The Birds and the Bees

 

No, this isn’t a post about you know what!  Fooled you, didn’t I?  But, not really – because the picture above is, clearly, a bee!  In fact, it’s a Carpenter Bee.  But, more on that later.  The Birds and the Bees is about my continuous love affair with this fabulous planet we call home – Earth – and the amazing, wondrous things that surround us every day, even when we don’t go looking for them.

My newfound hobby, next to blogging, has become photography.  I have a lot to learn; I’m just getting started.  And, my marvelous camera (a Nikon DSLR 3200) really does all the work.  I’m just the walking, breathing tripod for this remarkable piece of equipment.  It has the incredible capability to read my mind and capture the photo at the instant I want to permanently embed the image on my brain.  While I know all of those thousands of photos are, indeed, twirling around in my brain, my ability to remember and retrieve them is not what it used to be (I need Commander Data’s Android brain {grin}).  So, having this marvelous camera help me out in that department is a fabulous thing!

I have taken thousands and thousands of pictures since my husband gifted me with this new camera in December.  That’s the hard part about having a truly fabulous camera.  Then, you have to edit.  And edit.  And edit.  And edit.  Just because you have thousands and thousands of pictures doesn’t mean you have thousands and thousands of good pictures.

I’m trying to be more selective as I weed through my thousands and thousands of pictures and permanently delete ones that really aren’t any good, or are out of focus, or the lighting isn’t right, but it’s difficult because some I love even if they are blurry!

Anyway, over the last several months, I’ve been able to capture some pretty good pictures of birds and bees, mostly on our property, just walking around with my camera in hand and ready to go.  Hope your enjoy them!

 

This is a Black Phoebe on a wrought iron planter outside of my great room window.  This picture was taken through the window, thus the reason that the clarity isn’t as sharp.  But, a sweet, beautiful bird that mates for life that has always been a part of our country landscape in the 25 years I have lived here.  This bird sings all the time – happy, happy, happy!

 

 

This American Yellow Warbler is a bird new to me this year.  New to me because I don’t remember ever seeing one on our property before.  This was taken with a 300mm lens plus I enlarged the photo in editing so that you could see the bird close-up.  Because I enlarged it, the focus is somewhat blurry.  But this bird is a soft buttercup yellow and I think he’s beautiful even blurry!  This bird is quite a songbird (I guess the name Warbler should be the first clue?) and wakes me every morning along with the Black Phoebe (song dueling contest).

 

 

This is a Hooded Oriole in one of my trees.  Again, I took this with a 300mm lens and enlarged the photo.  So, the image is somewhat blurry.  But this amazing bird is everywhere on my property – in the Kangaroo Paws, in the Jacaranda trees, on the wires, on the house, in the pool!  I don’t know whether I have one bird or more, but I’ve never seen more than one Hooded Oriole at a time.  His bright yellow, almost orange color, is so intense and mixed with the other black marking, he’s such a beautiful bird.

 

 

This is a Red House Finch.  He’s contemplating my pool and eventually takes a dip.  This was taken through the window of my great room, so not crisp and clear, plus I enlarged it even though it was taken with a 300mm lens (I think I need a more powerful lens!).  Anyway, this wonderful bird is always with another bird, a bird that is the same size but doesn’t have any red.  I think (and I’m certainly not a bird expert), that the other bird is the mate and that this bird is a male.  We seem to have a small flock because I’ve seen 3 at a time bathing in the hot tub!

 

This beautiful Bluebird is perched high above me on one of our electrical wires leading to our house.  He’s high in the sky and this was taken with my 300mm lens and then blown up in editing.

 

Unfortunately, I don’t know what kind of bird this is!  But, he’s hanging out in one of Silk Floss Trees.  This was taken in early spring before the tree leafed out and sprung to splendor with its gorgeous pink flowers.  If you know what this bird is, please tell me in the comments!

 

And, another unknown bird!  Please share in the comments if you know what kind of bird this is.  He’s perching in one of my Jacarandas and this was taken with my 200mm lens and blown up in editing.

 

 

Here’s a fun picture, although obviously very blurry.  A red-tailed hawk circling our property high in the sky.  This was taken with my 300mm lens but he was moving so fast and up so high that I couldn’t keep up with him!  Still learning how to use my camera to capture these amazing sights!

 

And a bird photo tour around our property would not be complete without the ever-present crow.  Sometimes, we have hundreds in our fields, but I’ve yet to capture that site.  This one is on the wing and taken with my 200mm lens and blown up.

 

 

This flock of crows was taken with my iPhone.  I was visiting my aunt at her assisted living facility when suddenly this flock flew over the parking lot.  I’ve read that we have a flock of 2,000 to 3,000 that live in our area and I believe it, although there have never been more than a few hundred on my property at any given time.

 

I took the picture above, of Mourning Doves also known as Western Turtle Doves, on a raining day in early March.  The trees were barren and these beautiful birds needed a break and parked themselves in this tree outside my home office window.  This picture was taken through glass with a 200mm lens.  I haven’t seen them lately, but I hear them all the time…their soft cooing “woooooo, wooooo, wooooo” that is the reason for the name “Mourning Dove” because they sound mournful.

