October 23, 2011 - Yesterday (Saturday) was the October photo hike at the Circle B Bar Reserve. My dad and I led three enthusiastic birders around the trails at the reserve. Last year our walks were big and we had a wide variety of birding/photography skill levels. This year our walks have been very small, and today’s group of […]
October 21, 2011 - I photographed this White-Eyed Vireo this weekend on the Alligator Alley trail of the Circle B Bar Reserve. I used fill flash to illuminate him deep within a tree. I recently started training myself to use a new technique for focusing on these little birds who love to flit in and out of small trees. […]
October 20, 2011 - I photographed this juvenile Red-Winged Blackbird at the Circle B Bar Reserve this weekend. It was a cloudy morning, so I was glad to have my flash with me. I really like how his brown tones contrast with the green vegetation and purple flowers around him.
October 19, 2011 - I forgot to post the Yellow-Billed Cuckoo picture in my blog post Cuckoos Chasing Cuckoos from this weekend. Oops! So here’s the bird that caused several photographers to follow him up and down the Marsh Rabbit Run trail. He likes to bury himself in trees with lots of leaves, so I was very surprised when […]
October 18, 2011 - The Palm Warblers have been back for several weeks now, but between rainy weather and work, this weekend was my first opportunity to take a decent photograph of one. This one was hopping around in a tree on the Marsh Rabbit Run trail at the Circle B Bar Reserve. It’s such fun to hear the […]
October 16, 2011 - I think the weather forecasters were a little overly optimistic this morning when they predicted “partly sunny” for 8am. I called it “mostly cloudy!” I was glad that I didn’t go to the Circle B Bar Reserve for sunrise, because there wasn’t one. The light levels were pretty low all morning. But it was great […]
October 15, 2011 - Dyeyo and I were excited to go to the Circle B Bar Reserve this morning after all the good birds that I saw there yesterday. Until we saw the clouds. And the runners. There were hundreds of people gathered this morning to run a 5K race right up and down the trails. Dyeyo and I […]
October 14, 2011 - It was a gorgeous morning at the Circle B Bar Reserve. The temperatures were cool, there was a little breeze, and the winter birds are coming back. The Belted Kingfishers were posed on the power lines at the entrance to the reserve, and within a few minutes of parking, I’d located my first of fall […]
October 7, 2011 - The days are getting shorter and I’m getting home later and later…not a good combination for new “In the Backyard” shots. Luckily I still have some fun pictures from Circle B last weekend to share. I think it’s supposed to rain most of the weekend. Sad news for photographers! This is a family of Common […]
October 6, 2011 - This is an HDR image of the sunrise at Circle B last Friday morning. I enjoyed photographing the light in the clouds until I saw the baby Limpkins emerge. That distracted me until after the sun was high in the sky! :)
October 5, 2011 - I’ve been hearing complaints about the lack of turtle posts. So here’s a turtle from the Circle B Bar Reserve this weekend!
October 4, 2011 - Last Friday morning the sunrise at Circle B was very cloudy and not particularly interesting, so the Beast and I focused on the flying birds and making silhouettes. I tried to catch the birds as they had interesting wing angles and as they flew against the orangey colors of the sunrise. Then in Photoshop, I […]
October 1, 2011 - The cold front moved through and brought not only cooler temperatures, but lots of migrant birds! I spent a very nice morning at the Circle B Bar Reserve with Dyeyo. We chased lots of little birds and ended up with a pretty good migrant count, including an Indigo Bunting!! :) We hiked the Heron Hideout […]
September 30, 2011 - I spent my off-Friday morning with the baby Limpkins at the Circle B Bar Reserve. I headed out to the Wading Bird Way trail at sunrise. There were too many clouds for an impressive sunrise, but as I watched the light rising, I heard the baby Limpkins. I watched and waited, and within fifteen minutes […]
September 24, 2011 - We had our first photo walk at the Circle B Bar Reserve this morning. It was a small group, but we had a nice walk. We saw our first-of-fall Common Yellowthroats, and I’m pretty sure I heard several other warblers, but the mosquitoes were thick and we didn’t linger to watch them. We found the […]
September 23, 2011 - I’m looking forward to our first photo walk at the Circle B Bar Reserve tomorrow morning. So here’s yet another shot from a recent Circle B outing. I took this from the Wading Bird Way trail at sunrise, on a morning when the sun shone through the fog and illuminated the marsh. I love how […]
September 22, 2011 - Lately I’ve been playing with Photomatix and HDR. I went back to a sunrise panorama that I did at Lake Hancock at the Circle B Bar Reserve. Each portion of the panorama was bracketed for HDR. When I first processed it with Photoshop, I did the HDR on each frame individually, taking care to apply […]
