High Desert Game Bird | Mrsroadrunner Photography

High Desert Game Bird | Mrsroadrunner Photography




Meet these game birds found here in our town in the High Desert of Oregon! These birds are typically in this area every time I take a walk this way and every time they seam to make me jump even though I know they are there haha!





Without looking at the photographs Guy, (he is my other half ), says they are probably the common sage hens. This could be for I looked up ,"Sage Han", here on the computer and the females and young do look like these photographs I took.





These birds are pretty quick! I try and be quiet, however we are never as quiet as we think we are! This is a NO HUNTING zone and I find year after year this flock is growing. I would like to run into the adult males, since this is a sure way of identifying the species. Well, a easier way! The males being the flashier one with colors and such.





I did get these photographs as the chicks were not quite full grown. The photograph above you see a chick, with what appears to be a older bird. These birds are the size of chickens, smaller then some chickens my grandparents raised.





I know these birds are in this locations, though they always make me laugh for they start taking off to hide and I seam to jump in surprise every time haha For a long while I just assumed they were quail. Quail are very common here! Not sure why I just assumed this other then quail are every where!! The Quail are even found at our home, walking down the roads, stopping traffic (like we have a lot of traffic in this town haha).......

Watching the Quail on one of my walks into a gully I even came face to face with a Coyote who was hunting the quail I was watching.... surprising both the dog and I !

I have seen Coyote around this flock of birds as well! The NO HUNTING only applies to people with weapons. Coyotes are nothing to fear, they don't want anything to do with people around here. More then likely if a Coyote has reached adult hood it has been shot at, probably a couple times....

These birds also have to watch out for the Birds of Prey we have here! The Harriers are quite humorous for they will fly low to see what you have kicked up out of the brush for them! Harriers are said to be one of the only Birds of Prey who use their hearing more then other Birds of Prey. Might be why the Harriers fly so low and typically found on the ground?

I have seen both the Bald Eagle, the Golden eagles in this location. The Red Tailed Hawk of course! The Osprey fish around this location. The Owls can be found both day and night here in this location. Other miscellaneous Birds of Prey can be found here in our town as well.

If one goes to the Train Depot here in our town and look out in the direction of the Cascade Mountains, if one just waits you will see Birds Of Prey! I see them most every day, hearing them is not uncommon! Our town is Metolius Oregon if you ever come with way. Just keep in mind the areas are private property so just keep to the Train Depot or the roads and you are fine. You might have folks wondering what you are doing, though many folks show up here with their binoculars. Then the locals know what you are doing. Heck you may even see me walking around with my cameras?





If you have any information about these birds, do share! They could be the Sage Hens as Guy has guessed?  I had told the farmers who allow me on their land that I would not give the location of that in which I photograph and I mean to keep my word.

I have been working on a project in which my hands/arms really hurt. I will try and not be to cranky haha

Thank you for coming by and checking out these Game Birds who are found here in our town in The High Desert of Oregon!

Vivid Dancer Dragonfly Eating A Spider | Mrsroadrunner Photography

Vivid Dancer Dragonfly Eating A Spider | Mrsroadrunner Photography




Meet the Vivid Dancer Dragonfly! I captured this one eating what I think is a spider!?





Dragonflies are great helpers when it comes to controlling insects! I think I see wings there, so perhaps that is not a spider?





This happening was not captured here at the house, but in a area I like to go to here in our town! This area was near a water holding pond, there was plenty of activity going on! Of course you have to stop and look around to notice all the activity!





The Vivid Dancer Dragonfly is a common Dragonfly here. They are the smaller species of Dragonflies stalking and feeding on the smaller insects.





I get a kick out of the Dragonflies for the Dragonflies are our friends. Anything that helps control the insects is ok in my book!









