Flora and Fauna

As a final post to our Look Back at 2025, it seems appropriate to end with a favorite subject  .  .  .  wildlife.

Every destination, regardless of the season, has interesting sights. Our attention usually focuses on the local inhabitants and their environment.

Whether we came for that purpose or not.

The drive to Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge is a destination specifically to bird watch.

But other places we stop, say to collect a few rocks or catch a fish, present as much or more variety to observe and photograph.

Hours have been spent sitting at river’s edge, camera trained on a clump of reeds offering protection to a family of Mergansers.

We watched a fledgling Osprey hold off a gang of Magpies and attempted to track the flights of butterflies.

With binocs and telephoto lens trained on a raptor we watched it devour a recent catch.

We noticed that the people parked two sites down hadn’t even looked up into the tree branches.

It’s important to take time and look around, to see what you’ve missed. An advantage to this slower pace is nature often comes to you.

A lunch on the rivers’ edge is filled with all manner of flora and fauna.   Thankfully we have the time to watch it unfold.

Camera gear makes sharing experiences, as well as getting a better look, possible.

BlackDogHair blog serves as a journal on how we spent the week. A month of looking back at those posts reminded us how lucky we’ve been for the opportunity.