OK, I know, this is a HUGE ‘no-no’, but isn’t Coco cute on the computer?! And, yes, I have been working with her to stay off of it (I think she thinks her name is Coco No-no).
This is an orginal Gyotaku fish print, which is among several items being raffled off at my organization’s booth. The print was done by one of our members. Unfortunately, the glare is bad, but it really is a beautiful print.
And, this concludes the birding festival series!
The Aplomado Falcon was nearly extinct, with only 2 known pairs in the 1940’s-50’s. Thankfully, the bird responded well to intervention and no longer requires direct intervention by man to increase their numbers. They can be seen, if you are lucky, at Laguna Atascosa NWR (yes, I have seen this one in the wild). This one was at the Birding Festival and was a bit easier to photograph than those in the wild.
Aplomado Falcon
For more information visit Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. LANWR is also working with about 11 other endangered/threatened species, including the Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle and the Ocelot.
“I’ll have a nice juicy mouse, rare,” said the Golden Eagle. I tried to get a photo but everytime I snapped, the eagle dipped his head or raised it, so the photo has a blur.
What’s more classic than a Bald Eagle named Uncle Sam posing in front of an American flag? Nikon sponsors a Raptor program at the Birding Festival and I took a few shots of the birds (which were just a few feet away), hoping fill in a few more themes!
One of the National Wildlife Refuges has a large Friends Organization. The group runs the gift shop/bookstore and the profits go the the refuge. They have a great selection of wildlife related goodies for shoppers. Their items are reasonably priced, much more affordable than all the optics that were also for sale at the Birding Festival.
An organization I belong to had a booth at the recent Birding Festival, so we volunteered a few hours on Saturday to help man the booth and talk to folks. This is our chapter president talking about our upcoming training for new members.
Well, the down side to having vegetation that invites birds is that you get raptors. Apologies to the poets out there for my Haiku.
Hawk photo is poor quality, had to shoot from inside, through windowscreen. Sorry!
I love planting native plants and watching butterflies and birds visit the yard. Guess it’s a passion for me (I do take a lot of photos of them, too).
