Great Horned Owl at sunset, Archer County.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Of a Bird, a Cow, Boots, and a Horse Named Bird
In the category of Cutest Rump of the Year, I present the Scissortail Flycatcher. They haven't left for Mexico yet, and when they do, I will miss them and will wait for them until their return next spring.
A Hereford and sunflower plants.
Bird, Clay's favorite horse, inspects the back of my truck.
Muddy boots hanging in a barn.
Everything Loves to Eat Wheat
Wild sunflowers grow along miles of fencing in Wichita and Archer counties. The wheat fields have begun to grow, and with them, the grasshoppers, living in the fences, venture to the tender wheat sprouts for their nutrition. Unfortunately, in such vast numbers, grasshoppers have begun to decimate some of the wheat crops. Below I show healthy rows of wheat before grasshoppers had their supper, leaving only empty rows of soil.
No wonder we have so many grasshoppers.
The army worms have begun to appear, too.
Wheat farmers must contend with insects all year.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Burrowing Owl
Beautiful face.
Cross your fingers so that this owl taken to Wild Bird Rescue recovers from head trauma soon.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Airport Hound
At one of the local airports nearby, a dog named Ram Jet lives in a hangar with his owners.
I hear he's a great aviator.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Lila and Missi
Missi's Mom and Missi gave a lecture on hawks and bird life at the EcoFair.
Missi's Mom designed the t-shirt below, now on sale for a steal, $10.00.
Horned Lizards
Wichita Falls Reptile Rescue brought some snakes and lizards to the EcoFair on Saturday.
About fifteen or eighteen species of Horned Toads exist, but they live in different ecosystems. The lizards shown above live at the reptile rescue center while the rehabbers there attempt to find their proper environments for release, or because they cannot live on their own in the wild. WFRR also nurtures snakes, salamanders, turtles, and other amazing reptiles.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
D60, 50mm, f5.6, ISO 400
Sometimes I want to JTP, or Just Take Pictures. That's when I carry a lighter load and bring out my Nikon D60, a 50mm 1:1.4 lens, place the settings on Aperture Priority, f5.6, and ISO 400, which under many circumstances can yield adequately measured photographs. As usual, I set out with MyMrMallory not knowing what my JTP attitude would yield. Over the last few days, I snapped images of crop circles in the Texas Panhandle, noting that from 7,500 feet in altitude, the crops looked like art on soil. I had previously explored "farmer's art" and show it on my PBase site, so I felt interested in re-visiting this concept once the thought came to me.
Corn quarter circles. Circles can have one mile in diameter.
Overlapping circles.
Water ditches meandering across the circle.
Cotton fields in the circle.
Wheat circle surrounded by corn.
Harvested circles of corn.
Corn crop circle view from the ground.
Harvesters gather the corn, separating the kernels from the stalks.
The kernels fill up the bin, and from here, the bin fills up the eighteen-wheeler
that will transport the corn to the elevators for storage.
The combine pictured above can tackle eight rows of corn.
Trucks stand in line to fill up with corn.
At the office of the elevators, this device measures
the moisture content of corn, and important factor in its quality.
In the old days, farmers employed a more simplified device to measure the weight of corn. Today, in case of a dispute, farmers may need to search through their storage to find the measuring device, as Bud did (above, to show it to us), for the court of law will not accept measurements made by electronic devices.
And so ended my D60, 50mm, f5.6, ISO 400 experience. Post processing in the digital darkroom involved only minor cropping and enhancing contrast.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Room for Possums
Our mission: Release two captive young possums back to the wild. Penny met us at Wild Bird Rescue with two possums. MyMrMallory and I loaded the crate containing the two fellows into the white jalopy, then drove into the countryside, as far away from civilization as humanly possible.
Along the way, we drove across fields of flowers. The countryside remains covered in flowers, delightfully. Cows watched us drive through the brush toward the lake.
Finally, we came to our destination, Duck Lake, where we released the two fellows.
Frogs hopped into the lake as we approached. No, we cannot see them in the photo above. I wish I could have spotted them before they disappeared into the water!
Hesitant, the possums remained in the soft bedding inside the cozy crate.
Slowly, they investigated, sniffing before every step they took, and then, together they ambled under the grove of trees, disappearing under the broom brush.
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