Week in pictures – January 15th-January 21st, 2012

Little Blue Heron Reflects

It was a quiet week out here on the edge of the prairie[i]. Unfortunately for photography purposes, it was one of those weeks that flies by without many memorable images or moment.

One of these evenings, I need to take a page from my friend Joel, and do a downtown photowalk. Most of my walks are in natural areas, and hence I’m starting to get into a nature rut. Case in point, my one true photo outing this week was a morning hike down at Brazos Bend State Park. The alligators were confused in the abnormal drought and warm temperatures. Bellowing and displays of mating shenanigans that usually don’t start for several months were already occurring all around the Park. A continued presence of western and central bird species also spoke to the weird drought year this has been.

Early Alligator Mating Shenanigans, Convention of Young Alligators, Black Vulture Chorus Line, Green-tailed Towhee, Harris’s Sparrow, Winter Leaves

I’m still pretty ambivalent about my fancy new phone. I recognize some of its advantages, and it has some real utility, but it’s already starting to feel like a ball and chain. It has come in handy now and again to get shots of oddities and such on the run…

Sauron is Watching you (Droid X2), Buddha’s Hand in Chinese New Year Display at Grocery, Odd bar at Furniture Store[ii]

…and the hd camera is kind of nice to show living panoramas of places.

Pilant Lake marsh – Brazos Bend State Park,

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[i] Nothing more geeky that Prairie Home Companion references…though in my defense, we literally do live out on the edge of the Katy Prairie (coastal long-grass prairie areas in western Houston) where it meets the city and its post oak savannah and bottomland forests.

[ii] This bar was just weird. Weird in the sense that it’s almost cool enough to own, but very hard to explain to children. Given that it looks like something that should belong to a child (albeit potentially a child from Dickensian London, by the sheer mournful decay look of the piece) it seems an odd place to keep alcohol. Mommy and Daddy bought me a new toybox with all sorts of funny Koolaid inside!