Red-breasted Nuthatch by Coralie

We had yet another visitor to the garden just the other day!

I do not believe I have seen this little one here before in Jefferson Count Oregon? We are a small town here and not exactly a spot to find such a bird. However we did have another species of woodpecker show up just the other day (other then the flicker) as well as a owl here too so this might be a good year for migration?

These nuthatches are quick!! Dang..... here one second BAM, there another second! This one was actually thirsty, so stopped by for a drink of water from one of our little ponds.

 

This little one was only here for a very brief time. They reminded me of myself who can not sit still either!

This is a example of how truly small this bird is. The chain link fence is a standard, everyday fence. You could fit two of these birds in one of the squares!

Of course I am big on anything flying if I can get the shot!

I did find a good Oregon State website where you can read about this visitors and a link is there to hear their song!

Thank you for coming by!

Pacific Orangetip Butterfly

This butterfly is also called Sara's Orangetip butterfly.

Update on this to 2013 and learning more of the behavior of this butterfly. I have observed them in our area of the high desert in the more remote canyons with streams running through them, or very near to them in big numbers.

Very quick and they do not like stopping as some butterflies do not mind if I am around with my camera,however these just do not like any movement so it seams??

At least here in our area.... I have seen a half a dozen to a dozen of these at one spot. Several years ago I thought I was fortunate to see one!

I am thinking the top photo is a male, while these bottom photographs are of a female?

Shaggy Mane Inky Mushroom Photograph by Coralie Mrsroadrunner

Oregon is well known for our mushrooms.
We have the rich soil of the volcano of the Cascade Mountains, mixed with the rich soil of that which the trees leave behind during our wildfires. One thing to be certain of is, the Pacific Northwest has been and always has been known for our mushrooms.


The Inky Cap is known as such for the black "ink" type substance that drips from the mushroom at curtain times of the mushrooms life. I of course had to touch this.... and it does not come off all that easily!!



I personally like finding them in clusters growing here and there in our mountains here in Oregon. Being mindful of course of those who make a living off of picking such things as mushrooms. Staying out of these areas where their signs are typically posted when they are at work. Mushrooms are a thriving business in our part of the world. However I really can not say I know the laws of the inky cap..... I hear they are edible at curtain times of their life. Though I enjoy photographing them and that is it.


The clusters can consist of many mushrooms all bundles together, or just one whose spores traveled somehow to a spot to establish itself.


One rule of thumb I grew up with here in Oregon is, dont eat mushrooms you do not know exactly what they are. If you are on of these folks who want to go mushroom picking, keep in mind their are rules set forth now. As I said mushrooms are big business in states like ours.
Thank you for coming by my post!

Long Eared Owl

Our weekend started off like others week ends. Wondering what we were going to do other then chores around the house.
Sunday came and we had to head to the dump like a lot of other people do at this time of the year.
Instead of going home and just hanging out, we went back out to the national grass lands stopping at several places.


One of our stops was at a creek bed that is mostly dried up at this time of the year, but not all the way.
Guys attention got onto something and of course mine was not there, and I wondered off down the dry creek bed.
The trees were green here due to the creek bed and I seam to get a lot of different insects getting drinks. The butterflies and dragonflies are something I like to get.
A couple of the dogs came with me, as one stayed behind with Guy.

We came upon more of these trees and thought I would check them out as the dogs were more then willing to check them out before I got there!
Something flew out of the tree and went so quick I did not see what it was, so further investigation under the tree canopy was a must!
The scat and feathers proved to be some kind of bird. I really like birds and needed to find out what bird was making this grove of trees home.
I found out!

I was quite tickled to see this owl. I have wanted to get shots of a owl, but unfortunately I do not do night time photography.
I like using the natural light of the day time. As some of you can guess, most of my photography is just that. I don't use any special nothing.
After the shots of this Long Eared Owl were taken I did my best to see where it flew off to. These owls are smart things! Using the trees to hide in, to fly on the other side of, and just basically to be sneaky! The so called ears are the way they are to make them look bigger to predators.

I feel the first one up there was young. Just because it did not know to be scared of us.
Now this one, this is a different story! I snapped off a couple shots and it took off flying;

This one just seamed older, wiser. No pun intended there!!

