Photographs and thoughts on photography and camera collecting
It was time for me to head back to Back Bay Station. Directly across from the station I came across this man feeding the pigeons. He seems to be having a great time and encouraged me to take pictures.
Taken with a Sony A6000 and 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 OSS
“Quincy Market is a historic building near Faneuil Hall in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. It was constructed between 1824 and 1826 and named in honor of mayor Josiah Quincy, who organized its construction without any tax or debt. The market is a designated National Historic Landmark and a designated Boston Landmark in 1996, significant as one of the largest market complexes built in the United States in the first half of the 19th century. According to the National Park Service, some of Boston’s early slave auctions took place near what is now Quincy Market.
As the central building of Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Quincy Market is often used metonymically for the entire development. By the mid-20th century it was badly in need of repair, and it was redeveloped into a public shopping and restaurant area in the early 1970s and re-opened in 1976. Today, this includes the original Quincy Market buildings, the later North Market and South Market buildings that flank the main Quincy Market, the historic Faneuil Hall lying at the west end, and two smaller curved buildings, added later to the eastern end.” (Wikipedia)
Taken with a Sony A6000 and 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 OSS.
I was sitting, reading on my deck/balcony when this little guy hopped onto the book I was reading. You can see how tiny it was by comparing it to the page number on my book. How do I know it was a jumping spider? Well, it had jumped onto my book and after I picked up the camera to take the picture it jumped from the book onto my camera lens. Pretty impressive!
Taken with a Fuji X-E3 and Sigma 18-50mm f2.8
The chestnut-breasted malkoha (Phaenicophaeus curvirostris) is a species of cuckoo in the family Cuculidae. Found in Southeast Asia from Myanmar through to eastern Java, the Philippines and Borneo, it is a large cuckoo measuring up to 49 cm (19 in) with grey and dark green upperparts and chestnut underparts, and a large curved pale upper mandible. The male and female are similar in plumage. Unlike many cuckoos, it builds its nest and raises its own young.
Measuring 42–49 cm (17–19 in) in length, the chestnut-breasted malkoha has a large, curved, pale yellow upper mandible and darker red or black lower mandible, and a bare red patch of rough skin around the eye. The head is grey and wings are dark green fading to blue with age. Its underparts and rump are chestnut, and feet are dark grey. Little sexual dimorphism is seen, as the male and female are similar in plumage, although the male has a pale blue iris and the female yellow.
Taken with a Sony A7IV and Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports Lens
The red fody (Foudia madagascariensis), also known as the Madagascar fody in Madagascar, red cardinal fody in Mauritius, or common fody, is a small bird native to Madagascar and introduced to various other islands in the Indian Ocean. It is a common bird within its restricted range, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed its conservation status as being of “least concern”.
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the red fody in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Madagascar. He used the French name Le cardinal de Madagascar and the Latin Cardinalis Madagascariensis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the red fody. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Loxia madagascariensis and cited Brisson’s work. This species is now placed in the genus Foudia that was introduced by the German naturalist Ludwig Reichenbach in 1850. The type species was subsequently designated as the red fody. The species is monotypic.
The English word “fody” and the name of the genus Foudia are from the Malagasy name for the red fody Foudi or Fodi.
The red fody is about 5 inches (13 cm) in length and weighs 14–19 grams (0.49–0.67 oz). The male of the species is bright red with black markings around each eye. Its wings and tail are olive-brown. Its underparts are also red, which distinguishes it from other fodies in areas where it has been introduced. The female fody’s upper parts are olive-brown and its underparts are greyish brown. (Wikipedia)
Taken with a Sony A7IV and Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG DN OS Sports Lens