Climb Every Mountain
Bozeman, Montana
2022

I wanted to ask this magpie why it would choose to walk rather than fly, especially in deep snow.

The Underling
Bozeman, Montana
2022

I was trying to focus on the magpie, but the autofocus on my camera had other ideas. That was good in this case though, as I like what came out of it. Too bad it was taken from so far away that I had to do an extreme crop on the image to get in close enough to get the most impactful composition.

Faux Projector
Bozeman, Montana
2022

Funny how your life experiences influence how your mind interprets what your eyes see. This roll of reflective tape on a couple of boxes has been sitting on our counter for several days and every single time I come into the room and first see it, my mind seems to think it’s a Kodak Carousel slide projector. I’m tempted to let it sit there to see how long that reaction continues, but quite frankly it bugs me so I think I’ll forgo that experiment.

Blackberry Treat
Bozeman, Montana
2022

We had some frozen blackberries which just weren’t very good for some reason. Rather than throw them out, I put them out for the birds to snack on. It turns out that even the magpies didn’t care for them. This guy showed up right away and flew off with one. After that though, a magpie would stop by every once in a while and peck around a bit but then turn up its nose, er, beak, at them and fly off without taking anything with them. That behavior lasted until the day I poured some bacon grease over them. Then they disappeared in a hurry. Too bad that flicker from yesterday’s POTD wasn’t around for the blackberries.

My Friend Flicker
Bozeman, Montana
2022

This flicker (female northern flicker to be specific, I think) was hanging around our bird feeder recently, mostly being frustrated because she couldn’t get into the feeder as it’s covered with a wire cage that only smaller birds can get through.

I was shooting at a high ISO speed on my camera when I took this photo so there was quite a bit of noise in the image. Usually I use Photoshop when needed to reduce the noise in images, but in this case I thought it added a nice, sort of painterly effect, so I actually enhanced it a bit.

Occulation Preoccupation
Bozeman, Montana
2022

Two nights ago, there was a lunar occulation (a.k.a. opposition) of the planet Mars. These happen about every couple of years but this years was a bit special as it was a full moon. Also, Mars was particularly close to the Earth, making it look brighter than normal. If you look closely at this photo, at about the 8 o’clock position on the moon, you can see Mars just before it disappeared behind the moon. This is a highly cropped image I took using a 100-400mm zoom lens zoomed to 400mm. There are of course many closer photos of the phenomenon available on the internet, taken through strong telescopes. I like this one which shows Mars just as it is reappearing on the opposite side of the moon. I didn’t bother to stay out or go out again to see the re-emergence of Mars–it was too dang cold out there!

Yogi and Boo Boo Test My Smarts
Bozeman, Montana
2022

“You untie it Boo Boo and I’ll catch it when it falls.” It honestly took me about five or six iterations before I finally came up with an almost 100% bear proof bird feeder that is still easy to refill. (I say almost 100% because I can see a bear one day actually untying the rope on the pole.) I don’t know if I’m actually smarter than Yogi because he’s smarter than the average bear, and this may not actually be Yogi and Boo Boo. But as of last fall when our trailcam caught this image, I’m so far smarter than these two bears because they went away empty pawed.

Shelf Test
Bozeman, Montana
2022

Just messing around with my new camera looking for subjects to try it out on, so I pointed it at some of the miscellany on my windowsill.

Waddle and Fluff
Bozeman, Montana
2022

Nine degrees outside and trying to stay warm and scavenge for food at the same time. Is this how the penguins do it?

Iron Cross
Bozeman, Montana
2022

I must have been in junior high or high school when I first saw a gymnast doing the iron cross move on the rings. I was then, and still am, extremely impressed by the muscle strength it obviously takes to execute the move. As difficult as it seemed to be, when I was young I always thought that, at least theoretically if I chose to work out long enough and hard enough I might be able to do one too. I never did of course. Now, with a snapped bicep muscle and a shoulder in need of rotator cuff repair, I can’t even fool myself into thinking I could do one. In fact just thinking about trying one makes my arm hurt! It’s much less painful to just admire this magpie doing an aerial version.