Trees & Leaves

Here are some shots of Aspen and a Maple trees located just across the street from our home. I am looking real forward to the Fall colors and will be heading up to the mountains soon to see what I can find. I will make sure to post the mountain fall colors upon my return.

Bird Watching (and snapping)....

Our friends the Jeff & Joelle Gunther, recently gave me a great little book called “Birds of the Puget Sound Region" by Bob Morse. This book has turned out to be one of the most useful bird books I have ever used. Since birds featured in the book are only located in the Puget Sound, identifying birds around my house is much easier. On several occasions with other bird books I would “identify” a bird I thought I had just seen... only to find out when I read the fine print that the bird was only located in some remote village in Africa :~)

This book also has a spot under each bird where you can fill in “Date & Location Seen”. I have decided to start updating these sections AND try to get pictures of each bird. Over the last two days I have seen a Spotted Sandpiper, Blue Heron (daily occurrence) and a Horned Grebe in our back yard. I was able to get a picture of the Sandpiper and Heron (I had an earlier picture of the Grebe)…here are the pictures…

Spotted Sandpiper

Horned Grebe

Hummingbirds and Mt. Rainier

Work is really cramping my style. It seems like I have been not been able to take pictures for weeks. This past week we visited some friends on a business trip in La Verne, CA.. Since it was a business trip and I already had too much luggage...... I decide not to bring my digital SLR camera. It seems that every time I decide not to bring my Digital SLR camera with me, I regret it royally. This trip was no exception. Fortunately my wife brought her point and shoot digital camera with her. This was a good thing! The Alaska Airline airplane that we were on took off out of Seattle and went just West of Mt. Rainier. I was seated next to the window and decided to take some pics....

When we arrived at our friend’s house in California I quickly noticed that their backyard was loaded with beautiful hummingbirds. It was amazing. I decided to have some fun and try to take some shots. Taking good, clear pictures of small fast creatures with a point and shoot camera is not easy. For one thing, the zoom on the point and shoot is a whopping 3x power. My Nikon SLR is about 12x power. This made getting close ups a little harder. The cool thing was that these birds were not as weary as most hummingbirds I have photographed before. Here are some of the shots..

Enjoy

Blackberry Eating Labrador

It has been hard to take our Dog Bama out for a walk recently without her wanting to stop and eat blackberries.

I am not sure is this is normal.....?

Fishing Trip

I went fishing this evening with a friend....The short story is that we did not catch any fish. The longer story is it really didn't matter...the weather was great and the sites were amazing. God was putting on an incredible show.

Looking back at these pictures tonight reminded me of a verse I read this morning out of the New Testament that says "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse".

To me, it takes more faith to believe that the world we live in just happened by chance than by a Creator who had (and still does have) a plan. Why are the sunsets so beautiful the mountains so majestic, the smells so memorable and the sounds so soothing? Is this really just by chance??

Ducks..

As some of you may know, ducks are my favorite species of the bird kingdom. Cindi and I heard a familiar sound yesterday morning of Mallard ducks in our back yard announcing the return of fall. They most likely have returned from their nesting grounds in Canada.

Here are some shots of ducks I have taken that I hope to see soon off of Ray Nash Dr. in Gig Harbor…

Hooded Merganser


Common Merganser


Surf Scooter eating a clam


Bufflehead triplet



Drake Mallard


Lesser Scaup


American Widgeon pair


Barrows Goldeneye