To pass the four-hour drive back home from our vacation on Hilton Head Island I was scanning the skies and trees for birds. I jolted my family to attention when I slammed on the breaks and yelled "Whoa! That's a Bald Eagle!" It was perched in a large oak overlooking a pasture just off Hwy 21 in Screven County, Georgia. Of course, I had to turn around and go back for a photo! 

Coming to the ocean always affords me some views I don't see at my inland home of Athens, Georgia.

Not knowing where they would surface next, I didn't realize how impossible it was to get photos of dolphins breaking the surface! I put on a 28-300 mm lens. While I scanned the waves at the widest possible angle, as soon as they surfaced I simultaneously zoomed to 300mm and fired off on the shutter release. I didn't get any quality shots, but at least got something! 

Several times during our week-long stay on Hilton Head Island, I searched the "most likely" birds for this time and place on the Merlin App. One bird I didn't have and would like to see was the Northern Gannet. Having gone all week without seeing one, I had pretty much forgotten about it. But our last day, while the rest of my family was packing, I scanned the ocean from our hotel balcony. And waaaaayyyyy out there, I spotted one last life bird for the trip! 

Have you ever planned a nature outing only to find the park or preserve packed with people? Frustrating! While there are probably still plenty of photo opportunities, folks may wander into your landscape shot, or kids and dogs may scare the birds away. A little bit of internet research before arriving can be your best ally.
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My family and I have made several trips to Hilton Head Island on the coast of South Carolina, USA. While my wife and daughters love to enjoy the beaches, shops and restaurants, I like to get away for some photography. Yes, there are plenty of gulls and terns on the popular beaches, but there is another beach where the wild things are! 

Fish Haul Park at Mitchelville Beach on Hilton Head Island is that special place. The beach isn’t as “cleaned and well-groomed” as the shores along hotel row, and this tends to keep the sunbathers away. But the piles of seaweed and driftwood, broken shells and dead crabs make for much more natural looking landscape shots. And because the people are fewer, there tends to be a higher concentration of more skittish birds and wildlife.
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Fish Haul is an excellent place to go in the summer when the popular beaches are packed. But even in the winter it is still a bird photography hotspot, as I learned this past Christmas. There were plenty of sparrows, cormorants, egrets, plovers, sandpipers and an especially photogenic Willet.

​So do your homework before going on a wildlife photography trip. Look for those lesser frequented, more natural looking areas and avoid the crowds.  

While I didn't get to participate in an official Christmas Bird Count, I did to a lot of birding on the beach during the week of Christmas! My parents brought my family and my brother's family from Chicago all together on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. We had a great time together, and I still did manage to get away at least once a day to scan the shores, dunes and trees of the Atlantic Ocean coast on this beautiful island. 

I was following a Cooper's Hawk down the peach when up popped a flycatcher into a pine tree along the sand dunes. My first thought was Great-crested Flycatcher, for that is what I've seen here in the southeast... but only in the summer. When the Merlin app wouldn't pull up any flycatchers as likely for this time of year, I began to wonder. I posted it up on iNaturalist and soon began to get some more experienced folks to weigh in. Turns out is a vagrant Ash-throated Flycatcher. There was a nice discussion thread here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/36889389. From Cornell: "The Ash-throated Flycatcher is a rare but regular vagrant to the East Coast. Individuals turn up nearly every year across the U.S. and they have been found in all coastal states and provinces. See where they have been seen at eBird."

Since my trips to the coast are infrequent, I'm not too well versed in my gull identification. When I first stepped out on the beach and scanned the shore, I thought, like most people would, that there were just a bunch of "seagulls" standing around. But like walking into a dark room from the bright outdoors, my eyes slowly began to adjust and these "bunches of seagulls" began to differentiate! 

Once your "eyes adjust", you begin to notice the relatives sizes of the birds compared to each other. Then even the finer details tell the species apart: leg color, beak shape and size. ​

One gull on December 23 stood out from all the others, for it was huge. In comparison to the small Bonaparte's Gulls, this thing looked like a giant turkey. It was big and bold in its attitude too. I walked within 15 feet of it and it just stood there, staring at me, almost daring me to try something. It was a Great Black-backed Gull! 

