Another backyard visitor

Our backyard has seen a lot of different creatures over the years... deers, racoons, bobcat, possums, foxes and a lot of birds.. 

Yesterday we were visited by a turkey! Have no idea where it came from. Landed in our backyard.. spent a few minutes.. and took off!

Did not have enough time to go grab the lens as I was jet lagged.. so a grainy iPhone photo is all we got. 

The backyard animal collection continues to grow..

Photo time.. birds first

I had all but forgotten about the zoo pictures from the New Year's eve trip to San Diego. Things catch up and before you know it, the photoblog series came to an abrupt end.. or blogging for that matter. 

Was not feeling well last two days but made up for some quiet time this afternoon with photo editing. Here, are the birds that posed.

Majesty even in captivity! 

This guy was posing for portraits! 

Almost all the shots here were taken with the 70-200.. some with the now working extender at 400mm. 

This one is not a bird but rather the tail feathers.. the bird kept sticking its head into the feathers. Waited for almost 5 mintues but had to move on with the group..

it was one long feather.. at least 30 inches long and absolutely gorgeous. 

The Kookaburra is one shy bird. This one kept shuffling around. Was glad to catch the colors on the tail feathers.

when it came to "color" , this one takes first place!

This one is a close second..

THis is the first time we saw a secretary bird in a zoo. They could have done a better enclosure for this one instead of a thin long strip facing the road. A bird this beautiful deserves to be free. . or at least a better enclosure. 

Last but not least, a dove that came and posed for me. This is my favorite picture of the entire bird set. 

On to other beautiful creatures, big and small tomorrow.. 

Backyard critters

Now that the flu has come and gone, went back to do Yoga after a week. It was one of those classes where your body knows it has been there before, as does your mind, but things have become rusty. You think you are lifting your leg up 45 degrees and the mirror and all those images of your 4th grade math teachers tell you.. "are you kidding?"

Anyways, as usual I meander away from the topic. Things will get better again over time, till the next set of germs come.

Decided that some time will be spent just sitting in one place, camera in hand, to photograph the things that move around in the backyard. Was not disappointed..  

These two are raising a family on that tree. 

This fellow makes quite a racket on the bushes.. 

 These baby robins were playing around. It was a treat to watch.

 I have no idea what this bird is... but he visited us for a very short time.

Then came the bunny.. our new neighbors need to be warned about this guy. 

He has quite a reach!

Sat there for a good hour trying to capture this hummingbird in flight. Not a single shot came out okay. Need to put a bird feeder in the backyard. There are at least 8 hummingbirds in our backyard. Their acrobatics are amazing. Will try to take pictures of them.. has to be easier with a bird feeder.

The bumble bee was too fast to capture too..

While all this was going on in the backyard, my wife calls and says, we saw a deer in our front yard.. come take a picture of that.. It was like all the animals knew that I was ready with the camera!

This one was posing for me!

Feel much better today.. sometimes all it takes is to do yoga, have a good lunch, nap with the little one and sit in one place in the backyard and see (and mostly hear) nature sounds. 

Have put water in a bucket for the critters. The ground is parched because we had shut off the sprinkers. Today, I turned on the sprinklers for some time. The worms are out and the birds are now on the ground. 

The drought is probably hitting them a lot more than it is hitting us. Dry lawns, less flowers, no veggie garden this year to attack for the bunnies.. 

Everything said and done, an afternoon of peace.

Waitomo Caves and the Otorohanga Kiwi Conservatory in New Zealand

On yet another day trip from Lake Taupo during over December vacation in New Zealand, we drove north east to Waitomo. It was a very scenic drive with windy roads and sheep everywhere.

Well, if there were three common themes in our trip it was 

a. Fast moving clouds like you would not believe

b. Sheep that will put you to sleep when you try counting them during the drive

c. Scenic views that are unmatched

At Waitomo, they have a one of a kind cave system which is home to a glow worm that lives on the cave ceilings. It is pitch dark as we go through the caves in a small boat and if lucky the ceiling lights up with millions of light blue dots.  

We were lucky and got to see this. The staff were not friendly. We specifically asked them if a 1 1/2 old baby was okay on the boat and they said fine and sold us tickets. When it was time to board the boat, the guy stopped us saying the baby was too small and will make a noise that will scare the worms. We told him that the baby was a well behaved baby and went on the boat. For her part, the baby was well behaved.. and she would call out her mom's name in a shrill voice. We did not see that one coming. The worms were fine and did their display for us.

We came out from absolute darkness to bright sunlight and it took us all a few minutes to realize what was going on when the guy was trying to get us off the boat!

It was 90 minutes of waiting for a 5 minute boat ride to see a one of a kind experience. Fortunately, Mr. Disney had trained us well for such experiences over the last 15 years!

We finished a quick lunch at the outdoor cafeteria and headed on to see the Otorohanga Kiwi conservatory, which also is an avaiary that houses rare birds of New Zealand. There were three kiwi birds that are in the extremely endangered category and they seemed healthy and large, large gray fur balls that came up to our knees. They were in a glass enclosure which was dark. There was no photography allowed. We did see the birds and go "wow". They were very unique and we all felt sad for the bird that was most likely not going to make it.

Here are some pictures of the other creatures we saw while walking through the convervatory.

We saw the Kea which was once found everywhere and is now a rare bird.. guess that is what happens if you start eating sheep in New Zealand! 

We also spotted a lizard that looked like a dragon while wandering through the other displays and it had a peculiaar blue and green thing on its size. So I zoomed in and took a picture. When processing the image last week, saw that it was actually PLASTIC BEADS! Someone had done an Afro style beading job on the poor lizzard and let it out there! So much for us not messing with nature. 

It is a good 2 1/2 hour drive to Waitomo from Taupo. You are better off visiting from Auckland. Still we enjoyed the day and had a lot of fun. We drove through a city that claimed to be the "shearing capital of the world" and they even had a giant statue of a guy shearing sheep. This must have been at least 30 foot tall. 

New Zealand is a truly wonderful place and you get to see things that are far from run of the mill. Would strongly recommend a trip to Waitomo. If you have small kids who cannot keep quiet during a dark damp boat ride though, you may want to wait a while.. 

A new year begins..

With more pictures..

from the day trip to Elkhorn Slough..

There was a good chance of rain so the entire camera gear did not make it to the hike. We will definitely visit this place again at sunset!

Bridge to nowhere!

We got some great clouds. It had just stopped raining..

This was funny if it wasn't dangerous. One minute, I am sitting down on the tracks taking photographs and suddenly there is a train horn and this commuter train goes through.. no gates, no restrictions! It was cool though..

We did catch some birds but they were more impressive on the binoculars than on the 200mm zoom through the lens. Why cant we just take digital pictures off of what we see with those awesome binoculars?! 

There were many other birds that either looked like versions of sparrows or egrets and a bunch of hummingbirds and the whole place was filled with bird sounds. 

Will strongly recommend a walk around the slough as a day trip.. weather permitting!