I'm a fan and it's nice to see her celebrating here.

When I see palm trees, I'll imagine them filled with sunset colors. So wonderful!

Oh wait a second. I thought I was ready to leave that spot at the start of the loop and you were standing there. But I looked up and you waited patiently as I got a shot of the pink cloud overhead. I had no idea what I'd do with it, but I had saved a note from Garth about CP metamorphs.

I didn't expect him to stay but he did. I must have kept just the right distance so he showed he wasn't concerned by scratching his ear. I took several photos, but that was the one I liked best. We were in the parking area that looked towards the avocet island. I think he was just curious.

Some of each trip's stories would be lost because I'd never have time to look at all of my photos or make notes about them for a couple of weeks. Ce was making albums with beautiful papers. I copied her idea using my photos just to see what they'd be like in one of her albums.

You heard the owl and he was up in the big tree, at least until he spotted his breakfast and flew down into the grasses. Then just before we drove on from our blue hour spot, golden sun was pouring through the spokes of the wheels and on the Jeep's mud flap and it was magical.

We stayed in the same spot for just thirteen minutes. It felt like a lot more than that. Like an entire morning. A lot of birds were in constant motion, swimming and flying. It was so beautiful, and we loved it. The sun was perfect. The air was perfect. The view was perfect.

I watched the heron on the other side of the lake take a fish. I hoped to catch him doing it again, but never did. There were night herons and some Canada geese flew in and soon flew off. The ducks were mostly pretty non-descript except for the coots, which were easy to spot.

We always liked a spin around the Alamosa refuge if the weather was good, and on our August trip we had several hours before our hotel check-in. We saw the hawk on our way in, and it was a wonderful day after I spent some time just sitting, recovering from a bonk.

Me too @ksacry ! :D Before this one we saw two days in a row, I've only seen one, ever, peeking out of a tree cavity. I didn't have my stabilizer and my tremors were the worst, but I took about fifty photos to get a good one. It was too dark to tell if it was facing me, but I plugged away at it...

Love these colors!

On Tuesday I got my first ever photo of an owl, in the dark and without my selfie stick. We stayed at the first stop on the refuge until the sun was up. There was a haze and the sunrise was ugly with forest fire smoke. And a new bird that had us curious, turned out to be just a magpie without...

Thanks for the challenge, Nancy. I had been thinking about a photo of pennycress and had extracted it and some other weeds from my photos on Thursday. I learned one of the weeds in my composite makes into biodiesel, and of course needed to get that factoid tucked onto a page. While I waited for...

A late morning, we got out to Monte Vista refuge at around 10 am. It was sunny with abundant blue sky, although at sunrise there had been a cloud bank off to the east. There were a few ducks and herons, but most were gone. We wondered where all those birds go after breakfast each day.

This inspired a story to go in my book that wouldn't otherwise have been told. Thanks Adryane as always for the wonderful inspiration. :D

It was 4:30 am and our hotel clerk James offered us cold coffee. But he remembered me from another trip and wanted to show me a local trail with an eagle's nest, because he knew we were photographers. We had to skip the refuge, but the sunrise was gorgeous on our trip home.

Thanks @vickyday Mr Stone is an avid follower of the photography community, where he learns about new cameras and gear and who's who. They talk about it fairly often. The hour before sunrise is blue hour and the one after sunrise is golden hour. Then at sunset there's another golden hour...

:D Love it! You will arrive at dark thirty if you're serious, and it seems like there is nothing here, and it's very likely you'll have it all to yourselves except during the Sandhill Crane Festival.

Night herons and one blue heron were on the far side of the big lake again. We thought they were nesting there, because we saw quite a few juvenile birds. We also captured a group of ibis (new to us at Monte Vista) in flight, leaving the area. We had two more days and hoped we'd spot them again.

Thanks Kythe and team. This was a great challenge. I wish more designers put those weedy flowers I find at the refuge in their collections. :D