St. Louis Children's Photographer and Maternity Photography, Baby Portraits - The Blog » St. Louis Nature Photography

Such a cute house! Webster Groves charmer

admin — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 23:34:45 +0000

I’m participating in the St. Louis Photographer’s Showcase, a fun competition between local photographers. Thanks to Studio Altius for thinking up such a fun event! It’s like a basketball tournament (or since I’m a girl who never played basketball, a volleyball tournament.) Right now I guess you could call it the regular season, because the elimination rounds don’t start right away. This week’s theme was trees, and so I photographed this gorgeous magnolia tree in full bloom with a full blanket of petals also carpeting the ground below. The cute little Webster house is the perfect finishing touch. As soon as I drove by I knew I need to photograph it. The house is for sale – if anyone’s interested I can get a contact name for you. Oh…and to my surprise, this image won round one!

Empty nest…hmm…what should we do?

admin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:11:06 +0000

Every time I step outside, there’s a new adventure with our resident doves. Maybe I should start a new blog just for them! LOL I’ll be back to posting sneak peeks and other goodies soon. But for now, here’s the latest on the birds. They are SO protective of their young! I headed out the door one day to go to a shoot, and mama or papa dove swooped in right in front of me, flapping his/her wings. I had to turn around and press up against the door until he backed off. On another day, I was outside taking photos of the whole front door scene, with the flowers and the dove nest (cuz I think it’s kinda cute) and I turned around at one point and the papa(?) was standing on a post right behind my head. Glaring at me with a creepy look. Think “The Birds.”

The dove babies (round 2) are big already:

So big, they’ve flown the coop. Here they are, out on their own:

What are the empty nesters to do? Why mate, of course! They must be married, because it’s a very fast process. First they flirt for about 3 seconds:

Then they play hard-to-get for maybe 2 seconds:

Then they move closer again, and kiss:

And neck:

And I mean REALLY neck:

And then well, I suppose this is why they call it the birds and the bees:

So I’m expecting mama dove to be back on the nest in a few days.

Another baby… baby dove, that is.

admin — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:26:59 +0000

We’ve had a mourning dove nest by our front door for a few weeks now, and everytime I looked out, mom or dad was sitting there. But one day, I looked out, and neither was there. From where I was standing, I saw a small round something in the nest, which I thought was an egg. So I got my camera, held it high above my head, and hit the shutter. The “egg” got scared and tried to fly away…it wasn’t an egg, but a baby dove! And it couldn’t quite fly yet. So it kind of fell to the floor. And then tried to fly again and ended up down on the driveway. I felt so bad.

You should have seen me chasing that bird around my yard and the neighbor’s yard. I caught it several times, only to have it escape. Then the mom swooped down and stood right between me and the baby as I was trying to grab it again. Brave protective mama! But then she just walked around, making dove calls while the poor baby sat there on my driveway. So I went and picked it up one more time, and put it back in the nest. Next morning, both mom and dad were sitting up there with the baby perched on the edge of the nest. Later in the day, they were gone, but I heard the dove calls. I looked around, and found mom and baby sitting in a cherry tree next door:

Looks like the flight lessons had started. Don’t know how long that’s supposed to last, but that’s the last time I saw the fledgling. A strong storm came in that night. Yesterday, I saw that the nest had been built up more. And today, the mom is sitting up there again. I suppose she layed another egg…or two?