I think that is a spider this Vivid Dancer Dragonfly is feeding on, however I thought I seen wings? Thought it looks like the cotton wood tree's cotton is on the insect so?? We do have the cottonwood tree here and I can honestly say I do not care for that tree haha! I just think it is cool to see the Vivid Dancer Dragonfly helping out as it is doing!

Thank you for coming by and seeing my photographs of this happening!

Froglet in The High Desert | Mrsroadrunner Photography

Froglet in The High Desert | Mrsroadrunner Photography




Meet the Froglet , or Baby Frog here in Our pond! This Froglet is the common frog we have. The Pacific Tree Frog has to have a place to lay eggs and for those eggs to grow into adult frogs. Of course the Pacific Tree Frog uses any source of water for this process, this pond of ours is one of those places.





At this stage of growth this Froglet is still not mature enough to leave the water for good. However at this stage the Froglets start coming out of the water checking out things.

The shot above there are at least one Froglet and a tadpole under the water. This small pond of ours is the one pond this species of Frog likes, the other pond has Toads that make the other pond theirs so this species is not to fond of that pond. Or if they are, I do not get the chance to observe them.





You can see from the above shot, the Tadpoles are of different sizes, we do have several different species of Frogs and Toads that show up here at home. So the two above may not even be the same species?? The eyes seam to be the same color, so I feel these two are the same species just different sizes and in different stages of growth. I am not expert, I just spend time with the Tadpoles, Froglets. Much like folks who spend time with their fish.....

This pond has Raspberries growing around it which brings in many creatures, plus the berries themselves have a way of dropping into the water. The wild birds also use this and the other pond. Because of all the life in the ponds we do add fresh water to the ponds at least two times a day. We were thinking of putting one of those waterfalls in the pond, however I like all the life in the ponds and do wonder if we did add such a feature would it do something to the life in the pond? Would the waterfall disturb the eggs??





The mature Frogs do branch out. Moving to where a food source is. Food sources being any creepy crawling thing they can find. I even watched a mature Pacific Tree Frog eat a dung beetle, which the mature Frog instantly spit out of his mouth. Not tasting to good perhaps? This of course made me laugh!

What I get a kick out of is when the neighborhood kids find a mature Frog!! The small kids get such a kid out of seeing them, and perhaps catching them? I asked a child of perhaps age 8 who was new to me, if he likes Frogs. Instantly telling me NO. So I do worry about our small friends who helps with our organic garden. However we do have a healthy population of these common frogs. I still hate to see them killed for nothing more then surviving to adulthood.

Since these are wild Frogs I can only hope they survive the cats, people, birds, snakes etc.. I do remove snakes when I smell or see them. I am not bad at catching what I want to catch. Then Guy and I drive them at least a mile away so we never see that particular snake again. Though snakes are pretty good about coming back......





I thought this shot of this Froglet swimming was a good shot to end this post with. I can spend a lot of time watching the Froglets! The birds who stop for a drink or a bath are so funny when they see the bigger Froglets! We get many fledglings here who have never yet seen a mature Frog or a Froglet! The first time seeing them is just a cute funny!

Thank you for coming by and checking out my photographs of this day of photographing the life in the pond!

Foxglove Hybrid Flower | Mrsroadrunner Photography

Foxglove Hybrid Flower | Mrsroadrunner Photography




Meet this Foxglove Hybrid Flower! If you are new to my blogs, photographs you may not have seen this Hybrid in the past? We have had these growing now for three years I think (without going back and looking).

As with the past years these Foxglove grow near the Bell Flower, or the Bell Flower grow near the Foxglove? Either way this is what I believe this Foxglove Hybrid came from, these two flowers interbreeding with each other. Of course this is just my theory of observation in my garden.





Since these Hybrids grow as a Foxglove would, I do not know which Foxglove will look like this until blooming time. The Bell Flowers took some time to establish themselves here. Once the Bell Flowers established themselves, and we chose to grow the Foxglove inside our private area, did we get this funky looking flower blooms.

