pecunium

That Icon is sort of about this picture.

Most of you have probably seen it before, I put it up when [former SFWA VP Howard Hendrix] called people who gave things, they had created, away on the internet, "Pixel-Stained Techno-Peasants."

But I didn't know what kind of bird it was. Last week I bought a book on the remainder table at a local bookshop (Seasons in the Desert a naturalist's notebook by Susan J. Tweit). It's a collection of essays on various of the plant and animals, with illustrative sketches.

One of the essays was on The Curvebilled Thrasher. The picture is sort of drab, but the description made me sit up and say, "I know that bird!"

Color: Buff gray all over, with white throat and darker mottling on breast; bird's eye startling bright yellow or orange

That last line was what gave it away, because the eyes are stunning.

How does that relate to the Icon (and props to

bifemmefatale for making it, and the other shot of the bee's butt, which I used in the last post)?

Because they are similar stories. I was heading to the Library in Sierra Vista, about a year ago this time, and I was shooting some shots of cactus, as I walked through the desert. I looked up and saw the bird.

At which point I starte to stalk him. A slow approach, keeping the sun behind me, and maneuvering to where I could get a pleasant pattern of the brances (because there was no way to get all of the branches out of the foreground.

With insects in flowers, I tend to be shooting the flowers, when they show up, and with the same sort of change in focus, I try to keep them in the frame, and guess where the focal plane is going to be when they leave the flower. Bees are about as easy at it gets, because they tend to float in front of the flower for a moment. Hover bees are a little harder. Someday I'll manage to get one of them I really like.