With The Sun Shining on Her

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.

-Benjamin Franklin

Mrs. Red standing in front of a bit of snow left over from our storm.

Taken 02-20-12.

Female Cardinal Showing Her Crest

She's got quite the Mohawk!

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Female Cardinal - Simple Joy

The essence of life is not in the great victories and grand failures, but in the simple joys.

~ Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Female Cardinal - Inquisitive Pose

Same old eyes, same old world but the difference is how you look at what is in front of you, not what it is.

- Lister Sinclair

About the image: Taken 10/28/11 during the first sleet of the season. If you look closely you can see the sleet on her feathers.

Female Cardinal Blending In

Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be.

~Karen Ravn

About the image: Taken on a gray day - 10-19-11 - again thru the window in my living room.

About the quote: Profound words that have me contemplating several aspects of my life.

Female Cardinal and Her Berry Beak

Autumn is the eternal corrective.

It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity;
but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance.

What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon
- Hal Borland

About this image: I just couldn't pass up a bird with a berry in her beak. This was a dark picture - I was VERY far away - and it wasn't sharp. I did a bit of editing in Lightroom 3 and this is what I got. Still not very sharp and has a "painterly" look to it. I am pleased with the way the autumn colors in the background show through and I love that you can see her skinny legs :) The branches came together nicely to give her a "framed" look.

Female Cardinal - Peeking from the Pines

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

~ John Lubbock

Wednesday Wings ~ Wings in Motion

Growth, in some curious way, I suspect, depends on being always in motion just a little bit, one way or another. ~Norman Mailer

Sunday Simplicity

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.

~Robert Louis Stevenson

Snow Queen with Snow Beak

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life. ~John Burroughs

Portrait of a Lady

I Love how this lady posed for me!

And she gave me a good shot at the detail in her wings too.

Wishing you all a Wonderful Day!

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give. ~George MacDonald