Summer Continues

Every year my wife plants Morning Glories for me. This is the first flower of the year.

I shot this picture so slow and the hacker's golf club was swinging so fast that you can't see it. If you look closely, you might be able to see the grip in his hands.

An artist at work at the Schwab Estate in Loretto, PA.

This is her subject.

I found this ice cream truck sitting at Sheetz in Patton, PA and got a picture of it because it's probably the only one of its kind still roaming through the small towns in the rural areas of the northern part of Cambria County, PA.

Stager's Store in Portage, PA. It's everything that Wal-Mart wishes it could be.

After leaving Stager's, I stopped to take this picture. I talked to the owner of this house who told me that it was all hand built by himself and was designed after a home that he saw in Germany during WWII.

Robin sitting on the top of a pine tree.

Fruit of the Staghorn Sumac.
Being a fan of our southern shores and palm trees but living in the mountains as I do, I've renamed this tree The Pennsylvania Palm Tree.

For most of the summer we seldom saw, but often heard the call of hawks. It wasn't until this past Saturday that they finally slowed down enough fron nest building and hatching a family that we could actually see them hunting. We figured there was a nest somewhere in the area but we couldn't find it. Once we saw the birds we could identify them as Broad-winged Hawks.

About the only way to tell the male bird from the female bird is the size. I'm thinking that the bird at the top left is the male.

Shortly after I shot the previous photograph, the hawk on the top turned around and took off and the lower hawk turned around to watch it go.

The next time I was able to capture the hawks I got a little closer to the juvenile to shoot this frame. Shot at 200mm, I was able to crop the original photograph enough to show this close-up of the bird.

Still shooting with the 200mm lens, I was able to creep close enough to the tree that the young hawk was sitting in just in time to get this picture of it taking off.

I realize that it is rather difficult to really see the hawk as it lands on a nearby tree but I was so far back and trying to shoot in a manual mode. I'm just not as fast as I used to be.

I knew that if I kept advancing on the hawk I would eventually scare it away. I was lucky to get this exit shot just as it leaped from its perch.

I was hiding behind a pine tree and shot thru an opening in the branches of a pine tree, straight up into the sky, which provided this backlite picture.

The last four photographs were shot on Tuesday, 27 July 2010. These four pictures were shot in two minutes after the fledgling Broad-winged Hawk decided to try to land on our old over-the-air tv antenna tower. All were shot using the 200mm lens and a 2x extender.

I was standing on the deck trying to find the birds when I heard them calling. All of a sudden this juvenile came flying out of the trees and tried to land on the antenna. I went back into the house, grabbed a camera and shot 31 pictures of the bird before it took off.

This was the first picture that I was able to get of the young hawk as it clung to the tower while trying to gather its wits.

Looking for a better place to hold onto, the young hawk spread its wings and leaped into the air in an attempt to get a better hold on the perch.

Trying to gain its balance, the hawk repositioned itself on top of the rotor.

After sitting on the rotor for a few minutes, the bird's brain finally snapped back into place, and it turned and flew into a tree just on the other side of the house. Of course, I missed the shot because I was trying to do everything manually.