Creation Photos Around the World

Wow, that’s a beautiful picture. I would imagine you could publish and sell that as a poster! Thanks. I’m from Michigan as well from the West part. We have friends from North Central Saskatchewan to who were missionaries in Africa. Beautiful place.

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Um … I think all of you up there in the center of this big continent are a race of super-humans, capable of surviving almost anywhere. I think I must be a tender semi tropical kind. Think I’ll stay right where I am.

@klw I have a gardening friend in San Diego who is also a keen birder and insomniac. As a result he is up before dawn most mornings filming and photographing lots of interesting birds, most of which I’ve never seen. He posts these most mornings on his Facebook page (Ken Blackford). Interestingly he was raised in Michigan and like me is from a huge military family.

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Yep. Born and bred. Now not far from Lansing. Grew up closer to WIndsor. :wink:
Hope you got to see a lot of the state, while you were here. I think it’s a stunner.

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Ha! There’s something to be said for acclimatization. I think you tropical types have the superhuman gene! Anything above about 72 F and I start to sweat and melt into incoherence… I’m a sucker for good bird photos but rarely have the time to take them myself–usually too busy collecting data in the field to “stop and smell the roses”. Regrettable.

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Super humans. Ha! I see your temps and read about @SkovandOfMitaze’s outlander adventures, and I blush at my delicate nature.
I can always put on another sweater. Our winters, though have changed drastically in the last 10 years. Snow beats ice any day, and we’re getting more ice now. Awful.

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To quote Mark Twain, “The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco.”

A lifetime ago, I was a publishing exec and signed a deal with a company in Finland to reprint our hockey magazine there. For some reason, he insisted on signing the deal in person. It was August in Dallas. We took him to lunch, and he melted in the parking lot before we could make the restaurant door.

I’ve been away from Dallas for 10 yrs, but that sounds like the winters there. Ice storms were more common than snowstorms. I grew up driving on snow and now live in NM and drive in snow in mountains to go skiing. Snow at least gives you a bit of traction. Ice is practically frictionless. Driving to work in a Dallas ice storm, I spent more time looking in my rearview mirror for idiots than I did looking at the road in front of me.

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I seem to be rather unusually unaffected by temperature: I can wear my typical field clothes (fishing shirt over t-shirt, lightweight long pants over shorts, socks and sneakers) and be reasonably comfortable in anything between 30 and a humid 110 (okay, I want gloves for the low end of that because I cease to be able to operate the camera). Endothermy can be nice.

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Thursday

Gambel’s Quail

Virga (rain evaporating before hitting the ground)

Desert wash, showing the rippling

Red-shouldered Hawk

Oleander

Roadrunner footprint (yes, there were coyote prints going the other way on the same trail)

Landslides

Cactus wren nesting in a cholla at Anza-Borrego Desert SP Visitor Center

Anza-Borrego Desert SP Visitor Center area

Black-throated Sparrow

Beavertail (an Opuntia)

Black-tailed Gnatcatcher

Female Verdin

Costa’s Hummingbird

Another Cholla

White-winged Dove

Valleys are wetter than slopes

Acorn Woodpecker

Stellar’s Jay

Allen’s Hummingbird

Cerithideopsis (tall, dark shells), Melampus (pale brown, lower left), and some intertidal isopods. (Tijuana Slough, we could see the wall [and the bull ring], and had border patrol helicopters flying over)

More of the slough

Juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

An aster-like plant

Least Sandpiper

Kellettia

Nuttalia

Dallocardium

Mytilus californianus

Western Willet (southern San Diego Bay)

Western Sandpiper

Western Sandpiper, Short-billed Dowitcher, and Black-bellied Plover

Western Sandpiper (there were about 400 of them), Black-bellied Plover, and Red Knot

Black Skimmer

Semipalmated Plover

Marbled Godwit

Least Tern (background is a mix of Caspian, Royal, Elegant, and Gull-billed)

E

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Loved all the cool desert birds! Nice work.

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Wow, you can add to a classy nature phot book or calendar too! Lots of good example in this whole thread too. I am enjoying them thanks

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I now have enough for birds that a could do (almost, some of them are not great) a picture-a-day calendar (this trip brought it from ~350 to ~380).

For shells, I could probably do a 3-year calendar, though it would get kind of repetitive to a non-expert (members of Prunum for almost a month and members of Turbonillinae for even longer).

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I was too lazy to type out everything while waiting for it to load. The mini pinecone looking flower with yellow petals popping out is “ yellow eyed grass “. The white flowers with green tips is that loom like stars are “ starry white top reed/grass” , the tall one with lots of bumpy bids and a bit of purple is liatris, the roundish white ones are “ white bog button “ and I don’t remember what’s all in there. Did mostly landscape shops from just below flower level to make it feel more 3d and some just above for the same feeling. The spider is the tropical or weaver. Really hairy looking spider that reminds me of a “Beetles” caricature. If I spelled that British band wrong i apologize. I don’t think I’ve ever actually listened to them.

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Friday

Agave

Orange-crowned Warbler

Mission Trails Regional Park

An herbaceous plant

Male Costa’s Hummingbird

California Thrasher

Lesser Goldfinch

Wrentit

Spotted Towhee

Yellow-breasted Chat


California Towhee

Black-chinned Hummingbirds

Rufous-crowned Sparrow

California Gnatcatcher

An Abalone at the Birch Aquarium (meeting field trip)

A Ctenophore

A Garibaldi

A mathematically-challenged asteroidean

Do not step here!


(a stonefish)

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Love those orangish flowers in the next to the last pic. They make me think of orchids.

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They are. It’s the “orange/yellow fringed orchid “Platanthera ciliaris“. They grow best , and in abundance in pine woods.

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image

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Just saw a dolphin at my daughters on the Texas Coasr but missed a pic, but here is the sunset:


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And a few minutes later:

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Dolphin came back by, can see it here

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