Weekly Header Challenge - Wild Animals

It's time for the Weekly Header Challenge!

"Headbanger" Participants

Craver VII 

Fishing Guy 

Katney 

Imac 

Lew 

I'm joining in the group above for this weekly challenge.

Click on the other participants' blogs to see

what they've come up with!

Theme ~ Wild Animals

I got to choose the theme for this week.  I asked my guys to just start naming categories, because for the life of me I couldn't come up with something interesting, unique, or unusual.  Wild Animals stuck out from all their hollered themes, and so we're stuck with it!  I actually don't have images of truly wild animals, but the qualification I put on the theme was that the animals be something other than domestic in-the-home animals or farm animals.

The best image I have of a non-domestic animal is a young buck (you'll see it below); however, it's a vertical orientation so I didn't choose it for my header.  Here's the full image of my header, which just gives you more blue sky:

I was on my way home from shooting a September sunrise down the street when I spotted this red tailed hawk on a light pole at my street corner.  So I pulled in the driveway, ran inside the house, changed lenses to my 70-300mm, and walked back to the corner and across the street--I even had to wait for the light to change!  He was still there, and sat and posed for me various ways.  In the shot above, he's looking toward the early morning just-risen sun.

This cardinal is one of the first bird images I've captured, taken in Georgia while on a golf cart ride with my "sister."  She stopped at my insistence and backed up the cart so I could zoom in and capture this beauty.  (There's a reason I call her my sister!)

On that same golf cart ride, we passed a golf course (the whole town is built around the course, and the golf cart paths are in every subdivision, behind almost every house, even tunneled under the roads where necessary!).  This heron was next to one of the ponds, and let me get pretty close.

Okay, here's my buck shot (pardon the pun there).  I took an autumn stroll in the woods near my house, and at one point I had turned and looked back along my path and took a picture.  I turned forward again and took one step, and this guy was 20-30 feet in front of me off to my left, just looking at me.  I froze.

He kept looking, so I slowly stooped down and changed from my 17-85mm lens to my 100mm macro, the only other lens I was carrying with me.  I figured I could get just a tad closer with the 100mm.  Then I snapped a few images, and a few more.  His girlfriend was off to the left, and he eventually left with her.  But he seemed unperturbed by my presence, even pausing to munch something on the ground.

Here are the rest of my somewhat random "wild" animal shots!

Canada geese on the pond down my street.

A fly on my astilbe in my front yard garden.

A bumblebee on the variegated beard tongue in my front yard.

Another image from Georgia--a mud-smeared shell on its owner's back.

Omigosh--it's a wild frog!  *horrific screams*

Praying mantis -- truly a wild-at-heart insect with its hunting instincts!

Thanks for viewing all my "wild" animals!


Treasuring life's moments,
Christine

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