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120minute.bsky.social
OMPhotos
@120minute.bsky.social
560 followers 660 following 290 posts
A.k.a. Zahn. Enjoy photography, travel, and any time I can spend outdoors. All posts are my original work except reposts.
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pacbirds.bsky.social
Northern Pintail taking off for the #DucksOutOfWater theme of #BirdOfTheDay.

#birds #photography #birdphotography #birding #nature #wildlife
Large duck with long tail taking off from the water, water drops are falling off it.
November 13, 2025 at 12:53 PM
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vickyoutenphoto.bsky.social
Treecreeper

linktr.ee/vickyouten...

🪶🦉 #birds #wildlife #ukwildlife #nature #photography #ThePhotoHour #vickyoutenphoto #treecreeper
November 15, 2025 at 8:00 AM
120minute.bsky.social
A White-breasted Nuthatch prepares to dive into #Flyday, eyes fixed upon the weekend foraging for late-autumn insects in the sun-washed forest.

#birds 🪶 #birding #birdphotography #naturephotography #EastCoastKin
Long ago, before the rivers found their voices, the people forgot how to walk in balance. They leaned too far toward the light, or too far toward the dark. Their hearts grew heavy with wanting, and the trees bent with them, unsure which way to grow. The elders called to the forest for a teacher, and from the great oak came a small bird — White-breasted Nuthatch, quick as breath, soft as the sound of a seed dropping. She climbed the trunk headfirst, upside-down, her tail pressed to the bark. The people laughed. “Little one, you have lost your way.” But the bird only answered, “No, I am seeing both sides.” She showed them that healing does not come from standing still, but from turning — from seeing the world as a circle, not a line. When they watched her, they learned: to begin again each morning without bitterness; to use what is near at hand, even small things, and make them sacred; to hide their most precious hopes where noise cannot reach them; to trust the help of others, yet keep their own rhythm. And when the healers sang for balance, they whispered her prayer: Let me see as the nuthatch sees, turning the world to make it whole. The people began to walk more gently. The trees straightened. The rivers remembered their paths. Even now, when you hear that little tap-tap on the pine, know she is still at her work — walking the tree both ways, reminding us to change our view, to begin again, and to look with both eyes.
November 14, 2025 at 11:48 AM
120minute.bsky.social
A Song Sparrow peers through the gray mist of an early autumn morning, standing sentry while the flock below feasts on grass and thistle seed.

#birds 🪶 #birding #birdphotography #naturephotography #sparrow
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) A little bird, with plumage brown, Beside my window flutters down, A moment chirps its little strain, Ten taps upon my window–pane, And chirps again, and hops along, To call my notice to its song; But I work on, nor heed its lay, Till, in neglect, it flies away. So birds of peace and hope and love Come fluttering earthward from above, To settle on life’s window–sills, And ease our load of earthly ills; But we, in traffic’s rush and din Too deep engaged to let them in, With deadened heart and sense plod on, Nor know our loss till they are gone.
November 13, 2025 at 11:48 AM
120minute.bsky.social
White-throated Sparrow, balanced on a thin late-autumn branch — its gold and gray plumage mirrored in the fading leaves and quiet, tired meadows.

#birds 🪶 #birding #birdphotography #naturephotography #sparrows #WhiteThroatedSparrow
Fujiwara no Sanekata, a court poet of the Heian era, was known for his wit, beauty, and vanity — and for his strange devotion to sparrows. In a world where every gesture at court was a poem, he found in those small birds the one thing that answered him without pretense. They gathered outside his residence in Kyoto each dawn, flickering through the mist like living brushstrokes. Sanekata scattered rice before them, whispering verses as if to lovers: “Little messengers of morning, what secret stirs your wings?” The courtiers teased him, saying his heart had flown from the palace to the trees. Yet he called them his consolation in an age of ceremony. When he was exiled to distant Michinoku for a quarrel at court, he carried a sparrow in a bamboo cage on the long road north. There, amid reed marshes and the cries of cranes, he released it — but each evening he left a handful of rice on his veranda, certain it would return. He wrote, “In the voice of a sparrow, I hear the city I have lost.” Legend says that in the final year of his life, the sparrows did return — hundreds of them, crowding the eaves of his hut in a storm. When attendants entered the next morning, they found Sanekata seated by the window, brush fallen from his hand, the ink still wet. Outside, the sparrows chattered as if reading his last poem aloud. In old Kyoto, people still say that sparrows linger near poets’ homes because they once listened to Sanekata’s verses — small keepers of memory, carrying fragments of an exile’s voice across the centuries.
November 12, 2025 at 11:36 AM
120minute.bsky.social
Female Dark-eyed Junco in soft winter plumage. Early arrival to Frederick County, Maryland.

