Here comes Peter Cottontail...

In honor of the holiday, some photos I took toward the end of February, when I was staying with Kaylee at my parents' house, of a Cottontail rabbit.

Poking its head up over the edge of the porch:



Sorting through the thistle seeds at the base of the blue spruce:



Pretty much the classic chocolate bunny pose, no?





After I'd taken many pictures of the rabbit's back and sides, it finally turned enough for me to get a decent shot of its face:



Finally, one of the few decent photos I got of the rabbit as it made its way out from under the blue spruce and across the backyard:

Horses

My route to work takes me past a small farm, and, for whatever reason, as I was driving home yesterday the way the afternoon sun backlit one of their horses caught my eye. Enough so that I ended up turning around and driving back so I could try taking a few pictures.

This is the first one I took of the horse in question; I know the fence wiring running across the frame isn't ideal, but otherwise this is pretty much the exact visual that grabbed my attention to begin with:



The palomino was by no means the only occupant of the pasture—a pinto and a dark brown horse were also hanging around that end of the field. After some initial curiosity on the part of the brown and palomino horses, they pretty much ignored me and went back to grazing. But when I noticed this bit of symmetry, I decided a few more pictures were in order. I was a little wary of getting too close to the fence, as I was assuming it was electrified, but by crouching down a bit and using the zoom I was able to work around the wires:



A few minutes later, the pinto was kind enough to adopt the same pose for me:



Finally, even though it was among the first I took I saved this shot for last, as it's one of those happy accidents that ended up being my favorite photo of the bunch—I was going for another shot entirely when the horse decided to move on me:

Short but sweet

Just wanted to share a couple of photos today; I actually took them the same day as the Robin photos in my last post, but since I had so many images to share it made more sense to me to save these for a separate entry.

I was kneeling in Kaylee's favorite chair (and you should have seen the puppy-dog eyes she kept giving me while I was taking up all the space on her favorite perch), window open, camera ready, and watching the Chickadees, Juncos, and the occasional Robin flit in and out of the branches of the blue spruce when I happened to notice the arrival of this female Cardinal. I was thankful I had the windowsill to prop my elbows on as I photographed her, especially since the light was getting low—I'm sure it's a big reason why these two shots in particular came out as sharp as they are: