Nikki's Photography

A colony of cormorants lives on SS Palo Alto, a beached concrete ship at Seacliff State Beach, CA

___________________________________________________________________________

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, CA

___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

Survivor: sand crab with a transparent shell and two legs missing. Nag’s Head beach, Outer Banks, NC. This little crab measuring about 2 inches across had two legs missing but was still managing across the hills and valleys of footsteps in the sand. My guess is that a bird must have snatched it up then dropped it, retaining two of the legs for lunch. Shortly after this encounter it finally started digging a hole, offering much more protection than a footprint..

Feeding bread to about 50 turtles, Kitty Hawk, Outer Banks, NC

___________________________________________________________________________

Twisting vines climbing the trees, Elizabethan Gardens, Manteo, NC

___________________________________________________________________________

Alain and I flew to North Carolina for three days – a little business trip and I tagged along—he threatened to take my camera with him and I was sure I could not manage without it! We drove around the eastern countryside between Raleigh and Washington, NC through old, old towns. It takes a looong time for wooden doors to shred, and a looong time for conditions to be just right for vines to sprout then twirl round and round, entwined and squished between panes of glass …old, old farms: tobacco, cotton, peanuts.. and an interesting gas station.

There is a lot of history in North Carolina – fossils, settlers and Civil War history. We stayed at Kitty Hawk (first flight – Wright bros.) and walked the shores at various places along the narrow coast of the Outer Banks. We watched the sun rise and dolphins feed – too far away for good photos, even with the telephoto. As soon as the sun rose they swam away.
Along Cape Hatteras, groups of Grackles ate ripe grass seeds, bouncing up and down on the stems, their bodies too heavy for the tall grasses. Just off the 2 1/2 hr. long ferry at Swan Quarter, and sunset with a short, wide rainbow after a storm that we managed to escape and watch from the better side.

NO OLF – we were curious about this sign in many people’s yards. The following website shows a video describing how the U.S. Navy has purchased over 30,000 acres of land near the eastern North Carolina coast, planning to move their pilot training program from Virginia. Part of the huge controversy is that over 75 families would be forced to leave their homes, many of them farming that land for generations. The human issues are enough, but the cause and effect on the wildlife and ecology would be drastic and irreparable. Thousands of ducks and large flocks of snow geese that feed in the area annually would no longer have sanctuary. The large birds would also be a danger to the jets.

On Pony Island a large sand crab tried to buff up and look tough, but it was quite vulnerable there out in the open; all the other crabs scurried into holes but this one stayed, trying to hide in footprints, which offered no protection if we had been birds looking for a hearty meal. Great fun to watch the behavior for a while. Its clearly outlined crab-shaped shadow following it everywhere, creating a few graphic photos that are perfect resource material for drawings and paintings but do not stand alone as good photography because it was moving so fast.

Niagara Falls, New York USA and Ontario, Canada

___________________________________________________________________________

Yellow Poplar flower, Niagara Falls, NY

___________________________________________________________________________

Lepidoptera Papilioninae – In Andrew Brown Park, Coppell, Texas there were 20-30 Swallowtails fluttering in a small patch of wild vetch. The butterflies were nowhere else in the park except this one spot. I was mesmerized watching the flashes of black and metallic blue against the green and violet plants.

Firewheels – Gaillardia – en masse! Andrew Brown Park, Coppell, TX

___________________________________________________________________________