A sequel to a shot I originally posted in December – this seems to be a favourite branch for our local backyard magpies. It’s on the right backyard maple tree in which they built a nest last year and I wonder if they’re going to dismantle it for nesting material this spring!

Only two more animal-related albums from last year to go, one of them is the Catspotting Gallery of 2015 with all the cool and cute cats I found last year in the neighbourhood. I didn’t even remember that I took so many, but it was at least enough for a nice small collection of fifteen photos – including one unposted shot! Click on the preview photo above or on the link below to go to the gallery itself and you can also visit my Google+ Profile or the Animal Gallery Collection to find the parallel G+ version.

CATSPOTTING 2015

The only other flower I found yesterday in the neighbourhood – an apprentice daffodil that had not quite opened yet. Usually, they only come out in this spot in early March, but it’s just too warm this year.

This cramped-looking long shot has houses from three different time periods: on the left are the residential buildings from the early 1900s, on the right the highrises from the 1970s and in the middle you can see the new sports hall in the distance which was only built in 2004. This street is actually much less claustrophobic than it looks here – there’s plenty of space, which I’ll show later in some panoramas!
« Colour Version » | « Google Maps »

One more blurry abstract shot of the crows, just for fun. They’ve actually
been quiet this evening, but the last three nights were really noisy!

No, I’m not kidding – it’s January 25 and I found some crocuses today outside! It was actually pretty warm today with almost 14°C/57°F after we had sub-zero temperatures only a week ago.

Next in the gallery posts from last year is the Bugspotting Gallery of 2015 with all the spiders, bumblebees flies and other six-to-eight legged creatures – so be advised that there are more than a few creepy-crawlies in there! Although the new camera proved to be exceptionally good with macro photography, I didn’t get too many chances to try this out, but I had a resident garden cross spider for some time on the balcony and also managed some very nice bumblebee shots. Click on the preview photo above or on the link below to go to the gallery itself and you can also visit my Google+ Profile or the Animal Gallery Collection to find the parallel G+ version for easier viewing.

BUGSPOTTING 2015

This can happen to you often here in this city – there are lots of closed streets for many different reasons. This actually concerns a street somewhat further away, but it’s necessary as an early warning at this location and frankly this shot just begged to be taken :-).
« Colour Version » | « Google Maps »

Yet another unposted Cactus Flower from January 20, a nice side view.

This is less photography than a documentary-style grainy night shot of the crows sitting in the maple tree in front of our balconies last night – there were at least twenty, if not thirty of them and they were making a lot of noise. This really warrants a soundtrack, so I recorded some audio yesterday of the strange squawking and made an MP3 out of it, which you can listen to with the embedded player below.