Saturday, February 7, 2009

Lost for words today...


A Green Heron at Green Cay, almost too close to get a shot!

I'm still going through the Florida pics and working on a slide show about the birds down there, as well as finishing up a show on birding in Britain. So, I have birds on the brain and I decided just to post photos today...some are even from behind, go figure!

An American Coot, just like me!

Uncommonly attractive Common Moorhen.

Our lifer Limpkin! Great pose, why is he looking at me like that?

A Little Blue Heron taking a break and looking suave.

I think Pied-billed Grebes are the cutest little things (corny, eh?)

Don't Royal Terns remind you of Peter Boyle?

A White Ibis, even being color blind, the eyes and bill are amazing to see.

6 comments:

  1. Love your Green Heron.
    I can't get them to stand still!

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  2. Very nice Green Heron. He comes complete with matching green slime on his feet! I think Pied-billed Grebes are the cutest little things too, and I love the orange on the Moorhen.

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  3. Fantastic images, Dave!

    Is it on purpose that only the first one is clickable / has a hi-res version?

    I finally found some time to say 'Hi' again, but I've dropped by several times before.
    You have a very nice blog here and I added it to my favorites blog list to keep a closer eye on it.

    Best regards
    Nickolay

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  4. Thanks Nickolay,
    I figured it out! The first pic before script will allow you to see it at full size. Every other pic won't work. I don't know why, but then again, I still can't figure out how to embed a web address in a sentence...one day...
    Dave

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  5. Hi Dave,

    I had a quick look at the source code of this page and found out why only the first image is clickable. Only its code is (kind of) correct. For some reason the others are just thumbnails into the body of the text. It seems that Blogger generated funny functionality while still uploading the full sized images...

    I found the hi-res locations, so I could see the fantastic detail. I love the quality of your shots!

    the Ibis location for example

    Now, here's some technical info which I hope might be helpful. [I started writing a long note on this, but it got too complicated and I deleted it :(]
    The easiest thing to start with is the html code for a clickable link in text:
    <a href=PASTE_YOUR_ADDRESS_HERE>THIS_IS_YOUR_DESCRIPTION</a>
    The description will be visible in your text as a link and after clicking it, it will open the address.

    Don't know what browser you're using, but my main browser is Opera. I also have Internet Explorer6 and Firefox. After a while I found out that Firefox gave me many more formatting options and buttons than Opera, so it became my main blogging tool. It has a built-in spell checker, a very handy feature for a non-native English speaker like myself. It shows two tabs for formatting posts
    - Edit Html view where you can inspect and change the code that drives your page. I find it great for learning and playing with settings that happen 'behind the scenes'
    - Compose - a rich text editor with formatting buttons as of a word processor. It really is interesting to do things in this mode and then see what code it generates in Html mode.

    It's worth spending time playing and experimenting with all the features in Blogger. Even trying different templates, etc. For such a reason I have a non-public test blog where I do all this and when I'm happy with the result and know exactly how I did it, I change the setting in PoAA. This way the public blog always looks good.

    Now, if you know the address of an image, for example the Ibis's hi-res pic http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_CyCxq9MJLmY/SY3CNLqQDDI/AAAAAAAAALg/HjxP0NRviXk/White+Ibis_0827+(2).jpg
    you can use the following simple template to paste the image's address and have it clickable and working all the time (this should be done in Html view)
    <div style='text-align: center;'><a href='HIRES_IMAGE'><img src='THUMB_NAIL'/></a></div>
    where you substitute the HIRES_IMAGE with the http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_CyCxq9MJLmY/SY3CNLqQDDI/AAAAAAAAALg/HjxP0NRviXk/White+Ibis_0827+(2).jpg
    and THUMB_NAIL with http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_CyCxq9MJLmY/SY3CNLqQDDI/AAAAAAAAALg/HjxP0NRviXk/s400/White+Ibis_0827+(2).jpg
    there's a s400/ added before the last slash which means that inline we will only see a scaled down version of the picture. (you can go s144, s320, s400, s640, s720, etc)
    It takes some more time and copy/pasting doing things this way but the results will be more predictable. It is a very simplified version of all the code that can display a clickable image on a web page, but it can give you an idea how these things work and a bit more control.
    I presonally found it quite frustrating at the beginning that Blogger was trying to guess what I wanted and generated a lot of unwanted code. Even though I had a bit of a web design experience before, I learned a lot by just playing with the blog and looking for info online...

    Since Picasa web albums and Blogger became one and the same thing, it might be better to upload photos to Picasa and then just copy the addresses and paste them into Blogger. That's what I do.
    Finally... there's a free Google program called Picasa which you can run on your PC and use to upload and manage photos and I think it's worth having a look at too...

    Sorry for the ultra long post. I hope at least some part of it will be helpful. If not, just ignore it :)
    Best regards
    Nickolay

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  6. Thanks Nickolay!
    I'll have to read this over a few times. I can be good with cameras, but computers...well, I try.
    If only I didn't have to work a real job...
    Cheers!
    Dave

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