The Ring-billed gulls were plenteous and cooperative photo subjects. But even among this one species there was huge variety of color and plumage.  ​

I spent Christmas week on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina with my family and parents. I made several walks each day to shoot and identify the various gulls, terns and shorebirds. I am glad for the help of the Merlin bird ID app and the people on iNaturalist. 

These Forster's Terns were not to be confused with another tern species also on the beach at this time. Although fewer, the Royal Terns were still abundant enough to be noticed. But they were a bit bigger than the Forster's Terns and had completely orange bills. 

Although "kittens season" was about wrapped up, the shelter got a litter of five very cute, fluffy orange Christmas kittens on December 13, 2019. Almost immediately, the cute fluff ball boy above got an adoption application. A few days later, that adopter's neighbors came by and adopted two others. All were gone into new homes within a few days! 

Some people think I’m dumb, but I’m just that kind of person. When there is something cool looking out in nature, I’m going to mess with it, examine it, photograph it and identify it. A coworker pointed out this strange looking insect crawling up the window screen and so I had to check it out. As it was crawling on my hand and I was shooting it with my macro lens, she began reading from the internet…

“The deadly Kissing Bug has been confirmed in Georgia. This bloodsucking parasite carries an inflammatory infectious disease. Chagas disease is transmitted to humans by the bug, which typically bites people in the face around the area of the mouth, causing fever, fatigue, headache and in some severe cases, stroke or heart failure.” Great! That was dumb! I didn’t kiss him, but probably shouldn’t have had him on my finger either!

I finished my photo session with the little killer and brought the jpegs back to my computer for closer examination. As I began to research the spikey circular-saw-looking crest on his back, I soon found he wasn’t a Kissing Bug at all, but a harmless Wheel Bug in the same family.

Dummy me: I should have known it was a false alarm. Working with animals and wildlife my entire life, I’m fully aware that people are quite prone to dumb exaggerations when it comes to animal stories. “Once a dog gets the taste of blood he'll always be a killer"... “Cats will steal your breath when you’re sleeping”... “Its called a Coachwhip snake because it will wrap your feet, knock you down and whip you to death.” Dumb!  

Even in the case of the Kissing Bug, the stories are a bit blown out of proportion. Perhaps they are more of an issue in other places, but Chagas disease is quite a rarity in my area of the country. So, false alarm. But perhaps I should use some caution before making a dumb mistake and grabbing something truly deadly one day! ​

In a rare moment, the master artist Leonardo Da Vinci stepped into his own artwork. In Portrait of a Man in Red Chalk, Da Vinci gave us a special gift: a chance to see the man behind the work. The artist had moved, so to speak, to the other side of the easel and briefly entered into the artistic works he created. The Christmas story is much the same.

Our world is a master work of art crafted by the divine Artist. From the gloriously high and bright shining star which led the magi to Bethlehem, to the low and humble donkey which carried his mother from Nazareth, the Lord Jesus Christ created all things. Design, order and beauty grace every brush stroke of creation. “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth… all things were created by him, and for him” (Colossians 1:16). 

And with more splendor than Da Vinci’s self-portrait, Christmas is the time when we see the great Artist step to the other side of the easel and enter the world He created. What a special Christmas gift! A rare chance to see the Word become flesh and walk among us; something not seen since God had walked in the cool of Eden.
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As it is with art today, so few recognize and appreciate it. Had they known the greatest Artist of all time was lying in that manger, the fields would have been filled with thousands of people hoping to get a look, rather than the few shepherds and their sheep. But that is how it is with God. He did not desire the paparazzi and fame, but appeared in the most humble of forms: a newborn baby. He did not appear amongst His creation in order to dazzle us, but to redeem us. 

“Skye” presented a bit of a photography challenge for me. OK, I’ll just come right out and say it: my skin tone is different than the skin tone of Skye’s former owner. And for that reason, Skye knew right away I was a stranger and didn’t fully trust me. But we had to make it work. She needed some good photos to post on the adoption websites.

