July: Count Them if You Can

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Hot. July 2023 was hot, hot, hot. It is perfectly sane and respectable to just stay indoors in Louisiana in a normal July, and July 2023 was hotter than most. But you can’t see or count butterflies indoors, so…. a bunch of the incurable fortify themselves with bottles of water, field hats, and energy snacks, and out they go. July 31, 2022 – Knowing which flowers to plant is hugely helpful if you want to attract butterflies to your home, and Charles Allen wrote a book about it!* So counting butterflies at Allen Acres is great fun. Beauties like this…

May: All God’s Children…

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…get to sing in my choir! But fair warning to you snake phobes: Don’t click on this one, unless you want to see a lovely butterfly bad enough to also see a beautiful snake! May 1, 2022 – Once again I am driving slowly through Tensas River NWR, probably scanning the roadsides for birds, deer, wild turkey, maybe a bobcat or a bear–any of the things one can see in Tensas. Suddenly it struck me that I had just driven over something on the road. I hit the brake and checked my rear view mirror. Is that a snake? On,…

April: Winged Things

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And not just birds! Spring begins in March in Louisiana. By April, things are popping out all over. Flowers, of course. But also dragonflies and damselflies. It’s a great time to be outdoors. April 10, 2022 – The great damselfly emergence happened a few feet in front of my lens! Actually, I’m pretty certain it was happening all over Black Bayou Lake, not just in front of my lens. But that doesn’t make it less special to me that I captured four damselflies in different stages of emergence in one shot! For those who might not know, damselflies hatch from…

January: Birds

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I did not do a “Year in Review” in 2023. I had taken on a new part-time job in the fall of 2022, and I just could not find the time to do it. And I still have that job so I’m still awfully busy, but I’m determined. So I have decided to do pairs of photos this time, one per month for each year, 2022 and 2023. January 29, 2022 – This beautiful Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) perched on a branch just yards away and posed for me. I was entering Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge to meet a…

#AdventWord #Herald

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One of the reasons I began kayaking is because you can get closer to birds in a kayak than on land. The lower profile of a kayak on water and the smooth, silent movement–assuming you aren’t splashing your paddle!–seems to alarm them less. I came fairly close to the male Anhinga (Anhinga anhinga) perched on a snag over Black Bayou Lake. Was he calling to his mate? Signaling that he was ready to take his turn on their nest? Warning away other birds? Announcing appreciation for the beauty and bounty around him? God told Job, Ask the beasts and the…