Monday, September 22, 2014

Blue Monday: Butterfly Watch

Blue Monday is hosted weekly by Smiling Sally.
To see more offerings, or to participate yourself, please head on over to her blog.

Wow, can you believe September is almost over? I find that very hard to accept. Not that it's my favorite month -- it definitely is not that. I'm not really fond of the month. Probably because it's my birth month (yet another year older, sigh), but also because it marks the official end of my favorite time of year and the official beginning of autumn. Not that I don't like the fall; but if fall is here, that also means winter is right around the corner. And that's something I don't even like to think about. Especially after the winter we had last year. Brrrrrr!

OK, enough of that. How did I get off on winter? What I really meant to say is: Wow, we actually had some rain last week! And over the weekend, we were inundated with just about every kind of insect you can think of. Including dozens of butterflies! For a while on Saturday I was playing hide-and-seek with a huge Tiger Swallowtail that was flitting around our sage bushes. Every time I managed to get the camera aimed and focused, the lovely butterfly would flutter off to another branch, and I'd end up with another blurry peekaboo shot much like this:

Hiding in the blossoms

But after many tries, I finally managed to get a couple of decent shots. This isn't the best, but it does allow you to see the lovely blue spots on its lower wings:

I believe the blue spots mean this was a female

And this was my favorite: wings spread, with a bright blue Texas sky in the background:

Tiger Swallowtail in Texas Sage bush


Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Capturing the Roadrunner

We have a roadrunner living nearby. Probably more than one, of course -- but we only ever see one at a time. He (she?) likes to hunt for insects in our yard, and now and then comes right up onto our front porch to look around. Up close, he's really lovely to look at. I've been trying to get a photo for months now, but he's just too fast for me (I feel a little like Wile E. Coyote in the old Looney Tune cartoons). This is as close as I've come, so far. If you enlarge the photo and look closely, you can see the giant grasshopper in his beak.

(Click on photo to enlarge)

I snapped this with my iPhone, but I'm determined to get a really good shot with an actual camera (remember those?) one of these days. Stay tuned.



Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Wordless Wednesday: Biker Dog

(Click on photo to enlarge)


For more Wordless Wednesday offerings,
please visit the website here.

Unconscious Mutterings: Week 607


Haven't been keeping up with my mutterings for a while now. So here we go with Number 607 from LunaNiƱa:
  1. Men :: women -- OK, that was inevitable, right?
  2. Partial :: dentists (I've spent way too much time with mine)
  3. Expenses :: dentists again
  4. Notification :: for some reason, this makes me think of draft notices ("Greetings...")
  5. Bubble wrap :: hmmmm...the only thing that comes to mind is bubble wrap
  6. Speech :: my favorite subject in school
  7. Rumble :: West Side Story (When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way!)
  8. Sounds :: noise
  9. Sweaty :: summertime (love summer, but hate to sweat - go figure)
  10. Mud :: river, swamps, pies, facials, chocolate (actually, most things make me think of chocolate!)