September 20, 2011 - Lots of people at the Circle B Bar Reserve this weekend commented that the famous baby Limpkins look a lot like baby Sandhill Cranes. They do! The colors are different, but the size, beak size, and general shapes of the babies are quite similar. I hunted up some Sandhill colt pictures from April to compare… […]
September 19, 2011 - This sunrise HDR image was created at the Circle B Bar Reserve on Saturday morning. I had already taken so many shots of the sunrise and the sun was pretty high in the sky. But before I switched to the Beast for bird shots, I took one final shot of the sun and surrounding clouds. […]
September 18, 2011 - I had an awesome morning yesterday (Saturday) at the Circle B Bar Reserve with my dad and Michael Libbe. We had a great sunrise and then spent some quality time with the baby Limpkins on the Wading Bird Way trail. :) The sunrise was beautiful. We arrived on Wading Bird Way about 10 minutes before […]
September 17, 2011 - I went to the Circle B Bar Reserve yesterday (Friday) in hopes of a gorgeous sunrise with sun beams bursting through the clouds and reflecting over Lake Hancock. I came home with images of a fireball and baby Limpkins! Such is a morning at CBBR. You never know what you’ll find out there. I arrived […]
September 16, 2011 - Work interfered with photography on this off-Friday, but I did manage to get to Circle B for a few hours this morning. I won’t have my full blog post ready till tomorrow, so here’s a teaser image of a flock of Blue-Winged Teals at sunrise over Lake Hancock. They are my first Blue-Winged Teals of […]
September 14, 2011 - Long after the sunrise at the Circle B Bar Reserve on Sunday, I noticed a single cloud high in the sky that still had sunrise coloration to it. I thought it was pretty, and I took some bracketed shots for HDR. I didn’t realize how vibrant the colors would turn out! HDR can be quite […]
September 12, 2011 - You know that the hot summer is coming to a close at the Circle B Bar Reserve when you start seeing the first Pied-Billed Grebes on the Wading Bird Way trail. Although grebes are year-round residents in Polk, I don’t seem to see them until the very end of summer. The same goes for the […]
September 11, 2011 - This morning the sunrise made up for the icky cloudy day yesterday. I arrived at the Circle B Bar Reserve well before sunrise. Unfortunately I arrived at the Wading Bird Way trail about 15 minutes too late to photograph the setting moon, which was beautiful as I watched it driving across I-4. But I did […]
September 4, 2011 - The temperatures were a bit cooler at the Circle B Bar Reserve this morning, and the photographers and the migrant birds alike have begun to return to the reserve. Dyeyo and I hiked the Marsh Rabbit Run trail, Wading Bird Way trail, and Alligator Alley trail this morning in search of migrant warblers. Unfortunately, the […]
August 24, 2011 - The weather has been so hot that I’ve been spending less time outside and more time playing with post-processing. I’ve rediscovered HDR recently when I began experimenting with Photomatix Pro instead of Photoshop for HDR. I’d always read that Photoshop wasn’t quite as good, and now I’m starting to see why. Here’s my HDR image […]
August 22, 2011 - Friends often ask why our website is called “catandturtle” when most of my photographs are of birds. Well, I’ve always been a cat lover, and Rich has grown up with an obsession for turtles. Actually, it was our cat Goldilocks who started watching birds, and got us interested in them… So when I come back […]
August 19, 2011 - How are kitten care and warbler photography alike? Neither subject will stay still! This morning I enjoyed an off-Friday sunrise at the Circle B Bar Reserve. I saw my first warblers of the season! Two Yellow Warblers and one Prairie Warbler spent a pleasant 15 minutes posing for me in the top of a tree […]
August 8, 2011 - …except he went looking for a bird called a cuckoo, not a cuckoo photographer! He posted this picture of me with The Beast that is getting some chuckles on Flickr. Check it out! Show-Off – Hand-holding the Beast
August 7, 2011 - Herman made me go back to the Circle B Bar Reserve this morning after he posted a picture of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird on Flickr. I took the Beast and set up in front of the Morning Glory vines where he saw the bird. I waited about a half hour, but no hummers came. So I […]
August 5, 2011 - The Marsh Rabbit Run trail was finally re-opened! I went to the Circle B Bar Reserve this morning and found my very first Yellow-Billed Cuckoo! I couldn’t believe it when he flew into a tree right over my head. He was on Marsh Rabbit Run, about halfway down the trail. It felt so good to […]
July 31, 2011 - The Bald Eagle has returned to his nest on the sandhill at the Circle B Bar Reserve! I was very happy to hear him and then confirm that he was sitting just above the nest. It’s been almost a month since Dyeyo and I went to Circle B, so we were both excited to get […]