 

 

I took this picture and the one below of this hummingbird outside a San Diego restaurant called The Fish Market.  I took this with my regular 55mm lens.  That’s the great thing about hummingbirds.  They don’t seem to be as nervous around humans as other birds and let you get really close.  I was about 5 feet away and he swooped in to drink from this Kangaroo Paw.  I took at least 20 pictures of him with my camera set on the “sports” setting (takes pictures very quickly in rapid succession to capture sports – or birds in flight!).  I don’t know what kind of hummingbird this is, but the next picture shows his back and he has some beautiful green feathers.

 

 

And, this hummingbird – he let me come right up to him while he rested in one of my Jacaranda trees.  I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a hummingbird resting.  He stayed for awhile and let me take about 20 pictures of him before he flew off.  This, too, was taken with my 200mm lens because my Jacaranda tree is pretty tall!

 

And this hummingbird was outside my home office window, so this was taken through glass – again with my 200mm lens.

 

And this hummingbird heading for my sage plant!  Maybe it’s all the same hummingbird!!! {grin}

 

These are Guinea Fowl at my neighbor’s.  I know, I know, these aren’t at my house!  But, they’re so cute I just had to include them!  Our “neighbor” lives about 2 miles away, so they aren’t right next door.  Charlie and I were “driving around the neighborhood” on one of our Sunday drives and came across these cute, plump birds and I jumped out of the truck to snap this picture.  It, too, was taken with my 200mm lens.

 

Here’s a special surprise!  This egret just flew onto our property and landed when I happened to be outside taking pictures.  Egrets tour our yard rather often, but I’m never photographically prepared!  This time it was pure luck.  He just started walking around and I took these pictures with my 300mm lens (actually, it was the first day I owned the 300mm lens; an early birthday present from my husband Charlie!).

 

 

Then he decided to take a walk down our driveway, so I followed him at a distance.

 

 

He got to the end of our driveway by our entrance gate and then I guess he felt I was encroaching too close, so he took flight!

 

 

Sorry this picture is blurry – he caught me off guard – but I love this picture anyway!  Maybe he’ll return some day and I’ll get a better picture!

Now for the bees…

 

I took this picture of a bee zooming in on a Dahlia at Walter Anderson’s Nursery in Poway.  I went there to buy plants (naturally) and the bees were everywhere enjoying the summer flowers.  I grabbed my camera and started clicking away.  In the future, I’ll share a post about this wonderful nursery – my favorite local nursery – with only 2 locations.

 

 

This bee is on one of my plants, a Freeway Daisy planted along my driveway.  I bought this plant last year from Walter Anderson’s Nursery (haha) in a 6″ pot.  I’m hopeful that over time, this plant (now about a gallon size) will run rampant on my property.  I love Freeway Daisies.  We call them that here in Southern California because they line the borders and corridors of many of our Southern California freeways and when in bloom, are a marvelous site – in white with purple centers like this one and lavender with purple centers.  They are actually called Osteospermum, but I prefer Freeway Daisy.

 

 

This is a bee on one of my geraniums.  Geraniums were my grandmother’s, Dorothy, favorite flowering plant next to roses.  She had endless varieties of them in her yard and she taught me how to care for them and how to propagate them.  I, too, love them because here in Southern California, they bloom at least 10 months out of the year, so provide beautiful color to my yard most of the time.  Plus, they are so easy to care for and grow like weeds!  Anyway, the bees love them too!

 

And this bee is in the blossoming rosemary!  Bees are harder to capture than birds because they are tinier!

 

 

And now, we are back to the Carpenter Bee in one of my Palo Verde trees.  These bees are the largest bees I have ever seen!  The size of a quarter, with fat rounded black bodies, they swarm around my Palo Verde trees and Bougainvillea plants.  They don’t really seem to want to be anyplace else, so the Palo Verde and the Bougainvillea must give them just the right nectar for their finicky taste!  They weren’t afraid of me (nor I of them) and let me get really close to take this picture (with my 200mm lens).

At first, I thought they might be killer bees from Africa or Mars, because I’d never seen them before nor seen bees so big.  But after finding them online, I discovered they are Carpenter Bees.  They are considered a pest because they bore into wood like termites, but we haven’t found them near the house.  They only want the Palo Verde and the Bougainvillea so I guess we are blessed – for now!

Speaking of the Palo Verde trees, I didn’t know what these amazing trees were until I visited Tiffany when she lived in Arizona many years ago.   All around town, these glorious trees were blooming and I kept asking what they were until I asked the right person and they gave me the answer!  So, I had to have one on our property!  Now we have three!  And, the Carpenter Bees are happy.

Oh, you expected at least the lyrics from The Birds and the Bees?  Well, here are a few…

Let me tell you ’bout the birds and the bees

And the flowers and the trees,

The moon up above,

And the thing called love!

Tootles,

 

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• Creative Fairy Gardens
• Gifts from the Garden Fairies
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• Signs of Spring
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(other photography posts)

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• Good Photographs
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(other posts about birds – my birds {grin})

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• Sweet Baby James
• The Best Nests in the West
• The Swallows Return to Capistrano South