One Month at a Time: January 2014

One Month at a time is a group of about 13 photographers who record a time during the previous month that has resonated with them, in a story format.  As of this blog going live this group will be known as Tell me a Story.  

January is the beginning of the nesting season in Florida and this season has been very interesting for me.  I recently posted a blog on the surprising event I witnessed with the Anhinga.  I went to see baby chicks and ended up witnessing and photographing the making of the chicks.  

This week was the turn of the Great Blue Heron.  What you will be a part of, is the courting dance of the Great Blue Heron's.  Join me as I share what I witnessed the other day

It was late afternoon and the sun was starting to set.  Light was dimming. It started out with a Great Blue Heron stretching her neck up and making a noise similar to a barking sound.  She did this a couple of times while I was watching.  

Then another bird flew in with a stick in it's mouth......

........and I witnessed this incredible dance preformed before my very eyes. The wings are spread out and there is this flapping of wings and heads going up and down.  

Beyond that there is a dance of the beaks, that just fascinated me.  It was not a pecking at each other, but a moving backwards and forwards, and in and out of the becks.

I love the way the feathers spread out and stand up, and don't you just love the Anhinga to the side, and the look on it's face?

There is some pushing backwards and forwards while there becks are locked.

And then they groom each other for a period of time.  Rubbing against each other and passing their becks through the other birds feathers.

After the grooming they went back to building the nest and putting a stick in place, moving it until they are totally happy with the position of the stick.  

And then they will sit together for a while before he lies off to find another branch.

It was 5pm, bitterly cold, starting to darken and I was ready to head home. These two had huddled down together and in my opinion clearly cold.

As I walked away, the process began again for another Great Blue Heron. Head is up, she is making a barking kind of noise and appears to be calling her mate.  

I hope you enjoyed my visit to the Wetlands.  Look out for more on the nesting process and new chicks over the next few months.  

Don't forget to head over to Melinda Sauvageau to see what she has to offer.

“Dance is the hidden language of the soul” 

~ Matha Graham

Story in a Snap: Week 1: Favorite Location

Story in a snap is the weekly blog post for 30-Minutes-in-the-Life. The objective is to share one picture and tell your story. This week the topic is Location.  My favorite location that is close by is the wetlands.  Nature brings me joy.  I like to go out on a Friday morning walk around the wetland.

Wakodahatchee Wetlands is probably a 25 minute walk but somehow I often end up staying for 2 hours depending on how much bird life I see. 

On a normal day, I see see Great Blue Heron, Blackbirds, Rosetta Spoonbills, Wood Storks, Anhinga, Cormorants and Ibis.  Hanging in the reeds is often a Least Bittern.  Occasionally I will manage to catch sight of an American Bittern.  

At the moment it is nesting season.  The Anhinga, Cormorants and Great Blue Herons are either courting, mating or nest building.  At this stage I am already seeing a number of chicks that have hatched early.  

Walking around you might spot a rather large alligator on the bank, or a nest of baby gators. You might also see an iguana in the trees, or running across the bank.  The cold weather is really not great for them and many die when a cold snap like we are having, hits Florida.  

However, nothing can beat the photograph I took the other day.  This, for me, was grace in motion and a beautiful sight to see.  The Osprey is a fish eating bird, that you can often see gliding through the sky above the wetlands.  It's average size is about 24 inches in length and 72 inches across it's wing span.

My luck was that it just happened to be looking down at me as I took the photo. Perhaps the sun glinted off the lens as I angled the lens up towards it.  Luck, good timing, whatever it was, I am just so glad I was able to see and photograph this gorgeous bird.  

“Every bird that flies has the thread 

of the infinite in its claw.” 

~ Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

30-Minutes-In-the-Life: January 2014

 In the life of a photographer, whose art is created in tiny fractions of a second, thirty minutes is a sustained thought.  Thirty, minutes, the length of a child's ballet class, a quick sauce's simmer; a commute, is long enough to witness change and short enough to be over before you know it.  We offer you here our monthly results of thirty minutes of watching and waiting and recording, of rendering permanent those fractions of a second that slip past in the time it takes to watch a television show.  Thirty minutes in the life ~ Sara Kelly

January has been an interesting month, of hot days, one or 2 cold days, an earthquake down in Cuba, a whale beaching locally (which I missed as a photoshoot), flash floods.  I am back at work, and that means no running around. However, I heard a rumor that there were chicks at the wetlands.  So the day after the flash flood, I headed off to the wetlands.  Wet, wet, wet.  I probably needed a canoe but it was fun to watch the water splash over the side of my car.  

