Black Rain Gallery Inc

06/14/2026

Wi******er , Tn

06/08/2026

06/02/2026

In 1994, The Wilderness Society and the Forestry Department invited me to photograph the seven wilderness areas of Florida. I was given seven days in which to achieve the project! I took it on as a challenge to see if I could do it. I had two pieces of film each day that I could shoot. This photograph is one of the locations I came upon in the Ocala National Forest.

📷 BILLIES BAY © 1994 | Ocala National Forest, FL

05/25/2026

Memorial Day. The yard shifted this weekend. Here's what changed while everyone was grilling.

The first fledgling robins are on the ground — hopping, chirping, short-tailed, speckle-breasted. The parents are ten feet away. The rescue calls have started. The birds don't need rescuing.

The barn swallow nest above the front door is feeding chicks. The chatter intensifies at dawn and dusk. Six weeks from mud to fledging.

A painted turtle nested on the front lawn last night. The hole is covered. She's back in the pond. The eggs are underground for the next two months. 🌿

Firefly larvae are in the final pupal stage in the top inches of soil. First flash in the mid-Atlantic in roughly two weeks.

The dawn chorus is starting to quiet. Paired males are reducing song volume. Unmated males sing louder, later, more desperately.

🐦 What the quiet means:

- The singing is tapering — not because the birds are leaving, but because the territory wars are won
- The feeding phase is noisier than the singing phase — begging chicks are louder than advertising males
- June will be louder, messier, and more visible than May — fledglings everywhere

The grill was lit. The yard was watching. The season shifted while nobody was paying attention.

05/25/2026

The hummingbird at your feeder this May — the one that hovered for a second to check you out before drinking — is almost certainly the same bird that was at your feeder last May. Banding studies have tracked ruby-throats returning to the exact same yard nine years in a row.

She remembers the feeder. She remembers the porch. She knows which window she can fly past safely. And she just spent eighteen hours flying nonstop across five hundred miles of open Gulf of Mexico to get back here 🐦

That's why the same blur shows up at the same spot every May. It's not coincidence. It's her.

🌿 The three details that matter most this month:
- Never add red dye to her nectar — plain water and plain white sugar, four to one, nothing else. The red on the feeder is enough to attract her. Audubon has been warning against dye for years
- Scrub the feeder every few days — sugar water grows mold and yeast fast in warm weather, and a moldy feeder can kill her. Hot water and a bottle brush, no soap residue
- Don't take the feeder down in September — late migrants and stragglers need fuel. Feeders don't delay migration; daylight does. Leave it up at least two weeks after you see your last hummingbird

05/25/2026

I used to pull these without thinking twice 😅 Now I look a little closer first:
🌸 Violets are native wildflowers in many areas, not just “lawn weeds.”
🦋 They support fritillary butterflies, which use violet leaves as host plants.
🌿 They do well in shady spots where grass often struggles.
💧 Once settled, they usually don’t need much attention.
✂️ If they spread too much, I just thin them instead of wiping them out completely.
I don’t let them take over every bed, but I do think they deserve a little more credit.