I almost died TWICE today.

But as you can tell from me writing this post, I survived. Barely each time, but I survived.

First, I almost got eaten by an alligator. Really.

We were in the Everglades, for this Marine Biology course (don’t ask me, I just drive the van). One of the students and I were sitting by a marshy area, waiting for an alligator to eat a bird.

That little tricolor heron came within three feet of the alligator about a zillion times. He would get all freaky and dance away, but we were convinced that the next time nature would take its course. After about twenty minutes and no meal, we decided to head back to the group.

On the way back, there was a little alligator sunning itself beside the walkway. Several Japanese tourists were offering themselves to the alligator gods, but I guess they were unacceptable sacrifices.

We decided to walk on by and when I got in front of him, I turned to look.

I must have been a more acceptable offering because the damn thing opened its eyes and got up and started walking towards me.

A million things went through my head, rather quickly. First, I turned to look and there was no place to run in zig zags. (Alligators can’t corner.) Second, there wasn’t any place high enough for me to get on so he couldn’t eat me. Third, I was thinking that humans aren’t really that high on the food chain, are they? There was no emotion, nothing in those black eyes.

Thankfully, he just kept walking forward.

Past everyone and down into the water.

It was a SCARY moment.

We saw some other, cool, non-life-threatening things out there, including:

Turtles. We thought this one was funny because he was coasting on his belly.

Colorful birds. I can’t remember for the life of me what this is.

Endangered, hiding birds. (It’s the head of an American Bittern. A prize to the first person that finds his head!) I had to ask a photographer what he was staring at to find him.

There were tons of birders out there today. Lots of big, impressive cameras.

They seemed to love the back vultures. I thought they were pretty ugly.

I’m pretty happy with my new camera (Nikon D60), but I don’t like the auto mode. The aperture is a little too small in the auto mode. I like a little more depth of field in my photos. I’m getting better at using the aperture mode, but it still takes longer than it should to take the photos.

The second time I almost died was in the van on the way back to camp. I let the students DJ and they made me listen to Brittany Spears. I had them change the music in the nick of time, but it was close.

Whew.

Radio Star!

The report appeared on the radio! Jim wasn’t kidding when he said it was only a few seconds, but it was so cool when they said his name on the radio. I got chills.

http://www.environmentreport.org/story.php3?story_id=4142

Here’s the link for those of you that want to hear the story. Just a word of warning – the reporter got it all wrong. The catalyst generates oxygen, not hydrogen. Why is this important? Jim tried to get her to correct the report before it went out, but he didn’t have any luck. He was pretty bummed, but I’m still super excited to know that my husband was on the radio!

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I spent some time a week or so ago stalking the hummingbirds again. This time I set up at a different window. It really funny; last year, I had feeders at the same window, but the humming birds would only visit the one in the back. This year, they love the front feeder. They empty it about twice as fast as the one in the back. Strange.

Anyway, this time, I decided to go for the one in the back. The light is better, but the curtain thing wasn’t working quite as well as the front window. So instead, I turned the chair around and hid behind the back rest. I think it worked just as good. Plus it was much more comfortable.

I love the look on this guys face. Claire asked me about the spray on the window, was it raining? Nope, just dirty windows. So I cleaned the windows inside and out (man were they filthy) and went back to my hiding place to see about catching some more shots.

I also played around with the setting on the camera. Instead of using the Auto setting, I changed the ISO to 1600. It is a faster “film speed”, but the picture is pretty grainy. I like it though because it didn’t need the flash with the faster speed. I also adjusted the color balance, using the “cloudy” setting. I’m not sure what it does, but I like the colors that it gave. They are much truer to the colors outside.

Enough with the talking, more photos!

You can see how changing the film speed really lets you capture the wings! Pretty grainy, so I might try to play around with lower speeds the next time I stalk the hummingbirds. I didn’t zoom too tight on that photo either. Our camera has a digital zoom and for this one, I tried to make sure that it wasn’t engaged. I think that it made a big different in the quality of the photo. I went into Photoshop and cropped a lot of the window frame out the photo. I got rid of a lot of boring stuff out of the photo, but didn’t lose quality.

The window is cleaner, but you can see in the next photo, it isn’t great…

I think this is the male still, just the colors were a little washed out.

Anyway, fun with photography. It’s a hobby, so expect to see more! (Feel free to ignore all of the technical stuff if you want to.)

Success!

One of my favorite things to do on a Sunday morning is sit at the dining room table and read the paper, drink my coffee and watch the birds at the feeders.

I’ve been trying to catch the hummingbirds at the feeder for a couple of weeks but no success, mostly because as soon as I sit down at the couch, the birds fly away. I can sit there for 20 minutes, and no birds. The cats can jump up on the back of the sofa and the birds still visit the feeder. Go figure.

Well today, I figured it out. I made a blind.

Ok, ok. So I hid behind the curtains and only poked the camera out. It worked though!

I counted three different birds at the feeder, all ruby-throats, I think. A male, a female and a … hermaphrodite? He has a little bit of red at his throat, but not nearly as much as the male does. I got two good pictures of the third one, a bad one of the female and none of the male.

I love that photo! We was looking right at me. In the second photo shoot:

And then the third, hinky photo:

See that blur of brown on the right, kind of above the feeder port? That’s the female. She was hiding from me. She drank once from the left most and then moved behind the feeder. I think she was just being difficult.

Hiding behind the curtains and taking photos is more difficult than it sounds. I couldn’t use the flash because then it reflected off the glass. I couldn’t turn it off because then the exposure was too long and everything was blurry. I couldn’t use the “available light” mode because then the resolution was too low.

So I ended up keeping the flash behind the curtain, reflecting it off my hand (and blinding myself in the process) so it didn’t bleed through, but keeping the curtain out of the way of the lens while taking the photo.

My hands are sore.