Butterflies Everywhere

I've decided that it's going to be butterfly week! My last post was successful, so I figured, "Why not?" What really happened is that since seeing that last black swallowtail I stumbled on a field that was completely full of butterflies. I thought I had slipped into some kind of a fairy tale dimension.

It's not every day that you find hundreds of butterflies in such a small place. There may have even been thousands. There were butterflies flitting about and there were butterflies landing on plants. But the best thing of all was that they were stopping long enough for me to get pictures like these.

And while I was taking my pictures a group of kids walked past me on the trail. I heard one of them tell the others to make sure they stayed quiet because I was taking pictures of the butterflies. They were very polite and courteous, especially for children. Take that Rob!

Speaking of our new good friend Rob Wayne; his first article back wasn't quite as abrasive as I expected, but it was still quite angry. He assured me that they'll get worse. I make sure I check his work before it's published though, but just to make sure the language stays clean.

He has indeed increased the comment count over at Nature Center Magazine, and the comments that he got were more passionate and detailed than usual. Thanks to those who left them. Overall I'm happy with the results. So I guess I'll let Rob keep on speaking his mind, no matter how twisted that may be.

Let's just change the subject a bit. I have another little blog tip for you! This one isn't a piece of CSS code or anything like that. What I have for you is a program for all of you Windows users. I mentioned in another tip that our picture size should be about 800px or less.

You also might benefit from watermarking your pictures. Take a look at all of my photos here at The Everyday Adventurer. They all have a link to my blog in the bottom right corner. That's a watermark. I'm going to give you a link to a program that can both resize and watermark your photos. It can do that to as many as you want all at once, and the program is totally free!

The name of the program is FastStone Photo Resizer. This is the program I use to resize all of my photos. They have a few other programs that are very useful. Some of them are free and some are not. Take a look at them all.

Here's the link: FastStone

So now let's get back to nature. Now we're seeing my last butterfly picture of the day. Each one of these butterflies is a type of swallowtail. Over at Nature Center Magazine today we are featuring the video I took of this field of butterflies. Yup, just the same trick as last week. If you want to see these butterflies in action, just pop over there and take a look.

And I'll leave you with these words. Butterfly week! Butterfly week! BUTTERFLY WEEK!


Nature Center Magazine - Your starting place for nature!

Swallowtail

I found a butterfly! I have read that this is an eastern black swallowtail, but I'm a beginner at identifying butterflies, so I could be completely wrong. I do know that it's a swallowtail though because of the little parts that stick out at the back end of its wings.

I was wondering if I would ever get any butterfly pictures this year, but then they started coming one right after the other. So I'll be showing you more butterflies in the coming days. I have some that are even better than these!

When I found this one there were many others zooming around eluding my camera. I thought I had no chance until I found this butterfly sitting there on this plant resting. I was able to get as many pictures as I wanted of this flying flower.

I have to say that I love watching butterflies flying around in a field, especially if there are a lot of them. But it's a lot easier to get pictures of them if they stay still. There were plenty of them because there waren't many other people around.

I actually found a great time of day to go to this park. Right after work time almost nobody is there. When I went in there was only a couple of people in the whole park, and when I left I was the only one there. That's what I call bliss.

I met the two women who were there when I was about halfway through. They stopped and told me they saw an owl, but of course it was gone already. An owl would have been exciting to get on camera. I'll have to see if I can learn where to watch for them.

I've got one last subject before I go today.

Over at Nature center Magazine we have the return of an old friend. Rob Wayne, who I have known most of my life, has come back to write a few articles for us. Some of you may remember him from the early days of the magazine as the person who wrote the Free Wallpaper articles. Well, he didn't really enjoy that, so I took over in his name after awhile.

What Rob really wanted to do was to give his opinion on some nature related things. The problem was that his opinions can get rather strong. At the time I didn't want such abrasive articles on the website. Rob is a good guy, but I wanted the site to be a little more gentle than some of the things he was proposing.

But now things have changed just a bit. I still don't necessarily agree with the things he says, but we need to make progress. Nature Center Magazine has grown its number of readers greatly since it started, with some of our articles getting over 1000 page views. But the comment count hasn't really grown equivalently. Many people may get upset by the things Rob writes, but I also think they might want to return their own opinions after reading.

