A nature photographer’s images and stories of birds, butterflies, and other creatures from her backyard near Orlando, FL
February 27, 2013 - This past weekend I was feeling well enough to get out and shoot, but it was windy and rainy. Yuck! So I got out the camera and headed for my own backyard. My azaleas are in full bloom, and they are just gorgeous. Luckily the rain didn’t blow all the azalea blooms away like last […]
February 8, 2013 - Rich and I were saddened to walk into Pansies-R-Us (a.k.a. Lowes) yesterday to discover that the garden center is now stocking marigolds instead of pansies! Squirt is mourning the loss of his favorite “leafy greens.” He likes the warmer weather out on his porch, but he feels that the pansies have been taken away too […]
February 2, 2013 - Today is Groundhog Day, and Punxsutawney Phil says that we’re in for an early spring. Thank goodness — I’m tired of the cold! I didn’t need a groundhog to tell me that spring is coming, though. My backyard plants are telling me all about it. The oaks are putting out their new leaves already, my […]
February 1, 2013 - If you are reading this, you’re seeing catandturtle from our new host server. Did you notice how much faster it loaded? :) :) :)
January 27, 2013 - You know you’ve been bitten by the photography bug when you’re in a garden center, and you see a display of flowering Gerber Daisies, and you purchase it thinking, “oooh, that one would look good with the Fractalius filter applied!” You can have lots of fun with a pot of Gerber Daisies, Photoshop, and filters… […]
January 15, 2013 - I’ve had lots of time to enjoy the birds in my own backyard lately. It’s a backyard winter wonderland! All the winter migrants are here and the backyard is full of activity. It’s great! This weekend I had all these different kinds of birds: American Goldfinch Pine Siskin Painted Bunting Eastern Phoebe American Robin Cedar […]
January 8, 2013 - My favorite wintertime birds are back – the American Goldfinches! I know, you’re wondering why my favorite birds are the common goldfinches when I’m so fortunate to have Painted Buntings in my yard each winter. The Painteds are beautiful, and definitely great to have visiting, but they stay so aloof. They call to each other […]
December 22, 2012 - It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas! Work is done for the year, the cats are enjoying the cold front breezes out on the porch, and I got to photograph Squirt’s favorite holiday treat. Well, one of Squirt’s favorite holiday treats. :)
December 16, 2012 - This is my mom’s nemesis bird – the hawk that disturbs her little birdies at their feeders! He flew up on top of this phone pole the last time I was there. I grabbed the Beast and hand-held a few shots before he flew off. We knew he was either a Cooper’s Hawk or a […]
December 13, 2012 - My ‘Gold Medal’ rose is blooming like crazy right now. The big yellow flowers are very pretty and fragrant. I went outside on Sunday morning to fertilize the roses, and I immediately ran back inside to get the camera. The dew drops were too pretty not to photograph!
December 12, 2012 - Tonight was our city’s annual Santa Claus visit. Accompanied by police and firemen, Santa rides his sleigh up and down all the streets. His helpers throw candies to the kids on the sidewalks. It was fun to walk out and see tons of people in the streets to wait for Santa. Carla had to work, […]
December 10, 2012 - I love our winter bird visitors! The backyard is so active these days. We have plenty of Palm Warblers that hop through the yard, and I finally saw Bow Tie, our Yellow-Throated Warbler that seems to come back from year to year. He likes to hop up on our window and peck at the glass. […]
December 3, 2012 - Our first-of-fall American Goldfinches arrived in the backyard right before Thanksgiving. These cheerful little guys are some of my favorite wintertime birds. Their happy calls that sounds like “Potato Chip!” and “Gold-y!” are such fun. Our cat Goldilocks loves to sit out on the porch and wait for her “Goldyfinches.” I went out on Sunday […]
November 17, 2012 - I keep playing with water droplet experiments, and I think I’m getting better. I still haven’t quite captured the image that’s in my mind’s eye, but this one comes the closest. This is one of Squirt’s first-of-fall pansies, photographed through water droplets scattered on my porch glass-top table. I dragged a lamp out on the […]
November 5, 2012 - A few days ago I posted a picture of a pansy called Purple and Gold. Well, today’s is Red and Gold. This is one of my zinnias from the backyard before they were killed by the recent cold snap. I was having fun focusing on the detail in the middle of the flower. Then I […]
November 3, 2012 - My Painted Buntings are getting more active in the backyard. Starting in early October, we’d see a single male at a time. Now we see males and females together, with a high count of two males and a greenie. You can hear them calling to each other from within our viburnum hedges. They are such […]
November 2, 2012 - With this week’s cold snap, my summer flowers are dying off, including my clumps of Mexican Sunflowers. I photographed these a while ago playing again with water droplets. I liked this attempt better than my last one, when I had very little light. This latest attempt was at sunset with lots of light – and […]
October 30, 2012 - Whiskey Loopy was very intent on the window this weekend, and when we investigated, we saw these two little Common Ground Doves preening each other in our front tree. One of these guys was huddled on our porch during the strong winds – I guess our house offered him some shelter. The two together were […]
October 29, 2012 - A few nights ago I had my wide-angle lens with me on our evening walk. Our neighborhood Sandhill Cranes decided to cross the road and walk right in front of me. They made great silhouettes against the setting sun.
