Water birds
A collection of birds seen in and around the ponds on Mississippi Bar on my hike this morning.
Macro Monday, Week 5
I was hiking the dirt trails on Mississippi Bar when I first noticed these tiny little critters back in June 2017. I wasn’t sure if they were tiny frogs or toads, but they seemed to be nearly everywhere in the dust and the weeds, the largest maybe the size of a US quarter and many of them even smaller! Since then […]
Hoofprints
A nice bit of overcast lured me out of the house this morning and down to Mississippi Bar with my cameras. The clouds burned off by 10 o’clock, and although I had the hiking trails mostly to myself, I did see a few other critters — some horses from the Shadow Glen Stables and a scattering of typically curious blacktail […]
California ground squirrels
The area around Negro Bar State Park is practically teeming with these little guys; they especially like to hang around the picnic areas, scavenging leftover scraps of food. I normally don’t pay too much attention to them, but they do make good practice subjects for wildlife photography. They’re extremely shy and very fast runners, disappearing into their burrows, into the […]
To boldly paddle…
This curious little explorer decided to venture off on his own, leaving Mom far behind.
Mississippi Bar mornings
Even though large portions of Mississippi Bar are rocky, flat, and treeless — and sun-baked during the hot summer months — it’s still possible to find nice shady spots, even on a warm day in June. Still, it’s best to get outdoors early so you don’t melt on the hike back to the car! Once the spring rains dry up, […]
Osprey
I was very lucky this morning to spot this osprey while exploring around the ponds at Mississippi Bar. And special thanks to the Big Guy for helping me identify it when I showed him my photos!
Macro Monday, Week 3
You may have noticed that I haven’t been doing much with Macro Monday lately; well, that’s because I’ve been playing around with super close-up photography and trying to decide precisely what sort of subjects I want to shoot — and I haven’t been all that impressed with my results thus far. So rather than trying to make my cameras do […]
Toward McVicar and back
With this post, I’m concluding my series of posts covering my hikes at Anderson Marsh State Historic Park in early May of this year. After I had crossed the flats and circled around to the back of the ridge, I happened across a trail sign pointing the way toward McVicar. Although I wasn’t quite sure what/where McVicar was — and […]