Verna and Bob's Weblog

Photography

Roadrunner Catching a Bee

We saw a roadrunner behind the RV drive this afternoon when coming home from our daily walk. I took several photos of it after going into the house and coming back out with my camera. At one point on its trek on the little hill back there, it caught a bee. I guess insects are part of their daily diet.

From Wikipedia — Greater Roadrunner (Geococcys Californianus) Food and foraging habits:

The roadrunner is an opportunistic omnivore. Its diet normally consists of insects (such as grasshoppers, crickets, caterpillars, and beetles), small reptiles (such as lizards and snakes, including rattlesnakes), rodents and other small mammals, spiders (including tarantulas), scorpions, centipedes, snails, small birds (and nestlings), eggs, and fruits and seeds like those from prickly pear cactuses and sumacs. The roadrunner forages on the ground and, when hunting, usually runs after prey from under cover. It may leap to catch insects, and commonly batters certain prey against the ground. Because of its quickness, the roadrunner is one of the few animals that preys upon rattlesnakes; it is also the only real predator of tarantula hawk wasps.

Image above: Catching a bee. Image below: Greater Roadrunner. Click on either image to enlarge.

November 9, 2022 by Arizona Critters Photography

A Decade of Feeding the Birds

Actually, we’ve been feeding the birds for longer than a decade. We used to have feeders in our California home for years before we moved to Arizona. It’s more like two and a half decades we’ve fed the birds.

We took these two images ten years apart to the day in our Arizona back yard. Above is a cardinal snacking on a seed bell, the image taken on 10/24/2012. Below is a cactus wren pecking at a seed block, the image was taken the afternoon of 10/24/2022.

I took he top image with my old Canon A710 IS compact camera which I still have and use regularly. I took the image of the cactus wren with my Canon EOS Rebel SL1. I took the cardinal photo early afternoon and the cactus wren late afternoon when the sun was behind the mesquite tree so the lighting is not as good. Click on either image to enlarge.

October 24, 2022 by Arizona Critters Home & Garden Photography

Photo Update


I thought that I posted these last April when these photos were taken, but I couldn’t find them when I looked for them earlier today. Anyhow, these were posed to send to our friend Patty who is retired and living in North Carolina. We have been friends for a very long time and now that Patty is living alone, we try to correspond with her on a regular basis. Verna sent these in a letter to her just a week or so ago.

Top photo: Verna and Tucker. Bottom photo: Bob and Cabela.

Click on either photo to enlarge.

October 11, 2022 by Arizona Critters Family Home & Garden Photography

Red Bird Season Almost Over

It’s that time of the fall when the Red Bird Of Paradise (Pride of Barbados) shrubs in the courtyard are about through with their production of gorgeous flowers (and pea pods). Within the next few days, we will be cutting them back to the ground for the winter. However, they will be back by next late May or early June for another colorful season.

The image above (click to enlarge) is of some of the last flowers on one of the shrubs. Canon EOS Rebel T6i, 1/1024 sec, F5.6, ISO 250, EF-S18-135mm lens @89mm.

More about these flowering shrubs from Wikipedia:

Caesalpinia pulcherrima is a species of flowering plant in the pea family.

It is a shrub growing to 3 m tall. In climates with few to no frosts, this plant will grow larger and is semievergreen. Grown in climates with light to moderate freezing, plant will die back to the ground depending on cold, but will rebound in mid- to late spring. This species is more sensitive to cold than others. The leaves are bipinnate, 20–40 cm long, bearing three to 10 pairs of pinnae, each with six to 10 pairs of leaflets 15–25 mm long and 10–15 mm broad. The flowers are borne in racemes up to 20 cm long, each flower with five yellow, orange, or red petals. The fruit is a pod 6–12 cm long.

UPDATE 10/07/2022: One down, two to go. There are still viable flower pods opening on the remaining two shrubs, so they will be there for another week or two.

UPDATE 10/16/2022: We took advantage of a break in the weather (we’ve been getting some rain) and removed shrub #2 and part of shrub #3 this morning. We don’t usually do chores on the Lord’s Day, but the whole operation took less than half an hour, so I guess we’re going to be OK with it.

UPDATE 10/17/2022: Verna and I finished off the removal of the last Red Bird shrub today. The courtyard now has only the bottlebrush shrubs which are winter hearty in this climate. There was one last cluster of flowers still remaining on the last red bird.

So, with this last (clickable) image, we say good-bye until spring to these beautiful flowers.

October 3, 2022 by Arizona Flowers Home & Garden Photography

Retirement Throwback

This coming Saturday, 10/01/2022, will be the thirteenth anniversary of my retirement from full-time employment. In the days following that event, Verna and I took some weekday trips to some of our local attractions. Verna took this photo of a Seagull in the Harbor of Los Angeles (San Pedro).

We visited the garden department of a Lowe’s and saw this hummingbird browsing the flowers on display there.

Finally, we visited the South Coast Botanic Garden on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. This is us relaxing on a park bench for a few minutes after walking through the acres and acres of garden displays.

All the above activity took place the first week of October, 2009. It was such a pleasure to visit these places on weekdays when they were less crowded than on the weekends. Click on any image to enlarge.

September 28, 2022 by California Leisure Nostalgia Photography Retirement

A Sunset Cloud Rainbow

About a half hour before sunset this evening, this beautiful prismatic rainbow appeared in the ice crystals of high clouds west of our house. There were a lot of clouds over California and Arizona due to Hurricane Kay, currently making its way up the Baja California Coast.

The weather forecast for us over the next couple of days will be cloudy with possible thundershowers. In California, there are forecasts for flash flooding and high winds that may cross over into Arizona. We’re ready for it, however, having recently gone through our annual monsoon season.

September 8, 2022 by Climate Photography

Avalon 1998

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