July 3, 2011 - It was a slow start to the morning at the Circle B Bar Reserve. I pulled up to the main gate at 6:30, hoping to catch the sunrise. But the gate was closed! All I could think was “I drove an hour to get here and it’s closed!?!?” As Dyeyo and I chatted about where […]
June 26, 2011 - To see if the water level on the other side was higher! It wasn’t… I’ve never seen the water levels at Circle B Bar Reserve this low. We hiked the Wading Bird Way trail this morning. We got there at sunrise and got in two hours of photography before the rains drove us away. It’s […]
June 5, 2011 - Dyeyo and I spotted these, um, friendly squirrels at the Circle B Bar Reserve on Saturday. They made me chuckle and think of Rich’s and my anniversary. So here’s an anniversary message from the squirrels… Keep your partner looking his best. (I’ve never seen squirrels preening each others’ tails!) Lend a hand at every opportunity. […]
June 4, 2011 - Yes, that’s right, we saw a hummingbird at the Circle B Bar Reserve this morning! I didn’t get a picture—those guys move fast! I couldn’t see it for long enough to tell what kind of hummer, either, although I assume it was a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird. But it was most definitely a hummer! Dyeyo and I […]
May 28, 2011 - It was a good morning for baby birds at the Circle B Bar Reserve. I spent about an hour watching the Osprey nest on the Heron Hideout trail. Then I moved on to the Alligator Alley trail, where I photographed the Red-Shouldered Hawk Nest. The Northern Parulas taunted me but didn’t let me see them. […]
May 22, 2011 - It was hot this morning! We arrived at the Circle B Bar Reserve at 7:00 and hiked the Alligator Alley trail loop. This Great Blue Heron was trying to cool himself with the funky wing position – he wasn’t the only one who was hot! We checked on the Great Crested Flycatcher nest by the […]
May 16, 2011 - Every afternoon when I get home from the Circle B Bar Reserve, Rich pounces on me and asks for pictures of turtles. Usually I haven’t seen many, or gotten great photo ops of the ones that I do see. So this weekend when I came across a small turtle making its way across the Heron […]
May 14, 2011 - Dyeyo and I went to the Circle B Bar Reserve this morning in search of Bobolinks. These migratory birds can only be found at Circle B for a couple of weeks a year, in the spring during their migration back north. Various people on the Circle B Flickr page have seen Bobolinks, and Dyeyo found […]
May 8, 2011 - Happy Mother’s Day! Dyeyo and I spent a few hours at the Circle B Bar Reserve this morning before going to spend some time with my mom. It seemed appropriate that we saw a bunch of baby birds with their moms today. :) We hiked the Alligator Alley loop this morning, starting just after sunrise. […]
April 30, 2011 - This morning started out slow at the Circle B Bar Reserve. We’re getting into the time of year when there are fewer birds at the reserve, and you don’t get as many great photo ops as you do during the winter. But I find that the baby birds are just as fun to photograph as […]
April 15, 2011 - I spent a quiet off-Friday morning at the Circle B Bar Reserve this morning. It’s always a treat to be on the trails without the weekend crowds. I started off on the Heron Hideout trail to say hello to the little Sandhill Crane, then I turned left onto the Alligator Alley trail and hiked that […]
April 10, 2011 - Dyeyo and I went to the Circle B Bar Reserve this morning on a quest to find baby birds. The adorable Sandhill Crane colt that met us on the Heron Hideout trail was just the first. We figured that the Barred Owlet had already fledged, so we headed out to Wading Bird Way in search […]
April 2, 2011 - This winter the American Bittern and the King Rail were the stars at the Circle B Bar Reserve. This spring, the Sandhill Crane colt that frequents the Heron Hideout trail is quickly becoming the newest celebrity at the park. This morning I met Michael Libbe at sunrise and we found the Sandhill Crane family out […]
March 27, 2011 - Wow it was foggy this morning! It was all clear as I left Orlando, but the fog started when I hit I-4, and the Polk Parkway was crazy with fog. So I wasn’t anticipating seeing too much this morning at the Circle B Bar Reserve. I’m glad I was wrong! We saw tons of birds. […]
March 26, 2011 - Today my dad and I led the final spring photo walk at the Circle B Bar Reserve. We had a very foggy morning, and due to the closing of the Marsh Rabbit Run trail, we took the group on the Alligator Alley trail. Between the fog and the reduced number of birds along Alligator Alley, […]
March 11, 2011 - I went over to the Circle B Bar Reserve after work today to catch the sunset. The good news? I saw the bobcat for the first time ever!! The bad news? The Marsh Rabbit Run trail is now closed because the alligators are very active. There’s a freaky sequence of pictures on the Circle B […]
March 4, 2011 - I spent my off-Friday morning at the Circle B Bar Reserve. I arrived at 6:30, about 20 minutes before sunrise. I hiked down to Lake Hancock and was on the dock for the sunrise. It was pretty cloudy this morning, so the sun was a little late peeking out from behind the clouds. It was […]
