I Enjoy Taking Photos

From time to time, I enjoy not being the one behind the camera. During our Winterfest event at the park after Christmas, I was a bit preoccupied with other duties to be taking any photos. One of which included me dressing up as Queen Elsa to serve as the Queen of the National Fruit Cake Fling.

I enjoy how the perspective of a photo can make it seem like something else may have been going on. Here, I look like I am singing, when in fact I was really only speaking as the emcee throughout the competition.

I enjoy a good black and white photograph. Karena and I set the timer for a few on a enjoyable Saturday morning.

I enjoy a photograph showing two friends together. It's always nice to have a great friend pay you a visit at your new home. Karena spent a Friday night and Saturday morning up in Ponca before we got together with a group of friends in Sioux City.

I enjoy a group photo that shows you how many college friends you got together after a while, plus the additions to the group since leaving school. We had a fun friend gathering for Christmas and New Year's. It's always great to get a group together and enjoy one another's company like no time has passed since the last time we were together.

I enjoy capturing the energy on the face of a girl who is running around participating in my photo scavenger hunt on a Saturday.

I enjoy photographing families who work on projects together. Some guests that were up at the park for a family reunion participated in the activities I led that Saturday.

I enjoy photographing people that don’t mind showing any side in the picture.

I enjoy snapping a photo of a masterpiece that a boy worked on during my scrapbook program at the park.

I enjoy sharing some photos with the world. The National Park of American Samoa has a Traveling Park shirt project on their social media pages. If you own one of their awesome green t-shirts, they ask for submissions wearing the shirt at any location. I finally used some Christmas gift money to purchase a shirt for myself. I am still great friends with some of the Park Rangers down there. This was my first Traveling Park Shirt submission:

I enjoy getting up close with my lens in nature. I love how you can see some frozen droplets within the icicle on this bud of a Wahoo shrub.

I enjoy attempting to capture the beauty of various sunrises and sunsets. Two of my favorite things, and I couldn’t help but walk out the door when I noticed this beauty of a sky on Friday evening. Good thing I went out when I did, as the sky changes so quickly.

I enjoy gaining a sense of motion in some of my photos. Here you can see women stretching as they were instructed at the beginning of an opening speech at Women’s Wellness Weekend at the park.

I enjoy noticing great expressions in photographs I take, like these of enjoyment on the faces of these ladies in a Zumba session. I LOVE Zumba. Felt so good to jump in on that one, and I even knew the steps to one number thanks to my awesome class in American Samoa from 2 years ago.

I enjoy capturing the calmness of some activities, as you can sense in this photo of a yoga session.

I enjoy photographing from different angles, like framing this photo from across the table during an aromatherapy class.

I enjoy the sense of where you are at and the conditions on any given day in a photograph. You can notice how the wind is blowing pretty strongly in this photo as we headed down to the riverfront to do some bird scouting.

I enjoy capturing what a moment was all about. You will notice in this photo that I focused out in the distance with the person in the foreground with binoculars is out of focus. In this moment, many of the ladies on our tour were elated to be seeing a bald eagle soaring in the distance. Look for the thin shape just to the right of tallest tree in this frame. That was the moment.

I enjoy playing with light. We put together these awesome ice lights for our night hike during Women’s Wellness Weekend.

I enjoy capturing movement, which you can tell is happening in this photo as the ladies hiking up the hill are blurred.

I enjoy a focal point in a photo. What an interesting sight it was for others to see me hiking back up the hill with this glowing sack as I had gathered the lights on our way back out.

Hope you all have a great week and are enjoying the warmer winter temperatures!

Refreshing Time

While this time of year can seem busy at times, it is always nice to enjoy the refreshing parts.

 

Like the cousins dogpiling on your brother on a Sunday family Christmas.

Not to mention the looks on some of their faces.

A time when you can gather the entire family. Not a single one of the Wingerts was missing that Sunday.

A time to really notice how much your "little cousin" has grown up.

A time to enjoy a bit of the beauty of snowfall. I was asked to take some promotional photos around the park. Here are some of my favorites:

This is my absolute favorite from the favorites that day. It gives you a real sense of where we are at.

A time to see one of the newset members of the family be the center of attention in all her cuteness.

Christmas is a great time to enjoy hanging out in a great dress.

A time to see how all grown up we are all getting. We had most of the Boschen crew on Christmas Eve.

A time to put on an elf hat and smile with the Santa baby.

 

A refreshing time to partake in a First Day Hike. I led a group of 14 people on a 1.3 mile hike to kickstart 2015. The first day hike initiative is put on by the American Hiking Society.

A time to enjoy a beautiful crisp day along a trail in the woods.

A time to make memories with your family. There were 4 diferent groups of families on the hike I led on New Year's Day.

A time to stop and think about how refreshing that mildly crisp hike was.

A time to enjoy where we are at. Here is the First Day Hike group at Ponca State Park:

Hope you all have a great start to the new year. Enjoy some of the refreshing moments, and keep smiling. :-)

A Day of Birding

I had the opportunity to participate in my first Christmas bird weekend at the park this weekend. We had a few activities based around birds on Saturday, including a little educational program. Our friend Gracie, the ring-necked dove, served as a live ambassador for the bird family during our program. Ring-necked doves are not actually found in Nebraska, but they look similar to a collared dove that is found in the area.It is always a joy to her Gracie "laugh" throughout the day. She lives in our education center at the park.