#birds 🪶 #birding #birdphotography #naturephotography #photography #junco
Each year, when the last embers of autumn burn low, winter rises above the horizon as a gray dove. Her wings unfold across the sky and blanket the hills and meadows with silence and peace — a crystalline sheen of frost, the faint threads of an icy breeze. In the high air the clouds grow heavy, the scent of snow sharpens, and then her feathers begin to drift down: pure and white, a peaceful covering that smooths the world into quiet solitude. As her heralds come the small charcoal birds, reminders of the embers that rekindle the winter hearth on cold December mornings. They perch in the pines, gather in flocks, and a handful of millet will draw them in droves. Shining black eyes, buffy backs, and slate hoods above pure white breasts — their beaks a soft, subtle pink. These are the juncos, the birds of winter, wings fanning in the crisp, cold air to replace the last humid breath of autumn.
November 11, 2025 at 11:46 AM
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adrianlimani.bsky.social
Colors 🍂🍁
#naturephotography #Photography #Nature #PhotoOfTheDay #PhotographyLovers #LandscapeLovers #FineArtPhotography
November 10, 2025 at 8:10 PM
120minute.bsky.social
Male Downy Woodpecker on the roof of my shed in the light of a golden November sunrise.

#birds 🪶 #birding #birdphotography #naturephtotgraphy #downy #woodpecker
Long ago, the world often forgot to wake. The nights would stretch too far, and the dawn would hesitate beyond the hills, unsure of its place. The rivers grew cold, the trees shivered, and even the wind seemed to lose its way. Among all the creatures, it was the Downy Woodpecker who could not bear the silence. He flew to the tallest tree above the river and began to strike the bark again and again, his beak ringing like a drum. With each blow, a thin seam of light split the horizon, and the sky slowly began to breathe. The others heard him and stirred — frogs lifting their voices, insects tuning their wings, the people opening their eyes to the bright crack of a new day. They say that since then, the Downy has kept the same promise: each morning he tests the strength of the dawn. If the world grows weary, he will wake it again. His crimson crest glows with the color of that first sunrise, and his tapping still carries through mist and fog like a heartbeat beneath the clouds. To some, it’s just a bird at work, hunting grubs in the bark. But to those who listen closely, it is a reminder that light never returns on its own — it needs a call, a keeper, a steady rhythm. So when the woodpecker greets the dawn each morning, pause. Let the sound roll through the quiet places inside you. He is striking the edge of darkness, making sure the day still knows its way home.
November 10, 2025 at 11:54 AM
120minute.bsky.social
A Cooper’s Hawk, perched above a pond, just after sunrise. There was a small flock of sparrows at the edge of the water that he was locked onto with blood-red eyes.

#birds 🪶 #birding #birdphotography #naturephotography #raptor #hawk
A Cooper’s Hawk perches at the edge of a pond at dawn. Charcoal feathers catch the faint light before spreading silently into flight. He patrols the forest margin, eyes burning like embers as they rake the thickets and grasses for motion. From his tucked yellow legs extend talons sharp as razors, curved to pierce and hold. Then, from high above, he drops like a bullet, the air folding around him. A sparrow bursts upward, only to be seized on the wing, and swept away. A dark, silent shadow claims his share from last year’s brood.
November 10, 2025 at 1:07 AM
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onlyveesaz.bsky.social
Ubiquitous to the area and always causing trouble- California Scrub Jay
CA Scrub Jay on a fallen tree
November 8, 2025 at 6:19 PM
120minute.bsky.social
Remembering the summer pond, under Wednesday's hunter's moon.

meigetsu ya
ike o megurite
yomosugara

(Matsuo Bashō, translations in alt)

#waterlily #photography #BloomScrolling #Eastcoastkin
Matsuo Bashō 1684 Harvest moon— all night long I circle the pond. Bright autumn moon— around the pond I wander, all through the night. The full moon’s light— I walk the pond’s edge till night itself dissolves.
November 8, 2025 at 6:16 PM
120minute.bsky.social
Northern Mockingbird stands sentinel above the season’s last green leaves, Frederick County, MD, early November 2025.

