Observe The Banana

B and I had a very nice ride on the bike trail down to the park where we discovered a choir of frogs around the swimming hole turned nature pond. They seemed less shy than usual and allowed me to get up close and personal and take lots of pictures. I ended up with 50 shots of frogs - in the water, next to the water, bulging throat, on top of each other, etc. After some difficult weeding I got it down to 16 nice shots and a very short movie with sound which I put in a flickr set for all to enjoy.

Enjoy!

For the last few weeks these two crazy cardinals have been repeatedly intentionally flying in to all the windows across the back of our house. It goes on for hours at a time and can get a little maddening. We usually love to catch sight of the Cardinals in our yard as they are not nearly as common in Minnesota as they were at our previous home in Indiana, but these guys are starting to get on my nerves. A little online research reveals that when Cardinals do this they are probably try to scare away the other Cardinal (their reflection) from their breeding area. I edited down this video to the action parts, but everything you see happened within the 2 and a half minutes of the original video.

And yes that is what Minnesota looks like sometimes at the end of April.

At least they are not skunks, and I am not supposed to shoot at them.

This afternoon something black and white moving under a tree caught my eye out the window. I grabbed the binoculars and immediately identified three small skunks exploring an area near the back of the yard. I live in a small town (5600) but I am not used to seeing skunks in town, and I have no experience with them on a first hand basis. Seemed like I should let someone know about this… but who.

(click for more…)