We focused our Saturday activities on birds, as Sunday we would be participating in the 115th Annual Christmas Bird Counted through the National Audubon Society. Surveys are conducted across the nation and tallies are tabulated, which helps conservation researchers. I imagined this day to consist of riding around in a vehicle with some more seasoned bird watchers and making tally marks as we saw different birds. While my simplistic vision was correct, it was no where near covering all what my day would include.

A few of us from Ponca State Park, a few guys from the local Audubon Chapter, some bird watching enthusiasts in the area, and a representative from Pheasants Forever met up at 7:30am Sunday morning. We then broke off into teams and were assigned an area to survey. The entire group covered a 7.5 mile radius. I joined the Game and Parks team, which included my fellow naturalist, our park superintendent, the parks division administrator, and the administrator's wife. We covered the park grounds, while the other groups headed outside park boundaries.

We started out in the vehicle, asked some questions, watched my boss pick out birds in trees as we went, and all I kept thinking at first was all I see is a black figure on the tree branch... not sure if it's a bird or just a leaf. Then, when I decide it's a bird... even with my binoculars on, I can barely notice any distinctive features clueing me into what that bird may be.

Alas, it was fun to see the more seasoned birders become excited, pick up on bird sounds, and even watch flight patterns. Maybe some day I will be practiced enough to be closer to that level. In the meantime, we parked the vehicle down at the river bottom, climbed out, and went for a hike near the backwaters. As the guys took the lead, every now and then, all of a sudden.... flap flap flap with a whoosh pheasants would come zooming out of the prairie grass. Whoever was in front would jump a bit, smile, and say how cool that was. Coming a few steps behind, I would jump a bit myself, giggle, and agree that was pretty cool.



While walking along, I had my older camera at the ready on the dreary day and took some non-birding photos as I couldn't help myself. A few of these photos included tracks seen along the way of those who had walked before us.



A few were of the river wetland itself like this, where it was fun to watch the water against the ice that still remained despite the warmer December temperature we had recently experienced.

A photo of some evidence of beavers down this way. We saw quite a few trees that looked like this along our birding walk down near the Missouri River and backwaters on park grounds.

We saw a handful of flocks of birds flying over the river including some Merganser, Mallards, and Canada Geese. I snapped one decent photo of one of the groups of geese.

As we trekked further into the trees down around the backwaters than I would have ever thought of traversing, we found great numbers of sparrows as our boss knew was likely down here. I will say this was a fun walk, and I have a feeling one of these days I will find myself walking down this way again.

After paying more attention to the diversity myself, I can see why bird-watching is such a popular hobby everywhere. So many different colorations, flight patterns, sounds, and joys to see. Here I snagged a photo of some White-crowned Sparrows. You will notice the white stripes on their heads.

The more I looked through my binoculars, the better I became at noting the birds quicker and with even more excitement. This photo is of an American Tree Sparrow.

Just a few more nature shots for fun along the way.

There appears to be an oriole nest in this tree.

Also saw quite a bit of this partridge pea plant. I learned the name of this plant amid our birding adventure on Sunday.

We also spotted some tracks near the river that our "experts" were not even sure of. The pattern of the tracks being so close together seemed different from anything they had seen before, and I am still trying to figure what out what they are using some resources. Maybe one of these days we'll have a good idea.

I also took a close up of the bird print itself.

Look, it's a goose!

Well maybe just a log that looks like a goose head. :-)

The mighty Missouri has been a bit low lately, and we found ourselves walking on some sand bars working our way back to the vehicles.

Then, we spotted a turtle in the river. A yellow-bellied slider.

When we found the turtle, we decided it was simply time to cross a bit of the shallow water rather than back tracking quite a ways. Unlike everyone else, I did not come fully prepared with waterproof shoes on that day. Ooops. Never would have guessed I would have found myself "wading" through the river that day. Haha. Lucky for me it wasn't quite so cold that day. Slipped off my shoes to keep them dry and walked on across the small distance. Some fun parts of life and my job include the unexpected turns, the adventure, and the experience!

We also spotted a few larger groups of Northern Cardinals and Cedar Waxwings up on top of some of the hills in the park. I don't have any photos of those, but man oh many it was pretty cool. I became so excited because the seasoned experts were so excited. Excitement is contagious. Neither of them had seen such large groups of these birds at one time. I even said I hardly see more than a few cardinals at a time, let alone 20 in a bush at one time. It was pretty cool to see.

As our exploration continued, the temperature dropped, some drizzle began to fall, and more fog settled in on a day that had already begun rather dreary on the weather end of things. I took a few photos of the fog settling in over the river as seen from the North addition of the park.

While it may not have been the most clear day we had lately, I still had a great time! I learned a lot, enjoyed the hikes, spent time with people who really know their stuff, and came out with some good stories. I must say now when I go turn on the lights in the front animal area, I spend a bit more time gazing out the window near the bird feeders, taking note of what I am actually seeing like this little White-breasted Nuthatch here.

Check out the National Audubon Website, if you are curious at all about the bird count itself.  Christmas Bird Count

Hope you maybe found some enjoyment in my day of birding. I enjoyed it! Have a wonderful week, and here's to new experiences!