Late September in the yard

On January 11, 2025February 5, 2025 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography, Florida animals2 Comments

In mid-September I bought a new bird feeder. I had white millet and black sunflower seeds in it. For the first two weeks only the usual birds were around. We had a lot of rain and the feeder was full of water soaked seeds and fell apart. Some of the metal pieces broke apart and we couldn’t fix it. So, I put the old one back up. Still looking for a new one.

I noticed this lizard sitting on the patio chair was just starting to shed his skin.

A female redstart showed up and spent an few hours in and out of the bird bath. She didn’t mind when the yellow throated warbler stopped by. These were taken through the window.

The yellow throated warbler is a winter regular visitor.

The frogs were still showing up after afternoon storms and I realized they were sleeping in my cactus plant near the window.

Late in the day after a storm I looked out the window and saw this beautiful guy.

I grabbed my camera and went outside to snap these from the patio. They were on the other side of the fairway and he saw me. I was afraid they would take off but he looked at me for a second and then continued to graze with his girlfriend.

They only stayed for a few minutes and then continued down the fairway.

A frog invasion and seeing Jane Goodall in person

On January 4, 2025December 26, 2024 By dinajohnstonIn bird photography6 Comments

Two does came grazing through our backyard at the end of August. They were getting sips from the newly formed ponds. One looked really skinny.

It had been raining almost every afternoon through most of the summer. At the end of August we had a baby frog invasion. They would show up on our windows after the rain. One day I went outside with my macro lens and they were not skittish.

They were pretty tiny with most being smaller than my thumb. As cute as they were these were not good frogs. They are cuban frogs and are very invasive. They eat the native green tree frogs but will also eat a ton of mosquitoes. Many locals would say I should have killed them all but I just couldn’t do it. I’m thinking the birds including ibis that we get in our yard will eat a lot of them. I’ve seen many ibis with tiny frogs in their beaks.

Most days we have white ibis cruising through and we had the turkeys coming through in early September.

The doves with their pretty pink toes like to sit on the bird feeder hook waiting for dropped bird seed.

We had a tiny young ring neck snake in our foyer. He must have slid in from the front door or the garage door, maybe when we were bringing in boxes or groceries. He’s harmless and we need snakes to eat the rats so I put a plastic container over him and slide a piece of paper underneath and was able to get him out the front door.

On another note, Jane Goodall was in the area with a speaking appearance and I was able to go with a friend. She is know for her long term research on chimpanzees in Tanzania. She is also known for her conservation work and brought her Roots & Shoots program to the St. Pete Tropicana Field for 2 days. Roots and Shoots is her youth program that has kids working on local conservation projects. One night she gave a speech and filled a good portion of the baseball field.

At 90 years old she gave a great speech. Two quotes I wrote down were “When nature loses, we all lose.” and “Every one of us makes an impact every day.”.

She showed a video clip of when she was releasing a chimp back into the wild and the chimp came back to give her a hug. She spoke about that day and everyone had tears in their eyes. You can see the video here on Youtube.

Magical plants at the Botanical Gardens

On October 30, 2018October 30, 2018 By dinajohnstonIn Atlanta4 Comments

When I was in Atlanta in mid-August visiting friends, I spent some time at the Botanical Gardens. It’s one of my favorite places to take pictures. They were having an exhibit of “Mythical Creatures” topiaries that was really cool to see.

Above are just a few of the growing “creatures” that come to life.

Lots of fun things to see at these gardens which were full of butterflies.

Linking to Wednesday Around the World.

A perfect view

On November 17, 2016November 17, 2016 By dinajohnstonIn Florida animals, Vacation2 Comments

The view of the pool area near our room.

The view from our room.

The view from my beach chair.

The view from the front door.

The view of the critters that come out at night. We would see them coming back from dinner each night. I’ve never seen lizards this color before, especially with glowing red eyes.

Another view from my beach chair.

All views at our hotel, Casa Ybel, in Sanibel Island.

SkyWatch Friday

Sitting pretty for my shots.

On November 16, 2014November 16, 2014 By dinajohnstonIn Florida animals, flowers and plants7 Comments

Butterflies were everywhere at Bok Tower Gardens in late October so I got a lot of butterfly shot practice. There were still a lot of summer flowers out. Now I can’t wait to go back in the spring to see everything blooming then. I was trying to take a closeup picture of a butterfly when I noticed something green moving on the next flower. That little lizard barely moved as I moved in to get a shot of him. He was so tiny, that flower didn’t even bend with him on it.

The frogs were a bonus. I had walked around the historic home at the gardens and in front of the house was a water fountain with frog statues along the bottom. I walked down a path and saw a little pond with a frog sitting pretty on the side. I said out loud “You’re not real” thinking it was another statue and it jumped up and landed in water. So I missed out on a jumping shot.

Mandarin Orange Monday Shine the Divine

Flappers and jumpers at the botanical gardens

On August 19, 2013August 20, 2013 By dinajohnstonIn Atlanta, bird photography21 Comments

This bluebird was singing pretty loud on a light post.

I don’t know what this is. It flew onto the same post as the bluebird above. At first I thought it was a juvenile bluebird but that beak looks different. Any ideas? Cobb?