The Heard Nature Science & Wildlife Sanctuary is located in the city of McKinney just east of I75 and south of HWY 121. With close to 290 acres of land and 6 plus miles of meticulous well-carved trails, this sanctuary was made possible by the generosity of Miss Bessie Heard.

I had the opportunity to share this photographic experience with my good friend Brian Anderson who impressed me with his knowledge of birds. For a day, I had my own tour guide who named the different kinds of birds, their behavior, and able to recognize them by their sounds.

I brought a Canon EOS 20D with a EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, a Lumix LX3 for macro shots, but mainly used my EOS 5D Mark II with an EF 400mm f/2.8L II USM.  After 24 hours and a few painkillers, I’m still hurting from carrying around this 13lb monster.  The 400mm is the ideal focal length for this type of photography and I’m happy with the images I was able to capture with it -I will for sure be making large prints from some of them.  If I had to do it all over again I would carry the EF 400mm f/4L IS (4.5lb) or any of the EF 300mm (less than 3lb) plus a teleconverter.

Brian Anderson

Black-crowned Night-Heron

Black-crowned Night-Heron at the Heard Museum

A world upside down

Snake

Brian Anderson

A Monarch Butterfly at Heard Museum

Turtles at the Heard Museum

Bull Creek Park in Austin, TX

At the beginning of October 2012 I traveled to Austin, TX for the RedGate SQL in the City event. I made the trip to Austin a few days before the conference to visit with family and go to some of the parks in the area.  My first stop was at Bull Creek Park on the west side of Austin where I capture the pictures above.  From there I traveled west to the Pedernales Falls state park expecting something huge with lots of water.  It was kind of disappointing because there wasn’t much water flowing. On the flip side, I was able to walk right on the middle where normally is covered by water.

Pedernales Falls in Austin, TX