#birds 🪶 #birding #birdphotography #naturephotography #EastCoastKin
The mockingbird sits on a sprig of green leaves, the last breath of summer’s color. Around him, the meadow has faded from the brilliance of autumn fires to the quiet brown of winter. His song, once a flood of mimicry and melody, has softened into fragments — dry scolding notes and half-remembered phrases from summer. Soon the soft snows will come, and he will move with the winter flocks, branch to branch, taking his share of the fermented berries that hold the memory of sunlight. In that way he keeps the summer alive through the cold — until the spring sun returns to warm the fields and fatten the buds. Then, once more, he will remember his full-throated songs.
November 6, 2025 at 11:50 AM
120minute.bsky.social
Swamp Sparrow perched in reeds at the edge of a wetland meadow, Frederick County, MD.

#birds #birding #birdphotography #naturephotography #Sparrows
A Swamp Sparrow perches at the edge of cover near a bog in a grassy thicket. Its chestnut crown is slightly raised, the rufous patches on its wings half-veiled by lemon-green rushes. A fine yellow eye ring and dark mask set off the gray face, and a warm wash touches the feathers below the eye. The breast shows a soft tan with faint, darker mottling, subtle colors for camouflage in the shadows of the marsh.
November 5, 2025 at 11:49 AM
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davesadventures.bsky.social
Heading out for dinner and then a World Series party! May the Jays stand out like this Beech tree does! #Photography #EastCoastKin #Nature
a lone Beech tree with radiant yellow leaves in a drab forest
November 1, 2025 at 8:46 PM
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fraggenstein.bsky.social
"Hello Darkness My Old Friend" ~ Don't forget that the clocks go back an hour tonight in the UK - dark evenings now till spring 2026 🕰️⏰~ one of my favourite photos of a Fox just gently stepping into the light 🦊 #mammals #fox #wildlife #bluesky #naturephotography #naturetherapy #ukwildlife
October 25, 2025 at 8:05 PM
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markscheflen.bsky.social
Pine Warbler, Central Park, NYC. A small songbird found mainly in pine forests across eastern North America. markscheflen.com #birdphotography #conservationphotography #biodiversity #warblersofinstagram #pinewarblers #wildlifeconservation #birdsseenin2025
October 31, 2025 at 12:45 PM
120minute.bsky.social
An intense stare from a tiny Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Frederick County, Maryland. October 2025.
These were plentiful in Maryland last weekend, filling the trees, but I didn't see a single one lift its ruby crown. #birds 🪶 #birding #birdphotography #naturephotography #Flyday #EastCoastKin
This tiny Ruby-crowned Kinglet swims through the autumn forest, weaving through foliage that’s a tapestry of pomegranate and sapphire as it searches for plump insects that have slowed down and fattened up in the late-season chill. A pale lemon wash glows along the edges of its wing primaries, and bright white wing bars flash in the understory of the dark, rain-damp woods. Its black eyes and needle-fine beak fix the observer with an intense, almost challenging stare. Barely three inches long, the kinglet never stops moving—darting, hovering, vanishing among the leaves. The male conceals a crown that is nothing short of astonishing. Most of the day he looks modest, olive and gray-green. Then, in a flash of agitation or courtship, the feathers atop his head flare to reveal a vivid ruby patch, metallic and refractive, each feather catching light and glowing. For an instant he blazes like a tiny king, his ruby crown flared in royal defiance.
October 31, 2025 at 10:44 AM
120minute.bsky.social
A local farm has a massive sugar maple on the edge of the property, and last week it glowed in the sunset. Looking up through the canopy reminded me of the #Chihuly Persian Ceiling in Seattle. These images are all of that same gigantic tree. #Autumn #Fall #EastCoastKin
Under the Chihuly Persian Ceiling in Seattle, backlit glass glows like a captured sunset—fluted bowls and discs layered in molten orange and ocean blue, lit from above until the air itself seems to glow. Step beneath it and you drift inside color, where shadow dissolves and edges no longer hold. It’s like being immersed in color, swimming in a pool of light. A tremendous maple burns with the same palette—reds spilling into gold, each leaf a pane of living glass. Sunlight floods through the crown until the air turns liquid and sound disappears. You stand in the middle of the radiance, and your thoughts melt into the warm light and disappear. Time slows down and what remains is breath. Deeper in, the hues mellow to amber and honey. The canopy hangs low, filtering light into a calm warming glow. There is amazing variation in the colors and gradients across the canopy. You look around. The glass ceiling has become wood and leaf, but the sensation is the same—a luminous stillness that erases distance between body and sky, a hush that seems reverent. At the edges the fire cools to lemon and green. You walk out from beneath the canopy and feel unbound from clocks and routines. You are transformed. This tree will now be remembered as the Chihuly Tree: in autumn a living ceiling of color and quiet reflection, where art and nature share the same bright breath.
October 31, 2025 at 2:58 AM
120minute.bsky.social
A red maple branch stands out in the hardwood forests of southwestern Virginia. Deep in the woods, in a spot near Pandapas Pond, Blacksburg. Autumn, 2025.

