Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
I wanted a quick test of my new Sony Zeiss 55mm f1.8 lens so I visited a popular winter destination in our area, the wooden heater vent in our living room. Boo was enjoying warm air blowing on his belly but when he got up to greet me he was immediately replaced by its most frequent guest, Trixie, who is usually sleeping here when I come home from work.
Boo and Sam get into the holiday spirit even in their sleeping positions.
The green tags in this rain-soaked doe’s ears suggest she was part of the third wave of Columbian white-tailed deer that were captured at Julia Butler Hansen National Wildlife Refuge and brought to Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. She was hanging out with a group of other does from that transfer, and more importantly, their fawns, part of the reason their status has improved from endangered to threatened.
When I visited Ridgefield a week ago I decided to only shoot with the new Sony camera and the adapter that lets me attach my Canon telephotos. I was expecting to have to rely on manual focus but the autofocus did work sometimes, although not consistently enough for this to be a combination I’ll use often for photos. For these shots I used manual focus, although I was still learning how to do it. I’d normally like a little more depth of field in a shot like this, especially to keep more of the pouring rain in focus, but by shooting wide open I was able to take more of an abstract and turn the grass that surrounded the hunting heron into a sea of green.
With the heron standing tall, you get more of a sense of the large meadow it was hunting in. I had no idea herons hunted in meadows until I moved to the Northwest, but all the voles that live here are well aware.
I didn’t have time to take any 4K videos of this heron, it struck into the ground and walked off when it came up empty, but I did take a few videos of some animals sitting in the pouring rain, including a bald eagle, a white-tailed deer, and some snipe. I’ve never edited video but I’ll see if I can learn enough to put a few clips up in the next month or so.
📷: Sony A6500 | Canon 500mm | Canon 1.4X
🗓️: March 26, 2017
A ring-necked duck gives me a quick look before resuming his feeding on a rainy March morning.
I had been watching this Wilson’s snipe at the edge of the marsh when there was a rustling nearby and it suddenly hunkered down and put on this display. It didn’t hold the display long, the noise was made by its mate flying into the area.
We all live in a yellow snowy scene, a yellow snowy scene, a yellow snowy scene.
I wandered alone through the snowy woods, lost in thought, the heavy snow muffling my every footfall. Except these snowy woods were actually my snowy neighborhood. Not so romantic!
Boolie 