The Vault: A New Series

Hi, everyone! From time to time I'll be posting photos that I took years ago, when last I was conducting nature studies. The posts will always be prefaced by "The Vault" to let you know that the subject is not a recent sighting. If I can, I'll try to provide some context, even a date. These images will include insects, flowers, landscapes, and birds. Also, I'll keep a running list of links to these posts under a tab called "The Vault."

As a side-note: if you've been wondering why I don't show any pictures of birds, it's not because we don't have them around our yard. In fact, they're quite active and we have several feeders set up. I was once passionate about bird photography, and I purchased all my equipment to facilitate that hobby. I have tons of print photos that I took with my first camera, a film camera, in my closet, and I also have many digital photos on my computer. But eventually my passion for writing superseded that for photography, and my camera collected dust for a while. I'd only take it out on special occasions, when I saw an interesting insect or we experienced rare weather in the South, like snow. Moreover, we had to have most of the old, large oak and pine trees in our yard cut down for various safety reasons: the roots creeping towards the foundation of the house, the branches too close to the roof, and the susceptibility of the trees to storms and disease. Now we just have a couple of dogwoods, a crepe myrtle, and a young maple tree with a lot of open space around them. As a result, the birds don't have as many places to perch as they used to, so there aren't as many nice venues in which to take photos. That's not to say they don't still come or that it's impossible to photograph them. But at the moment, without the trees, and my having already photographed most of the bird species over and over, the non-bird wildlife is more intriguing for me.

With that said, I hope you enjoy the upcoming flashbacks!