just stuff

Troy and I photographed a wedding on Saturday up at Kohi Point. He does all the important stuff and I just hang around with my zoom lens to get candid shots. It was a hot day and the view was awesome as I waited for the bride to arrive. There were about fifty guests assembled when a little rabbit jumped out onto the lawn from the grassy verge. Of course I couldn't resist getting a shot or two.

Then I got distracted by a tui doing aerobatics to catch flying insects above the treeline. I combined four frames of the one bird taken within about three seconds to get this shot.

But I swear when the bride arrived I focused on the ceremony not tuis or rabbits. Speaking of rabbits, I was walking Billy the Wonder Dog tonight when he got the scent of a rabbit in the woodpile. He raced over to investigate and spooked the rabbit from its hiding place. It ran away from Bill and straight towards me running right between my legs! Meanwhile Billy had his nose amongst the logs thinking "I'm sure there's a rabbit around here somewhere!" Duh!!!! Those bunnies are SO safe.

But it was a lovely walk. I got this shot of a random orange cloud, the only one in the sky to colour up in the sunset. And finally the same cloud reflected in a cow trough.

Electric Pheasants & bunnies wearing birds.

On Friday when I left the studio for lunch I noticed a white faced heron atop the street light across the road. I think perhaps there may be a pair nesting at the waterfall about 50 metres away as I've seen them fly in. I must go and get a better look on Monday. Maybe this was a young one. It seemed very relaxed about me photographing him. When I got home last night we got a rainshower! Quite heavy but only lasted five minutes. I thought it may be enough to green up the lawn but to no avail.

This morning I spotted a ring-necked pheasant in the paddock beyond the orchard. (I can call the side paddock "the orchard" because it has an orange tree in it.) I grabbed my camera and snuck out for a look making sure Billy the kid didn't follow in an effort to suss out the local bunny family. I crawled over to the fence and waited til the pheasant came into view from behind a tree. When he did he saw me and stood with his neck stretched up trying to check me out. I froze. He didn't move. The sun got hot and I started getting cramp. Took a couple of photos. Finally he relaxed and started to move, pecking at stuff in the dry grass. I stretched up a little then WHAM! I felt like I'd been shot out of a cannon .........F#*N ELECTRIC FENCE!!!!!! I rolled around in the dust muttering unspeakable things while the pheasant did a great Roadrunner impression and Bill barked hysterically from in the yard. When my eyes adjusted and I started seeing one of everything again I decided I had better check my camera to make sure it hadn't been fried. I took this photo of a rabbit wearing a mynah bird for a hat???...er... maybe I hadn't really recovered from the shock as well as I thought I had.