When you have too much pop to drink at dinner, you sometimes have to stop at a rest area on the Interstate for a nature call.

Of course, in this case nature also called for me to take a few pictures.

Tonight there is almost a full moon and I decided to capture the moon with a pigeon silhouetted on top of one of the picnic structures at the rest area. Of course there is also a nice silhouette of tree. I tried to also capture a small sparrow that was sitting by the pigeon, but he flew away too quickly.

Here is a closer look at the pigeon. There were many pigeons around cleaning up the leftovers that people left of their rest area snacks. There were also many other birds. I counted at least six different types and heard a few more that I could not see. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get pictures of all of them.

The black bird here is more of a silhouette, but I really like this picture as the leaves in front are blurred out and you can clearly see the eye of the bird. It was roosting high in a tree and I had trouble focusing through the branches. Just when I would get focused on one it would fly away. Finally after about five tries I snapped the picture.

I tried to get close-up shots of a group of little birds that were flying around. I wanted to find out what species they were. However, the best I could get was another nice silhouette picture.

There were also flowers blooming or starting to bloom at the rest area.

This picture of an iris bloom starting to open was my favorite of the flower pictures that I took. I really like the way that the bloom is folded up and can just imagine it opening and the beautiful color that it will be. Also, it brings back memories of the large iris beds that we had when we lived in Kansas.

I will close with a sunset picture that I took before I left the rest area.

I really like the silhouettes of the transmission line towers and lines against a colorful sky.

Steven