Wednesday, August 28, 2013

A Second Look--August 28, 2013

We had a few wonderful days of cooler weather that lulled us into thinking that maybe fall was here. However, real August days returned with temperatures in the 90's with high humidity soon enough. The flower workhorses of the summer have continued to add their color. Some of these include blanket flowers, marigolds, celosia and coneflowers. Acutally most of the coneflowers have finished blooming and the goldfinch are starting to enjoy their seed heads.

The bird feeder has had a lot of activity and is interesting to watch as we see which birds don't mind sharing and which birds would rather have everything to themselves. We had a particularly aggressive male house finch one day that thought it was his job to keep other birds away. This is not typical for the finches as there are usually several there at the same time. And speaking of aggressive birds, I think the baby blue birds are still in the nest. When I got to that part of the yard today, the parents were dive bombing me from two directions. Enough so that I couldn't go into the lower part of the yard to take a Second Look. I guess technically I could have, but the birds aggressively whizzing within an inch of my head scared me. Has anyone seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds?

Here are a few things I saw this week during a Second Look.






10 comments:

  1. We have the same problem with magpies dive-bombing people here - cyclists usually wear cable ties on their helmets to scare them away!

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    1. Are the magpies protecting their young or just their territories? I have thought about wearing a good hat when going out.

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  2. Haven't seen that movie since I was a kid... it scared the begeezus out of me!

    Your flowers look lovely!

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    1. Alfred Hitchcock was the master of setting a scene. As I remember it, the movie didn't have much of a plot, but the birds were terrifying.

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  3. Replies
    1. I was trying to take a picture of a blue moon that we had recently. It was a very beautiful sky, and while I wasn't able to capture it like I wanted, I was able to capture the essence of it.

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  4. I enjoy watching the birds at our feeder as well, the one bird that doesn't like sharing time at the feeder is one of the two mourning doves. I'm not looking forward to this season ending, it's been cold more than not and leaves are already changing.

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    1. We have a few leaves that are falling, but mostly things are green. The changes should be at their peak in about a month.

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  5. I tried to take a night time photo about a week ago, but couldn't get it. If the flash was on, all I got was a nice well-lit photo of a tree just off the deck. And if the flash was off, it was just pitch black. I don't know much about photography. Is there a trick to using a point and shoot and getting night time pictures?

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    1. I am no expert at this, but most point and shoot cameras have a setting for nighttime. However, with this setting you have to have a very steady hand or use a tripod or some other stabilizing device because there is a long exposure. And as you already know, you should turn the flash off. I don't have a tripod or a very steady hand, so most of my nighttime shots are blurry.

      Good luck when you give it another try.

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What do you think?