Buzzards fascinate me. They are the most graceful of the local birds, floating in lazy circles on the thermals over the hills. They're not quite as adept as pedestrians, galumphing along on the ground, even comical. The valley has been socked in with fog for days now, but we, here on a "different planet," have enjoyed the sun, although night temperatures have been in the twenties. It seems that these birds have a welcoming ritual, raising wings in a silent paean to the warmth. Logic tells me that they are just thawing out after a frigid night, but it is so beautiful to see that my imagination imbues the scene with more than it is.
Equally amazing to me is that they let me come so close now. There is no more than eight feet between me and this handsome fellow on the post. While watchful, he waited while I threw flakes of alfalfa down for the girls, and only when I later went through the gate did he swoop off. These are turkey buzzards, but their heads are actually more attractive than the gnarly, bumpy red heads of the turkeys. The huge nostrils allow them to scent carrion more than five miles, I understand. They appear black at a distance, but this close up shows the exquisite pattern of black, tan and bronze.
I love my new camera, so compact and easy to use, but it takes over half an hour to upload one photo, and it sure sets my day back to insert a photo...way back to put in more than one. The download from the camera is almost instantaneous, so I can only think it is a drawback of my computer, but dang, it's frustrating!
2 comments:
Beautiful pictures. Explore reducing the size of your pictures. Your new camera likely snaps images at a much higher resolution than what you have used in the past. A GIF image is just fine for posting online. You can adjust the resolution either in the camera or open and save the file at a lower resolution before posting (preferred as you still have the higher res photo for printing later or even selling for stock)
What magnificent creatures...who knew? The picture with the multiple Sun Worshipers is awesome, and the lone fellow is spectacular. I'm so sorry that you have to suffer so that we get downloaded photos! It's a domino effect as my comment is late because the download time threw the Blog into a different time zone, and today was a work day for me. It was hard to start my day without it, but so rewarding to come home and read about your special place in the hills. So thanks for putting up with the frustration to give us the oh-so-special, special-effects!
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