You can see from the shot above, the top flower blooms are the ones who open up in this funky manor that the typical Foxglove Flower Blooms just do not open up as these hybrids do.





I have read some of the hype on the computer about this funky looking Foxglove Hybrid. Some saying there is no way that a species like the Foxglove can possibly breed with another species of flowers. Why not? Why cant a species of flower breed with another type of flower? I personally feel trying to control nature is like holding back the tide from coming in.....

This Hybrid Foxglove Flower Bloom was not something that was planned here in our garden, it just happened one year and has continued year after year. The seeds are the only way I can think of, of how this can happen the past what three years here in our garden? We do contain this hybrid flower within the private part of our garden so far. The typical Foxglove Flower that folks know of is one of those Flowers that we, or I have to contain within our yard.

As some people know the Foxglove is also a plant that if used in the wrong manor, or if it spreads to livestock it may not have the effect people really want. Thus containing the very good seed producing seed pods, or dead heading. As soon as a seed pod is forming, pinch it off before the seed pod matures. Keeping only the color of Foxglove you want.





The Hybrid Flower above has not opened up all the way yet. It takes them some time to fully open up in the funky manor you seen above. We do keep the Foxglove Flowers away from the dogs who have chewed on the leaves they could get to before, as puppies it was more so. Making the dogs sick of course! These Hybrids I do not recall the dogs being able to get to? We grow the flowers in our private area inside the six foot dog fence, inside another fence. We just find this way best for our Flowers and to keep the dogs from chewing on leaves the best we can. The dogs are allowed to chew on the Raspberry leaves and stems all they want to, the raspberries are safe to eat. I can not express enough, Foxglove Flowers are NOT safe for dogs, cats etc., people to eat!!

Thank you for coming by and checking out my Hybrid Foxglove Flowers!

Butterfly On The Sweet William Flowers | Mrsroadrunner Photography

Butterfly On The Sweet William Flowers | Mrsroadrunner Photography




Meet the Yellow Swallowtail Butterfly we have here at the house in the High Desert of Oregon!





Of course this species of Swallowtail are not just at our garden, but many places here in the High Desert! There were several of these Yellow Swallowtail Butterflies here at the house on this day , I chose these Sweet William Flowers and their visitors to pay attention to!





Since this Yellow Swallowtail Butterfly is in perfect shape I do feel this one is new to the Butterfly world coming from close by! Some years is great for all kinds of Butterflies to show up here to our garden!

We grow the Sweet William flowers by seeds. The Sweet William flowers did very well the first year we put them in and the butterflies of all kinds like them so much we put more of them into the garden here and there!





The Yellow Swallowtail Butterflies have everything they need right here in our garden! From food to the mud we supply for water the butterflies drink from. We even do not mind when they lay their eggs here and there! Though I really feel the trees that are close by are really where the caterpillars live and feed. Way up high in those trees you can see where the Caterpillars are, this is where I feel they metamorphoses into butterflies.....

I may make a blog of one of these Yellow Swallowtails who look as if it just emerged, drying it's wings on a leaf.....





I do like this shot I took of the Yellow Swallowtail Butterflies sets of wings. Front are up while the back wings are down.





This shot above I wanted to show the Sweet William Flowers with the Yellow Swallowtail in the shot but more in the background. I sure do like these Sweet William Flowers! Easy to grow, we have the Sweet William Flowers in several locations of our small properties garden.

Thank you for coming by and checking out this Yellow Swallowtail Butterfly!!

Bumblebee Hard At Work | Mrsroadrunner Photography

Bumblebee Hard At Work | Mrsroadrunner Photography




Meet again this Bumblebee! This Bumblebee is working on a Foxglove Flower, even this big Bumblebee can still fit into the flower blooms!





This Bumblebee acts aggressive but really, never had a bad experience. This species will challenge you by aggressively flying quickly into your face, or check you out by circling you. This is what bumblebee's do with flowers, they go round and round. They work on some flower blooms by circling them as well. This is just from my observations, if the Bumblebee does that in front of me I am sure they show the same behavior in your garden?

