birds is the Tufted Titmouse. They're with me year round and I think more than one pair breed in the yard. I never go looking for nests for fear of disturbing breeding birds, they have enough shit to deal with when breeding without stupid humans adding to their problems of raising young. Take note all you asshole "photographers" that walk up to a nest and shove a camera down a sitting birds throat.  Not only are you going to make the sitting bird fly off exposing the eggs to predators you're leaving a scent trail directly to the nest which other predators will follow. Stay away from nesting birds.

Heres a couple of Tufties from a while back.

Tufted Titmouse

Tufted Titmouse

Radical departure from the norm.

Trains, not birds, not cats, not butterflies, not humungous spiders or even a landscape. I would call that a radical change, wouldn't you?

Anyway, coming from a railway family on my Mothers side I've always had a passing interest in trains. Mother used to get free rail travel so we used trains a lot when I was a kid. Not your diesel electrics of today but real trains. Steam trains are the only way to go. Trains that had names, like the Flying Scotsman, the Golden Arrow, the Mallard. Those were the days. Anyway getting back to the pictures, Kelly and I were going to be dining in the Strasburg area in Lancaster county. I had a bright idea or a brain fart one of the two. Why don't we visit the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania I suggested. Now I must add that it was rather cold outside, January in PA can get rather cold but it had warmed up considerable from a few days earlier. The outside temperature was now a balmy 25f or so from memory. So off down to Strasburg we went, the light snow became a howling blizzard but what the hell, it was a Saturday and we had 4WD. The Museum was pretty damn good apart from one minor detail. The inside temperature was about 10 degrees colder than the outside. It was colder than a witches tit, I kid you not. No heating at all. We didn't stay too long! I wouldn't mind going back one day but probably when it's way above freezing.

Twilight

A little departure from the massacre in the garden.

Twilight

Japanese Beetle Massacre

More carnage amongst the Japanese Beetle population this afternoon. She was without mercy to her green bodied prey and had 2 trussed up ready to be slaughtered with a third in the web for desert.

Black and Yellow Spider with prey

for the squeamish, without prey

Painted Lady

I hope the Painted Lady doesn't get eaten.

The Pennsylvania Holy Shit Spider

My neighbors Tom and Joan have been plagued  this year by invasive Japanese Beetles decimating their vegetable garden. Not any more.  The Holy Shit spider is eviscerating her way through the invading population in a beetle apolcalypse. When she's eradicated the beetles any passing groundhog had better look out, she's huge.

What a beautiful creature she is. Her real name is a Black and Yellow Garden Spider but I prefer my own name of "Holy Shit Spider".

Black and Yellow Garden Spider

Focus Stacking

I've been attempting to take a completely in focus shot of the Rain Lily again. This time I stacked 13 shots and it's still not enough. These macro (or Makro) lenses have a ridiculously shallow depth of field. There appears to be a few more buds appearing so hopefully it will be in bloom long enough for me to perfect the technique.

Rain Lily

On the birding front I spent a few hours up at 2nd Mountain Hawkwatch with Morris and Joan. Only a few birds were moving though it still is very early. We had 5 or 6 Broad-winged Hawks, a few Red-tailed Hawks, an Osprey and various assorted passerines the best of which was a Scarlet Tanager, on the top track as we were leaving there was a sizable flock of Field Sparrows

Bit more Summery today

It's definitely been a nice day today. Not too hot at all, not humid, bit of a nice breeze blowing. In between working in the yard I took these pictures of Black Swallowtail caterpillars and an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly.

Black Swallowtail Caterpillar on Dill

Black Swallowtail Caterpillar on Dill

Eastern  Tiger Swallowtail on Buddleia

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Buddleia

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Buddleia

Autumnal feel to the days now.

The other night I even lit a fire as it was a bit chilly in the evening. I had been shifting logs for much of the day and having just had the chimney swept I thought I would get in a bit of practice. As it's Sunday and raining off and on I'm having a play with some pictures from my little Sony RX100 Mk.II. Heres a few from last Autumn.

Rowan Berries

Aster

Memorial Lake

Rock

Grand Teton National Park

So. I've got this new computer, a Macbook Pro. I'm learning how to use Lightroom 5 and one of the things they suggest on the tutorials is to have all your files in one place. So following that advice I have them all available for me to browse through easily, several years worth of pictures. So I've been looking through some older shots and playing with Lightroom. These are from the end of September 2007 in the Grand Tetons.

