Annie the Seagull Whisperer

I went to the beach at Wildwood with some friends recently and we ended up feeding the seagulls for a few exciting minutes. Annie got one to eat out of her hand!

Take a look from Annie's point of view!

Life Update!

I've seriously neglected my blog for several months, but I want to get back to it! Since my phone has a camera on it, I've used my Nikon less and less; add to that my computer is old and I've been procrastinating on getting a new one; and Instagram makes it too easy to post pictures right after I take them on my phone. So all of those excuses have made it easy to add to my photo project. Shameful!

I have a lot of photos on my phone that I can share and I hope to get my Instagram feed up as well. Here is a photo that I was inspired by Instagramer, purposeofenvy. I couldn't edit this on my phone the way I wanted to, so it never got posted.

Summer Blooms

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.  ~Walt Whitman

Faithful Recreation

Well, I figured it out! The last time I tried this the sun was not in a good position because it was a little late in the day.

Attemped Recreation

I've been seeing the same kind of cool flower picture on Instagram lately, so I decided to try it myself. Below you can see the vastly superior inspiration photos:

A Real Rabbit

I've seen more wild animals in this state than anywhere on earth, even zoos. Ok, maybe not a zoo.

Growing Up

Since a bird is always on the nest, it took us a little while to actually find out that the eggs had hatched. They got big pretty fast! This one baby curiously poked his (or her) little head out to get a look at me. In case it's hard to tell, the baby is facing left. Next to its eye, you can see it's little baby bird ear. (it's not often you get to see a bird's ear!)

The Bird Family

I like checking on the mourning doves every morning because I'm able to get a really good look and they let me! A parent dove stays with the baby birds, no matter who may be watering their nest (me) or who might be poking their face through the flowers to take a peek (me again).

The parents usually switch off. First, one of them will call out the distinctive mourning dove call once or twice, fly away and after a few seconds, the other parent swoops in to take over. One day I was lucky enough to hear the hooting before the switch-off occurred and I watched as a parent landed on the nest with the rest of the family!


They patiently waited for me to take my pictures until I crept back inside, then the bird who needed a break took off.

Robin Photo Op

We've been taking pictures every day of these little guys when the mama is not around. The robin parents will leave the nest if anyone gets too close, and chirp angrily at us from a nearby branch until we leave!

Hatched!

Newly hatched robins are a little bit scary. Look at those eye balls! Also, notice how small they are....

Bird Alert

On the front porch is this hanging pot of lovely petunias. Mom went over to water it one day and a bird flew out of it! After restarting her heart, she peeked into the pot and noticed two little white eggs. So not only are there robins in the back, there are mourning doves in the front! It's bird central over here!

Robin's Egg Blue

This is the "before" picture. Mom found the nest by our back porch recently with these little tiny eggs in it. It's not hard to guess what type of birds will hatch from these!

Beauty

One of my challenge words is "fade." I was mesmerized by the way the color fades from the petal tips to center.

Spring Has Sprung!

There are so many flowers blooming, and it was just the official start of spring a few days ago! It makes me really happy to see the trees starting to green up and flowers starting to get colorful. Does spring make you happy too?!

Baby Plants

I'm growing pepers again this year. I planted seeds just recently and they're already sprouting! Yay for spring and new plants!

NJ Winter

It's been raining instead of snowing here in NJ this winter. I'll be fine if it's not a white Christmas. The memories are still fresh of frozen, white New England winters... I do not miss them yet.

Jolly Holly

There's a row of holly plants/bushes on our block and just one has berries. The rest are straight up green.

Turkey Butts

This morning as I left the house, I saw a whole gaggle of turkeys across the street. Of course they stayed hidden during Thanksgiving! Smart move, local turkeys.

Birch

Cerulean & Canary

This is the sky the day after the snowstorm.