“A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away.” ― Eudora Welty
Copyright ©2025 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
Thank you all for the support, and kindness you’ve given me these last few weeks. I appreciate you and your comments so much. 🥰
I wish you all a wonderful Independence Day Week-end!
Purple Loosestife wildflowers
more to come…
Copyright ©2024 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
Here’s some of what I’ve been up to lately starting at the beginning of the month with a birding walk up in the mountains above Lake Tahoe. The wildflowers were in bloom. Here are a couple of favorites I saw.
A beautiful view from the trail with Lupine, and Cornflower leaves in the foreground.
There were all sorts of juvenile birds being taught how to forage that morning. I saw Young Cassin’s Finches begging their parents for food, and the parents trying to encourage them to forage on their own, and young White-crown Sparrows foraging with their parents, but the highlight for me was the juvenile Rufous Hummingbird perched on a branch. That was a first for me.
On Monday I got up at 2:45AM to go on my back patio to see if I could spot and photograph any Perseid Meteors. I very nearly went back to bed as there were still clouds from the day before in the sky.
I saw 3 great fireballs streaking across the morning sky, but one was completely out of my frame. One just looks like a streak with no fire ball that was disappointing, but it has a green tail, and one was just partially in my frame. The others I photographed are pink and green. Which I think are from the Aurora Borealis that was visible here. I missed the peak of that. I slept through it.
Here are two images of Perseid Meteors I photographed.
Look how close that fireball came to being in my frame! See it left side bottom edge? There’s another meteor below center as well.
And, I’m still painting. I just finished a big painting for me at 9×12 inches of the Le Moulin de L’Abbye in France. I used a photo from a book called Hotels de Reve en France that I picked up years ago from a Little Free Library. I’ve been sketching from this book for years, but have been afraid to actually add paint out of fear of messing it up. I drew it freehand which took me hours, because drawing is so hard for me, but I am improving! Practice really helps. Anyway, I transferred the drawing to drawing paper so if I did mess it up I could half the drawing time by tracing it. This time I was determined to add paint!
Here’s that painting.
watercolor painting
The reference photo from the book Hotels de Reve en France.
I also made the boys some little handmade sketchbooks. I hope they fill those pages up!
The weather is cooler and the smoke from the Calif. fires has cleared so I’ll be out birding later this week and getting my morning walks in outside.
This is getting long so I’ll close with I hope your week is going well.
Nikon D850\ iPhone 14Plus
more to come…
Copyright ©2024 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
Spring was bloom in the high desert and I saw some lovely wildflowers while I was camping and out birding. Here are three.
Red Columbine
False Lily of the Valley
Richardson’s Geranium
+1 I think this is a Great Spangled Fritillary. Please let me know if I’m wrong!
I hope your week is going well, and you aren’t being overheated with really warm temperatures this week. By the week-end our temperature which has been on the cooler side for days are going to start climbing again and by Friday we’re supposed to be hitting the 90’s F.
I hope to be out on the lake having a paddle with He-Man this morning…fingers crossed the wind isn’t blowing! If I’m late getting to your blogs and comments this morning you know why. 😊🛶
Nikon D850| Nikkor 500mm PF-E
more to come…
Copyright ©2024 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
I’ve been updating and cleaning up my birding records which has me going back in my files 15 years. In the Spring of 2011 several friends and I went to Death Valley and on the way home we stopped to photograph wildflowers in a big field by the side of the road, well you’ve heard the saying, beware of a snake in the grass. Beware of Rattlesnakes in the wildflowers!
That’s not the closest I’ve come to a Rattlesnake while hiking, but it was too close for comfort even with my 300mm lens.
Then we backed out of the field and headed back to our cars only to discover another Western Diamondback coiled up sleeping beside the tire of my friend’s car soaking up the warmth from the sand and car engine! The driver had to get in via the passenger side of the car.
It was quite the adventure!
Nikon D300S| Nikkor 70-300mm@300mm| PS CC 25.4
Happy Valentine’s Day!💗
more to come…
Copyright ©2023 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
Here and there throughout the Carrizo Plain were patches of purple flowers. The most prominent was the Great Valley Phacelia.
This particular genus is only found in California and Baja California. Per Plants.usda.gov site they can be found:
Phacelia ciliata is found only in California and Baja California in Mexico. Within California distribution includes the Northern
Coastal Ranges, the Sacramento Valley including Sutter Buttes, the San Joaquin Valley, the San Francisco Bay, the Southern
Coast Ranges and South West California, but excluding the Channel Islands. For current distribution, please consult the Plant
Profile page for this species on the PLANTS Web site.
Habitat: Great Valley phacelia is found associated with Coastal Sage Scrub, Northern Oak Woodland, Foothill Woodland
and Valley Grassland.
Adaptation
Great Valley phacelia is drought tolerant and grows well in areas given 7 to 18 inches of annual precipitation. It grows on a
range of soil types from clays to sandy loams to gravelly slopes and tolerates moderate salinity. It is found at elevations from
seal level up to 5,000 feet (Calflora, 1997; Walden et al. 2013).
They’re considered one of the “blue” flowers and they’re a pollinator.
I got a wee bit behind with posts due to a trip down to SoCal to visit Big Baby Boy, and the Dark Haired Beauty. We crammed a lot into a few days, but I’m home now and catching up.
I’ll be sharing more from our wildflower Super-bloom trip in the future.
Nikon Df w| Nikkor 105mm and 35mm lenses| PS CC 24.4.1
more to come…
Copyright ©2023 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION!
On Easter He-Man and I met our friend Gordon of https://undiscoverdimagesamongstus2.wordpress.com/
down in SoCal at the Carrizo Plain National Monument to photograph
the wildflowers in bloom…or Super-bloom 2023.
The Carrizo Plain has a lot of yellow flowers. Today we’ll focus on the Orange Fiddlenecks with an honorable mention of a few other yellow wildflowers.
Orange Fiddlenecks, Hillside Daisies, and Goldfields cover the distant mountains and the plain, and in the above image you can see front right a few Tidy Tips too.
It was so beautiful and not too crowded being a holiday.
Next time I’ll share other views, and flowers that I saw while here.
Nikon D810 & Nikon Df w/ Nikkor 105mm macro lens & Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G| PS CC 24.3.0
more to come…
Copyright ©2021 Deborah M. Zajac. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Fuji X-T3| Fujinon 100-400mm| PS CC 22.4.3
more to come…
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