I think spring is my favorite time of the year. This winter seemed to be colder than many down here in lower Alabama. We had our coldest days toward the end of the season and I was more than ready for warmer weather and pretty things to photograph! I've spent many hours walking along the streets and ditches and crawling in friend's yards. I've gotten my share of strange looks as people have passed by me although many remember me from previous years and ask if I'm finding anything good to shoot. I always can find something interesting or pretty, no matter what time of the year. It's just easier in the spring!
One recent Saturday morning I was out taking pictures very early. I lucked into photographing two baby Great Horned Owls. My destination was down a different road but some blooms back in some woods caught my eye from half a block away so I took a fortuitous detour. While shooting a few pictures of those blooms a man called from across the street. He was asking if I would like to take some pictures of baby owls and I couldn't say yes fast enough! They were 7 weeks old at the time I took these photos and had been hatched and raised in a large old oak right outside the man's house. They didn't seem to mind me taking their pictures and I was fortunate again to have the right lens on the camera at that time; I used my 100-400mm zoom. It is a large lens and very impressive looking although it doesn't zoom as far as you might thing by looking at it. It is amazing that they were born and raised in the middle of our little city! Other people had told me about an owl that made the rounds early each morning and I, myself, had seen a very large owl from a distance one afternoon. I'm convinced that it was one or both parents of these babies.
That same morning I was walking along a busy street and noticed a squirrel up on a power line. He was backlit by the rising sun and so my pictures of him were not the best. Shortly he ran down the power pole and into a bush and immediately was dive bombed by a very irate mockingbird. I was able to quickly catch two shots of that squirrel between a rock and a hard place---me and the mad bird! The poor thing didn't know which way to turn.
Several photos in this album are of a tung oil tree's blooms. They grow wild and the blooms go on to form hard circular seed pods. Tung oil is used in inks, paint and furniture finishes. I think the flowers are beautiful and I try to make a point of photographing them each spring. Until I started taking pictures of them this year I'd never noticed how many tung oil trees are around this area.