I do like the shot above showing the two sets of wings!



Some photographs I use ONLY for id use, some are stand alone photographs. Which is which is something I have to decide as the photographer. I feel I may put a couple of these shots out in the public as stand alone photographs? We will just have to wait and see?





I do not use my tripod all that much. Why? I feel tripods are restrictive when it comes to wildlife. I am not that far away from my subjects. If they would allow me closer I would change lenses and get in closer ha! Fact is I had a visitor here yesterday who did not stick around long and who was just to close! I did not have the time to change lenses..... if you are a photographer you know not everything comes out the way you see it in your head. All we can do is do our best!





This is the last photograph of this series I am showing. I am going to try to limit my photographs on these blogs to six or less. Lets see how I do with that ha!

Thank you for coming by and checking out this Bumblebee working hard on this Foxglove Flower. BTW the Foxglove does have it's bad point however the great thing about growing Foxglove Flowers is? The pollinators LOVE the Foxglove!

Rose Bloom in Orange

Rose Bloom in Orange




Meet our one of our Roses! Like several of our other Roses this to is a climbing Rose, with a nice color and the scent is not to bad either!



Roses are one of those flowers many people have. Guy is the Rose buyer here at our home. He looks at peddle count, and is real fond of the climbers!! This Rose is not a huge climber as our others. It does cover quite a lot of the six foot fence with many blooms! We actually gave away recently a couple of our climbers due to space. We do not have much land so every inch of space is valuable. I will miss those climbing Roses, however they all went to good homes!

This Orange Rose has a hint of yellow inside the peddles and we have had it for several years now! We did not have scare with our Roses. Warmth then we got a freeze! It looks like all our established Roses are coming back! The black death was clipped, and new shoots of growth is being seen! Black death is something I just say for if you grow roses you know of the black death and how much you do not want to see it!

Guy claimed he was not going to buy anymore Roses..... guess what he brought home lately??

The Roses attract Butterflies, Hoverflies,I have even photographed frogs inside the peddles of our Roses!!

Thank you for coming by and seeing my photographs of this Rose!

Lazuli Bunting birds Visiting

Lazuli Bunting birds Visiting




Meet the Lazuli Bunting bird. Isn't he pretty?





I had to be in my archive yesterday. I came upon these photographs I have never shared before. Actually, it looks as if I did not look through this whole file..... ? These days I put notes for myself in my photography albums of what day, so I know what I did when. Otherwise the photographs get lost in the shuffle.

This series of the Lazuli Bunting Birds I am showing today is the two feeding here at the house. This is when I had yet to designate this area as the bird area here at home. This is almost four years ago.... I have been doing this for a little while now, those who have read my blog know how much I like taking photographs and talking about the subjects of the photographs!



Like most of the birds who show up here these Lazuli Bunting birds are no different! They are a little mistrusting at first, then they find out I have my space, they have theirs. All I ask for is some photographs! In turn they get the seed that is placed in the feeder, they get nesting material if it applies. They get water which is a biggy here in the High Desert of Oregon and I wont let anything happen to them while in my space.

After some times these Lazuli Bunting birds noticed this, they were safe here.



I do believe I have photographs of the female in another photo album, however at the time I did not know what I had? I have to go back and find that photo album of that day.... My archive is organized by the year, month and the day. Then as I go through the photographs I name the photograph , if that is I can? This way all I have to do is go to the drive my external hard drive is plugged into, go to the search option type in whatever, hit search! If anyone has a better way..... I am all ears haha!

By naming the file before it is uploaded, the search engines grab the name of the photograph file. This just helps with the search engine optimization. I have done this for years, again if you have or think you have a better way......



Being a agricultural area, the seed we buy typically comes from the feed store at the livestock auction. At one time there was a well known feed store there in Madras we bought from, however with the economy the way it is... this is now a tire store (It looks like a tire store, could be a mechanic shop).

