On May 27th I stopped at the St. David's Emergency Center in Leander. No, I wasn't having a medical emergency; I just wanted to photograph the wildflowers on the adjacent property. Barbed wire kept me at a distance so I used my longest lens, the 100–400mm, knowing I'd get an in-focus band across the middle of a picture that cropping at the top and bottom would turn into more of a panorama. The purple flowers are horsemints (Monarda citriodora), the red and yellow ones firewheels (Gaillardia pulchella), and the broad white ones basket-flowers (Plectocephalus americanus).
At one point a couple of small birds landed on a part of the barbed-wire fence. As I already had the telephoto lens on the camera I figured I'd pretend to be a bird photographer. Advancing slowly, I took what pictures I could, still farther away than I'd have liked.
A look through a Texas bird book makes me think the birds were chipping sparrows (Spizella passerina). In the pose below, the sparrow seemed a bit put out by my presence.
© 2023 Steven Schwartzman
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