Blue Heron Along Antelope Valley Trails

There has been the creation of quite the strange little stream/pond ecosystem along the Antelope Valley Trails that run through Lincoln.  There have been algal blooms, duck families, tadpoles, and a variety of other pond and stream creatures around this year.

Along the trail, very close to UNL's campus, I routinely see a blue heron.  I don't see it every time I walk along the area, but often enough that I know it must live in the area.  I finally had my "real" camera along the other day, and I was able to sneak close enough for this picture.

Lincoln Pollinator Garden

Recently, the pollinator garden along some of the Antelope Valley trails has really taken off.  This garden didn't exist before this year, so I was fascinated to see the ugly-looking weeds turn into very pretty pink flowers.  I'm not sure precisely what kind of flowers these are, but they have become very attractive and very good at attracting pollinating insects over the past couple weeks.

Here are a few Instagram pictures and panormas.  I typically only encounter this garden on a walk, which is why all of my pics are from a cell phone.  All photos can be clicked on to be enlarged.

September 5, 2014

I went on a walk Friday night after supper on campus while I was waiting around for a guest from out of town, and I happened to bump into my sister.  She's now on campus as a freshman and has taken up my old habit of going for walks all over for exercise.  I figured out that she was on a walk at the same time as me and actually located her in the UNL gardens taking pictures of campus cats.  Clearly she needs to have more stranger danger awareness because she walked right past her own sister without even noticing.  I let her get past me and then tapped on her shoulder to get her attention...

Anyway, we continued our walk together for a time.  We saw decent looking clouds, but neither of us were anticipated a very impressive sunset.  After we parted ways so she could head back to the dorms and I could head back to my apartment, I noticed that the sky seemed to be improving.  All I had was a cell phone to capture the prettiness, but my phone camera is nice enough that it still looks decent.  

It's so hard to predict these good sunsets and to have a camera ready...

Labor Day Sunset

After a couple photography-less weeks due to cloudy and ugly weather conditions and grad school busyness, there was a decent sunset to take advantage of last night.

We've had rain about every day for a week and Labor Day was no exception.  The forecast called for a 0 to 10% chance of rain, so of course weather drew upon that 10% and sent a couple showers in Lincoln's direction.  I was still getting sprinkled on as I was taking these photos.

Also, just for the heck of it, here's a rainbow shot from a couple weeks ago.  I found it on my computer and figured I might as well post it somewhere.  With the unusual amount of rain and storms, there have been far more rainbows in recent months than I typically see around here.