Mormon Row

After spending the night in Jackson Hole we set out to photograph the old barns along Mormon Row. The weather was not what we would have liked and I would have liked to have been there 3 hours earlier but there you go.

Mormon Row

After a drizzly start at Mormon Row the weather brightened up but still left the great snow laden clouds for a bit of drama.

Jenny Lake

After a visit to the Grand Teton visitor center it had brightened up even more.

Grand Tetons

We stopped and admired the Aspens.

Aspen

Pyrenees

A long, long  time ago in a galaxy not too far away I used to travel a lot on business. Now some of the places I worked at were to put it mildly, absolute shit holes. Kanpur in India springs to mind, Newton-le-Willows was another. One of the nicer places was in Northern Spain near the Pyrenees, the mountain range that separates France in the North from Spain in the South. These photos are from a couple of excursions up there at weekends while I was working in Logroño in La Rioja region famous for it's wines.

Misty morning in the Pyrenees

Boca del Infierno

Boca del Infierno is a narrow gorge in the Valle de Hecho (Hecho Valley). What an amazing gorge, very narrow with sheer sides down to the torrent below.  A direct Spanish to English translation of Boca del Infierno is Hellmouth. Didn't see Buffy the Vampire up there but on the second trip I did see one of the Wallcreeper's the site is famous for.

Col du Portalet

One trip I went through the 8.6km Tunnel du Somport into France to visit a Vulture sanctuary where they have Lammergiers. Returning to Spain over the 6000ft high Col du Portalet was interesting,  switchback after hairpin after switchback all the way up. It was difficult enough in a turbocharged Renault and these fanatical morons were cycling up there. Nice view once you got up there.

Col du Portalet grasses

Enough on the weather, how about a few nice birds.

The Red-headed Woodpecker has a nest in here somewhere. Don't know where and haven't looked, I just enjoy them .

Red-headed Woodpecker

The White-breasted Nuthatch has a very nasal "ahhc" "ahhc" "ahhc" noise so you always know when they're about.

White-breasted Nuthatch

Now the Chickadees pose a bit of an ID problem due to the fact that in this area they hybridize. They can look like a Black-capped but sing like a Carolina and vice versa. The true Black-capped Chickadees are a winter visitor while the Carolina Chickadees are around all year long. This one I think is a Black-capped but as I mislaid my DNA testing kit I'll never know.

Black-capped Chickadee (I think)

You know what comes after Fall.

Yep, after Fall you have Winter. Not the nice pretty snow at first, just cold and damp followed by heavy rain and then the bone chilling cold and maybe an ice storm or two thrown in. Just something to look forward to. Remember that theres only 132 shopping days until Christmas.

Back Yard in Winter

Falls on it's way.

I was out in the yard most of the day and I was watching the leaves falling. Falls coming soon.

Falls on it's way.

LIghtroom Fun

I never thought I'd say this but I'm enjoying Lightroom.

Pretty Marsh

Bet you didn't know I was artsy fartsy did ya!

Old barn along Rt.501 South of Myerstown

I'm still playing with Lightroom and some of the presets that came with it. Heres an over the top rendition of a very boring so so picture of an old barn.

Bet you can't guess where this was taken.

Seawall

Still experimenting with Lightroom.

I like this one from a few weeks ago in Hershey. Around the Medical Center theres a lot of grassy areas that have been planted with wild flowers. This was just after an horrendous thunderstorm.

Daisies (I think????)

Rain Lily

Experimenting with Focus Stacking yesterday. You take several photos with varying focus points from front to back then merge them together and get Photoshop to choose the ideal focus point from each photo. This is a Rain Lily on the rock bubbler thingy on the deck that the birds like to drink from.

Rain Lily

Twinkle

One spoilt cat, but she's cute.

Twinkle

Mockingbird

This Mockingbird spent the whole winter in the yard and would wait each morning for a breakfast of mealworms. He/She also liked the Pokeberry and Yew berries along with the Bluebirds and Robins.

Mockingbird

Rascal

I'm playing with Lightroom 5.6 instead of my normal Photoshop CS6. Lightroom has some nice features. Heres one from March of the little Rascal.

Rascal