Category: Photog.Social

I spotted some of these feral parrots in the grocery store parking lot today.

Green and red parakeet in a palm tree, grooming its leg.

Green and red parakeet in a palm tree.

Green and red parakeet in a palm tree, looking sideways.

Two of these parakeets flew across the grocery store parking lot into a palm tree, squawking as they went. I could only spot one of them once they’d settled, but I managed to get almost a dozen photos of it while it sat there.

On iNaturalist

Link: Feral Parrots Are Taking Over America!

“These birds, descendants of escaped pets, have managed to create thriving colonies in these cities despite the annual cold weather.”

On Wandering.shop

I spotted some of these feral #parrots in the grocery store parking lot today. Two #parakeets flew across the lot into a palm tree, squawking as they went. I could only spot one of them once they’d settled, but I managed to get almost a dozen photos of it while it sat there.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/26590485

#birds #parakeets #FeralParakeets #FeralParrots
#nature #wildlife #photos

On Photog.Social

TODO: combine with this post and others

House Sparrow: Super-Blurry on a Wire

House Sparrow

On iNaturalist

Perfect example: I posted this super-blurry photo of a bird on a wire across the street, zoomed optically as far as I could and then just cropped. Within 15 minutes, 4 people had identified it as not just a sparrow, but specifically a house sparrow!

Meanwhile the entry for the horseweed from last week still hasn’t had anyone stop in to confirm or correct the ID.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/26366528

On Photog.Social

Rocketship park (one of very few remaining parks with this sort of climbing structure). I …

Rocketship park (one of very few remaining parks with this sort of climbing structure). I stopped to grab coffee and realized I’d been able to see the shopping center from the park…so it stood to reason I ought to be able to see the park from the shopping center.

Yep!

I think the #BlackAndWhite version works a bit better on this.

#photos #park #rocketship

Rocketship park (one of very few remaining parks with this sort of climbing structure). I ...

Rocketship park (one of very few remaining parks with this sort of climbing structure). I ...

On Photog.Social

Flax-leaved horseweed, according to iNaturalist’s identification engine.

Flax-leaved horseweed, according to iNaturalist’s identification engine.

Since the idea is to catalog nature, not gardens, I’ve found myself taking lots of photos of weeds. Some that I know, like dandelions, and a lot that I don’t.

Unfortunately, while observations of birds almost instantly attract other users who are ready to fine-tune the ID, people don’t seem as interested in identifying plants.

#photo #plants #iNaturalist

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/26041661

Plant with puffy flowers and a tall stalk with radial leaves.

On Photog.Social
On iNaturalist

Fellow iNaturalist user @sohkamyung recommended this forum thread on photo-taking recommendations by taxon

@rubah suggests tagging fediverse pictures with #plantID or #PlantIdentification.

I found the original of this while looking for something else and thought it would …

I found the original of this while looking for something else and thought it would look good in black and white.

#photography #BlackAndWhite #Birds

Silhouettes of palm trees and lots of birds.

On Photog.Social
On Flickr

I’m kind of surprised that I didn’t post the original back when I took it. Yeah, it was pre-Instagram and I was barely using Flickr at the time, but I had been posting photos to my blog for a couple of years by then.

:shrug: Well, it’s up now. And who knows: maybe I wouldn’t have thought of adjusting the color if I’d stumbled on it as “Oh yeah, that one…” instead of rediscovering a photo I’d completely forgotten.

On Photog.Social

Since joining iNaturalist, I’m paying more attention to the birds I see (and, more often, hear)…

Since joining iNaturalist, I’m paying more attention to the #birds I see (and, more often, hear). 3/4 of the time, they fly off before I have a chance to take a picture, but I’ve caught a few.

I learned that most of the #pigeons we see in cities are classified as feral, descended from domesticated pigeons derived in turn from rock pigeons who live on the sides of sea cliffs. Buildings serve as a nice substitute.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/kelsonv

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_pigeon

#photos #BlackAndWhite

On Photog.Social
On Flickr

The Adventures of the Flickr Panda

#Flickr is partly back after a day of planned downtime to move out of Yahoo’s datacenter.

For the downtime, they encouraged people to print out the #panda from the maintenance page and take photos of it off having adventures.

I went a bit overboard and put together 12 pictures of the panda exploring plants, hiding behind a crosswalk button, slipping near a caution sign, etc. I plan on posting this shot once uploads are working. The rest are on my blog at hyperborea.org/journal/2019/05/flickr-panda

#photos

Paper panda next to an INITECH coffee mug.

On Photog.Social

These are a few shots from the grounds of a hotel in Hawaii that isn’t there anymore.

These are a few shots from the grounds of a hotel in #Hawaii that isn’t there anymore.

The open-air lounge jutted out over #tidePools made of #lavaRock. A bridge labeled Kapu (forbidden) led to the next resort over, which had already been torn down.

It was on the Kona (west) side of the Big Island, and was demolished last year to make way for an educational/cultural center. Since there are several heiau ruins on the property, that’s probably a better use of it.

#photos #tbt

On Photog.Social

Two days later:

Realized in all the editing I dropped the *name* of the place. It was the Keauhou Beach Resort. I stayed there for a week in 2005, and took these pictures on an afternoon (or morning) when we weren’t going anywhere else.

On Photog.Social

A house finch, perched in a juniper tree. I couldn’t believe it stayed put long …

A house finch, perched in a juniper tree. I couldn’t believe it stayed put long enough for me to go inside, get my camera, come back out, and take seven pictures. Google conveniently linked them together in this animation.

#photography #birds #animation

On Photog.Social
On iNaturalist

I took a break from errands and went to the bluffs above the beach to …

I took a break from errands and went to the bluffs above the beach to watch boats and seagulls. It was super windy, and the seagulls were hovering in the updraft…and riding the wind *sideways*!

That, and the usual wheeling around, made them difficult to catch on camera.

#fotofails

On Photog.Social

This is amusing. SmugMug has been slowly disentangling Flickr from Yahoo…

This is amusing.

SmugMug has been slowly disentangling #Flickr from Yahoo over the last few months, and they have planned downtime coming up in a few weeks to finish migrating a gazillion photos and videos from Yahoo’s datacenter to AWS.

The funny part: They’re doing a photo contest where you print out the maintenance notice and “take your photo of the little panda on an adventure somewhere,” then post it after the site comes back.

https://blog.flickr.net/en/2019/05/08/enter-our-good-panda-photo-contest-for-a-chance-to-win-a-free-year-of-flickr-pro/

On Photog.Social

I managed to get out to the local botanical gardens again for a mild hike …

I managed to get out to the local botanical gardens again for a mild hike / photo walk. Large parts of the grounds are designed to look wild, though the plants are all grouped by category and labeled. Other parts are obviously manicured. I also have photos of a snail hidden in a rosemary bush and a lizard that…wasn’t very hidden!

Flickr Album: South Coast Botanic Garden

#Photography #nature #flowers #garden #lizard #snail #trees #spring

On Photog.Social

A deserted Parisian street on a gloomy November day, years ago.

A deserted Parisian street on a gloomy November day, years ago. I stumbled on it again while looking for my photos of Notre Dame from the same trip, and I actually like this shot better than any of the ones I took of the cathedral. The lack of scaffolding probably helped!

Caption from Instagram
Photo on Photog.Social