Urban Safari: Backyard Adventures
A bright red cardinal has been visiting the bird feeder in the RainyDayGarden these past few weeks. For days, we have been stalking this elusive visitor, but despite our efforts we came up empty.
One would think it should be easy to get a photo of the cardinal: set up the camera, autofocus on the feeder, wait for the visitor. We could hear it singing up in the tree. Occasionally, it would do a fly-over of the feeder. However, it almost seemed like it knew what we were trying to do and didn’t want any part of it. Maybe it was because of the interns, maybe it was because we were too much out in the open, but we just couldn’t seem to bag a shot of our red friend.
While we did get plenty of practice photos of the sparrows, we got bupkis on the cardinal 🙂 Maybe we need to change from safflower seeds to something more enticing. Maybe we need to keep the interns from circling the feeder; maybe we should just keep them inside. Hmmm…you think?
Anyway, waiting around for the cardinal gave us a chance to try out some of the features of our new Nikon P7000 point-n-shoot. We played around with the macro mode on some of the blooms (echinacea, day lilies) around the garden. Not bad, even though we shot all of it without the aid of a tripod. Click on either of the top two images below to see a cropped portion at full-res.
The funny thing with poking around the RainyDayGarden is that one never knows what one will find. A few years ago we visited a nursery in Connecticut called Logee’s, where we acquired a passiflora. We have normally kept the plant in a pot, but last year we took it outside and planted it in the ground. We were not sure if the passiflora would make it through the winter. When we did not see any signs of it in May, we thought we had lost it. However, we were pleasantly surprised when we saw the familiar tri-lobed leaves of our passiflora trying to make its way up and over the blades of siberian irises.
Today is the start of the July 4th holiday. We’ll be off this weekend. On Monday, we’ll be at Castle Island with a few of our local friends to celebrate another turning of the USS Constitution. Come on down if you are in the neighborhood. Otherwise, have a great long weekend!
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