Hearst Castle has the ‘largest collection of antique ceilings in North America,’ which is to say, every ceiling in the building is an original historical ceiling from elsewhere. This one depicts four medieval figures with weapons: sword-and-buckler, spear-and-shield, sword-and-shield, and another with sword-and-buckler.
An egret wades for fish in front of an old power-line boardwalk at the Palo Alto Baylands, on San Francisco Bay.
A Great or Common egret hunting the tide-pools at the pacific shore in Monterey, California.
Another Green-Crowned Brilliant, the most cooperative of the hummingbirds in the garden, and certainly one of the finest.
This image had a piece of string removed in post, and the blur on the rear leaf was increased, as well as the normal edits.
While eating lunch, a flock of Scarlet Macaws (Ara macao) landed in the avocado trees across the road. My long lens is not very good, so the image is a bit soft, but I couldn’t miss including it in my Costa Rica set.
Here is another version of the nest, which shows how the log rises from the river a little better.
Three chicks of the Social Flycatcher, a common bird of Costa Rica, in their nest on a log rising out of the Rio Frio.
We took a boat tour of the Rio Frio (as close as we could get to Caño Negro in one day from La Fortuna) and saw a number of different birds, including a large number of what I believe to be Ringed Kingfishers (our guide said they were green kingfishers, but all the identification photos I can find of those show them as having a much greener colour). This one was perched and possessed of a large lunch for such a small bird.
Another green-crowned brilliant at Monteverde’s hummingbird garden.
I may just post all photos of these Green-Crowned Brilliants all week, I enjoyed photographing them so much. . .