The Turkey Vultures were back:
Tonight was an almost-full moon.
It’s full tomorrow, but I won’t be around.
Just… wow.
I saw the moon last night and thought it might be the supermoon. It didn’t look as super as that, though.
October 6 2025 is a supermoon, in the sense that the moon is unusually close to the Earth
In reality the whole idea is overhyped. The difference between a supermoon and a regular moon is not easily apparent to the casual observer.
[mode = Pedant] Actually, the Moon is not unusually closer to the Earth. It gets this close every twenty-eight days. A “supermoon” is when the Moon is full at its orbit’s perigee.[/mode]
The rest is correct, however.
I really want to know how @beowulff got that shot. Did you use a telephoto lens as the Moon was rising over those hills? I’m not doubting it’s real. It’s just a really cool shot.
I didn’t get pics, but a trio of male turkeys just took over my yard for a bit. I’m guessing brother bachelors that got kicked out of their flock.
Tossed out some birdseed & cracked corn for them.
Yes, it was taken with a 400mm lens on my Nikon Z8. That camera has plenty of pixels, so the image was cropped to make the moon bigger. I wanted to get it rising over some more interesting mountains, but the timing didn’t work out. The key to taking these sort of moon photos is to have the moon rise just before the sun sets. If it rises too early, the foreground is way to bright, and the moon is washed out. If it rises too late, the foreground is too dark when the moon is correctly exposed.
Taken through the trees unfortunately , but an “intermediate” dark morph Red-tailed Hawk. Intermediate or not, that’s the darkest red-tail I’ve personally ever seen in the wild:
It stopped on that limb for just a couple of minutes to enjoy its snack - an Alligator Lizard:
Just for a little color, Mrs. and Mr. Western Bluebird (you can’t see it in this shot but the Mrs. had a very pretty aquamarine tail):
Also saw an American Kestrel catch and eat a Jerusalem Cricket (one of the very, very few bugs that kinda gross me out), but far enough away it was a bit blurry. Plus lots of Western Meadowlarks and other things. Very nice day.
Today I saw a green anole in my back yard. Here in South Georgia that should be an everyday thing, but they’ve been absent for quite a while. Maybe it’s because I sprayed the yard for fleas a couple of years ago. Last week I saw a hognose snake in the yard so I had to pester it ‘til it played dead. Saw it again yesterday as it slithered under the house. Nightly I’ve been watching little brown geckos on my kitchen window and A/C unit. Occasionally I get to see one gobble a moth.
Really nice photos!
I figured it had to be cropped, the Moon looks so big. I would consider submitting your photo to a county or state fair. The framing and composition beats out most of the runners up I’ve seen.
Thank you for your kind words.
We had a sudden, absolutely torrential rainstorm this afternoon. Judging by the depth of the water that filled some containers, it was probably raining at 10”/hour or more. Trees were knocked down all over the neighborhood, including one in my backyard.
A few hours later, the remnants of the storm created this pick cloud filled with lightning.
Now that’s a squall.
Lovely. On balance I love the weather where I live because year-round mostly moderate temperatures rule. However it IS a bit boring. I miss thunderstorms, especially dramatic ones which we see relatively few of compared to the rest of the US. I had a very nice post-rain sunset last night as well, but it didn’t compare to that.
So, first world photography issues - sometimes I really wish I had a nice, long, zoom lens. I shoot 95% of the time with a moderately expensive, long, fixed-length lens. It’s compact, it’s sharp, not too heavy and it’s bright enough for my purposes. But it is a bother trying to find something at a distance in brush when you can’t zoom down. And if you find yourself very close to something all you’re getting is a face, not the whole animal. Which is absolutely fine, but often find myself wanting to get both.
Unfortunately the reasonably-priced (though not cheap) “decent” long zoom for my camera is bulkier fully extended, slower and not quite as sharp at range and that’s frankly where I’ll use it that 95% of the time. The super-duper zoom is literally $9k and weighs 9,000 lbs (or close enough as far as I’m concerned). So I can’t quite justify either to myself 
. I just have to make a virtue of only shooting faces when I’m right on top of things.
Least Bittern x2 different days (it’s really small but insists on virtually crawling into my lap lately), Black-crowned Night Heron and a North American river otter:
Also the eyes are the window into the soul. I always get a kick out of catching an inadvertent self-portrait in a critter’s eyeball:
Wonderful images!
I’ve been craving the Nikon 180-600mm Z lens. If I bought that, I would be able to cover the range of 14-600mm in three lenses. So far, I have been mostly using my Tamron 35-135 f/2-2.8 Z, which is a really nice lens, fast and very sharp (especially for a zoom of that range).
But, the Nikon 18-600 is expensive, heavy and almost comically large. I’m not sure I want to lug it around for those rare occasions…
Yeah, weight is a killer for me. I’m really not into the added bulk of tripods and I’m probably already about at my limit staying steady while hand-holding, even with pretty decent image stabilization. I covet the bigger and heavier lenses, but I just don’t want to deal with them.
I have a Nikon 200-500mm zoom. My wrist gets sore after using it for a while. I think pretty hard about what my trip entails when deciding whether to bring it or not. I have one of these for carrying it so I don’t have to have it hanging from my shoulder or my neck.
I always wondered if those required belts and suspenders.