How about some spring photos from WILD AREAS instead of gardens?

[Nothing Without Hope]

Here in New England, spring is in its earliest stages, and I really love the way it takes months to fully unfold. Here are some images that have been trimmed and made low-res for monitor use and then hosted on TinyPic.com. They'll come up if you click on the links. Please let me know what you think and add your own!

By the way, I'm new to the Photography Group and am delighted to be able to participate. Keeping our spirits up is serious work in these hard times, and the beauty of images is one way to do it. Another time, if you're interested, I'll tell you about my idea for setting up a Group called "The DU Nature Preserve." It would be such a natural for you people to run, for the enjoyment and refreshment of all of DU.

Here are several photos taken 3 days ago at one of the local nature preserves, this one tiny and only a few blocks away:

I call first photo "Icebird" because the tiny plant shoot is emerging like an eye in the silhouette of a long-beaked bird:
http://tinypic.com/2k381g

For the second, here are some wildflowers, the first I have seen (even the tulips in the garden are only about 4 inches tall so far.) I am guessing they are snowdrops, and I hope you will correct me if this guess is wrong. I was delighted to see about a half-dozen bees very intently gathering pollen and nectar. They paid no attention to me, which was just as well. I see two of them in this shot:
http://tinypic.com/2k36kk

For the third, here is what I am assuming is a muskrat, a very shy little brown swimming mammal I have watched - mostly very quietly from a distance in the pond - for two years now. Here he/she doesn't yet know I'm watching!
http://tinypic.com/2k3dic

For the fourth and last photo for now, here is the little brook - its name is "Beaver Brook" - flowing from the upper pond, which is home to the muskrat and to a very regal great blue heron and many turtles and other creatures, to the lower pond, which is a favorite hangout of ducks (mostly mallards, but some wood ducks at times), geese (Canadas) and a few watchful seagulls. The flow is down from what it was when the icemelt was at its peak. Later in the spring, this whole area will be lush with every shade of new green leaves and full of birdsong.
http://tinypic.com/2k3eq0

[Blue_In_AK]

1. Cool, I'll play...love those snowdrops, by the way

Not much in the way of flowers here yet, but at least it's breaking up.



Pussy willows/Mt. Susitna

[Nothing Without Hope]

2. Wonderful! Those flowers I found really surprised me, there's nothing

else remotely close to blooming. I wonder if they really ARE "snowdrops"? I've heard that name and know they're early, but don't know exactly what they look like. Even the crocuses aren't up yet, and there's still snow and ice, especially in shaded areas. This was a little patch on a hill where it could be warmed, a little local patch of late spring with almost nothing else green yet.

These are beautiful - thank you!

[Longgrain]

3. Al right, here's a few I took last summer, from a nature reserve

in my home town in Massachusetts, trying out my new digital camera for one of the first times on a rainy day...








Now I'm longing for summer again...

[Mr. McD]

4. "Nice Pictures".

Here are a few from last summer. The top two are at Big Sur CA., the third was taken farther south along the coast

[Nothing Without Hope]

11. Oh my, these make me miss California!

Maybe we can get a thread of west coastal photos going sometime soon. (A thread of east coastal and gulf coastal could be separate, done at different times.) Then I could take out my collection too. Not as extensive as I would like, but the real draw is seeing other people's images as a collection.

Gorgeous.

[Blue_In_AK]

14. I'd love that.

I have some pretty nice west coast shots. We're going down there again in a couple of weeks, and I'm excited because I have my new filters and lenses. Woo-hoo!!

[TahitiNut]

12. Makin' me homesick for Northern California.

Gawd, I loved living there for 15 years! Monterey, Carmel, and points south were some of my many loves of living in the SFBayArea - the perfect place. The bottom photo looks like the geography around San Simeon.

[Mr. McD]

13. Yes, San Simeon

It was taken near Hearst Castle.

[Rocinante]

5. These are from last summer

It's still a bit early for green or wildflowers where I am.

[Nothing Without Hope]

6. Wonderful! Here are two from this time last spring at Halibut Point

on the Massachusetts coast, on a cool, mostly overcast day. There's an old granite quarry and a lighthouse there, and the granite formation, which comes right into the water, has long been a landmark for ships. The granite itself is in statehouses and banks in many places even quite distant. The stone is very old, having solidified before the evolution of dinosaurs, most likely on a volcanic island in what was then the southern hemisphere. There is a timeless, primeval look to the water meeting these rocks, and no wonder.

View across the quarry (now flooded and part of a state park):
http://tinypic.com/2khbgl

Rocks and waves at Halibut Point:
http://tinypic.com/2l55hk

[Rocinante]

7. Those are really interesting

There's nothing here that resembles granite. (except for the obvious) Are people allowed to swim in the quarry?