October 28, 2012 - Before I let the cats devour their first-of-fall pansies, I claimed the six-packs for myself and had some fun with my macro lens. I love the colors of pansies – purples and reds with great yellow centers. They are my favorite wintertime flower and I’ll have to take advantage of this week’s cold snap to […]
October 22, 2012 - There are two birds in this picture. See if you can identify them. Answers tomorrow!
October 18, 2012 - We had fun watching for migrants and hummers in my parents’ backyard on Saturday afternoon. Right after I left, my mom reported that about 50 Palm Warblers came to visit Missy! Goldy is jealous. I had my wide-angle lens with me, and while we waited for the birds, I took pictures of the flowers in […]
October 8, 2012 - It was a gray, icky day yesterday, so I had fun playing with my camera and flowers in my own backyard. I had read about a technique for water droplet images on Denise Ippolito’s blog, and I decided to experiment and see what I could do. This is a zinnia flower taken through a sheet […]
October 7, 2012 - I noticed this Monarch caterpillar on my milkweed today. All the leaves of the milkweed had been eaten, and just the stems were left. Then I looked down the flower bed to the next clump of milkweed. Five more caterpillars, all eating hungrily away! That’s why I grow milkweed.
October 6, 2012 - Goldilocks and I had a nice morning on the porch. We had breakfast al fresco and saw lots of birds in our backyard. (Goldy also caught a lizard.) The best birds were the returning out-of-town guests. We saw our first Palm Warbler of the fall (the one who comes up to Goldy’s window is known […]
October 4, 2012 - I had another fun afternoon photographing flowers in my backyard. Here’s another one of the pretty pink flowers.
October 1, 2012 - I’ve been having fun playing with some post-processing effects and filters. This is my latest experiment, using an image of a half-open Mexican Sunflower. I blurred the background a little bit to make the flower pop, then I played with the colors a little to darken the background. I learned something, too – these effects […]
September 30, 2012 - Last night after work I went out into the backyard with my wide-angle lens and extension tubes. A lot of hummingbird flowers are blooming right now, and I wanted to capture the “hummer’s-eye view”. This is a close-up of one of the giant Coral Porterweed blooms.
September 26, 2012 - I photographed this dragonfly in my backyard a few days ago when it was really windy. I was amazed at how well he held on! There are tons of dragonflies in the backyard these days. They are relatively easy to photograph (when it’s not windy) because they always seem to fly back to the same […]
September 25, 2012 - We haven’t seen any hummingbirds in the backyard recently. :( My Coral Porterweed and Compton’s Salvias are about to burst into bloom. Hopefully that will help to attract some. In the meantime, we have a lot of bee activity. This plant is a real insect-pleaser.