#Fall #Autumn #NaturePhotography #Virginia #Eastcoastkin #Blacksburg #VirginiaTech
They say there was once a man up on Brush Mountain named James Lineberry, an old gray-bearded banjo player who used to pick with Lester Flatt himself before a bass fish the size of a washtub pulled him clean off his feet and broke his finger out at Pandapas Pond. Couldn’t play worth a lick after that, so he turned his music into something you could drink. Folks claimed his shine was the smoothest east of Galax, clear as spring water and absolutely dangerous. The revenuers hunted that still for years, tromping through laurel thickets and mud till their boots came apart, but they never found it. Lineberry had tucked it so deep in the woods that only the mountain seemed to know. Come every autumn, when the fog hung low and the colors burned high, one red maple branch would blaze brighter than all the rest. That was the sign, they said—the banner that marked the trail. Find that branch, and you were in the race: Lineberry’s kin outrunning the law with the tires of their trucks kicking up the mountain gravel. By winter the branch went dull again, and the secret went back underground with the roots.
October 30, 2025 at 10:52 AM
120minute.bsky.social
Morning mist at the Waterbury Reservoir, Vermont. October 6, 2025. The dark forest wakes up and the trees along the bank ignite in the sunrise like fire at the water’s edge. 🍁🔥

#Fall #Autumn #NaturePhotography #Vermont #Eastcoastkin
That morning, the mist hung heavy over the swamps and lakes, rising in thin clouds above the trees. A gull passed on soft wingbeats, barking to its flock, while the distant cry of a loon echoed through the valley. It spoke to the autumn spirits lifting from the reservoir banks like tongues of flame in the dawn, reaching up toward the pale blue sky. The mountain answered, its echo rolling back across the water as the season turned and life in the dark forest awoke and moved out toward the light — toward the sun, the earth, and the quiet fires of autumn.
October 29, 2025 at 10:09 PM
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marysunshineisgone.bsky.social
Shot on 10/27. Last bee? 🐝🥲
Bee on white aster
October 29, 2025 at 12:13 PM
120minute.bsky.social
Autumn Colors reflected through the mist on Waterbury Reservoir, Vermont, Early October, 2025.

#Fall #Autumn #NaturePhotography #Vermont #Eastcoastkin
A thin veil of mist drifts across the still water, softening the reflection of the autumn trees rising at its edge. Gold, crimson, and rust-colored leaves shimmer faintly through the haze, their hues mirrored in the water below. The sunrise filters through the branches, a golden wash warming the cold air and igniting the treetops. A chill lingers despite the sun, enough to bite the ears a bit. The mist moves like breath over glass, diffusing the forest into a watercolor of shifting color and light. It is the kind of morning that wakes the senses.
October 29, 2025 at 10:50 AM
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ilovebirding.bsky.social
Green-tailed Towhee #towhee #ilovebirding #birding #birds #FDT #Colorado #bird_photography 🪶
October 28, 2025 at 3:36 AM
120minute.bsky.social
Female Purple Finch I met on Sunday morning’s walk. She’s bristling at me because I interrupted her breakfast of fermented dogwood berries. (1/2)

#birds 🪶 #birding #naturephotography #birdphotography #purplefinch
The female Purple Finch’s plumage is muted and understated, yet beautiful to the male who courts her with his burgundy crest and raspberry-streaked flanks. In autumn she sings from the treetops, her voice reminiscent of the lost calls of the Red-eyed Vireo, but slower, softer, and tinged with something like sorrow. She sings about her memories from summer and gazes south, dreaming of the warm tropical days she’ll chase and of her mate waiting there to share the short, quiet winter days. When the fire returns to his plumage and the sun warms up, they’ll journey north again, carrying summer in their wings.
October 28, 2025 at 10:44 AM
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remyscameraeye.bsky.social
A Chance Encounter... It's always a great day, when I run into this handsome boy. Say "Hello" to my little friend, Francois The Fox (husband of Francesca), enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. Stunning!!
🦊📸🇨🇦
#AlgonquinPark #Fox #Mammals #Nature
#Wildlife #WildlifePhotography #OntarioParks #Canada
October 27, 2025 at 3:01 AM