I have a bit of a sore foot so I decided merely to walk a short distance and check out the chicks.  When I got there I could not see the chicks.  However, I kept watching the nests and chatting to a couple of folk that were hanging out.  

As I was watching and snapping the birds nesting something interesting happened ....

A female Anhinga, identified by her coloring, was lying in the nest and my assumption was that she was lying on eggs.  The female Anhinga typically is a buff color on the head, neck and chest.

On a branch close by a male Anhinga appeared to be sunning himself.  You can tell that he is male because his tail feathers have white on the end.

Suddenly the male got up and flew to the female.  From what I have read up there are a couple of things that I see going on here. There is a courtship kind of dance of waving their wings and moving around on the branch.

The mowhawk look the male anhinga has is apparently his breeding plumage

There was a lot of squawking at each other ....

And some position changing.... 

And some x-rating ......

"Oh my gosh, did you get all of that on camera?".....Oh yes I did.  

She does have that deer in the headlight kind of look......like what the heck just happened. 

And if I am not mistaken, and what I really went to photograph, was the end result of the courting session....the baby chicks.  These chicks, born to another pair of Anhinga, have been born really early and I have to wonder if it is not because of the rather mild winter that we have experienced in South Florida.   

March/April is typically breeding season in the wetlands, and you will find the Great Blue Heron, the Anhinga, the Commorant and the Herons all nesting together in the same trees. Anhinga pairs apparently mate monogamously for the the breeding season. It is quite a sight to see when you first watch the chicks hatch, and then get a few more feathers and change color. 

The female Anhinga typically lays 2-6 eggs of a pale green color.  The female typically lays the eggs within 48 hours, and will sit on them for up to 30 days. They may hatch at random times, not all at once.  Both male and female Anhinga will take care of the chicks.  

When I went out looking to photograph chicks the last thing I expected to see was, what I believe to be, the making of them.  

“Wherever there are birds, there is hope.” 

~  Mehmet Murat ildan   

That is my 30 minutes-in-the-Life contribution this month, please remember to follow the link and see what Sophie James/Bluebells on the Green/Glasgow Lifestyle Photographer has for you this month.  

Project 10: January 2014: Topic: Sharp

So Project 10 comes along and the topic is Sharp, and I begin to think, I am really not feeling to sharp about anything.  I can't really do the cold thing, because truthfully except for the past week, it really has not been too cold.  I don't have young kids living in the home, and I have already used the cats.  Of course, insulin needles are defined as sharps, but that involves the cat again.  So no needles.  I could show you the paperwork on my desk regarding sharps (once again needles etc) and how they apply to OSHA regulations but that's kind of boring.  

So I am sitting and waiting for inspiration to hit. This year I have chosen to do a personal 365 challenge and we are on day 18 and so far I have survived.  Still a long way to go.  The weather has turned cold, and the thought of going out and looking for a photo leaves me thinking I would rather just stay indoors and take a picture of the cat. I know, I know, it's the cats again...

Breakfast is out on the patio and I happen to look up at something simmering in the light. Here is my picture of the day. Now, just a little bit about me, I have a love hate relationship with spiders. I really hate them.  It goes back to my childhood, and a "friend" chasing me with a huge big bush spider.  One of those ones with long legs and a big yellow sac at the back of it. Yes, yes I ran screaming all the way down the road.  I also hate walking into a spider web, it is kind of creepy, and it leaves you wondering where the spider is going to appear, and makes me start thinking of huge spiders and webs...way to much Steven King as a child.

However, there is something about spiders that I love, and that is their creativity in designing webs.  I think spiders are pretty sharp.  And when I take the webs,  I love the sharp effects that stand out against the background. 

And so here is my take on sharp.  

  

Next time you see a spider stop and check out the beauty of it's web.  I am sure that a spider is created with a really sharp mind.

“There are spiders living comfortably in my house while the wind howls outside. They aren't bothering anybody. If I were a fly, I'd have second thoughts, but I'm not, so I don't.” 