September 20, 2012 - I keep watching for hummingbirds in our backyard. Our neighbors finally saw their first hummer, but it’s been a few weeks. Don’t the birds know how long I worked to plant those nice red flowers for them? Maybe it’s not too late to hope for a winter guest. Or maybe they’ll find me next spring. […]
September 13, 2012 - Our backyard has been a-flutter with butterflies in the past couple of weeks. We’ve had sulphurs, swallowtails, monarchs, and skippers galore. I took my recently-upgraded Canon 7D to the backyard to test out the new firmware. Unfortunately the camera now seems to randomly freeze up on me…but the butterfly cooperated and let me pop out […]
September 12, 2012 - I suspect frequent beach photographers are somewhat amazed when they watch me at North Beach. I take my fancy Beast lens and use it to photograph the oh-so-common Brown Pelican. But I love watching these big birds as they splash around after fish. They make me laugh. Like in this shot, where two birds were […]
September 8, 2012 - I took this image of the late afternoon sun shining through my window. (Note: next time I need to clean the window first!) I found that it wasn’t warm enough or sun-shiney enough for my liking. I also didn’t like seeing every scratch on the window (thank you Whiskey!) So I decided to experiment with […]
September 1, 2012 - Last night’s Blue Moon was the second full moon in the month of August, and it’s the last Blue Moon we’ll have for a few years. I had hoped to walk down to our neighborhood lake to photograph it as it rose, but the clouds were thick and the picture would have been bad. So […]
August 23, 2012 - A few weeks ago, I noticed an advertisement for the Winter Garden Art in Public Places exhibit. They were asking local artists to contribute artwork for display in the Winter Garden City Hall. The theme was “Native Wildlife and Natural Landscapes of Central Florida.” I figured I might have a few pictures that fit into […]
August 12, 2012 - Sometimes it’s good to just stay home and be lazy. Goldy and I were eating breakfast out on the porch when a hummingbird visited our yard! I didn’t get a very good look at the hummer, but I think it was a female or juvenile Ruby-Throated Hummingbird. It hovered over my pentas plants that surround […]
July 26, 2012 - This is my ‘Hot Cocoa’ rose that has been blooming wonderfully for the past few weeks. All my roses are doing really well, and standing up to the heat better this summer than ever before (knock wood!) One of our young neighbors loves to come and smell the roses in the evenings. Her happy squeal […]
July 25, 2012 - This past weekend we had a bunch of butterflies fluttering around the backyard. They like my nectar plants! This one spent a lot of time sipping from my red pentas plants.
July 21, 2012 - It’s been really hot out, and the bird photography just isn’t as intense in July. So I’ve been spending more time in my own backyard garden. I’m trying to get the birds to come to me! Especially the hummingbirds, my absolute favorite little birds. I can get hummers in both summer and winter here in […]
July 17, 2012 - I’ve been spending more time in my garden in the past few weeks. I’m trying to bring the birds to me–more about that in an upcoming post. I was surprised to find my hydrangea bushes putting on a few late blooms. They are especially pretty after rain! I played with a few Nik Color Efex […]
July 15, 2012 - …the flowers were all covered in little water droplets. I often get asked if I ever sprinkle my flowers with drops to make dew. No, whenever I’ve tried that, it looks really fake. Besides, in Florida in the summertime, you don’t often have to wait for the real thing!
July 11, 2012 - Our resident backyard cardinal’s name is Beaky (since he goes and “beaks” at Carla’s window). He’s one of our most reliable feeder customers, but lately, he’s been branching out and acting like what my mom calls a “real bird.” I left some sunflowers to go to seed, and he discovered them. Now he sits on […]
July 10, 2012 - My hummingbird garden is growing nicely with all the rain we’ve been having! If only the hummer numbers grew as quickly. We’ve had a couple this summer, but no regular customers. Yet. I’ll keep the nectar coming!
July 4, 2012 - Happy Fourth of July! I took this image several years ago. At the time I thought it was one of my best images. After revisiting it today, I realized how under-exposed and noisy the original capture was! I attempted to clean it up with post-processing.
May 27, 2012 - We have two pineapples growing in our pineapple patch this year. They are getting bigger. I can’t wait to taste them!
May 23, 2012 - Rich wishes everyone a Happy World Turtle Day! If you didn’t know, World Turtle Day is an annual event to protect turtles and tortoises around the world. This year Rich is helping to protect sea turtles by being an “adoptor” of a Hawksbill Sea Turtle. Here are some things you can do to help protect […]
May 19, 2012 - My rain lilies have started to bloom like crazy, thanks to all the good rain we’ve been getting in the afternoons. We have baby cardinals and mockingbirds in the yard daily now, as well as a pair of Brown Thrashers. Best of all is the hummingbird that visits sometimes!
May 13, 2012 - I spent yesterday afternoon with my parents in their backyard. We had a fun time planting and transplanting, trying to make sure there’s enough nectar to satisfy Mum-mum’s visiting hummers. When I saw the Red-Bellied Woodpeckers eating oranges in Dick’s backyard, though, I couldn’t resist going to get my camera… These silly birds will land […]
May 7, 2012 - I chuckled when I checked my Flickr contact updates and saw that almost everyone had posted a picture of the “super moon” from Saturday night. The moon was very close to Earth, so it appeared larger and brighter in the night sky. I didn’t have much interesting vegetation in my yard to place in the […]