Butterfly and Wildlife Gardening And Photography In Houston Texas
Category Archives: Camera Lenses We have our first Eastern Bluebirds! We have 1 male and 1 female. For the past couple of days they’ve been checking out the house I set up for them. I sure hope they decide to use this house as their nesting space. I was so excited about seeing the Bluebirds that I went out…  I’m not exaggerating when I say we probably have 50 or so American Goldfinches hanging out at the feeders. I like these little birds, even more so because they crowd the feeder so much that it appears to intimidate the Sparrows we have. Not only are the Goldfinches swarming the main feeder, but when I…  Today was an awesome day for the backyard birds! We had the usual American Goldfinches all over the place, a Red Bellied Woodpecker, and our first Eastern Bluebird couple (more on that in a later post). It was a little foggy this morning, but good enough to bring out my one man chair blind to…  While debating on who should get out of bed because it was cold, Leecy yells, “holy crap, there’s a big bird!” As we both dash out of bed to look at the backyard window, I noticed a huge Hawk sitting in my Maple Tree right above my Koi pond. That sucker was looking for a…  We have so many American Goldfinches right now they can’t fit on just one feeder! They seem to know the ritual; wait until I put seed out in the morning, raid the feeder, go back in the trees until the afternoon. In the afternoon, wait until I refill the seed, raid the feeder. I also…  In find Carolina Chickadees a very difficult bird to photograph. They never sit still for very long, at least not when the visit the bird feeders. I did get a little lucky with one particular bird after I put out some fresh seed. I guess it was so overwhelmed over the selection, it actually paused…  Squirrels, you either love them or hate them. I personally don’t mind them except when the hog the bird feeders and scare the songbirds away. Since it is Winter, and I know food is a little harder to come by, I decided to place ears of corn along the fence and away from the bird…  Even though we had some freezing weather for Houston (but no snow, despite predictions of 2-4 inches), our Monarch Chrysalises continued to eclose. We had a total of 5, three of them eclosed a couple of days ago, and the last two eclosed yesterday at the exact same time (Leecy called them the twins). As…  We had tons of American Goldfinches around the bird feeder today. We also had a House Finch feeding as well. It’s really cold here right now so finding fresh food is a bit of a challenge right now. Taking good pictures was a real challenge as the lighting was terrible and it was cloudy and…  In addition to the Cedar Waxwings behaving in an interesting way, I also witnessed a Monarch Butterfly do something I’ve never seen before. Today, I released one of the Monarchs that eclosed a couple of days ago. The Butterfly got a nice draft of wing, and gently floated to our Maple tree. That’s when it…  The following pictures aren’t that great, but they are rather interesting. For the first time I’ve ever seen, we had several Cedar Waxwing birds in the trees behind the backyard. What was really interesting, is that two of the birds, kept exchanging a seed back and forth. I was using my 300 f2.8 lens with…  We’ve had some beautiful weather here in Houston the last few days, with sunny skies and temperatures in the upper 60′s. That’s going to be changing this week, where we may have 4 days below freezing. And just think, I almost decided I could start preparing for Spring in the garden. We still have Monarch…  Leecy and I woke at 4:30 am yesterday to head over to Brazos Bend State Park. I was very excited to go, as it was the first time I would really have a chance to use my Canon 300 f2.8 lens. We arrived at the park at 7:00 am, but it wasn’t quite open yet,…  After we returned from Brazos Bend State Park yesterday, we found that we had 4 Monarch Butterflies that had emerged from their Chrysalises. It was a really beautiful day yesterday with full sun with no clouds, and temperatures in the mid 60′s. Two of the four flew off immediately, but the other two hung around…  I released 3 Monarch Butterflies today (they eclosed three days ago). Two of the Butterflies immediately flew away as soon as they were released, but one Male Monarch decided to hang around and sun himself. Speaking of Monarch Butterflies, we currently have 8 Chrysalises, 2 Caterpillars (who are likely sick..I’ll explain shortly), and 4 adult… |
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