This next one allowed me a couple shots, but took off like a bolt of lightening too!

By now Guy and the dog who was with him showed up. All heck broke loose! We had Long Eared Owls flying everywhere!!
Quietly, swiftly they swooped and dived and went this way and went that way. I caught a couple of them flying....






Guy said he counted 15 Long Eared Owls. Guy told me there were more like 20! It was truly crazy there for a while!!
We were talking about all this after everything was said and done. The elder ones must of caused this chaos to protect the younger ones?? They seen us as a threat and this was their way of protecting the younger birds?

We decided to change our tactics as to not freak them out again. This is the last thing we want is for any wildlife to hurt themselves trying to get away for fear as taken over.
This tactic we used seam to do the trick. The dogs could care less about birds and they found a place in the shade to keep a eye on us and to cool down. I think if the dogs did care about birds, I would have asked Guy to take the dogs away. A bird dog would have went nuts and some of these owls flew low to the ground.

This next series is two birds. One photograph of one, then the next one was hidden pretty well and felt secure in the spot in the tree. You can see the owl move forwards as to take off flying, but settled back down when I stopped moving towards the tree in which it perched itself.

This next photograph shows how close to the ground these Long Eared Owls flew to the ground and you can see why I am very happy our dogs do not care about birds. These Long Eared Owls are not small birds. They are part of the larger owl family and you can see why.

Now this next bird, I just wished it would have stayed on this branch. BUT these are wild birds! I am fortunate these birds stayed long enough for me to get the snaps I did get!! I got several of him just checking me out. I put one photo up that is not the greatest, but it shows the owl looking for another spot, then the owl moved himself into a flying position, moving forwards on the branch. This is a sure tail sign of a big bird getting ready to fly and it did!

Now in this next series there are two birds here. They were VERY secure on the limb they were on and I did not do anything to scare them off. By this time Guy was just watching all the activity. You can look at the owls eyes, where they are looking to find out where Guy and the dogs are to me, the owls see me but they are paying attention to Guy and the dogs.

Do I still have you looking at photographs?? As I said there was quite a few Long Eared Owls in this spot and I did my best to capture the experience with my camera!! This next Long Eared Owl was intent on watching me. I snapped some off then left him alone.

By this time Guy has walked back to the truck, brought back water for us. I was making my way back out, but just had to snap off more photographs! Whe n is this ever going to happen again?? Each one of these birds are showing different behaviors, they are different birds and I am just really curious about each bird!

This next bird looked rather skinny to me..... When he flew he sure dint, but when he was just perched there he sure did! You can see where I had my lens right on him, but when he started looking around I pulled my lens as far out as it would go. You can see the owl looking around, then in the position to fly, then flying! If you are curious, I don't use auto on my lens. The manual I find easier to use. The auto feature just is not quick enough for me! I would be very upset if I lost a photo due to waiting on the auto feature of my camera!!

This last Long Eared Owl got me back for waking up his family. He scared the crap out of me!!
I was heading out and the last tree I was sure no one was in it, right? I walked in and this owl was right in my face! Heck my hands were tired, I was tired off grabbing ticks off me and thirsty and just ready to get out of this grove of trees and get to the truck. Guy and the dogs were already off and pretty much all loaded up in the truck! I happened to snap off one more photo....

Thank you for coming by. Since the original post was made that spot shut down on all of us,therefor the photographs had to be pulled from my archives and reconfigured.

Spent Some time with this hummingbird

Coralie aka Mrsroadrunner | Spent Some time with this hummingbird

Thought I would spend a little time with this hummingbird on this day.

Showing up with his/her click click lets me know this one or the others are around. Typically in the apple tree and coming out during the day. Fortunately for me, they all get hungry about the time I am outside doing my chores then doing my photography!

I personally think this is a young hummingbird of the rufous species.... possibly a adult female... however just the way it behaves I really think it is a juvenile??

This species is rather aggressive and new I was there. These hummers appear to think my camera is perhaps one of them?? Hovering in front of me as if checking me out as if making sure I am not going to be stealing anything from their territory? At times hovering in front of me so close that a photograph was imposable to get with the lens I have on my camera for these shots.

