Today's nutch

WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH, GREEN, MICHIGAN, JULY 22, 2017

Pentax K-3

Pentax F* 300mm f4.5 with Pentax 1.4x converter (420mm)

1/400 sec. f7.1

ISO 1600

Usually seen at our feeders as loners, this species has taken to visiting in pairs, and perhaps because of that tends to perch on the feeders for a longer time instead of quickly grabbing a sunflower seed and dashing away. That makes it easier to compose and snap a picture of the quicksilver little creatures.

Thimbleberry

THIMBLEBERRY (RUBUS PARVIFLORUS), HOONAH, ALASKA, JUNE 19, 2017

iPhone 6s
4.15mm lens
1/120 sec. f2.2
ISO 25

I'd thought the thimbleberry was limited to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but it's actually quite common from Alaska to the Great Lakes. Its soft, raspberry-like fruit doesn't keep well and hence is never seen in supermarkets, but makes excellent jam. The intricately veined leaves clearly are photogenic—and make excellent emergency TP.

Red squirrel

RED SQUIRREL, GREEN, MICHIGAN, JULY 10, 2017

Pentax K-3
Pentax-F* 300mm f4.5
1/400 sec. f5.6
ISO 1600

The red squirrel may be a pest, but it certainly is photogenic.

Black-legged Kittiwakes

BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKES, HOMER, ALASKA, JUNE 27, 2017

Pentax K-3
Pentax 55-300 at 300mm
1/1600 sec. f8
ISO 1600

I shot this pair of gulls from the balcony of our high verandah stateroom aboard the Holland-America cruise liner Amsterdam, moored at the Alaskan port of Homer, where hundreds of thousands of the birds had converged on the docks to nest.