March 16, 2019. It’s Saturday of Louisiana Master Naturalist’s annual 3-day meeting called “Rendezvous.” This year we met in Fountainbleau State Park on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. Fountainbleau has a lot to offer naturalists. It’s also ideal habitat for cross vine (Bignonia capreolata), one of my fave native plants. I began looking for its distinctive sets of four leaves, actually two pairs of two leaves, going up the straight trunks of trees long before I saw a flower. But when I finally did see a flower? Wow! I thought immediately of Tom Wolfe’s book, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake…

February 27, 2019. Hmm. Maybe 2019 was the year of the bird? In February I traveled to Albuqurque to attend the Episcopal Archdeacon’s annual conference. It was surprisingly cold. In Albuqurque? Yes, said the local I asked about it. People often underestimate how cold it gets in Albuqurque. So I really was not prepared to be out walking and shooting. But we always get a little time off at that conference, so I bundled up as best I could with what I had and paid a visit to San Felipe de Neri, the historic Roman Catholic church that dominates Old…

January 1, 2019. I am driving Highway 2 to D’Arbonne State Park to lead a First Day Hike. As usual, my camera is on the passenger seat and I am keeping a sharp eye for photo opps along the way. I should have a bumper sticker that reads “I brake for raptors on power lines.” Because I do. And I have gotten good at spotting hawks along Louisiana country roads. Seeing them on poles is more common, but this one was sitting on the powerline, which sagged significantly between the poles. I pulled to the side of the road about…

Ironic. The thing that requires patiently standing still scanning the trees and shrubs for the slightest movement must be done in winter when many trees are bare of leaves, no matter the damp and cold and chill wind. In 2018, I participated for the very first time in the Christmas Bird Count, a national event started in 1900 by the National Audubon Society. It is one of the longest running citizen science events in the world. I’m hooked. This photograph is part of how I got hooked. It might be the most perfect photo I have ever made. No matter…

Since I usually stay in a hotel in The Loop when I visit Chicago, my typical approach to Millenium Park is from the west. I walk east on Madison or another of the streets perpendicular to the lake and wait patiently for a pedestrian light to give me permission to cross Michigan Avenue–a somewhat perilous experience most days. If I want to get all the way to Maggie Daley Park, usually worth the effort, I make my way to the BP Pedestrian Bridge over Columbus Dr., after an obligatory pause at Cloud Gate for the quintessential Chicago selfie in the…