NC Chinese Lantern Festival

This gallery contains 12 photos.

Timmons Oak

I had a request for a black and white photo of a single tree.  The few in my collection  were taken in a fog setting.  That’s not what they wanted.  Trying to find a single tree without a distraction was difficult.  I thought I’d go back to the one I had taken in the fog but the road had been closed for months and when I finally made it back there, farm equipment adorned the tree trunk.

Out of the clear blue sky the thought of the old oak tree photo I had taken while visiting Bald Head Island came to mind.  Thinking it would take forever to go through the photographs I was pleasantly surprised when it was one of the first.

The original was done in color.  With the help of Scott Kelby’s Photoshop book and Topaz Labs I was able to turn the color photo into an interesting black and white.  The requester was pleased.

Taken with a Olympus 35mm camera 20 years ago

 

Morning Mushrooms

Plenty of pretty toadstools to be had this morning.

Predator

This fellow has been hanging around the hummingbird feeder for several days.  It seems impossible that little insect could do damage to a hummingbird.  I really don’t want to find out.

Daylillies and Lantana

Great Golden Digger Wasp

At first glance, I thought the small tunnel in the ground was made by a mole then movement caught my eye.  Out comes this interesting bug.  It appeared to be very busy carving out the tunnel.  Soon after it flew away only to reappear with a little black ball.  The wasp dropped it just outside the tunnel then went deep inside.  It finally came out, located the black ball, then took it into the hole.  When the wasp reappeared it made short work of backfilling the freshly made tunnel.  Once the job was done it flew away.

This morning I noticed another tunnel very close to the first one.  After reading up on this particular insect I found that inside the tunnel the female wasp was laying an egg on top of an insect it had caught and paralyzed.

Hummer

Four hummingbirds that grace the feeders have become a little more trusting.  A couple of them are allowing me to get just a tad closer.  I’ll get that perfect picture yet.

Sunflower Power

Giant Leopard Moth

Never seen anything like this before.

 

Feeder Attraction

Love watching hummingbirds come to the feeders.  Apparently so do others!

Safe

 

Not Safe