Well lets get on with the photographs shall we??

What I did was, I stood in one spot for 45 minutes to a hour and just waited. At times finding things to photograph just so my camera would make the click click noise! That is all it took as I stood near our patch of zinnia flowers! Yes I have a tripod, the question is, do I use my tripod? The answer is no. Not my style, and frankly this lens just is not big enough to need it on a tripod. It extends a foot, 12"?

The shot above he took notice of where the noise of my camera was coming from. There was oh three sessions with this little one. In the middle of the sessions the hummingbird would go and rest. Which of course would give me a chance to rest.

The photo above just makes me laugh when I look at it! Birds are not stupid, and it just appears to me as I was working on getting these photographs, that this little one was trying to play peekaboo with me. The clicking of my camera stopped when the hummingbird was low on those flowers, however when feeding on the top zinnia flowers the clicking of my camera commenced!

I personally like the hummer on the red zinnias, the color is darker and makes the color of the hummer POP. However this is just my opinion. Our worst critiques after all is ourselves!

What I like about this shot above is, this hummingbird is flying backwards. I am a avid bird watcher. With this said, never had I seen another species of bird do this, nor have I photographed any other bird doing this! At the time of going backwards, this hummingbird is also "talking".

Ok, I am trying not to bombard you with to many photographs. I will show two more and if you want to see all of the photographs they are in my birds,seed and insect eaters album.

This shot this hummingbird was happily talking.

This shot was just colorful! We have had a pretty good patch of zinnias in this spot this year which surprised us since we had someones pets here destroying parts of the garden. Anyone can clearly see the damage done by these pests called pets. We do not condone folks allowing their pets to destroy other people property. To bad others do not feel this way.

Thank you for coming by my yard, seeing my photography!

Thread Wasted (waisted) Wasp

Coralie aka Mrsroadrunner | Thread Wasted Wasp

Thread Waisted Wasp

This little guy showed up here at the house. Well, females have more color then the males and I did not see another one thus it is hard to say if this is a male or female. Pretty colorful and if we just went on that I would say female?

Busy with the work that needed to be done. I have not seen this particular species here at the house before. Typically only seen them in the many canyons we have here in our part of the high desert. Though we have several canyons near by and can only assume this one came from one of them? Or heck, perhaps we now have these on the property raising young? Never felt threatened by this species so, let it be.

You can see this one was feeding on many of our flowers,going here and there. Playing with wasps is fine, I just keep in mind they can sting.... if they are going to or not is another story. I have photographed bumble bee's who acted more aggressive then this species.

I watched as this one got irritated with all the pollen and wiped the pollen from its facial area. I am sure this wasp new I was there watching it, but did not seam to mind or care?

The yellow in this marigold flower brings out the color of this thread waisted wasp.

Wasps are wasps. These are considered solitary wasps, however for being solitary I have a photographs around here of several of them together at the canyon. I will find that photograph to show you.

This photograph was actually my first experience "playing", with this wasp. Guy is my other half for you who are new to my posts. He maps out where we are going to go and has kept me from doing some pretty stupid things!! Needless to say Guy was not impressed with whom I chose to "play", with on this hike to the canyon rim when I got this shot.

Back to another one of our flowers this one went! Lets be honest, most people kill such things when they see them. I got a pretty simple rule here at the house, you dont hurt me and I wont hurt you. You hurt me and I will destroy you, your colony, your children your childrens children haha. Half way joking here but.... I do remember the stings from doing nothing more then walking into the garden from the other stinging "guests", we have here. This is unacceptable behavior in my eyes from these creatures we welcome into our garden.

This is a mud dauber flying off. This is also a thread waisted wasp. The species has several wasps within it. These mud daubers have never acted aggressive with me either, thus the photographs. I see them at the base of one of our ponds, they do not seam to like the other little pond we have for some reason?

Now this is this thread waisted wasp flying off.

Thank you for coming by and checking out my photographs of the thread waisted wasp. My conclusion from observing and photographing this species is, they are a pretty docile wasp....