Snow and Waterfowl

It's been a stressful week or so, and it's still been slow to make great progress on things. I spend a lot of time driving Mike around, though, and I keep seeing things that I would like to paint. I really think that beautiful things happen around here all the time, and no one seems to stop and notice. For instance, today we had several snow squalls come through during the day, and it was that nice heavy, fluffy stuff that's all made up of real snowflakes. The kind that all look different? It was beautiful. People hate it. While I was out I happened across a cornfield that was just full of geese, but it was snowing to a point that you just saw all the silhouettes of them flying through it. I took a lot of shots there, but mostly after the really heavy snowfall--but that's how I remember it best, with the white-out conditions, and the geese circling. I think that might be an idea for my next painting plan, something with geese flying over a snowy cornfield. I probably shouldn't do too much corn, though, seeing as the bluejay piece I'm working on is already in a snowy cornfield (for which I got a ton of perfect references today, by the way). This album is sort of a composite of shots I've taken over the last week (there were more, but they were boring), plus a few pictures of my chinchillas.....because they're just so damn cute.

Something of note today is that while I was sitting outside right around dusk waiting for Mike to finish his trumpet lesson, and all the sudden a dozen little sparrows burst out of this evergreen tree to my right, closely followed by a little saw-whet owl (I think, could have been a screech owl). It was AWESOME, but I couldn't get my camera (which I do carry everywhere with me just in case) out in time. I jumped out of my car and tried to follow them, but I lost track of them, and the lady in a car behind me asked if I was okay. When I told her what happened, she just gave me a strange look.

A couple nights ago we had the local white tails run through the backyard. I often see them at dusk, but these guys showed up in mid-afternoon, so I got a few shots of them as they passed. I'm thinking of doing some various ideas for the white tails with the material I have so far. I'm a little sad, though, that I seem to have missed shooting the bucks in full-antlers. I think most of them have dropped by now. I found an old dropped antler while out earlier this week, but it seemed like the squirrels had been at it for quite a while, so I left it. Sometimes I find nice, fresh drops. I like to collect antlers and stuff like that. :)