Undecided Tree

And one that has no doubts what season it wants to belong to.

Parrot Day

A foundation that rescues and rehabilitates parrots comes to the Alexandria marina once in a while with nine or 10 parrots to raise awareness and funds. I never had the camera with me when I saw them, but today I was lucky. You can take pictures with the birds on you if you want; donations are optional. I was quite impressed by the optional part, but I assume (and hope!) that it makes people more generous. Of course, I had to take pictures with the birds, too. I chose the yellow-and-blue ones and, as I approached one of them, he greeted me with a chirrupy “hello,” which melt my heart :). The one that you see flapping its wings on the woman’s head actually does that at the “eagle” command; thought that was hilarious. You only keep them on you for a minute or so and then they go back to their rings.

The two green ones had a conversation going on; you could hear the chirrups’ various intonations.  The one being groomed would at times look uninterested, but the other continued to groom her (him?) affectionately. Really sweet.

Fluttering Wings

I finally took a day off to decompress a little bit and went to chase butterflies at the Natural History Museum. It’s a small, climate-controlled enclosed space inside the museum; butterflies fly around you and you can linger on as much as you want.

Here is the day’s bounty: picasaweb.google.com/simonne.c/Butterflies. I stayed there for about two hours, until I made sure I captured almost all of them. However, the most beautiful of them all, the Morph, turned out to be very elusive. It has beautiful patterns on the wings’ outside and a stunning blue on the inside. It looks like this: http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/1426759/2/istockphoto_1426759_blue_morpho.jpg. That is, if you’re lucky enough and it opens its wings right in time for you to take a picture. The two or three they had in there kept flying continuously, tantalizingly close but never setting down on anything. And when one did get tired, it went to some far away cranny and promptly closed its wings. Man, that was frustrating :).

I have a modest suggestion, though: instead of “Butterflies + Plants” they should have called it “Sauna + Butterflies” :). But, aside from the temperature, humidity, and (just like with the frogs) little kids moving in unpredictable directions it was wonderful. And actually, the kids were somewhat more predictable just because butterflies like to land on the floor, so everyone had to pay attention not to step on them. They also liked to land on people and just stay there 🙂

Tomorrow I’m moving to Bethesda, another DC suburb, where I’ll be house and dog sitting the whole next week for a friend. It will be a nice change to play with a dog when I come home.

Frog Pics

I still have to figure out some Photoshop- and Flickr-related stuff, for which, unfortunately, I won’t have time too soon. I really wanted to share these pics with you so I’m posting some of the best shots I took at the National Geographic exhibition last weekend. I’m fairly proud of them since I didn’t want to use the flash and I don’t have a tripod to compensate for low shutter speed. Plus, there were a zillion little kids around and they could come in and out of the frame at any time through their reflection in the glass of the frogs’ microhabitats. Then, the frogs weren’t much interested in posing, so I had to find good moments, good angles, be quick, AND make sure my hands were as still as possible.

Without further ado, I give you the cutest frog :). The weirdest thing is that it was in the exact same position I had seen it the week before 🙂 Wonder if it ever left that spot. It’s a Chinese Gliding frog.

The next huge favorite were the Dart Poison frogs. Forget the Komodo Dragon. These are the most poisonous creatures on earth! The toxins on one frog’s skin are enough to kill 10 people or 10,000 mice. Don’t know if you die just by touching one, but wouldn’t try 🙂 At any rate, pretty unbelievable colors!

Amaryllis in Bloom

Here it is, in all its splendor.

Amaryllis Update

Almost ready to greet the world.

My Blooming Cactus

I told you this was a carnival. Now you have the proof :). The amaryllis is next, in a week or so.