Poor Hawk

We heard a loud thump this morning and when I searched around outside, I found a juvenile Red Shouldered Hawk lying on the roof. We often have song birds fly into the windows, and sometimes they will lie still for a long while, but eventually come to and fly away. I let the hawk lie, and though he slid down the roof a little, he did not fly away. Eventually I retrieved him from the roof and after a couple of photos (the others are somewhat macabre) buried the poor fellow in our pet cemetery.

November Sunrise

There was a beautiful, but short, sunrise Saturday morning.

Helena Spillway

Our Catchlight small group visited the spillway on Buck Creek in Helena, Alabama Monday evening. Lovely lighting, but I kept trying to figure out what the small handprint in the lower left was. It was actually a reflection from the office building across the creek.

This is the building that was reflected in the photo above.

Yeah, it's a composite, but the moon was blowing out to get the spillway and it was too tiny to tell it was the moon.

What the . . .?

At first I thought it was a Lady Bug, but . . . no, it's not!

November Camellia

This Camellia blooms in November, while others in our yard bloom in January and February. They're always beautiful when they do, though.

Magnolia Seeds

Magnolia trees can be magnificent, but their leathery leaves can make a big mess on the ground. Their beautiful flowers turn into these seed pods, and as far as tree seeds go, I don't think I know of any that are prettier than the bright red ones of the magnolia. Close up, the fuzzy pod can be kind of weird looking, maybe even gross.

Gulf Fritillary

This poor little fella didn't make it to the gulf this year. I found him on our driveway last week, already gone. I brought him inside to photograph him, but never got the chance until the small group met last night to discuss product photography and try our hand. I guess he's a product of something, just not manufacturing. By the time we got to shooting, he had become very fragile, and positioning him without destroying him was tough. There was a discussion afterwards about what kind of butterfly he had been, and I thought it was a Gulf Fritillary, but was unsure because I remembered their wings being mostly orange. It turns out, the top side of the wings is very different than the bottom, but it is a Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae).

Upon close examination, I commented that the eyes looked, well dead, I guess because they were. He's still a sight to see, though.