On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Balloon Juicers who are on the road, travelling, etc. and wish to share notes, links, pictures, stories, etc. from their escapades. As the US mainland begins the end of the Earth day as we measure it, many of us rise to read about our friends and their transient locales.
So, please, speak up and share some of your adventures, observations, and sights as you explore, no matter where you are. By concentrating travel updates here, it’s easier for all to keep up-to-date on the adventures of our fellow Commentariat. And it makes finding some travel tips or ideas from 6 months ago so much easier to find…
Have at ’em, and have a safe day of travels!
Should you have any pictures (tasteful, relevant, etc….) you can email them to [email protected] or just use this nifty link to start an email: Start an Email to send a Picture to Post on Balloon Juice
From Debbie:
This may not be share-worthy, and that’s fine. I didn’t crop the photo because I didn’t want to lose the scale.
This shot is of a 30- to 40-foot pine of some sort that serves every spring as scaffold to a very energetic wisteria. This is from a couple years ago as the blooms were beginning to fade. I hoped to get a better picture this year but the late frosts ruined my plans. There’s always next year!
With a sight like that, I cannot avoid publishing! I am a man who loves flowers, trees, and this crazy, towering combination thereof is just divine, even if it’s not at its best.
Finally, some breath-taking magic (please send more):
Where it was taken: Maquipucuna Clound Forest Reserve in the Western Andes of Ecuador
When: 5/20/2017
Commenter: AlbatrossityMale Green-crowned Brilliant, one of the many gorgeous hummingbirds in the cloud forests of Ecuador. We were in Ecuador and the Galapagos with a university Study Abroad Class studying Biology and Creative Writing in May.
Words … cannot …. Wow. I’m sure there’s a Portuguese or German word for what I feel when I see that; joy seems so insufficient.
I once held a stunned, less-reflective hummingbird in my hand as it regained consciousness and strength, only to push off and fly away. It was just one of many magical experiences with these amazing creatures, though certainly the closest and most intimate. But I’ve never seen the kind of intelligence or majesty as in this picture.
The complexity, diversity, and richness of life is amazing, especially in the natural world around us that we often only notice when travelling.
Have a great day all!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes
My attempts at hummingbird feeders only drew ants…
Amazing photo.
JPL
The colors of the hummingbird are amazing. Thanks!
I love wisteria, but it can be a tad invasive. Wow!
SiubhanDuinne
That. Bird.
That. Photo.
Quinerly
❤??
Elizabelle
The hummingbird is spectacular, as is the wisteria with altitude. Love this feature.
Good morning all. I am celebrating last night’s Democratic Virginia primary win by Ralph Northam, and the predicament in which Ed Gillespie and the Republican apologists find themselves. (Almost pantsed by a Confederate-monument loving rabblerouser from the exurbs.)
Juju
That is a beautiful hummingbird. I just finished making nectar for the hummies we have here. I forgot to last night, otherwise I wouldn’t be up this early. The birds we have here buzz around my head when I put the fresh feeder out. That’s always kind of neat.
Juju
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes: Hummingbirds prefer pure cane sugar to beet sugar or a mix. That may be why you didn’t attract any hummies. Hummies can be very picky about the nectar they will drink. It can also take a number of years to attract more than one or two birds. It may also be nesting time where you are, and that makes the mother bird territorial about what she considers to be her feeder. Once the babies fly, feeder territory goes back to the usual buzz fights.
rikyrah
Both pictures are beautiful. How they got that close to the bird… amazing
MomSense
You have to love wisteria. It won’t bloom where you plant it but puts on a glorious display where it chooses.
I can’t get over that hummingbird. I had a close encounter with a hummingbird in my garden. It hovered right in front of my face for a few seconds and I was completely transfixed by it. Such amazing creatures.
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes:
You could always try planting flowers or shrubs or hanging baskets of flowers that they like. I attract many hummingbirds to my garden that way.
Waratah
The humming bird photo is amazing, they never stop moving. Debbie my mother loved wisteria and every year they were in full bloom our family walked to Parramatta park to see them.
J R in WV
The Ancients used hummers in their ceremonial garb, and that pic shows why, outshines gemstones by quite a bit.
We have had lots of hummers some years, not so much other years, no telling why the difference.
One summer not so long ago I was reading on the back deck, where two disc shaped feeders were hanging, both kept full. I was in a shady spot near a corner of the house, sitting very still when two combative hummers came around the other corner and past my head on either side, so close I felt the breeze from their hyper-rapid wings.
If I would have flinched or ducked, I may have been impaled by that lance of a beak they carry around. I think their regular high speed is like 50 mph… Hummingbirds.net says
so really fast in combat mode.
Laura
That bird is majestic.
Barbara
I am in awe of that hummingbird picture. I gasped when I saw it. We have hummingbirds around my yard from time to time but I have never gotten a picture. When I was in the Panamanian rain forest highlands, there were dozens of hummingbirds and we barely even saw them they moved so fast. I think you would have to have your camera on some kind of auto shoot feature. Just amazing, and of course, amazingly beautiful.
Mnemosyne
Hummingbirds crack me up. When my parents lived in Arizona, they had a hummingbird feeder on their patio, but the woodpeckers loved it, too.
So one morning while I was visiting, I was sitting in the kitchen with my dad and looked over to see a hummingbird hovering in front of the sliding door. My dad saw it, too, got up, and went outside to scare the woodpecker away from the feeder so the hummingbird could use it.
Yes — a two-ounce bird had managed to train a 180-pound human to do its bidding. ?
The Golux
@Juju:
I have hummingbirds that visit me every day when I sit out on our deck with my laptop, and we have no feeders, per se. What we do have is several potted salvia plants, which the hummingbirds seem to enjoy. No need to mix anything up – just water the plants every other day.
Juju
@The Golux: I don’t mind feeding the hummies, and I’ve never heard of a salvia plant. I’ll have to look up that one.
debbie
Nature really is something else!