Earth Explorations

That is me, the woman on the left in a blue shirt. I am a 2019 National Geographic Education Fellow. This blog really isn't about my work with National Geographic but when you put yourself out there as an explorer even of the every day variety and you end up working with National Geographic some explanation is in order. My work with National Geographic is to build out their citizen science resources for teachers.  Being a citizen scientist myself I think this is important, essential work to getting to a Planet in Balance. I won't be going any place exotic like the Okavango (unless National Geographic thinks they need an education fellow to go to help with... I don't know what I could help with but I'm game to go). My fellowship work may or may not show up in this blog and if it does it may be direct i.e. talking about it specifically or indirect talking about an experience because of that work. This blog will still be about my observations and the work

If it's on the internet, it lives forever. I had half forgotten about an online nature journal I kept about four years ago which was something of a precursor to this one. I eventually replaced it with iNaturalist, never to return to that work. I won't reactivate it but I do think it belongs as part of the archive for this blog. This is one of my favorite photos from that blog taken with an old phone. This was taken on the causeway from Pierre to La Framboise Island.

I am enjoying my new camera. I am practicing the same skills I was when I last posted which means there are features on my camera I still don't know how to use. No matter. For the moment I am enjoying learning how to take pictures of birds at the feeder maintained at a nearby state park by volunteers from the Audubon Society. When I am ready to learn more about the camera, I will move on. Today is National Bird Day so I will share a few bird photos. I find taking halfway decent photos of birds unexpectedly gratifying, especially when I share them on iNaturalist. The photos I'm sharing below aren't my best photos but the ones that I am learning from. What I've learned so far: I've learned that snow is hard to get the right light. The birds in the photos I took on a snowy day come out a little dark. See the American tree sparrow photo one below. I've learned that autofocus may or may not always pick the right thing to focus on. I've had more than one p