This challenge prompted me to review photos I took when my sisters, niece and I visited the San Diego Zoo in September, 2012. Here are a few snaps of particularly expressive birds and mammals.
Here are a few of my favorite vistas in nature where earth, water and light create a sense of tranquility and peace. When I am there, the sounds of birds, water and breeze add to the calm I experience.
Wet, cold and dreary is the forecast for the Pacific Northwest (USA) the rest of the week. This photo of water flowing and freezing was taken during an earlier cold snap.
All the more reason to be inside with a warm fire!
~ a dark area or shape produced by a body coming between rays of light and a surface.
Gaston Lachaise, 1882-1935 Standing Woman (1932) Bronze
~ lightness, darkness, and all the shades of sun, water, wind and earth ~
“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.“
ee cummings
With the temperature outside barely above freezing, I sat sipping coffee at my kitchen table thinking about what I wanted to share for this week’s Photo Challenge. Just then two Varied Thrush (lxoreus naevius) landed on the deck railing to feed upon the seeds I had strewn there. Of course, the minute I stood to get my camera they were gone, but, with a fresh mug in hand, I waited until this beautiful male perched in the fir right above my deck.
In Dylan Thomas’ Child’s Christmas In Wales, the narrator mentions going out on Christmas day and finding a dead bird, “perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out.” Later, he tells us, “Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bossomed thrush.” This lovely bird, sunning on a branch in the icy air, is a vision of warmth to me.
Yellow is one of three primary colors on the spectrum. Combine it with blue and you have shades of green, do the same with red and the many nuances of orange appear. Though gold doesn’t blend as yellow can, it certainly is a noble example of the hue we call yellow.
Illuminations with 24k goldleaf.
After the snow, we often experience a “silver thaw.” Vancouver is located on the banks of the Columbia River where strong east winds funnel through the gorge freezing any melting snow into sheets of ice on trees, roads – everything.
