I'm putting together a presentation for "photographing wildlife" for a local group, and I decided to upload my January to October monthly montages from 2023 and make them into a poster to use during the presentation. These were my montages from the 365 group. Since I generally made 30-image collages on 31-day months (although I used a 32-image one in May when I couldn't decide between two favorite pictures), I simply dropped the non-creature photo from any month that I missed a day of getting one. My first non-creature photo is thus the last day shown here, October 31. (I actually did get a creature photo each day of October 28-31, as well, though the frosted flower was the best photo of October 31 and I elected to use that one, since the 300 days were officially over.)
The barn owl in October was a captive bird. I did also get a "wild" animal on that day, but elected to use this one in the montage. All others are wild animals. Although several creatures have more than one photo, nearly two hundred species are represented in these three hundred photos. Most were taken in southern Indiana, USA, but a few in Michigan.
I hadn't started the year trying to get a creature photo every day. That would typically be a difficult task in January and February (and also in November and December.) But I was trying to get outdoor photos every possible day, and I knew where a kestrel was hanging out, and by the time I had gotten outdoor creatures every day in January and a different species of bird each day in February, I decided to see how far into the year I could go. Eventually I decided to try for 300 days, and I managed only to miss three of those days, for 99% success.
All right, I counted the creatures. I haven't IDd all the insects, but I can still tell if they're separate species. If I counted right, there are 92 species of insects, about 13 spiders, 7 mammals, 63 species of wild birds plus one captive owl, and 9 assorted other creatures (reptiles, amphibians, and a crustacean). Great blue herons came in with the most photos, at least 19, and fox squirrels won for the mammals, with 11 shots. But that's more than 180 species, and obviously this doesn't show all the species I photographed in those ten months (especially among the insects).
You can click on the photo to see it larger with more detail.
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Day 196/365
Montage of female osprey coming into her nest carrying a small stick. The nest contains three juveniles that I estimate to be four to five weeks old. I have added back in three shots I didn't upload to Flickr.
Tags: 365: the 2022 edition 365:2022 Day 196/365 15-Jul-22 osprey montage flying bird osprey nest flying osprey raptor fish hawk bird
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This is 20 separate photos (fast-action mode, each row left to right), though the same motions are repeated several times. The nestling seems to be practicing his flight skills, which in this case meant hovering above his siblings for a while and then lowering himself into the nest between them.
It's interesting to note how the legs are lower on the downstroke than on the upstroke (particularly noticeable on the second row, where I did a better job keeping the nest at the same height in my crops).
Some of the individual photos are in my stream, but not all of them, because of the similarity in poses for several. Photos taken August 6. I believe this chick fledged two days later, and I was able to observe it.
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peacock in tree; captive bird (but obviously free to fly and move around an expansive acreage)
Tags: peacock peacock in tree bird
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