Happy Thanksgiving! I’ve been keeping busy. Birding, astrophotography, and hiking. Now I’m working on digging up 89 photos of butterflies for Gary Marrone’s 2nd Edition of The Butterflies of South Dakota. That will be a great book when it is published. Weather here has been cool but still pretty nice.
I found two Gray Vireos in the Darby Well area, first time I’ve seen Gray Vireos there for several years now. I photographed this one capturing a leaf-footed bug. A Hermit Thrush in Alamo Canyon. A Verdin perching on flowering Condalia. I really like this one!Male Northern Cardinal peeking out from the mesquite. I’ve been adding more exposure to my Crab Nebula image, started this several years ago. I think there will be more coming. Same with M33, Triangulum Galaxy. The giant nebula, NGC 604, is very clear in the lower left. Forty times the size of the Orion Nebula, it would outshine Venus if it were the same distance as the Orion Nebula. But it is almost 3 million light years away. A very poor photo of a Varied Thrush, a very rare bird for this area. I found it by the school baseball field. This is only the second one I’ve seen in the Ajo area. I’ve been trying to relocate it but so far, no luck.
