Rainy Day

The weather today is atrocious here - rain, sleet, wind, and occasional snow. I tried to go for a walk earlier, but horizontal sleet is painful. So here's a detail shot out my kitchen window: one of the arms of my feeder station a-drip with raindrops.

© 2014 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Saturday Morning Ramble

I cut through the Dykeman Spring Nature Park on my way to the grocery store this morning. I had the camera set on b&w and ISO 400 and didn't change it, just changing aperture and shutter speed as needed; I was doing an experiment, acting like it was the old, pre-color film days. I took a lot of shots, starting downtown and along the way on the other side of the park, but these three from the park are the only shots that pleased me. Enjoy!

Dykeman Spring wetlands

The creek in the Dykeman Spring Nature Park

Canada Geese on the north pond in the park

© 2014 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Hand Carved

I went up to the Spring Hill Cemetery with a mission today - to get shots of the older, hand carved gravestones there. As you can see in some of the pictures, it's snowing here again, so it was a cold trip. But I like what I got, and the dim lighting of the day helped to capture the starkness in these black & white shots.

© 2014 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

A Walk on the Vernal Equinox

I went looking for signs of Spring today on the Vernal Equinox; naturally I went to look in the obvious place, the Dykeman Spring Nature Park. The day certainly hasn't proved all that Spring-like – temperatures in the mid 40s F (around 7º C), windy, and mostly cloudy with sun only from time to time. So I didn't hold out much hope. 

But there are signs, if you care to look closely. And the birds are out in full force; you can hear them singing their Spring songs – Cardinals, Redwing Blackbirds, Song Sparrows, Goldfinches, House Finches, etc. –  but they were successfully staying hidden in the brush or out of camera range. I managed to get a decent shot of a Redwing Blackbird, and that took some time and patience. Here are the results of my search for Spring.

A Redwing Blackbird in the Dykeman Spring wetlands

Skunk Cabbage poking up in the Dykeman Spring wetland, a sure sign of Spring

Daffodils poking up along the Dykeman Walking Trail

New greenery on the forest floor along the Upland Trail

New greenery on the forest floor along the Upland Trail

Despite the close-up look, the wide view still looks pretty bleak, as seen in this shot of the upland meadow

© 2014 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Birds and Scenery

A single day off full of errands and shaky health (you really don't want the details on that) limited my photography today. I did manage to pass through the Dykeman Spring Nature Park and got some shots. And when I finally got back home my backyard bird feeder station was busy, so I got some more shots. Below are the shots that passed quality control and processed well.

A Canada Goose on the north duck pond

A view of Blue Mountain from the upland meadow

This upland meadow scene has always had a very Andrew Wyeth quality for me; I hope I captured that here

A Common Grackle feeding on the spillage under the feeder station

Two male House Finches munching on sunflower seeds in the flat feeder

© 2014 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Ornamented

A single day off, and thus necessarily errands day, but I did manage to get some shots of architectural ornamentation along King St. The shots displayed below were played with in Photoshop to give an old-fashioned, hand-colored postcard look, very fitting for a town like Shippensburg.

© 2014 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Sunday at the Duck Pond

We have weather coming at us later this afternoon so I figured to get a brief walk in this morning. The north duck pond in the Dykeman Spring Nature Park turned out to be the most photogenic; it was calm and the pond's surface became the perfect mirror. I like the wide panorama of the west side of the pond, and of course I had to get a good shot of my "pew" on the north end of the pond. And two more ducks who usually show up on the coast, not this far inland - a Lesser Scaup drake (male) and a Canvasback hen (female). The Scaup is the black and white one with the yellow eye, and the Canvasback hen is the brown one with the long, flat beak. The seasonal migration seems to have started and we're getting strays showing up on our doorstep!

© 2014 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

At the Feeders

I'm off this weekend and today is errands day, so there hasn't been a lot of time for photography. But I caught this male House Finch feeding at the sunflower seed feeder. I swear he knew I was there on the other side of the window and was deliberately mugging for the camera. I caught the following sequence to prove it. And then there was the Chipmunk foraging under the feeders. The darned Sparrows are sloppy pigs, tossing seed all over the place when they eat, so all the ground feeders have plenty of food as well!

© 2014 by A. Roy Hilbinger