I'm seeing more of these pretties..





And before it changes..

EXCELLENT Pictures, Meg!

I just love seeing those close-ups and all the beautiful detail. I never tried taking those kind of photos before this year and it's so interesting to see the birds and bugs in such detail. I think my husband thinks I'm nuts though, sneaking up on the spiders, butterflies and birds . lol

I'm with you Suzy, those pictures are great...
and my husbands' been sayin' the same thing..

Here is MY Bumble and Sunflower pic. I am a 20 year veteran of birdwatching, and photography for the last 3 years, but with the Summer doldroms in birding I have switched my attention to insects and flowers until Fall.

HEY!! I know!! LET'S MAKE A BUMBLEBEE-SITTING-ON-A-SUNFLOWER THREAD!!!!!

Thornius, that is stunning!! Your hands must be a lot sturdier than mine!

Weezie, I see you must still have that borrowed camera, eh? I love all those pictures.. keep em coming!

The butterfly I photographed is just like the one that we released after it came out of the crysalis, of a caterpillar just like the last photo of the 3 I posted up there.. (I find them in my pansies!) YES WEEZIE, REAL PANSIES. :p (which of course, are all about dead now.. but lots of seeds were dropped!)

Meg

Did the Buglady tell you what kind
it was???

Askin me weezie? About my caterpillars? Noo.. I did a google on "spiny caterpillars" looked around till I found one that looked like it, and when it hatched, I looked up thier butterfly, and yep, it was a match. Variegated fritillary.

Meg

He likes to upgrade alot....

ohhhhh, Weezie - did you ever post what kind of camera it is that you have there? huh, huh, huh?

Did I miss it while I was not in my right mind???

Lynne, she just posted it in the thread about our best performers this year in the gardener's chat area..

Meg

Yeah, I knew I posted it somewhere's and
I had remembered some one asked me...
Geesh, brain~drain again!!! :rolleyes:
KODAK EasyShare Z740 10x Opitical Zoom
(5.0 Mega~Pixal's)
The only problem I've had with it
is I keep wearing the battiers out,
takin' pictures. I've been so picture
deprived, I'm out there snapp happy away,
and I think I'm takin'g triples of pictures..
but I'll get them sorted out...

So much fun to have a camera back...

Weezie, try Ray-O-Vac 15 minute rechargeable batteries. The charger comes with two AA rechargeable batteries for about $20. I bought mine at K-Mart but I think Walmart carries them and so do the office supply stores. They can be charged at least 1000 times and take only 15 minutes to charge. The charger charges AA and AAA batteries and you can buy a 4 pack of each for around $15 a pack. I've been using the original 2 that came with the charger for 1 1/2 years now and take 20-40 pictures a day, every day, and they are not even starting to show signs of wearing out.

Oh! Can I play? lol. This isn't quite a bumblebee... (I don't really know what it is), and Geez, it's not a sunflower either, but oh well. Is it close enough?

I love all these pics. I like to look at them once the white stuff overcomes the ground. Doesn't it seem like summer goes soooo much faster then winter?

Actually, I can't stand Summer at all. I like to lay on my reclining Adirondack chair in the backyard, in my bathingsuit with a glass of iced tea and watch the snowflakes accumulate on my bare stomach while the Wintery blizzard howls around me.

Hey Thornius,
You can come up here and experience a
REAL BLIZZARD...
16" 18" in one nights' dumping.. and that's a regular snowy night here..

We get snows like that at our cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. In 1960 we had an average snow depth of 100 inches in the month of January. We had to dig tunnels from our car to the porch of our cabin to get in.