~ Richard Brautigan, The Tokyo-Montana Express

Photography for all Seasons: December 2013

Photography for all Seasons is a new group of about 10 photographers who records a time during the previous month that has resonated with them.

As an immigrant to the USA, one of the hardest parts of leaving your home country, is saying goodbye to family.  Family that you have spent almost all your life with in one way or another.  Family, whom is so important to you and whom is irreplaceable in your life. 

For most Americans, Thanksgiving is the time of year you draw close to family. For South Africans, Christmas is that time of year.  For many years I hosted Christmas in my home, so that all the family and extended family could, and would, gather together to spend the day with each other.

Moving to Florida, meant no extended family. No time with your loved ones other than your husband and two children.  For me that was tough.  I wanted my mother and my husbands mother to be with us.  I wanted my brother and his wife and 2 children, and my sister-in-law and her husband and 2 children, and my brother-in-law.  I wanted the brother of my heart.  But that was not going to happen.

Fortunately we had friends.  Friends who had moved here before us or around the same time as us. All of us in similar situations - no family around.  And so the tradition of hosting Christmas in our home continued.  For the past 10 years Christmas has been celebrated in our home with family (who have visited), with friends (who live here), and at times, with family of friends.  And while friends can never replace family, they themselves carve a notch in your heart and bring warmth into your life, that is missing along with your loved ones

So my blog this session is about preparing for a celebration of Christmas with friends.  Every year my first priority is to decide on a color theme and very often that depends on the color of the tableware.  I have different colors over the years, red, green, gold, burgundy, purple and blue. 

  

Then I will design an invitation to a bring and share dinner.  This year my color theme was red and gold.

Then I head up into the tiny attic in my home and pull down my boxes of decorations.  My boxes are color coordinated which makes it really easy to only pull down what is needed.  This year I decided on gold bows and flowers for the napkins and red balls and golden decorations for the centerpieces.

Two days before our Christmas dinner, I spread myself out on the dinning room table and I begin the process of making the napkins.  This year I was making for 16 adults and 5 children - a total of 21 guests.  I love this part of being creative. 

Finally the bows are on and the glittery golden flowers are placed at the opening of each napkin, ready for me to place the silverware inside.

 I just love how the light sparkles on the golden flowers.

Next I pull out the small wreaths and begin the process of making the centerpieces.  Dollar store vases make great candle holders.  Red balls and gold decorations from previous years,  are woven into the green wreath to make attractive center pieces.  Finally the candles are placed into the vases ready to be placed on the tables and lit. 

My pool table looks like Christmas heaven, consisting of rows of napkins, wreaths of red and gold, gold chargers, and Christmas plates.

 

We held our Christmas dinner this year on Saturday since my son was not able to get home on Christmas day.  That was a disappointment for me, but I also realized that I am going to have to get used to the idea.  My children are growing and soon they will move away from my home and into their own. I cannot say that I am overly happy with that idea.

First place to be set was our patio table. It was undercover and the threat of rain forced me to hold off setting anything that was out in the open. 

The outdoor bar area was next.

Finally the last bit of rain has been squeezed out and the tables have been dried down and the last table has been set. The candles have been lit and we are ready for the evening ahead.

As 2014 begins, I wish you and yours, a New Year full of hope.  That peace may be felt throughout your home, that joy may be the fundamental essence of your lives, and that love will abound throughout.  Remember, most of all, that when you give love, you will receive love, when you give laughter, you will receive laughter, and when you give comfort you will be comforted.  Take a bold stand in 2014 and make the very most of it and all it has to offer you. 

To our family and that of extended family, you are missed dearly.

To our friends, thank you for the past 10 years of fellowship.

For those friend who were moved out of Florida, move back to Florida. 

You all make this transition so much easier.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. 

“You must remember, family is often born of blood, but it doesn't depend on blood. Nor is it exclusive of friendship. Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are related to you, can be your family.”

~ Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society.

“I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff.”

~ Jon Katz

 “I may not always be with you
But when we're far apart
Remember you will be with me
Right inside my heart”

~ Marc Wambolt, Poems from the Heart  

Remember to check out Mary T Slone, Mephis Lifestyle Photographer, and see what she has to offer for her take on the month of December