What would you do in my situation? I think Rob Wayne might be a necessary evil. Like I said though, any of you who know him also know that he's really a good person. Anyway, you'll have to judge for yourselves when you read some of the articles he writes. People will either love him or they'll hate him, but I don't think he'll be ignored.


Nature Center Magazine - Your starting place for nature!

A Time Of Chickadees

I finally went back! I finally went back to Woodland Hills Nature Park where I took a tumble down a hill last winter. At first I avoided the place because I was disgruntled about having that fall. Then I didn't go back because I knew from experience that there just wasn't much going on there in the winter. It really is a dull place for me in the winter. When the leaves are gone, it really exposes the place to the urban surroundings.

I say urban surroundings but it really is in the middle of the wilderness. The urban part is a freeway that runs a little too close to the place. The leaves of the trees go a long way to muffle the sounds of all the vehicles. Somehow warmer weather also seems to help that as well. It really is one of the most beautiful nature parks I've been to.

And that leads me to what I found there on my first time back since my accident. When I got deep into the first trail of the forest I began to hear birds everywhere. This has never happened before when I was at this place. This is usually a very quiet section of the park. The best thing this time was that the birds came close.

When I got a good look at the birds I found out they were black-capped chickadees! I'm just learning about these little guys, but I know they are among a lot of peoples favorite birds. They seem to be known for their friendly demeanor, and these that I met were no exception.

I've been encountering these birds everywhere my travels have taken me these past few weeks. They always seem to come up close to me. These in the pictures got the closest of all. I saw several in a small tree right next to me. The thick tangle of branches prevented me from getting pictures of more than one at a time though.

I was glad these chickadees were there on the trail with me. They really helped change my recent sour outlook of this park. I remember now that I have called this my favorite park in the past. It is still right up there. These sweet little birds helped me greatly when things seemed bleak. I'll have to move them to my favorites list too.

And lastly, I'd like to thank all of you who visited Nature Center Magazine for yesterday's official opening. It was a huge success! I expected maybe ten or twenty visitors for that first day. The total was almost two hundred! The site is still evolving though, so the best is yet to come. I hope some of you continue to see what we come up with.

Oh, I almost forgot! It's been a busy couple of days for me so I haven't had time to visit most of your sites. I'll change that later today when I get home. I don't like missing my favorite reading, so I'm looking forward to reading what you have to say!

Nature Center Magazine

It's time for my big announcement! I have started a brand new website called Nature Center Magazine! This website is a project that I have been planning for a very long time. The official debut for it is today, right now!

As you might have guessed, it's a website about nature. It's also something that will be different and much bigger than I can do here at The Everyday Adventurer. Nature Center Magazine focuses on nature from all around the world, not just my little corner of it. It will also focus on nature websites from all over the web.

Before I go on I want to say that this will not have an effect on The Everyday Adventurer at all. I will still be doing my normal posting here. Nature Center Magazine is a team effort. I already have a few members of the writing team, and I'm looking for many more.

The point of this new website is to help give other nature websites or the websites of any nature lovers get a little bit of recognition. I feel we don't get nearly enough, and I want to try and change that. For any contributors, this recognition will come as links to their own sites. We also have a person that does a focus on her favorite nature websites of the week. There will be more as time goes on and as new ideas are made.

Right now you are the first ones to know of Nature Center Magazine, but soon I will be going step by step in marketing this website to the entire world. This is what I hope will be the biggest thing I have ever done in my entire life. I'm going to do everything I can to make this the greatest nature website in existence. I have literally dozens of plans to do this, but I'm always looking for help.

As of right now, I'm sharing administration of the website with one other person. I'm also writing one article a week there, among all of the others. It's not quite like anything I do here. We already have several articles up, mostly mine, but most will be debuting this week. I hope to have some contributions or maybe even just helpful suggestions from people on the web I already know.

Whether you own a nature site or are just a fan of nature, you will be interested in Nature Center Magazine. Maybe you want to write something there that you either feel might not fit on your own site, or you just want to show off a sample of your blogging style and get a link to your site every once in a while. Or maybe you have just been looking for a good place to go to find the best of nature from around the internet. Nature Center Magazine will be the place to go. Take a look at it now:

Nature Center Magazine