| My website has articles on topics that have been of interest to me over the years. Some are informational and others casual but in either case they’re heavily illustrated with photographs and/or videos that I’ve taken. Browse the site by clicking on a Search by keyword item to the right. For those interested, you can now buy some of my best selling photographs here at Fine Art Photos. Arnie |
Earth Day is celebrated globally on April 22 each year.
I’m old enough to remember the first Earth Day in 1970 when I was a young college student. For quite a years since, I’ve written essays about this topic. If you’d like you can read one of my previous Earth Day articles here.
Subsequent Earth Days have been filled with forceful calls to conserve and protect our natural resources. The difficult and controversial task was to improve the way the worldwide economy functions so as to reduce and/or prevent harm to our environment with a goal to keep our planet viable into the future.
It’s widely agreed that we have a long way to go to change the trajectory of our collective and personal behavior to reach that goal. I’m not here to judge or criticize. Rather I’ve tried to minimize my carbon footprint and encourage those that I can influence to do the same.
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time roaming the outdoors USA visiting many wonderful places that Mother Nature has provided.
Following is a gallery of photos from our nation’s National Parks.
I hope that you have chosen a way to celebrate and remember Earth Day.
Written by:
Arnie Lee
Here in western Michigan, the sun is finally making an appearance and the winter’s cold is fading. That signals the time for the migrating birds to make their way back to our northern location.
Reaching back to Christmas, my wife received a gift that is perfect for this warming weather.
It’s called BirdBuddy.
This is a bird feeder with addition of a built-in camera.
She was anxious to see how it works but we thought it best to wait until the weather was more hospitable to the both the birds and to me (I’d have to get it working in the cold).
The BirdBuddy has a solar panel roof to power the camera. While we’ve used it only a few days, we’re not sure if the panel will charge the unit without having to use conventional USB charging.
The camera has a motion sensor to start recording when a bird (or other animal) approaches the unit.
Assembly is simple – snap the front and rear feed walls to the blue platform, attach the roof, insert the camera unit front facing into its slot and add some bird feed.
After downloading the BirdBuddy app from the internet you set up an account with your email address and finally connect the unit to your wi-fi network.
When we had it assembled and were ready to go, we hung the unit in the backyard.
Sure enough an hour later we had a feathered visitor.
The BirdBuddy app notified us and sent this message with a picture of the unidentifed bird.
When we clicked Identify this visitor we were told that the bird is a House Finch.
We were both surprised that BirdBuddy actually records a video when the motion detector kicks in.
Here’s a short clip of the House Finch munching on some seeds.
We’re happy that this BirdBuddy is now ready to serve up more sightings as Spring continues to bring more visitors back to Michigan.
If you’re interested find more information about BirdBuddy here.
Written by:
Arnie Lee
Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium is a tranquil place where you can enjoy the underwater scenery.
We spent a few hours feeling the solitude that some of the creatures of the sea offer their guests with their eye-catching beauty and graceful movements. Some are tiny and some are gigantic but they all seem to move with such ease.
Below are a few of our visual experiences.
I hope you enjoyed the quietness of these clips.
Written by:
Arnie Lee