Wild things at the Great Plains Zoo

Robins where everywhere.

Cute little chipmunk with some kind of food in his mouth. I think this is food from one of the zoo animals. I don't get to see chipmunks in central Florida so I was excited to see them here.

Beautiful butterflies were everywhere.

The zoo was full of canadian geese. They were sleeping or grazing in most of the exhibits.

Since my sister lives close to the zoo in Sioux Falls, we decided to spend a little time there walking around on my last day of the visit. It was sunny and 70 degrees so we had to get out after spending so much time in the car driving back from Rapid City. It's a small zoo but very nice. They had a large variety of animals there including wild geese that seemed to be resting on their way south. It was a perfect way to end a visit in South Dakota.

Animals in Custer State Park

There are big signs all over the park that say "DO NOT FEED THE WILDLIFE" but yet here we are,watching the car in front of us feeding the wild mules. Obviously a lot of people feed them because the mules were lined up along the road waiting to be fed.

A cute baby mule staying back from the road.

My only pronghorn sighting. It was far away in a field. This is the fastest land animal in the United States. It didn't move an inch while we were there.

The herds of buffalo were far off the road.

More bighorn sheep. We found this herd at the Blue Bell lodge in the park. They were wandering close to the parking lot.

My only upclose buffalo sighting. We were able to pull off to the side of the road here and take it's picture. We found it all alone and near the exit to the park.

  Camera Critters

A Sunday in the backyard - Skywatch Friday

A hawk was sitting on my neighbor's sailboat in the morning.

Blue jay screaming at the hawk.

Blue-gray gnatcatcher sitting in the grapefruit tree. It's the first time I've seen a blue-gray in our backyard. I think he was watching the blue jay at the top of the tree.

Later, as the clouds moved in I noticed the downy woodpecker on the same (almost dead) grapefruit tree.

Another downy picture.

The resident osprey showed up later with a fish.

Creepy clouds moving in right before the sun went down.

Our grapefruit tree is going to have to go soon. It's about 75% dead. It covers around 25% of our backyard and has been there since the house was build back in the 60's. It's been great for shading part of the house and I'm going to miss it (except for picking up rotten grapefruit for half the year). I don't know what I want to replace it with. Something that's already half grown so we can get some shade fairly soon. We don't want another fruit tree since it's just too much work to pick up the fruit. Our soil is sandy and the tree would sit in between our house and the seawall. It would get lots of sun. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

For more skyscape photography from around the world, visit Skywatch Friday

Wild animals in the Badlands

Our first sight into the Badlands Park was of some deer bouncing across the fields.

Badlands bunny.

The prairie dogs were so cute. They made a lot of noise. They kept barking the whole time we were there. It almost sounded like they were singing to each other.

Munching on some leaves.

Bighorn sheep along the road. I had to get a picture of the smaller baby. The adults would not turn around.

More bighorn sheep along the road. I took this while my sister slowly drove by since we were in an area where there was no place to pull off. We didn't see any males with the big horns, only females and juveniles.

Our three hour drive through Badlands National Park was full of wildlife. I think my favorite part was the prairie dogs. They were scurrying around the field. The biggest disappointment was that I only saw one bird. A lone vulture flying high up in the sky. Well, I also didn't see any snakes. There were signs at all of the paths and boardwalks to watch out for rattlesnakes. It would have been cool to see at least one from far away. Lucky, I haven't crossed any in the parks in Florida although I've heard there's a few at Fort Desoto. After the Badlands we stopped in Wall, South Dakota before heading to our hotel in Rapid City. Wall has a 76,000 square feet tourist shop. We bought some fudge and hit the bathrooms before heading out. Next stop, Mount Rushmore!

An after work walk around Fort Desoto Park.

Juvenile black bellied plover. I wish I had found this little guy when he just a baby. He would have been really cute and tiny.

Adult black bellied plover. He just kind of stood there like "What do you want?"

Snowy egrets and a great egret fishing off the jetty next to the fishing pier. The sun had gone down behind some nasty clouds.

Snowy egret got a fish!

"Mom, feed me" says the juvenile sandwich tern. Although he's probably big enough to fend for himself, they tend to beg for a while at that age.

Great blue heron thought he had a fish but it was just seaweed.

Cute raccoon hanging around the picnic area.

Our World Tuesday

Also, check out more birds at

Vacation in Sioux Falls and the Badlands

My trip started in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. My sister lives there and it was time I paid her a visit. The falls run through downtown Sioux Falls. We walked around Falls Park for a while. It was cloudy and a little chilly (well, for this Florida girl it felt chilly.)

The next morning we got up early to drive across the state to the Badlands and Mount Rushmore. We had to stop at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center (rest stop, Yea! bathrooms) in Chamberlain. It sits over a bluff looking down on the Missouri River. It was cloudy and cold. We didn't walk around too long here.

We make it several hours later to the entrance of the  Badlands National Park. Yes, the sun came out for us. It warmed up to a little over 70 degrees. It was a perfect day for the Badlands. The first thing you pull into is a boardwalk that goes out over a large portion of the mountains.

After driving down a hill, we stopped at the only lodge in the park and had lunch,

We continued on through the park stopping to get out and walk around at all of the viewpoints. There were beautiful yellow wildlflowers everywhere.

The sections near the end of the park had the prettiest color.

I spent 5 days roadtripping around South Dakota with my sister. It is a beautiful state. One regret was that I was too late for the sunflowers. We passed hundreds of miles of sunflower fields that were almost dead. But the nice thing about going in September is all of those summer tourists are gone. Nothing was crowded. The weather was perfect and stayed warm most of the trip.  More on wild animals in the park, Mount Rushmore and Custer State Park later.

Photo things I learned after my trip:

1)Don't go to cool landscape parks without a wide angle lens. I should have at least rented one. My regular 18mm - 105mm lens did not do the scenery justice. 

2)Should I have taken a polarized lens filter? I have one I bought to take to the beach but only used it a few times. I felt like it made the shots less sharp.  I wonder if it would have cut out some of the haze that's in the 3rd and 4th picture. When I was editing, I couldn't seem to get rid of the haze where the sky meets the land in most of the pictures. Any suggestions?

3)Take my newly bought monopod with it's new ballhead. I bought it weeks before my trip to use in the parks when I'm hiking instead of lugging around my heavy tripod. I should have at least stuck it in my suitcase. It would have helped when it got rainy and cloudy and I was loosing sharpness.

4)Spend more time reading up on landscape photography, which isn't something I had been doing in the past (landscape photography that is, not reading). I should have studied up on how to pull out the colors and what settings I needed to be at more closely.

5)Slow down. I was always in a hurry because I wanted to see so much and fit too much in the trip. There was so much to see in the Black Hills.

These are just some of the things that came to my mind as I was editing and reading up on landscape photography. Now I'll know for future trips.

Neat things at the Lowry Park Zoo.

The baby penguin is getting big.

Flamingos trying to sleep.

A new baby rhino, born mid-July. The kids were going crazy watching him run around with his mother. He was so cute.

Pretty bird in the aviary.

One of the elephants cooling off.

Just a few neat things I saw on my recent trip to the zoo.