Greg Burt Photography

My parents have asked me to clear out a section of their yard that has become overgrown with pricker bushes. It's where the chickens used to live, but the last time they had chickens I was 11 or 12 years old. I'm 29 now, so you can do the math and figure out how long pricker bushes have been growing there. But I'm not here to tell you about the pricker bushes.

What I'm here to tell you is that my parents' house has been somewhat of a wildlife sanctuary over the past couple of days. Yesterday when I arrived there was a lump of something in the driveway... which turned out to be the turtle you see at the beginning of this post. Go ahead, click the thumbnail to see him (or her) closeup. Today as I was working my way through the pricker bushes, there was a pissed off catbird hopping around and screeching at me. At one point I even said out loud, "What the hell is your problem?".

A short while later I cleared away enough of the prickers to find the nest with four eggs in it. So now the plan is to leave some cover around the nest until the eggs hatch and the baby birds are gone. The cool thing is that within a couple of weeks, I'll be able to get some baby bird pictures since I have access to a bird nest.

Posted by Greg Burt at 8:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Podcast, May 16, 2007

My response to blaming cell phones for car accidents.

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This morning I went for a hike at the Noon Hill reservation in Medfield and about 2/3 of the way up the hill, I ran into this garter snake on the trail. I heard something move in the leaves, even though I was listening to my iPod, and spotted the snake right away. After getting out of my way, it remained motionless in the leaves while I pulled my camera out of its case. I needed to switch to my telephoto lens, but I wanted to get a shot or two before I made the switch in case the snake decided to bolt.

As soon as the shutter snapped for the first picture, the snake immediately rearranged itself into an attack stance... facing me with its head cocked back ready to strike if I got too close. Now, this may sound dramatic, but it's just a garter snake and the worst it could have done to me is the equivalent of a mildly painful pinch. I wasn't worried about it lunging at me, and it held that position while I fired off a bunch of shots. It probably lived there and was just trying to defend its home. The snake was very nice about the photo shoot, and we both went our separate ways after.

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Podcast, May 13, 2007

It's podcast time once again. Tune in for Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Francesco Scavullo, and some odd stuff.

Posted by Greg Burt at 10:10 PM | Permalink

I've started work on a nice local photo project. I'm finding and taking pictures of the historic buildings in Wrentham. Basically, if it's got a plaque on it with the year it was built, that's a building I'm going to photograph.

The final goal is to put my photos side by side with old photos of these places so you can see how much things have changed over the past 100 years or so.

Posted by Greg Burt at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)