Dwight, not contradicting you because it was mostly moccassins we swam with in Ga. but all snakes do seem to swim now and then. https://animalhype.com/reptiles/do-copperheads-swim/
Great minds think alike, Stan! I was thinking of doing that exact thing...that maybe the critters would expose themselves running between cover. I just decided to cut it and let nature take its course. They have been returning, but I've not seen them on the ground as before.
affecting the wildlife. We try to keep our forest although we do have to fight vinees that kill all native plants and trees.We will have to do some clearing just remove the vines and try to keep the trees and native plants. Our deer family escaped last month after the storm fell a huge tree on our fence. So its wide open now. Haven't seen the mama or baby since storm.She did have 3 in past couple years with her.[/QUOTE] Ironically, a subdivision was installed in the land just north of my little farm. The name is Wildlife Acres. Uhmmmmmm houses on every lot does not encourage wildlife anymore.
Yes its best not to tryand stop them! About 5 years ago we had a guy at the speongs grab a water moccacine and it bit h9m several times ,he was dead before the amvulance got to him. He was probably drining and acting foolish. The whole town was talking about it.Someone said it got too close to kids swimming andhe grabbed it.
I know that copperheads swim because we usually have one or two in our swimming pool each summer. They get in and then are unable to get out; usually they swim until they drown if my husband and his shovel don't see them first.
My lawn mowing did not affect the owls one single bit. They still arrive in the late afternoon at this same spot and sit until near dark, dropping to the ground to grab something tasty. There seems to be only one that returns, although every once in a while I'll see a second one fly behind the regular visitor, near the wood line or seemingly in the woods. You can see how close to the woods the perching tree is. The other one is like a ghost that is sort of there and then gone again, almost flying in the woods...but unlike when there were 3 younger ones in the tree, I only see the [apparently] older one perch. The older one is still not as tolerant of my presence as the younger ones were, but she does not always fly away when I come out on the deck. Tonight I was looking out the window next to the deck and she glided from the branch to right next to the deck to get something tasty. I was looking down from above as she was about to land with her wings spread. Even if I had a camera, I would not have been able to anticipate that flight path...or even her intent to take off at that moment. Such pretty creatures. I'm so lucky.
Scroll down to the new pics if you don't want to hear my excuses for why they suck. I can control the camera function on my new iPhone remotely through my Apple Watch. So I decided to set the phone up on a tripod pointing at the Owl Tree and take snapshots from inside the house so as to not disturb the birds. While I was out there setting the thing up, a couple of owl dropped out of the tree onto the ground like so much overripe fruit and munched on their catch, undisturbed by my presence...so I bagged the remote picture setup and stood there taking pics. I wanted a pic of the owls with their wings spread (dropping from the branches and launching their way back up), so I tried leaving the phone in the tripod focused on them sitting on a branch and on the ground, waiting for them to launch so I could snap a pic. It just didn't work out well for a lot of reasons. Those pics went in the virtual trash bin. I then got out my Canon Power Shot. It has much better resolution and a much better zoom, but keeping it on the tripod was to restrictive...I could not follow the owls as they moved. They went out of frame too quickly. As you can see from the pics below, one pic is rock-steady while the others are "one cup of coffee too many." There are my first attempts. I now know I can stand out there and not scare off these two that have remained. My next move might be to set up the Power Shot on the tripod and put it in video mode so I can rip frames later. Or I might not zoom in so tight and later crop the pics. I'd love to get a decent camera, but money & technology are not gonna fix Operator Error. And I'm not motivated enough to go down that rabbit hole.
I think there are a couple of things: -The slightest movement gets magnified when in Zoom mode. -The camera has regular to a point, with the final steps being electronic. So maybe that matters. -The camera auto-focuses, so the depth of field may not be correct for our subjects. I just posted pics of a praying mantis. One angle is sharp & clear, while I could not get a perfect focus from the other angle. I suspect Angle 1 had nothing behind the mantis to mess with the camera's field. I'm tempted to get a nicer camera, but then I remembered when I played trumpet as a kid. I had an old beat up one that I was whining about limiting my sound quality. My older brother had a friend over to the house...the guy was in the Air Force jazz band. He picked up my horn and pretty much shut me up. It's not the camera.
I thought all the zoom was digital and that the original picture layout was dense enough so that a zoom was just a selection of the original enlarged. I've been wrong before, though.
You made me go look at my manual. There is a setting for shooting closeups (Macro.) There is also a Manual Focus mode. It has a 20x optical zoom (which is the cleanest), then the digital zoom for up to 80x. I do remember buying this camera because it has optical zoom...the lower cost ones at the time were 100% digital zoom. I just discovered that I can do Continuous Shooting. In our defense, the manual is 246 pages long. And then there's this stuff: Controls *gulp* Maybe having a need for better photography will make me go through the thing more thoroughly. It's not like I'm wasting film.
Aww, man. You're making me have to look at the instructions. I could build a space shuttle from those diagrams. Bummer. I waste as much digital film as I please. There's an infinite amount. I just discovered that I can do Continuous Shooting. Going postal on us, huh? I've thought about it.
Do yourself a favor...get out the manual and read on how to do Macro Mode, then go take a pic of a small flower. I'm gonna figure out the first-best feature that will help with owl pics and learn that one.
I'll take you up on your challenge. The biggest guy in our senior class was called Macro Mode. I'll ask him how to take pictures of itty-bitty flowers. He might want to hit me, though.