During the breeding season, females lack the spectacular yellow colors of the males. The non-breeding season is a great equalizer as even the males take a turn for the drab. This picture was taken at the end of winter in Mississippi.

Of all the soft pictures on this trip to Mississippi, this portrait of a chipping sparrow perched in the center of a tree hurts the most, as it is my favorite bird picture from the trip. I missed the focus on the little bird, leaving little detail in its feathers. We have chipping sparrows here in Oregon, but I don’t recall seeing one, so I took as many pictures as I could while I had the chance. Some of the others came out sharper, but I still like this abstract one the best.

Another picture from my trip to Mississippi of another old friend that I first met when I got into birding back when I lived in the East. Knowing I might have an occasional chance at birds and lizards, I brought my oldest lens, my 100-400mm telephoto zoom. I love how it collapses enough to fit in my little camera bag that fits in even the smallest overhead bins, this lens doesn’t get enough credit for how easy it is to take on casual trips. Yet without a tripod and in low light I knew pictures were likely to be blurry and soft.

I missed focus on the chickadee so it is indeed rather soft, even at web resolutions, and making matters worse I might have even had a tele-converter on and been manually focusing. And while I don’t like the look of the foreground, I love the background and since it’s my only decent picture of this little bird, I’ll put it online.

At least for now.

While photographing birds on my last day in Mississippi, I didn’t have a lot of clear backgrounds to isolate the birds. But when this brown thrasher popped up into the tree, I took a picture I wouldn’t have normally just because I so rarely get to see this bird. Reviewing my pictures that night, I actually liked the different look of the background and wanted to try for some similar pictures the next morning before our flight home.

Unfortunately, a heavy downpour arrived at midnight and didn’t depart until we did. Ah well, something to try on the next visit!

Given the circumstances, we had a good visit to see family in Mississippi after my mother-in-law passed away. I debated whether I should bring my camera or not, right up until I left for the airport, but in the end decided that I might as well bring it since it packs up pretty small and wouldn’t require much extra effort.

My job for much of the week was to keep the young children entertained while the adults did the adult stuff. There is a short path through the woods behind the house that we liked to take which yielded my favorite picture of the week, if not the year, so I was glad I brought the camera if only for that one picture of the two youngest kids.

I grew up in the east but didn’t get into photography until shortly before we moved to Oregon, so I have better memories than pictures of the birds of my youth. So whenever I travel back east, I’m always on the lookout for old friends. Our last day there was a quiet one, the kids having left the day before, so I had some down time for bird-watching and was again glad I brought the camera.

One picture I wanted was of the mockingbird that often hung out near the house. Like all the birds there, it was pretty skittish, but after sitting still on the porch for long enough, it eventually came close enough for some pictures. It was cloudy so I went for a high key look, which will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I like it.

I didn’t bring my big telephoto lens or my tripod, it wasn’t that kind of trip, so many of the pictures are pretty soft. Nevertheless, it was nice to be reacquainted with family and friends alike.

Another picture of the little fence lizard from Mississippi. I first spotted it because I saw movement out of the corner of my eye as I walked past the tree. It took me a while to locate it, both because it blends in so well with the bark of the tree and because it can circle around to the other side of the tree in a flash.

Even after I knew the location of the tree where it lived, it usually took me a while to find it. Viewed straight on, it blends into the tree. Viewed from the side, it appears to be just another knot or branch on the irregular tree trunk.

There were a number of similar trees in the area and I hoped to find other lizards, but I was never able to find any but this one. Whether they were there and I just missed them, I have no idea. But thankfully this one was a regular customer.

I won’t post any more shots of this lizard here but you can find some more pictures of it (and other eastern fence lizards) in my eastern fence lizard page.

Completing the trinity of reptiles seen during our visit to see family in Mississippi in 2005 is this little fence lizard. I photographed it over several days as it was always on or beside this one tree — my lizard tree. One of the fun things about photography is getting to see little creatures like this lizard in great detail in a way I never could in the wild. The downside is that I’m always surprised by how small the lizards are when I see them, I build them up in my mind to be larger.

Not quite dinosaur large mind you, just larger.

Another good thing is that looking back I remember the good things (the lizard) and forget the humidity and mosquitoes and ticks and lying in the dirt.

We have fence lizards here in Oregon, I’ve seen them in central Oregon at Smith Rock State Park, but they are a different species than this one (western versus eastern). This one is an eastern fence lizard, just in case you aren’t sure where Oregon is in relation to Mississippi, or in case like me you tend to confuse the east and the west.

My brain always wants the west to be on my left. That’s where it is on the maps …

The trip to Mississippi in 2005 turned out to be a good trip for reptiles. This timber rattlesnake was not only the first rattler I ever saw but also the first venomous snake. Fortunately she was sitting up on a bleached-out dead tree that I had walked by several times before, so even from a distance I immediately noticed something had changed. I slowly approached but kept my distance and could clearly see the classic viper headshape, so I knew she was dangerous even though her rattle was hidden (and silent).

I carefully circled around to her front, moving slowly and keeping a good distance to keep both of us in our comfort zones. It must have worked as she never stirred apart from occasionally flicking her tongue. This picture was taken from the side and you can see her head poking out from her coiled body.

One lesson from watching web stats the past two weeks is that my reptile pictures are my most popular. I’m more than a little surprised by this, as while they are one of my favorite types of animal to photograph, there are only a handful of reptile galleries since I don’t see them very often. But for reasons I don’t understand, I’m currently fourth ranked if you search Google for “reptile pictures” — for reasons I understand even less, I don’t even show up if you search Google’s image search for the same.

In any event, I’ve been updating the reptile pages to update some of the crufty HTML code and have re-edited a handful of the pictures as well, such as this green anole. I’ve always loved lizards and newts, but anoles played a special role in getting me into photography.

I spent the summer of 1994 working in Florida when I was in graduate school and was delighted to find brown and green anoles running all around my apartment complex. I only had a point & shoot camera at the time and was so frustrated at my inability to photograph the little things that when I got an unexpected bonus while back in school, I decided to get my first SLR. There were other things I wanted to better photograph, of course, like alligators and birds and a little gray cat, but one failed anole picture in particular pushed me over the edge.

It would be over 10 years before I saw another anole, this time a green one in Mississippi while we were visiting family in the summer of 2005. I found this fine fellow in a tree in the brutal light of a cloudless summer day. With the lizard in the shade of the tree’s canopy, I was just able to avoid the hot spots of bright sunlight in the background and still get the image I wanted.