Our World Tuesday and Nature Notes: March winding down

I think Carolina Chickadees are such stylish looking birds.



They look a lot like black-capped chickadees but according to the Cornell bird site:  Carolina and Black-capped chickadees hybridize in the area where their ranges overlap, but the two species probably diverged more than 2.5 million years ago.  



Above is Mrs. Cardinal considering a bath.



We had a moderate rainy week but the cold descended for the weekend.



I was glad that the rain cleared before it got cold again and we didn't get snow which was forecast at one point.



Below is Mr. Cardinal having a bath before it turned cold.



I took the rest of the shots on Saturday.



It was cold but sunny and knowing how low the temperatures are supposed to get Saturday night, I wanted to shoot flowers in my neighborhood before the risk of damage.



I decided to go ahead and prepare this post on Saturday instead of waiting until after a Sunday walk like I usually do.



During a walk to a nearby store, I took over a hundred shots.



I may try to go out in my yard early tomorrow and see if I can capture frost on the flowers.



Even this morning, a neighbor said he had to scrape the windshield on his truck because it was covered in ice.



I slept in this morning and by the time I got out the frost was gone.



Most spring flowers do alright with a frost or two but my concern is tonight the temperatures are dropping way down before rebounding by Monday.



I am surprised with all the rain we had this past week that more blossoms weren't knocked off the trees



This coming week is supposed to be wet and warm.



Pretty much the same pattern as last week.



It's been a long time since I've posted this many photographs at one time.



I had trouble narrowing down which photographs to use.



The last shot is a self portrait I caught by accident but the flower bed I photographed was washed out. When I noticed my reflection in the door I cropped it out because it amused me that I captured my two heads.



Click here for nature notes and here for Our World Tuesday.

The Weekend in Black and White: Tree top in spring

Click for the home of the Weekend in Black and White.

SkyWatch Friday: Spring is in the air

I looked through shots I'd taken since last week's sky watch after work and was surprised that the only day I had taken any photographs at all was on an overcast Sunday walk.



Thanks to daylight savings time, I had enough daylight left to takes some shots before preparing this post.



I had intended to go outside and take one shot specifically for this post.



I ended up taking 75 photographs in my yard and in the street capturing some of my neighbor's trees.



All of the trees in this post are mine except for the second one of my next door neighbor's Japanese Magnolia. The last two shots are of my redbud trees which I love this time of the year.  Click for the home of sky watch Friday.

Our World Tuesday and Nature Notes: Spring has sprung

Each day brings further signs of spring in my neck of the woods.



Looking at the extended forecast I saw we may get a spring snow next weekend but I never pay too much attention to predictions 7 days away.



It always surprises me how weather predictions try to guess beyond a day or two in advance and even with the next day predictions they can miss the mark.



Below is a shot of a hawk that was chasing another hawk above me while I stood on my deck; they were too fast for me to get a shot of both of them.



I love the feathery look of early leaves on trees.



We had a lot of rain over the past week.



Redbud trees are amongst the first trees to flower in my yard.



My white camellia buds haven't opened yet.



I have a japonica pieris bush beside the camellia bush in front of my house.



A few trees are starting to flower in the woods leading up to the lake I frequently walk around.



The evergreens are the tall trees and the feathery deciduous trees are beginning to think about leaves or flowers. 



At one point the duck on the bottom was underwater so long I thought she would drown before the duck on top was done with her.



I love the little red dotted look of the flowers on the trees in the next shot.



There are less and less gulls at the lake and they usually are all gone by mid spring. Some lakes have gulls year round where I live but Shelley lake mostly has gulls in the fall and winter.



Below the forsythia is like a window of sunshine.



I had my camera around my neck on a trip to the grocery store so I caught some flowering tree shots at the stop light.



Click here for Our World Tuesday and here for Nature Notes.

The Weekend in Black and White: Calm after a storm

Click for the home of the weekend in black and white.

SkyWatch Friday: mid March skies

The moon below is a shot I took at the end of last week in the morning. 



Amazing how fast the moon changes as I demonstrate later in this post. 



We've had a mixed bag of weather and skies over the past six days.



In general our weather is like a yo yo.



The shot above and below are of a sunset this week from my bedroom window.



I took the next shot at a stop light leaving my subdivision for work before the sun was up this week. There were only 5 days between the moon shot at the top of this post and the one below.



At the last stoplight before getting on I540, I caught the sunrise looking across at the exit. The sunrise was behind me for most of the drive.



I was glad I had my camera when I crossed the street from one building to another for a meeting.



In some ways it's nice that the company I work for has multiple buildings because it gets me outside briefly when I go between buildings for meetings. Click for SkyWatch Friday.