October and November found Richard back in the cold north leading photo workshops to the polar bears in Churchill. He had another great bear season with good groups and more bears than ever. Global warming doesn’t appear to be affecting the Churchill population because there were more bears and cubs than he’s ever seen.
Here at the Daybreak sanctuary, we didn’t have much snow –just a lot of cold this winter, but Richard took advantage of what little snow we had. He sat in his blind for several days and got some new coverage of birds in snow for our files. A pair of Great Horned Owls chose a tree in our yard for their nest site, which was very exciting. We listened to them hooting in the yard nightly for several months. Unfortunately, the eggs in the nest were predated so the owls moved back to the woods. We hope they’ll try again next year. We already miss going to sleep at night listening to the owls. He also made a few trips to Riverlands near Alton, Illinois to photograph migrating White pelicans.
Late summer and fall were exceptionally dry in south central Illinois this year. No fall color. None of the usual autumn pretties to photograph. The flowers withered away in the dry heat. But we kept our bird baths full and bubbling and all those migrating warblers found us. We’re always amazed that such tiny birds can locate our little puddle on their southern migration! They must have built-in GPS units programmed with Daybreak’s latitude and longitude coordinates! From our office windows, we watched them splashing and bathing like children in a kiddie pool on a hot day!. Richard set up a blind near the bath and photographed Black-throated Green, Cape May, Tennessee, Yellow-rumped Warblers alongside all our new summer fledgling families--bluebirds, orioles, catbirds, cardinals and American Goldfinches. We stuck a few bathing beauties in our Gallery—search for bird bath to see them.
And that means that we’re out in the yard watering and deadheading flowers and basically trying to keep the gardens alive. This is our most challenging time of year in the yard because it’s between the glories of spring and the colors of autumn. And so blasted hot that who in their right mind would want to be outside anyway? Except Richard, of course. He seems to thrive in the heat partly because that’s when the butterflies and dragonflies are most active. And the hotter it gets, the more of those flying wings we see. He’s been contracted by the State of Illinois to conduct 2 separate surveys of dragonflies and butterflies in Marion, Jasper, Clay and Effingham counties. This gets him out of Susan’s hair and in the field! He’s working closely with the Illinois State Museum and archiving species for their permanent collections. The most exciting sighting for him was locating and documenting a new state record species of dragonfly at Ballard Nature Center in June This was the first time the Golden-winged Skimmer Libellula auripennis has been seen in our state! You’ll find lots of new dragonflies and butterflies in our Gallery.
We had another delightful spring with the usual planting, weeding, and anxiously waiting for the birds and butterflies to find our offerings. They did—and Richard was out taking their pictures. We were thrilled that most of our summer migratory bird residents returned to raise their families at our sanctuary. Each morning we awakened to choruses of robins and the flute-like songs of the Baltimore orioles who sing in our pecan tree each spring. The Indigo Bunting families returned and chowed down on the coneflower seeds in our flower gardens. We had a record number of Eastern Bluebird nesting in our boxes. And this was the best year ever for Ruby-throated hummingbirds here at Daybreak! Our friends, Bob & Martha Sergeant, renowned hummingbird banders and experts, told us that the more feeders we put out in spring the more birds we’d attract—and they were right! We regularly counted 20 or more birds in the yard at any given time all season. All those extra flowers helped too! We’ve put some of our spring photos in our Gallery so check them out by searching for spring, orioles, birds, or bluebirds!
Vol.1 No.1 February 2006
The newest news at Daybreak Imagery is the launch of our totally new website! This section on the site will feature news of what we've been up to, our latest photos, and anything else we feel like writing about. It could be tidbits about gardening, birding, or photo tips, --or just an update of what's new at Daybreak Imagery.
Feel free to snoop around our new site and let us know what you like-or don't like! We'd love to hear from you!
We want to thank the folks at Relevant Arts for making this happen! Our designer, Cindy Svec, scoured our files and found photos and created our fresh new look that we're real proud of. Webmaster, John Lock, took care of the nuts (and guts) and bolts behind the scenes and made it look soooo easy!
