You Capture - Animals

Our You Capture challenge this week was to capture animals. This should have been one of my favorites and one of my best. I spend half my life taking pictures of animals. After all, I don't have children around all the time to capture and I spend a lot of time observing and photographing the wildlife at Striebel pond.

Of course the swans are going to hog up a lot of the room on this post but first here are a couple of other birds, a grebe and some geese.

I had to include this shot because this guy swam right up to me and smiled. He actually wanted his picture taken.

The wingspan displayed in this picture was very impressive to me.

Then the swans got a little crazy and I had to photograph them. These photos would never win in a photography contest since they're so dark but I'm including them because of their content and the fact that if it weren't for Beth and You Capture, I wouldn't have them at all. They were far too distant for my flash and it was way too dark to shoot in auto. Thanks, Beth, for the little bit of knowledge I had that let me shoot in manual and capture the moments.

The money shot.

Then there was this little amphibian visiting the small pond at home. What is it? Frog? Toad?

Of course, I'm always on the lookout for deer when I visit Striebel Pond and this week, I caught a couple.
The end. Finally right?

For animals of every kind, visit Beth at Ishouldbefoldinglaundry.

Not To Be Boring With The Fish Again BUT

We finished with our fish rearranging project. The biggest of the baby koi had the cleanest, freshest little pond to swim in that you ever saw. It had to look like a universe compared to what they had been living in. We had about 13 of our biggest babies in there and of course they were doing a good job of hiding in their protection tunnel and among the rocks so I was looking for them WHEN I saw something land on the net that we have over the pond to protect them.

But first, let me show you what I'm talking about when I'm talking about protecting them.

Here is the tunnel that we built with our bare hands so they'd have a place to hide from evil predators.


Here is the net that we covered them with lovingly and anchored it securely on all sides so that nothing could harm them at all.

Here is the heron that we bought even though we aren't fond of them but we had heard that they're so territorial that if another heron saw this heron guarding our pond, he'd pass on by and forget about eating our baby koi.

So imagine my dismay when I saw a frog that I had startled jump unto the net, wriggle around a little bit, and plop cheerfully into the pond. And we had the hardest time catching him. We actually had to dismantle the cave before we could get him out.

So we did a little research on the internet and the general consensus seems to be that frogs will eat fish but only when they're really tiny........like ours. Whether or not he ate most or even any of the little guys, we probably won't know for some time but I'm just saying. How do we stay ahead of all the things that could happen?

I've seen as many as 6 at once of the 13 babies that we put in there and the rest may have been hiding. But at any rate, I'm up for this challenge. It's me against all the enemies of tiny baby koi fry. And I intend to win!

But don't worry. I'm not taking it THAT seriously. I know after all, that they're just fish.