The Cormorant, the Dragonfly, and the Bee: cherry tree

Sunday, May 23, 2021

Spring Happenings

Spring is a great time to be taking pictures. The bright colors of blooming flowers are hard to resist, both for me with my camera, and for bees as well. Bees see color somewhat differently than humans, preferring blues and yellows and not so much reds, as red looks black to bees.

Nature has a way of showing off this time of year. I try to capture that in the images below.

Enjoy!

This is a Lenten rose (a type of hellebore). It is not a rose; it is in the buttercup family.

Green with Envy

A hyacinth:

Purple Wave 1

Purple Wave 2

Here's a daffodil (also called Narcissus, the formal name of the genus). This was taken indoors in low light.

Mood Setter

A backyard azalea, that I find particularly captivating, at least in this pose:

Seeking Truth

This bee likes it too.

Pollen Hunter

Here the bee goes "all in":

Nose First

These next two photos are flowering pear tree blossoms:

Upward Bound

Blue Sky Watchers

This next photo is of our purple leaf sand cherry (also called plum leaf sand cherry). It *is* a member of the rose family. I've been experimenting with photos on my Pixel 4a, a recent cell phone upgrade. Despite its single lens and small size, this cell phone can be encouraged to take remarkably good photos with a bit of care.

This was taken in "Portrait" mode, and enhanced using Remini, which is a cell phone app I recently discovered that makes some pictures sharper (especially out of focus ones) using artificial intelligence. While Remini works particularly well for faces, I find it does a surprisingly nice job with many flower photos as well.

Purple No-Rain

(back to my regular Olympus camera on a different day) Here's the same plant in bright backlit sun:

Setting Sail

Another hyacinth:

Curls Aside

This is a primrose, which is not a rose:

Color Pop

This tulip was one of the earlier spring flowers on display in our garden:

Pink Rules

Pink Petals

This next photo is an indoor Pixel 4a picture of a daffodil in a vase, using natural light.

Splash of Yellow

Here's another Pixel 4a photo of one of our cherry trees, also taken in "Portrait" mode, and enhanced using Remini (and Lightroom).

Blossom Out

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Visiting Finch

Our friend, Lisa, gave us a "thistle sock" bird feeder. We never had one before. We filled it with thistle seed and hung it on a tree in our back yard and waited and waited. It is supposed to attract finches but none ever came. In fact, it just hung there idly for weeks and weeks. Finally, we decided, after a squirrel or the wind knocked it to the ground, it was time to either give up or try another location. Deb moved it to our cherry tree in the front yard. There was still no activity for the longest time, then one day, amazingly, finches showed up. I tried to take some photos of them through the window, but the results were not satisfactory. Then the finches disappeared for several more days. Finally, they returned. This time I was able to capture a few photos with my telephoto lens from just outside the front door, after tiptoeing outside as quietly as possible.

Finches are quite small birds, and ours seem very timid; at least from my experience they disappear quickly the moment they detect a human even some twenty feet away.

You can see the growing cherries, orange (not yet red), in the background of both of these photos. Though cherries are popular among many other larger bird visitors such as blue jays and robins, these small finches prefer thistle seed.

Bashful Goldfinch

Food Inspection