Since coming down with the flu on February 9, I've been pretty much tied to the house while I try to clear up the cough and my hoarse voice. I've learned that if I feel good and do too much on one day, I'll backslide and be sick for two days after, so I may as well take it easy. I belong to a 365 day photo project on Facebook, and for all but the first week when I was too sick, I've been taking photos every day. Since most, but not all, of the photos are taken from inside my house I've felt like I was living inside a fish bowl. It is an odd selection of photos and I thought it might be fun to share them here.
My backyard is home to birds and squirrels, I feed them and they entertain me.
This Nuthatch moves in and out so quickly, it took me quite a while to finally get a photo.
One day this male house finch with a yellow face dropped by. I was glad I caught him with the camera, I had never seen a house finch with a yellow face, but apparently it does happen some times.
I love to photograph bluejays, they pose for peanuts but you have to be really fast with the camera!
Poised to dive on a peanut!
By now I'm starting to get tired of using my house as a blind to photograph birds, there really can be too much of a good thing. So I upped the ante, now shooting for more than one bird at a time. That at least makes it a greater challenge. :-) Here is a male cardinal seated by a pair of housefinches.
And here is a pair of male house finches perched together.
One morning I was making my bed and noticed the lilac bushes outside my bedroom window were filled with house finches. Here is a shot of a pretty pair.
One morning when I got out of bed and opened the blinds I saw this and ran to grab the camera, finally something that doesn't have feathers!
Then one afternoon this Cooper's Hawk showed up and dug around in my neighbor's brush pile. Usually it is filled with sparrows. The hawk dove into the brush several times and it was a riot watching the brush pile heave and hop around, but in the end the hawk left without lunch after all. Sorry about the photo quality, it tested the limit of my lens, and somehow the camera was in the metering mode I did not want it in.
Finally it warmed up enough to go out and run a couple errands. I had to go out of my way to fill my gas tank and on my way home I could see this eagle in the tree for blocks. Praying it would stay put I drove to the parking lot across the street from the tree and took this from the warmth of my car.
While I was meditating one morning the sunlight shining through these icicles kept "poking" at my eyes. Finally I just gave up trying to meditate and took photos of them.
I also made it out to the grocery store eventually, bound and determined to take some photos of subjects that did not have feathers.
This day at the grocery store I found myself shooting even more wildlife:
More wildlife!
The other day this goldfinch showed up, a harbinger of Spring, he is changing into his warm weather colors! Woo Hoo!
Also this week I happened to notice this neat shadow on my neighbor's garage.
Inspired by a photographer friend I decided to set up the tripod and try to take shots of the streetlight reflecting on the ice covered snow in my front yard one evening. It was a struggle to get enough light and then a car came along on the road across the street that T-bones into the road I live on and I managed to get this with the help of his headlights.
While I was messing around with that, I'm just a goofball with the camera pointed in the wrong direction, I happened to look out the back window and saw this. I didn't even have to change the settings on the camera, it only required moving from a front window to a back window and framing the shot.
Well, that pretty much brings us up to date. I hope you've enjoyed the view out of my fishbowl as much as I've enjoyed sharing it with you. I'm hopeful I am really getting better, today my taste for salad greens and chocolate came back. Surely good health can't be far behind. :-)