Images

Sleepy Gerbils

Just a couple of happy gerbils in their little hut.

gerbils snuggling in gerbil house
They’re just a couple of dudes that like to snuggle

They generally head below to the main part of the enclosure to nap, but this time they decided to stay up above, and have a siesta together in the remains of their “house”.

Their eyes may be open, but they were definitely in low power mode.

Beta child had just cleaned their enclosure an hour before.  It’s amazing how fast they can litter up the place. It must be tiring.

Walk-About on a Foggy Christmas Night

Playscape and trees at the shore of Silver Lake, backlit by a street lamp, on a foggy night
I thought the street lamp was a nuisance, casting too much glow on everything else, until I realized that it was backlighting the playscape and trees in a peculiar, almost spooky way
Playscape and trees at the shore of Silver Lake, backlit by a street lamp, on a foggy night
After playing with the light levels of the raw photo, I got a much more dramatic image.

Bird-watching at Wildwood Cemetery

Our local library sponsored a guided bird-watching walk through the cemetery across the street.  Most people brought binoculars.  I brought my camera and a zoom lens.  Here are the highlights:

robin in the grass
This robin was bouncing between tree and grass
red-tailed hawk preening
Red-tailed hawk preening in a precarious situation
unbalanced red-tailed hawk with wings spread
A red-tailed hawk finding it’s balance in a precarious situation. A moment before, it was preening it’s feathers.

Walking Through Goldsmith Woodland

Alpha child and I took our cameras on a walk through the Goldsmith Woodlands.

marsh and trees reflected on waterI have a new camera, an Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV.  (Their new naming scheme is kind of terrible, but the cameras are still good.)  The last camera I owned was an Olympus OM-4, so using a digital camera is taking some getting used to.

Over time, Alpha has adopted my old OM-4, a Canon EOS DSLR from 2005, and a small number of truly vintage cameras.  Today was a Canon kind of a day.

All of these photos were taken by me on my OM-D.

tree truck with insect and woodpecker holes
One of a number of dead tree trunks in the Goldsmith Woodlands. The grounds are carefully managed, and that includes leaving dead trees in place when possible.
sun through tree branches
Filtered winter sun through tree branches
lone cattail with pond in background
The remains of last year’s cattails, also known as typha
bald eagle in flight
We watched a bald eagle parent taking off; it’s juvenile offspring was still standing on the ice