A Busy Junco

During the winter months we like to fill the bird feeder and watch as all of the "overwintering" birds help themselves to dinner.  We always have a lot of Dark Eyed Juncos, all different kinds of Sparrows, a few Blue Jays and Cardinals, and every once in awhile a Tufted Titmouse or a Nuthatch will show up.  

On the warmer not-freeze-your-face-off days I like to bundle up and take my camera out to see if I can get some shots of the birds at the feeder.  This day was sorta in between the warmer and the freeze-your-face-off weather!

A Junco enjoying a Sunflower seed.

To capture these two pictures I was laying on my stomach in the driveway for thirty minutes waiting for some of the birds to get close enough.  I was finally able to get a few shots!  The rocks didn't make a very comfortable spot to wait, though!

Back in August of last year I purchased a new Nikon D7100.  At first I was having trouble with the focus, but after experimenting and reading through the instruction manual I figured out I could select where I wanted the camera to focus!  Most of you photographers out there probably already knew that, but oh well! ;)  These two pictures are from when I finally got that figured out!  I was so excited and was finally able to enjoy my camera more!

Here is a picture I snapped of my sister in her freeze-your-face-off-weather getup. :)  Luckily the sun was shining and the wind wasn't blowing too bad!

And here is the picture she took of me in my getup!  You always gotta carry an extra pair of insulated gloves! :)

How do you like to dress for cold winter photography?

Week 15: Spring Is Here, But Winter Came to Visit

Spring is finally here!  The grass is green, the daffodils are blooming, the birds are singing and new baby calves are being born!  But Winter isn't going to give up that easy, so for the next few days he'll be hanging around until Spring kicks him out for good. 

Over the last week I have been busy planting potatoes and strawberries.  We had several days in a row where it was in the 70*s and the nights in the 40*s.  I planted 10 lbs. of seed potatoes and hope to get 4 more planted soon.  This year I am going to try to grow some purple potatoes, they're called Purple Majesty.  I should've taken some pictures of the cut seed but I didn't.  I'll have to get some pictures of the harvest to show you guys.  In all I am growing seven different varieties of potatoes, they include: Purple Majesty, Purple Viking, German Butterball, Red Pontiac, Kennebec, Irish Cobbler, and Dakota Pearl.  I was going to grow Yukon Gold instead of Dakota Pearl and Irish Cobbler, but I was too late in buying the seed tubers.  I couldn't find them anywhere.  We grew them two years ago and they tasted amazing!

As for the Strawberries I planted 3 varieties: Jewel, All Star, and Honeoye.  Seventy-five plants in all.  They are all June-bearing.   I planted them about 12-14 inches apart both ways in my strawberry bed and another small bed we had.  The last Strawberries we had were Honeoye, they grew very well and the berries were big.  Hopefully we will have lots of strawberries next summer!!

We have been getting lots of rain the past few days.  Maybe not a lot, but some.  Compared to last year we are getting a lot.  I'm just thankful to be getting rain at all!  I like cloudy-rainy days!  The rain seems to make things all the more pretty.  It makes the grass greener and the trees darker.  Not to mention the lighting, even though it makes taking pictures all that more difficult.  IF I can figure my camera settings out, the dark rainy days make for better photos than the bright sunny ones do.

                                                 I'm so excited Spring is here!

                            The Grape Hyacinths are blooming, aren't they so cute!

                                           The Chickens are also happy Spring is here.

How has the weather been in your area?  Are you seeing signs of Spring yet?

"In the light of a king's face there is life,

and his favor is like the clouds

that bring the spring rains."

Proverbs 16:15

 



Week 11: One Fancy Dude

This guy is one fancy dude.  He insists on fixing his hair everyday!  Sometimes his obsession gets annoying!  As if that isn't enough, he goes around showing it off, strutting here and there all day!!

Though I can't say all of the other guys are jealous, they think he's just weird.  Especially since he can't see too clearly, what with his hair in the way and all.  But don't tell him that, he won't listen.

The Fancy Dude

 

I took this picture in 2011.  He is a Polish Crested (I think, but who knows!) rooster that our friends gave to us because they had too many.  He definitely doesn't blend in with the rest of them!

See another picture of him on my Flickr

 



Week 6: Roosters



 Last Spring and Summer we had quite a few chickens decide to set and hatch eggs.  After the first batch, we would take the newly hatched babies to the hen that was already raising a brood.  She eventually ended up with about twenty chicks!  We kept them in a chicken tractor (a wire cage that can be moved all over the yard to provide new grass) untill they got their actual feathers.  We then move them to the Chicken House in a dog crate overnight, just to let them see where their new house was going to be.  We then let them out in the morning with the rest of the chickens.  Usually they knew where to go to at night, but not always.  We had a few of the older chicks that stayed out at night and we had to sneak up on them once they roosted and grab them.  We then deposited them in the Chicken House for the night.  This lasted about a month, then finally we were able to get them to go to the house at night by themselves.

