Eye Contact

Portland was wonderful, but I missed my bees! 

Despite the wild blackberry blossoms being almost over, the bees were out in force this morning, and for a change, I tried photographing them with my 14-45mm lens (equivalent to 28-90 on an SLR). That required getting much closer to the bees than I'd been in the last few months, when I used my telephoto lens, but they didn't seem to mind. I wasn't as close as you see here----some cropping helped with this---but it was a much more intimate experience to photograph them this way.

In other backyard wildlife news, we saw a chipmunk there for the first time ever, the race between the robins and us for our blueberries is underway, our tiny black currant bush has produced a few delicious berries, and our two dwarf apple trees have had to be thinned of some of their potential crop for the second time!

I much prefer watching bees to yesterday's Independence Day fireworks. We are just outside the city limits, so the personal fireworks ban didn't apply here, and some of our neighbors made the most of that last night. I hope that at least the children present were wearing ear plugs, even if the adults weren't, as "the sound output produced by fireworks can reach 150-175 dB [decibels]," according to the hear-it.org website. 

"Exposure to loud sounds such as fireworks can lead to temporary or permanent hearing loss and tinnitus," the website notes. The World Health Organization recommends that adults not be exposed to more than 140 dB of peak sound pressure, children to not more than 120 dB, and infants should not be exposed to fireworks at all.