[Nothing Without Hope]

8. No swimming - and I have a photo of the sign! And the rocks really

are interesting. I have a number of shots showing its various surfaces. Where it is fresh and unweathered, it is a light gray granite with a coarse salt-and-pepper pattern. There are multicolored intrusions by other igneous rocks. I read about the history of this ancient congealed pluton in Roadside Geology of Massachusetts.. I've loaned the book out, or I'd quote some of the juiciest bits for you.

Since you're twisting my arm... ;) ... tomorrow I'll post some new links to pictures showing more of the granite in its various personalities: freshly cut, weathered, intruded. Apparently it was a highly prized building material and there were railroad tracks right up to the quarry to take the stone to building sites. I think some of it even went to other countries. The quarry site is an amazing place, quite surreal.

I figure that by posting TinyPic links, I can post fairly large images (in low-res JPEG) without overburdening the thread. Besides, this way you get to look at them one at a time, like opening presents.

[intheflow]

9. Ooh! Post granite in a new thread!

I have lots of granite pictures! :hi:

[Nothing Without Hope]

10. Great! If you start a new thread with granite pictures, I'll post some

from the quarry at Halibut Point some time tomorrow. I love stone of all sorts, used to fantasize about being a geologist (or a palentologist, or an archeologist, or an astronmer...). What dimensions do you suggest I make the 72dpi images? I've been aiming for something like 12 inches high by 15 inches wide maximum, and most smaller. The file size isn't an issue, since it's just links in the thead and won't slow its loading. I mimize it before the (free) hosting at TinyPic.com by trimming, lowering resolution, and doing a lower-quality JPEG compression (usually not below a setting of 5 out of 10.

Besides, I have LOTS of spring pictures, and that's what I really wanted for this current thread - images to lift the spirits with new life in wild places after the long winter. At this stage, the sense I get from the few plants and insects I see is something like:
:hide:
There will be more freezes and maybe more snow before the final thaw.

[intheflow]

15. Maybe I'll expand it to rocks.

And give me time to find and scan some in. Also have some great shots to add to this thread that I have to scan in. :hi:

[Nothing Without Hope]

16. Sounds good to me! Post the thread when you're ready and I'll join you.

Bet there are some other stone people around here too!

Didn't get my photos ready to post today, so I'll be back tomorrow.
:hi:

[intheflow]

17. Early spring in the Rockies

I debated what version of spring to put in this post. Spring pitures from Colorado now look like late April/early May in New England. But this thread seems to be more about initial thaw. So I'm submitting this photo from Horsetooth Reservoir in Fort Collins that I took in late January, which is more in keeping with what I remember March thaws to be like when I lived in Massachusetts.

[Blue_In_AK]

18. Very pretty, ITF. I like it. n/t

[yellowdogintexas]

19. Texas bluebonnets by the roadside:

These were taken yesterday while on my way to do the sunset.
We can thank Lady Bird Johnson for these; the Texas Dept of Highways regularly seeds the roadways, and this is the result.


And it won't be mowed until AFTER the bluebonnets have gone to seed, either.

[Blue_In_AK]

20. Bluebonnets are about the only thing I miss from Texas.

I lived down there in Houston (well, Pasadena, actually) from 1962-1968. We have flowers kind of like bluebonnets, only they call them lupines up here. They usually grow individually, not in masses like in Texas.

[yellowdogintexas]

21. thank you , now for some Fields of Gold:

Don't know exactly what these are, but we drove through field after field of these on the secondary roads from Fort Worth to LoneStar Caverns and Natural Bridge Caverns. Breathtaking!

[RushIsRot]

22. In the Ozarks

I just bought a house on 20 acres in the Ozarks. This little creek flows through my front yard.

[Blue_In_AK]

23. That's lovely. I think the Ozarks are beautiful. n/t

[RushIsRot]

24. Thanks, I agree.

I can't wait to get myself moved up from Louisiana. Here's another view of the same creek.

[alfredo]

25. Not that wild, but then I have become rather

domesticated over the years. Mooo


This was a couple days after the first day of spring. I will go out again in a day or so to get an update. Hickman Creek, Lexington Kentucky.

[alfredo]

26. Nothing says Spring more than

Violets

[Blue_In_AK]

27. I LOVE violets...thank you. n/t

[alfredo]

28. How did they get in

a tree?

[Blue_In_AK]

29. They remind me of the way flowers grow out of the rocks

around here, any place where there's just the tinest bit of soil they can grab onto. This is just such a cool picture. I really like it.

[alfredo]

30. I had walked by it but

my wife noticed it. Glad she was there that day.

thanks. It was my wife's good eye that made that picture posible.

[Blue_In_AK]

31. Springtime in Alaska

Everything is melting, but the ground is still frozen not too far below the surface so there's nowhere for the water to go. This is along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail about a mile or so from our house.

[F.Gordon]

32. This is as "wild" as I can get for now

Many small dry creeks fill up in the Spring with the melting mountain snows.



I'm planning a Wild Area expedition in mid May, after most of the snow has melted. But I really suck at nature/wild life photos.... Well, I suck at most photos.. but especially nature. :D

[Algomas]

33. Cactus in bloom: Tucson