There is also a feed store now in Culver Oregon. Though we just find getting into the livestock auction easier and it is closest to us. Which ever case the seed to our understanding is from our area. Now a days we buy bulk seed. 40-50 lbs bags.

We also provide suet here for the wild birds. This I have yet to find a bulk supplier hint hint, if you know where I can buy this in bulk......



What I felt was a little strange for these Lazuli Bunting being here is, we are not a wooded area like I read they are found. We are the High Desert. For this reason I think these Lazuli Buntings were here at the house just resting until they went on their way.

We get many creatures just stopping in. Migrating birds the most! Whatever species might be here for a day or two, or could be here for only hours before they pack up and move on! I think this is the case with these Lazuli Bunting birds?



As you can see from this series of photographs, the Lazuli Bunting birds are filling up on seeds. They were in the fruit trees as well, so perhaps they were also feeding on insects? I watched these Lazuli Buntings while they were here. Their behavior and how they interacted with the birds who are here normally at this time of the year, (May). There was some fighting going on with the other birds trying to run off the Lazuli Buntings, however the Lazuli Buntings were not easily ran off!

I have photographed the Western Bluebird which one website claims is similar to the Lazuli Bunting, no there is no confusing the two birds one bit!! However, if the two do share the same space, this is even more confusing to me as to why the Lazuli Bunting were here at the house..... There are three spots that we know of that the Western Bluebirds always are and it is not here at home! Again why I feel these Lazuli Bunting birds were here during migration?

The Lazuli Bunting I have read is pretty common bird, so I hope to see it again! Thank you for coming by and checking out my little write up and hope your weekend went well if you celebrated the holiday or not!

American Goldfinch and Fledgelings

American Goldfinch and Fledgelings




Meet the American Goldfinch Fledgelings!



Because we have the Lesser Goldfinch here in Oregon and they show up at the house as well, I use some of my photography only for identification purposes, this is the case with these shots I am sharing with you.

The American Goldfinch Fledgelings are very noisy! I can not express to you how noisy these babies really are!! This is how the fledgelings got my attention, the begging almost made me want to feed them myself haha! I spend a lot of time on identification of whatever species I happen to photograph.

If I happen to get stuck on a identification or Guy and I disagree with a identification of whatever I have been known to contact someone to help with identification. As with one of the hawk species I photographed, even though I contacted someone in the field of birds of prey, Guy is still being obstinate that he is right ..... it makes for good conversation here at home!



I have went back to this series of photographs, (there are many more photographs in this series), for the fledgelings and females just do not look like the males that everyone thinks of as The American Goldfinch. The males being the flashy, pretty ones that people like to photograph and think of as the American Goldfinch.

Thank you for checking out these identification photographs I took here at home! Identification photographs are not for anything but id......

Rufous Hummingbird In The High Desert

Rufous Hummingbird In The High Desert


Meet the Rufous Hummingbird! This is the Hummingbird we have most here at the house. The Rufous Hummers show up here for the breeding season.



The hummers like the pine trees we have here. This Hummer had followed me around so I took some photographs!



All the Hummingbirds react to the click of my camera. Pretty aggressive birds during this time of the year!



This Hummingbird was so curious that the hummingbird did not appreciate a neighbor stopping by to chat! The hummingbird dove at the neighbor I am assuming trying to run off the neighbor haha!

Hummingbirds really do get used to us! This species of Hummingbird will show back up here at the house at any time. We have had this species here for quite a few years now, do not expect 2015 to be any different.



I think this Hummingbird followed me around because I kicked up bugs? Even "talking", back to the click of my camera haha!!



Hummingbirds do not relax very often and I just feel these Hummingbirds here at the house like to watch what I am doing as much as I like watching them!

Thank you for coming by and checking out this Rufous Hummingbirds photographs!