Day of the Squirrels

I recently met and made friends with a local gal, Lisa, here in town. She also has a passion for photography and a very good eye but was plugging away with a little point and shoot and I felt she could achieve so much more, so we set her up with a cheap D30 (the first digital camera put out by Canon). Consider this, I paid the equivalent of $3000 for my D30 a few months after they had been released, replacement batteries were about $90 and Compact Flash card worked at about $2 per megabyte, so 128 mb was $250 odd and all of this only 7 years ago) Now you can pick one up for around $200!!!!! They are still good cameras, the file size is smaller (3.5 Megabyte files) but you can print poster sized prints from it happily if you are not a serious pro photographer who needs these huge files to keep clients happy.

She has lovely green grass and old maple and oak type trees al over the place there and some empty plots that are kept mowed and has tonnes of squirrels, birds and rabbits. I went there this evening and tried to shoot a few shots but I tried using my 80-400 Tokina that has been my workhorse for about 11 years with no service and tends to be soft at the long end and they were all in the shade so I didnt get terribly sharp photos. I was hoping to get use out of the extra zoom. My hands are shaking badly at the moment so I could have done with a monopod or tripod too. Some of them were okay for web use and smaller prints, I need a converter for my Canon 70-200 2.8 and I will be going back for more pics, this time I will take peanuts or something and try to entice them closer so I can fill the frame better.
These are just a few that I shot. I will do the rest tomorrow. There are a lot of black squirrels and some that look as if they are crossed, brown tail black body, one with black rings around its tail like a racoon!!!!

Of course they love the bird feeder and this guy just couldnt resist the food so we managed to keep him coming back for more. This one looked better in B&W because there was a bright red car in the background!

So enjoy the squirrels guys. Sylvester caught and killed a chipmunk this morning and very gently brought it to me so I could see it, it had no marks on it at all. Of course I had to take photos of it because I can never get close enough to them to shoot them, and then resigned myself that he was going to be a kitty meal. I know they are rodents but it breaks my heart, I just think of Alvin and all those guys LOL. Abe I know you dont like cats and this is probably one of the reasons, but without my cats my barn would be over run by mice believe me, they do a good job.

Our aide said her husband came out this evening to get something from her while she was here and he saw a hummingbird by our barn. I am going to get my hummingbird feeder set up tomorrow for sure!!!!

Hope you all had a good day, it was a bit cooler today but not much and no rain. Flooding in and around the state is still very bad. Keep tose people in your prayers and their animals.

((((((Hugs))))))))

Lori
xx