Skye was surrendered by her owner on December 3, 2019. Being in a new place and around new people, she was pretty freaked out and hand-shy. She didn’t trust anyone putting a leash on her and would turn her head to nip. But I let her alone that first day and gave her overnight to decompress.

The next morning, I ignored Skye’s defensive barking and entered her kennel with a high, cheery voice and confidently sat down next to her. After a few minutes, she approached me to sniff. And after a few minutes more I had her leashed and headed out the door for photos! She seemed to do much better while outdoors with me. When I went to unleash her to go back indoors she was once again very leery, but we got through the photo session with some decent shots.
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Over the next week in the kennel, she began to get better. Treating her well and bringing her treats each day, I guess she began to realize, “These white folks aren’t too bad!” She would still need some TLC and socialization from an experienced adopter or rescue, but all hope wasn’t lost yet.   ​

Thursday, 10:57 AM - I enjoyed watching this winter Great Blue Heron visitor on the water retention pond catch this big bream fish. I didn't think it could be done, but he swallowed it with relative ease! 

Yule was picked up by an animal control officer on November 30, 2019. The officer was called out on the weekend by 911 because Yule had an injured ear. Even though he was already neutered and had a great personality, no owner ever came looking for him. 

The most incredible thing about Yule's story is the people that pulled together to see him get saved. Anne, Jason, Lorraine, Dana, Alice, Nancy and Becky all pooled over $800 to donate to Second Chance Habitat for saving him on December 11, 2019!

A pitifully pregnant sad girl! “Mary” was brought in to the animal shelter on December 10, 2019 about to pop. Who knows how many days, or just hours, before she was going to have her litter. So I took her outside right away to get her photographs and get a head-start looking for a rescue to taker her in. 

On December 13, Mary was picked up by Washington-Wilkes DAWGS Rescue to go have her puppies in a comfortable foster home! She was sponsored by donations to the rescue from Rebecca, Becky and Jason. 

From a small puppy I wanted to be a police dog… well, what German Shepherd doesn’t want to be a police dog? So anyway, it was bit embarrassing to end of up the wrong side of the law. Instead of loyally trotting alongside a SWAT officer on exciting missions, I found myself behind bars at the dog pound.  I was simply out for a bit of a joy run when the animal control officer spotted me. I tried to duck under a car but he coaxed me out with some irresistible bacon-flavored treats. Then it was off to doggy jail.

I was a bit down in the dumps when they slammed shut that chain-link kennel door on all my dreams. All those aspirations of being a police K9, a military dog, or even a just an airport customs agent vanished into thin air as the charges of violating the leash law were stacked against me. And I sunk deeper into depression as the days passed and nobody came to bail me out.

But things took a bit of a turn for the good while I was at the animal shelter. A photographer showed up. Not only was I excited to get out of the kennel to stretch my legs and “do my business”, but I was going to have a better photo than the crappy mug shot I got at booking.

At first the depression showed on my face as my head hung low to the ground (or maybe it was just me sniffing the dog that had been here before me). But the photographer really got my attention. “Hey,” he said, “if you’ll strike a good pose, I can get you out of here.”

​He told me my dreams of being a police dog weren’t over. He told me that if I performed well during the photo session, I might get adopted by a family with a 9-year-old boy who also dreams of being a police officer. We’d be able to play cops-and-robbers together all day long, pretend to stop thieves as they flee from the imaginary bank, and even foil bomb plots by crazed terrorists together. What a deal! And the best part is that imaginary bullets wouldn’t hurt me!
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With that new dream of being a life-long imaginary police dog companion to a young boy with an overactive imagination, I struck the best hero-dog pose I could muster. Once the photographer had worked his magic, it was off to the internet adoption websites to find my young adopter! 

It is so sad how many dogs that come into the animal shelter are in such poor condition. "Cookie" was picked up stray by an animal control officer on December 10, 2019. She was thin, dirty and looked like she had too many litters of puppies. Of course, she also tested heartworm positive. We are almost to 2020 and people still can't show compassion and care for their pets? Sad. 

Thankfully, Cookie was rescued by Washington Wilkes DAWGS Rescue on December 17, 2019! She was sponsored by pledged donations to the rescue from Jason and Becky!