In the English gardens of the conservatory in the Assiniboine Park.

Installment two: prairie dog eating.

I saw this funny little guy, a prairie dog, in Assiniboine Park Zoo, Winnipeg. Prairie dog chillin’.

Trying to get a little bird perched on the bench, I scared it away, leaving me with a picture of just the bench instead. I like it, standing there in the midst of the tall grass.

And this one is actually clutching a fish — well, half a fish (as opposed to this one)!

This osprey lives in a state park on Honeymoon Island in Florida, near Clearwater (and Tampa). Birds are fun — and difficult — to photograph.

I also saw a baby bald eagle in its nest this day, from 330 feet, the closest you are allowed to an eagle’s nest under federal rules. I never saw his (her?) parents though, but it was still cool to see a (not yet) bald eagle (the characteristic white head is developed later). Here is the baby, which was born around Valentine’s Day and was appropriately named Cupid.

There were lots of osprey, however, bringing fish in to feed their young ones. Yes, I realise this particular one doesn’t clutch a fish, but it’s one of the better pictures I took. I used the 300mm, which is an okay lens despite being very basic and cheap ($200).

I caught this robin (Norwegian: rødstrupe) cleaning its feathers with my 300mm. I wasn’t this close though, it’s cropped to about a third of the size of the original. A lesson from this picture is that I could well stop up one or two times when it’s this bright, to make it sharper and get a greater depth of field.

It’s that time of year again. There were two geese and two goslings, unfortunately I could never get them all in the same shot. This is the best one I took in my opinion.

Magnolias are gorgeous flowers. Many people have magnolia trees in their gardens. Here’s one of many, many pictures that I took with my 300mm.

Closeup of the trees from the last post. Here you can see what I mean. It looks decently sharp at this size, but try to open a bigger version of it (or don’t). They’re beautiful though.

• Nikon D70, Nikkor 300mm at 270mm,  1/100 sec at f/14, ISO 200, CPL
• Hard to keep it sharp at that extension/f stop. Put it in burst mode but should have compromised on the ISO instead since I had no tripod.