One More New Bird – I wasn’t sure what this bird was. A duck or something else. It took awhile to find it in my bird book.
But it is a Clapper Rail, it looks half duck and half something else. Even when I looked up information on this bird, this is what it says.
This bird is a member of the rail family, Rallidae. The taxonomy for this species is confusing and still being determined. It is a large brown rail that is resident in wetlands along the Atlantic coasts of the eastern United States, eastern Mexico and some Caribbean islands.
Group Art Project – at a campground we stayed at this winter, one of the local artist ask me if I would help her with a project she wanted to do. Which would involve having a dozen people help with the project. I said sure, sounds like fun.
So, step one. She drew on a piece of paper her idea of a painting she wanted to do. The photo below shows her rough draft of a bridge in the background, some of the local birds, water, sand, sea grass. She asked me if I could put all these items onto a photos that can be printed.
I made the print below. It is just what she was thinking about. I used photos that I had taken and made a composite of all the images into one.
I then applied grid lines to the image and printed a 20×30 copy. She cut the image into the 6×6 squares I made and had the volunteers pick a square, they in turn painted that square onto a 6×6 piece of canvas.
They wanted me to paint one, and I am not a painter at all. So I chose the top left square that only had some clouds in it.
The top left square in this picture below is my attempt to paint the piece I chose. This was actually a very fun project. The idea is that the final art piece will look more like a mosaic piece of art. The teacher of the project said she did not want the painted pieces to be perfect. It was just for fun.
Below is the final piece of art. 24 different people painted the squares. This project is now hanging in the club house at the campground. I am glad I was able to make the template for the project to bring this idea to life.
Heat Distortion – this light house is about 5 miles out into the gulf, I took this photo from the beach, it almost looks like the light house is floating out there. That is what heat distortion does to a photo.
The further away from the subject of your photograph, the more heat distortion will be present. The further distance means the light travels through more air before reaching you. Therefore, it gets refracted more in areas where heat distortion is present.
A long zoom lens usually means photographing subjects at a greater distance. That greater distance increases the chance that heat distortion can ruin your images. Heat distortion is most prevalent at ground level.
We have a friend that has a smaller boat and has offered to give us a ride out to the light house. But, not for me. He would have to have a much bigger boat. The waves and the tide can change dramatically 5 miles out into the gulf of Mexico. I really don’t need a good picture of this light house that badly.
Besides, there are plenty of photos of this light house on the world wide web, here are a few below so you can see what it looks like.
The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin — only a narrow connection to the Atlantic exists as the gulf is surrounded by North America and Cuba.
It is the ninth largest body of water in the world, covering about 600,000 square miles, and is bordered by five US states in the north, five Mexican states in the west, and Cuba in the southeast.
Almost half of the gulf basin is shallow waters over continental shelves, though it contains a trough that measures as deep as 14,383 feet.
Ship Traffic Density Map of GULF OF MEXICO
They estimate that over 4,000 shipwrecks rest on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico from its nearshore shallows to its deepest abyss.
Sheepshead Fish – One glance at the picture of a sheepshead fish might make you assume this fish has stolen a sailor’s lost pair of dentures from the seafloor! Yes, there is a fish whose teeth are eerily similar to humans.
The teeth are composed of highly mineralized enamel and dentin, two components that also make up human teeth.
There are two rows of molars on the lower jaw and three rows on the upper jaw. This heavy dentition allows sheepshead fish to crush and grind the shelled creatures that these fish prefer to feed on.
The Sheepshead fish are finally coming inland, so the fishermen are out. There is a limit of 10 of these fish per person.
Sand Dunes or Snow Piles, well the trees in the background might give it away. But, these are sand dunes, but when I am missing snow, just a little bit. I sure can picture that these are snow piles by a lake.
Today it is 45 degrees down here on the gulf coast. So I can easily picture snow.
Sea Glass – I have only found a couple pieces of sea glass. I have added them to my collection and am always looking for more.
Sea glass are naturally weathered pieces of glass, which often have the appearance oftumbled stones. Sea glass is physically and chemically weathered glass found on beaches along bodies of salt water. These weathering processes produce natural frosted glass.
