Hummingbird Photos

Bought a used macro lens last year for my birthday and Christmas presents to myself, forever. I've been playing with it for a year and love it. Here, some photos from Mt. Lemmon on Sunday of Rivoli's hummingbird..

Saguaro Blooms

 

Saguaro blooms in May mean that summer in the desert is here. Within just a week or two, the blooms fade, and then the fruit will grow. The Thong O'odham and ancestors eat the fruit. Amazingly, the saguaro has tiny, tiny seeds. Birds like the Gila woodpecker and cactus wren love to make their nests in holes in the saguaro. And it grows nowhere else on earth but here in the Sonora Desert.

Sandhill Cranes

The wonderful sandhill cranes stop briefly in Arizona on their migration north to their breeding grounds. I've been saying for about 30 years that I want to go see them. This year, I did. 

Urban Birding

 

Redhead rampage.

The New Handsome Boy

 The new handsome boy at 2.5 years old. One quarter puppy, three-quarters adult. 

New Camera Experiments

 I recently bought a DSLR, and am having way too much fun. It's a Canon Rebel t7 and it's perfect--light enough to hold in one hand, even with a 200 mm lens on it. My love pop photography has been totally reignited. My old rules are back though--no filters, no Photoshop, only a brown filter if needed (I live in the desert, glare is a big problem), and only cropping. My goals have always been to show reality. That means some photos may not be good in the opinion of others, but it will always be real.

Four Years

It's been fours years since I wrote anything. I cannot believe fours years have flown by. Life threw way too many curveballs my way: too many deaths, the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic--just too much at warp speed. I barely kept my head above water. No apologies, no guilt. This blog was not a priority. We will all just keep moving forward, one day at a time.