A couple of hundred yards from out house is a small dirt road called “Roaring Brook Lane”. It parallels a brook and goes over a small bridge to a dock by the lake. While walking the dog we decided (actually he decided – I merely followed) to go down to the dock. We haven’t had much rain of late and the brook was hardly “roaring”. In fact it was completely dry. As we walked down I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye and decided to “check it out”. It turned out to be a large (I’d guess almost 2ft long) snapping turtle dragging itself out of the dry water course.

I understand from my reading that they rarely leave the water unless they are planning to lay eggs, and that the egg laying season is from April through November. This picture was taken in mid-October so I imagine that the turtle was looking for a spot to lay its eggs.

From its appearance it’s a common snapping turtle rather than an alligator snapping turtle, which I believe is found farther south in the US.

Whichever it was I stayed well away from it and quickly left. I didn’t want to disturb its egg laying and I’d also heard that such creatures can deliver a nasty bite.

I have a very clear memory of taking this picture. We were in Copenhagen visiting our older daughter and her family. I’d gone with my grandson to his piano lesson. We’d been driven there, but were expected to make our own way home. I recall that we were taking the train so we walked to the nearest station and while we were waiting for the train to arrive I spotted these two pigeons on the roof.

It was taken in May, 2011 with a Panasonic Lumix ZS3 – a compact 10 megapixel point and shoot camera. Yes the images were noisy and the focus tended to lag. In poor light it was next to useless. But it was very small and light and had an excellent 12x zoom. It took more than adequate pictures in good light. I have many pictures that I would never have gotten at all otherwise because: 1) I probably wouldn’t have had a camera with me; and 2) even if I did have a camera a shorter focal length lens would not have allowed me to get the picture.

I just took this picture. My work area is down in the basement of our house. It’s only partially finished so we get a few bugs down there – especially spiders. Since I was a kid I’ve always liked spiders so it doesn’t particularly bother me when there are a few around.

This one was right in front of my desk. It always seemed to be in exactly in the same position so I began to suspect that it was dead. In any case I decided to take a picture of it. I tried using my DSLR with a zoom lens on a tripod, but I didn’t much like the results. So I reached for my RX-100 and moved it really close to take this picture.

Of course it’s not all that clear and it’s quite noisy, but I still like it – especially the way the spider stands out against the white wall.

Incidentally, when I moved in close to take this picture the spider scuttled away. I guess it wasn’t dead after all.