The birds and the bees

I stopped by a local shop on my way home to see about taking some photos of the river running behind it. Nothing really caught my eye there, but I got lucky on my way back to my car—I would have totally missed seeing this robin if it hadn't started chattering at me from the trees:



My apartment is part of a building that also features a thrift shop, which is open just a few days a week. Thursday happens to be one of those days, so more often than not when I get home from work there's absolutely nowhere for me to park. That was definitely the case tonight, so I figured I might as well drive over to the pond and hang out for a while. As I stood by the edge, looking around for stuff to shoot, I noticed a few bees working the foliage right in front of me. I took several shots, and was pretty pleased by the way this one came out:



I liked the color contrasts at work here, especially between the bluish water and the dead reeds:



Then, just as I was starting to think it was going to be a quiet evening wildlife-wise, my nemesis showed up. Not content with simply flying by and cackling, this time he parked himself in a tree directly across the pond from me—it's like he knows I don't have a telephoto lens and decided to mock me for it. I hung out for a while, occasionally shooting some nearby branches to break the monotony:



Finally, my patience was rewarded. Sort of. While the kingfisher didn't come across to my side of the pond as I'd hoped, it did start doing some fishing. This isn't the greatest shot, but you can definitely see the bird as it dives toward the water:



And just after splashdown:



A beaver also put in a cameo appearance, during which I managed to get this image of it rolling over—you can see one of its feet just poking up out of the water:



I waited quite a while longer, but my nemesis decided that one little taste was all it'd allow me today and flew well out of camera range. Before I headed for home myself, though, I did take one more picture of the budding branches in front of me, as I liked the way the setting sun illuminated the buds now that it was lower in the sky:



Oh, and kingfisher? Just wanted to let you know that this is far from over.