Sepia Scenes

I have been intrigued by the sepia photos that I have seen on other blogs. So I decided to see if my rather rudimentary program would allow me to create sepia images. It does have the ability and here are the results of my fiddling around.

These photos were taken on one of the back roads in Minnesota that I explored in September. I believe that this is/was a root cellar.



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Happy New Year!

Watery Wednesday-Lake Superior

In yesterdays That's My World! I featured the Split Rock Lighthouse (one post down). Todays Watery Wednesday post features a photo of Lake Superior taken from the grounds of the Split Rock Lighthouse.


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Happy New Year!

That's My World! Minnesota Lighthouses

A large part of the reason I went to Duluth in September was to see and photograph the lighthouses.

This is the Split Rock Lighthouse.


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The station derives its name from the appearance of the rock as it is approached from the open lake. The octagonal brick tower 54 feet in height was built in 1910. Because of the height of the rock, the light was 168 feet above the level of the lake and could be seen for 22 miles. An incandescent oil-vapor lamp was used inside the third-order lens, producing a light of 450,000 candlepower. The station was also equipped with a compressed air-operated diaphone fog signal, sounding a blast every 20 seconds in time of fog. Split Rock Lighthouse is one of the most frequently visited lighthouses in the United States. The light was discontinued in 1969.

This the Two Harbors Lighthouse


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Construction began on in the Spring of 1891. The light was first lit on April 15, 1892...
The light tower and keeper's house are attached. This allowed the keeper to go directly from his house to the tower. The tower is built three bricks thick. The house is built two bricks thick. So where the walls meet is five bricks thick. The idea behind this thickness was, with the oil that was used in lighting the lamps in the tower, there was a level of protection provided the keeper and his family.
The tower is about 12 feet square and 49'6" tall.

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Camera Critters

Miz Winnie is a Beagle mix that I got about five weeks ago from Basset and Beagle Rescue of the Heartland. She's about five years old and a real sweetie. Some of my friends gave her a Christmas present. Since Miz Winnie is a polite dog, we took photos, so we could send an appropriate thank you note.




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Skywatch Friday

In late September I spent a week in the Duluth, Minnesota area. I had never been there before. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, though I felt like I only saw a small portion of the things that there were to see and do.

These photos were taken from the North Shore Scenic Drive overlooking part of the harbor of Duluth and looking towards Superior, Wisconsin. The lighthouses in the first picture are the Duluth Harbor North Breakwater & Duluth Harbor South Breakwater Outer Lighthouses, respectively.


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Seasons Greetings

Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Joyeux Noel, Happy Hannukah, Merry Kwanza, Joyous Festivus and Cheery Winter Solstice celebration to one and all.

May all that you wish for during this holiday season come to pass.

Watery Wednesday

These photos of the St. Louis River were taken in late September when I spent a week in the Duluth area.


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Visit Watery Wednesday posts from around the world.

W as in....

Wood-Nymph.

There are 4 different butterflies in the Wood-Nymph category. This one is a Common Wood-Nymph. They are usually found on the edge of woodland areas and in fields in the eastern part of the country. The range map shows them throughout most of the U.S. and into Canada. They do not seem to be in the southern parts of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California.


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That's My World!

It's been very cold here the past few days. Not that different from elsewhere in our country. Perhaps because it will be my first Christmas without my Mother, I've been thinking about some of the stories that she used to tell. She and her triplet sisters were born in North Dakota. The parents and older siblings were living in a sod house. They were born in November in the midst of a blizzard. What a present on a blizzardly day those triplets must have been.

Last spring I took these pitures of a sod house near Eustis. There were no signs by the sod house, so I don't know if this is the original location of the sod house, or if it was moved to this location.


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More information about building and living in sod houses can be found here and here


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Critter Christmas Wishes

This is too cute....



Put together by the BBC

Camera Critters

Todays Camera Critters are American Avocets. Avocets feed by sweeping their long bills back and forth. Females can be differentiated by shorter and more curved bills. The difference is fairly obvious in this first photo.


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I just love their blue legs.

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The toe webbing of Avocets is well developed and they are among the few shorebirds that regularly swim. This picture sort of shows the toe webbing

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Photos were taken at Pawnee Lake

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Skywatch Friday

Phew, the cards and packages are mailed. I can now hunker down for the predicted bad weather and not worry about Christmas.

Todays's photo's are from Pawnee Lake SRA

Cloudy winter skies

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Sunny summer skies

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Gray

The Lensday challenge of the week is gray.

The Gray catbird is normally a secretive bird that stays hidden in thickets and bushes. I usually know there is one in the area only because of its distinctive catlike meow. It is the only North American bird that has a uniform dark gray plumage.

Because they are usually in bushes I was quite fascinated by this guy foraging out in the open, much like an American robin. He/she totally ignored me as the camera clicked away.


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For other posts featuring Gray, visit Lensday

Watery Wednesday

When I got up this morning, it was snowing and there was virtually no visibility. In my That's My World! post Monday, I posted a photo of Pawnee Lake that was taken on a calm, warm summer day. I took this photo in November last year. I suspect that if I had gone out there this morning, it would have looked just like this.


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From Nebraska Birding

V is for...

Viceroy...as in a Viceroy butterfly

The Viceroy looks very much like a Monarch. There are several differences, but the two most immediately obvious are size and a a black postmedian band across the hindwing. The wingspan of a Viceroy is 2 5/8 to 3 inches, and a Monarch is 3 1/2 to 4 inches. To translate what a black postmedian band is, it's a black stripe on the lower wing. This black stripe can be faint or lacking.


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A Monarch for comparison

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That's My World!

About ten miles northwest of Lincoln is Pawnee Lake State Recreational Area.

Pawnee Lake was completed in 1967 by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Lower Platte South Natural Resources District as part of a larger part of a flood control project to protect Lincoln and surrounding communities. The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission developed and maintains the recreational facilities and wildlife resources. Activities at Pawnee Lake include camping, boating, picnicking, swimming, hunting, trapping, fishing and hicking. There are five trails that range from .75 miles in length to 1.5 miles.

In this first photo there is a dead tree on the left side of the picture. It is a favorite spot for double-crested cormorants during spring and fall migrations. During the summer turkey vultures can often be seen there. They can't really be seen in this photo, but there were twelve turkey vultures in the tree when I took this photo.

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This photo was taken on another day, but it shows the tree full of turkey vultures

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One of the two swimming beaches is on the opposite shore in this photo

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I've taken lots of butterfly pictures there. This is an Eastern tailed-blue

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This is a Melissa Blue

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Today's Flowers

For the past week I've highlighted photos from the Nebraska Sandhills area. I hope you've enjoyed the tour.

Two posts down I highlighted three insects that I found in one little flower patch. Today's Flowers post will highlight one of the flowers in that patch. It seems to have several names. Hoary vervain, wooly verbena, also spelled in some places woolly verbena.

I have read that Plains Indians made a tea from the leaves and used it to treat stomachaches. Prairie chickens and small mammals eat the seeds. It is very drought-resistant, with roots that can descend to 12 feet. Cattle will not consume it due to its bitter taste so it spreads in overgrazed pastures.


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