White-Tailed Kites, Juvenile Antics

These are the three juvenile white-tailed kites that lived in the Laguna De Santa Rosa in the summer of 2020. They were often perched like this in the tops of trees near the waterway. I tried locating their nest but was unsuccessful. The juveniles can be distinguished from the adults by the brown markings on their upper bodies. I find the juveniles to be particularly beautiful birds and they are a joy to watch and photograph. They will often be in unusual positions in the air and it is hard to figure out if they are doing it on purpose or if it is part of their learning to fly process. The pictures that follow capture one of the juveniles doing a somersault in the air.

First camera frame of the somersault, above. That is the adult on the left.

As it continues to roll, notice the feather that has dislodged and is just to the right of the kite in this image.

Coming back upright, notice the feather's location at about 2 o'clock from the juvenile.

As he comes around a bit more you can see the feather being left behind.

And now, finally, pretty much recovered from his adventurous antics in the sky. Is he just having fun? Or did he just lose control?

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Art Display At The Center For Spiritual Living, Santa Rosa

The Center for Spiritual Living Santa Rosa, has a wonderful program that encourages artist members to display their work. The work is hung in the Social Hall and typically has about twenty pieces hanging for two months at a time. On March 1rst I will be hanging several images taken in Iceland, along with some wildlife images, including foxes, coyotes, eagles and kites. I will also have some paintings by my mother and two of my own. I am pretty excited about this showing. One of the pictures I will have in the show is of Godafoss, a beautiful waterfall in Iceland. When I first saw pictures of this waterfall I knew I wanted to go to Iceland to take pictures of it. This composition required gettin into some very cold water.

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The Aurora Borealis, May 10, 2024

This last May, my wife, Jan, and I were on vacation in the San Juan Islands, WA. We were there for a week staying at the Trumpeter Inn, a B&B on San Juan Island. Mid way through our stay we heard there was to be a Northern Lights display and that we would likely be able to see it since we were at a latitude just north of Victoria, BC. The excitement was immediate. The conditions were just right as the sky was cloudless and the moon was in its crescent phase and would be low on the horizon (and therefore not overly bright) during the expected good viewing time between 10 pm and 2 am. The image above was taken that night and is what I was expecting to see, a green Aurora. Little did we know what was to come! Early on the was the first hint that something special was about to happen as color in addition to green began to show. I found this very exciting as I had seen green auroras before but never one with the purple/blue colors an...

Notes To My Mother

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