Month: August 2009

If you visit here regularly, you know that Cedar Waxwings are one of my favorite photographic subjects. They’ve always struck me as being rather elegant.

I’ll have to admit that I was a little puzzled Sunday when I saw a small flock of them flying around a tall fir tree. When I noticed that almost of them had their beaks wide open,

I half assumed that they were flying down, getting a blackberry and then flying back to the safety of the tree to it eat. I discarded that theory after I’d observed them for awhile and realized that they never left the fir tree, but simply flew a short distance and returned to the tree and sat there with their beak open.

The puzzle was solved when I finally got home and blew up this picture enough to see the insect just out of range of this Waxwing’s beak.

It turned out a they weren’t flying as much as they were simply hopping up to catch insects, only using their wings to land safely after launching themselves mid-air.

On Sunday’s trip to Theler Wetlands in Belfair I was carrying the usual two camera, one to capture birds in the distance and another to capture flowers, and anything else that might be visiting the “flowers.” Although I don’t mind carrying two cameras, the truth is I seldom end up using both effectively because it’s nearly impossible to hold two cameras with only two hands.

So, about half way through our walk I gave Leslie one of the cameras and told her to shoot whatever appealed to her. One of the first things that appealed to her was this wild rose, which has always struck me as the archetypal flower:

She also found that once she started looking carefully at flowers that she also started seeing insects that she’d overlooked before:

Unfortunately, neither of us really has the slightest idea what this strange little creature is, though it looks like some kind of wasp to me.

Both of us loved this subtle Mallow that was hiding in the shade:

And, I thought she got a much better picture of this giant Mallow than I’ve ever managed to get.