Historic Roswell

  • June 9, 2008 10:42 PM

It looks like this week is turning out to be a tour of Atlanta suburbs – today is Historic Roswell.  Actually, the Exposaroonie challenge for this week is to take a photo of the name of your city or state.  Thomas and I went on a photo-stroll around Roswell Square this evening.

I haven’t decided yet, which photo to use.  They don’t seem to be speaking about the same town.  The first says Roswell is rundown, which it really isn’t.  The next one shows that it’s a little quirky, but old.  The next one makes Roswell look proper.  I’d say more preppy, than proper.  And I liked the little peek through the window in the last one.

Historic Roswell Square

The Roswell Store and Lady Liberty

Historic Roswell

Roswell Paper

I think I like the second or third one best.  You can see all of the photos I took on Flickr:

Dinner in Decatur

  • June 8, 2008 3:27 PM

Two of our good friends, Dave and Anna, just moved to Decatur – the cool part of Atlanta. Unfortunately, it’s about 45 minutes from our less cool part of Atlanta, but we headed down Friday night to get some dinner with them. We went to a Belgian Pub on the Square called The Brick Store. This is Anna walking to the pub, and one of my favorite photos I took.

Anna

The pub was packed, but cozy and the food was delicious. It’s supposedly pretty authentic Belgium-style, so the beer was served in wine glasses, and the cider was in a teacup. I went with the cider.

Dallas tries Cider

Dave and Anna invited two of their new friends along, Steve and Stacey. I really like this photo of Stacey that I took.

Stacey

After dinner, we headed over to Java Monkey for some dessert – their cheesecake was superb! We sat out on the patio and chatted until 11:30PM. It was a totally different feeling from our part of town. At that time, our city would be shut down, but this place was packed and people were still hanging out outside.

Anyway, before we headed home, Anna asked if I could get a few photos of her and Dave. Of course it was dark outside, but we found some streetlights to help. (Anna – if you want another try at photos during the daytime, just let me know. )

Poking the Baby Dave and Anna

Dave and Anna are expecting a baby in a couple of months, so that’s what’s up with the belly shot. :) It was a great time and I hope we get together again soon.

More photos are on Flickr:

Us and Them

Newman Wetlands

  • May 14, 2008 11:25 PM

We finally got our photos posted from the last birding class field trip to Newman Wetlands

This park has a beautiful boardwalk trail that is maintained by the Atlanta Audubon Society. We didn’t see as many birds as we’ve seen in the past, but we saw a lot of reptiles and amphibians – turtles, snakes, lizards, and frogs.

Turtle

We also saw a few Ruby Throated Hummingbirds, a Common Yellowthroat, and Purple Martins. That’s a Barn Swallow in this photo – I found out how pretty they were at the last field trip, but I couldn’t get a decent photo with them flying. This little guy sat still for quite a while though.

Barn Swallow

Afterward, we headed over to the water maintenance facility and looked for waterbirds. We saw a few sandpiper-sort, but they were too far for our cameras. The land around that area was gorgeous though, with purple and yellow flowers.

Newman Wetlands Colors

Lullwater Conservation Park

  • April 21, 2008 6:37 PM

Thomas and I are taking a month-long birding class at Emory Center for Lifelong Learning. Wednesday nights, we have classroom instruction and Saturday mornings, we go out into the field. This last week was our first class.

Robin

Wednesday, we learned how to look for field marks on birds, why some binoculars are $20 and others are over $100, and the difference between birdwatchers and birders – I think Thomas and I have become birders. Right now, we’re more interested in collecting species, than just studying birds. Oh well.

Canada Goose Goslings

The Saturday hike was amazing! We went to Lullwater Conversation Park on Emory’s campus and saw 37 different species of birds – a few that were new to our list. We both saw one of the birds that we’ve been pining to see – barred owl for me, and wood duck for Thomas.

Red Tail Hawk

The trip had some excitement too. We watched a goose chase a hawk eating a squirrel, a bunch of crows beat up two owls and knocked one of out of a tree, and later at home, we watched a hawk catch a crow.

Baby Barred Owl

We both took our cameras on the field trip, but Thomas got much better shots – his camera does better in low light. The pictures in this post are mine, but I really suggest checking out his shots too.

Here’s are photos:

P.S. Does the coloring on my photos look off? My monitor keeps flipping from an orange tinge to a dark blue tint. I think I need to recalibrate it, but I’m not sure if it messed up the color correction of my photos too. Thanks!

Callaway Butterfly Garden

  • April 16, 2008 11:13 PM

Since there was no way that Thomas and I could top our honeymoon, we kept our first anniversary low-key.  We spent Saturday at Callaway Gardens, south of Atlanta. We started the day off with a picnic, toured the Butterfly room, and then checked out the azalea garden. It was a beautiful place and a very romantic day. And of course, we took a ton of photos:

These are some of my favorite photos that I took:

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