 

 

Quite a few of those chicks turned out to be roosters.  Here are a couple pictures of two of our roosters. 

 

 

This rooster is a golden color with darker gold turning to black in the tail area. 

 

 All of the chicks that hatched were mixed breeds, so we got some interesting looking ones!

 

 

This rooster is a Barred Rock crossed with a Buff Orpington, I think.

He has the normal Barred Rock coloring with bright orange on the midsection of his wings.

You can visit my Flickr page to see both of these pictures in color.  They are in the set called "Around the Farm"

 

We have about six other roosters.  In all we have Forty-Three chickens.

We really enjoy having the fresh eggs!  Store eggs cannot compare in taste or color!

You can immediately tell the farm eggs from the store eggs just by the color of the yolk.

In farm eggs the yolk is a dark orange, in the store eggs the yolk is a pale yellow.

 

We also have a variety in the color of the egg shells.  We have white, brown, dark brown, pale brown with darker brown spots, blue, gray-blue, green, blue-green, and an occasional dark gray-brown.  Maybe sometime I can get some pictures of the different shell colors and share them with you all.

 

Do you raise chickens/eggs?

 



Week 4: A Look Back in Time

This weeks post is a look back in time.  A look back in time at one of my old pictures.  I was hoping to post a new picture that I had taken the same week as the post, but since week four is already over that's not going to happen.  Once in a while I thought it might be nice to post an old picture that I have never posted before.  Well, it looks like this week is once in a while!

                                    Hey, it worked!  The picture uploaded!! Yay!!

So this weeks picture is of a little blue bird.  I'm not sure what kind of bird it is, it looks like a hummingbird to me.  I'm not sure if there are blue hummingbirds or not.

   Last Summer my family and I went to the zoo in Omaha, Nebraska.  We hadn't been to the zoo for several years and my four year old brother had been wanting to go for a year or so.  He would ask mom if we could go to the zoo because he wanted to see real tigers and bears.  So last year we went to the zoo.  Needless to say, he was a little excited about it!

The Berniece Grewcock Butterfly and Insect Pavilion is where I got a picture of this little guy.  I had never seen a bird this color before.  He was so blue!  He didn't like to hold still very long, but I was able to capture this picture of him.  I didn't have much time to take pictures because there were lots of people behind us and we had to keep moving.  I was able to snap a few pictures of the flowers and some of the butterflies, also.

Here is a picture of one of the butterflies.  You can click on the images to see them larger.
I will also be adding these to my Flickr if you want to view them there.
Here is my Flickr:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobbihphotos/

I hope you have enjoyed these photos!

The Ones that Didn't Make it

I had picked out way too many photos for each kind of calendar, so I had to choose which ones to use.  Here are a few that didn't make the cut.  I still like these, but I thought the others went with the calendar better.

 

 

Some didn't make it because they wouldn't print very well because of how they had to be cropped.  One example is this eagle.  I really like the picture, but I had to crop it in quite a bit so that you can see him good.  As you all know, cropping a picture too much will cause it to be blurry if printed too big.

This is also another example as stated above.  Eagles don't like to hang around very long for a photoshoot!

I really like this one, but I had a few others that looked similar to it already in the calendar.  I wanted a variety of photos for the calendar.

This is a neat picture, but not quite right for a calendar!

 

 

Also, I try to put pictures that would be accurate for the month that they are on.  Though, sometimes I have to use some that might not fit quite right.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the pictures that didn't make it!  If you are interested in a print of any of the photos you see on my blog, e-mail me and I can let you know if it can be printed!

P.S. If you look at the chicken picture you will notice that he is running from Bobbi Heyde. ;)

Winter in January

These are a few pictures taken last January. I am kind of late in getting them up!
I hope to have the next Colorado post up soon, also.

One morning in January it was frosty, and the light shining through the frost on the trees was beautiful!

I thought this one looked neat in Black and White!

This was the sunrise on the frosty morning!

Trees in the snow.

These are our cows in the snow, not sure if they enjoyed it!

One of the first Bald Eagles I have seen this year. I haven't seen as many Bald Eagles this year as I did last year.

I liked the way the snow was sitting on top of the branches, just waiting to be blown off by a gust of wind!

I hope to get more pictures up soon, I will try to start posting once a week! But we will see what happens!