Kippy Spilker

Popping in here to THANK YOU for coming out west on your tour! Unfortunately I have heavy deadlines the week you'll be near me, or I'd have definitely been there. I hope you have a great trip, and I can meet you another time. :) Looking so forward to the new book!

Thank you! Only just over 2 weeks in, but he is doing extremely well! :)

Gerald's first time out in our yard. Two dogs, one black lab and one white husky mix, roll on the grass on their backs. There is a fence and a bush in the background and the wall to a house in the left.

We were told Gerald is not interested in sleeping on beds. :) Three dogs snuggle on a colorful bedspread. One black lab, one white husky mix, one brown shepherd mix.

We were also told Gerald wasn't interested in sleeping on couches. A small white husky mix and black lab mix sleep on a couch while a brown shepherd mix sleeps on a dog bed in the background in a living room.

Gerald's first day smiling. About a week after joining our family, he finally started smiling. A black lab smiles up at the camera. There is a wooden stand to the left and tan rugs on a wooden floor.

Two weeks ago we drove through a snowstorm to meet Gerald, who became our new family member that day. Caught as a stray with wounds consistent with jumping or being thrown from a moving car, he has brought that beautiful lab energy back to our home. He is very loved. Dets in alt text. #adopt #dogs

Good for the soul! Thank you, my friend. :)

The bow of a wooden kayak, on blue-green water, faces a wall of tufa spires sticking out of, and reflected in, the water. On top of one of them is an osprey nest.

Geothermal activity along the shore of Paoha Island. There are rocks and bushes, with steam rising up among them. In the background is a walkable mud surface and more scrub/sagebrush.

Yesterday we saw a lot of #SomethingBeautiful during a gorgeous day paddle on Mono Lake, outside Yosemite National Park. After exploring the south tufa, we spent time on geothermal Paoha Island. What a great day to be in the caldera of a volcano.

#PhotographersUnited #Kayaking #Tufa #Geothermal

An aerial (drone) photo looking down into the clear aquamarine waters of Lake Tahoe. There are large boulders, and a group of people in clear-bottomed kayaks visible.

I'm lucky in that much of my job relies on me finding #SomethingBeautiful in our state. This was taken on one of those days, where our staff went kayaking on Lake Tahoe, in clear-bottomed boats. I took this photo of a beautiful day 'hard at work.'

#PhotographersUnited
#ILoveMyJob
#DronePhotography

Thank you, as always, for such a fantastic compliment. ❤

A blue heron is reflected, along with a bit of the snow-capped mountains, in a calm pond, surrounded by dormant grasses. There are wispy clouds in the blue sky.

#SomethingBeautiful in a quick cell phone snap, while on a bike ride today. This blue heron patiently allowed me to take a photo. Loved the reflections.

#Wildlifephotography
#CellPhonePhotography
#PhotographersUnited
#Photography
#Booksky
#Herons

I love that! And can so relate with missing one's own pup! I feel like the longer I'm away from ours, when traveling, the more desperately I accost any dog I come across. Haha. I love these photo shoots - any shoot with dogs is a win, but even moreso when there are this many!

A group of people in red shirts, with their respective dogs (of all sizes and breeds), pose in front of an Air Force plane at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport. The blue sky has big puffy clouds in it.

If you've traveled through the Reno-Tahoe Int'l Airport, you may have encountered #SomethingBeautiful of the canine persuasion - the volunteers of Paws 4 Passengers. Leaving smiles in their wake, they are 4-legged angels. Their people aren't too bad, either. ;)

#PhotographersUnited
#Dogs
#Flying

A cell phone photo of a riot of colors, in all shades of punks and greens, a stonecrop plant waking from winter dormancy. It is interspersed with dead grasses, twigs, leaves, stones, and dried Russian olives.

#SomethingBeautiful, for sure! A sign that spring is on the way, when the stonecrop starts waking up. :)

#CellPhonePhotography #PhotographersUnited #SpringIsComing #Succulents #Stonecrop #Gardening

Yes, it sure is!

Snowy and rocky ground, with pine trees all around. There are mountains and a beautiful calm Lake Tahoe in the distance. There is a somewhat broken log/wooden seat visible.

Made our way up to #SomethingBeautiful today. Almost 600 feet of elevation gain, I'm definitely feeling this snowshoe, but it was so worth it. This is Lake Tahoe as seen from near Captain Pomin Rock. #Photography #PhotographersUnited #LakeTahoe #Snowshoeing #SierraNevada #Nevada

I wish I had a magic wand to fix this. :(

Thank you, my friend. I don't have the energy or time for managing hives, but I'll give em as many flowers as I can. :)

I am in love with your dof and treatment of this image. Gorgeous - really evokes a mood.

Damn, that is really lovely!

Sorry! Virginia City, NV, has had the world outhouse races for over 35 years. :)

Orange and pink honeysuckle blossoms on a large leafy Candy Swirl Honeysuckle plant. There is a bee hovering over one of the blossoms and flinging little bits of pollen. Its wings are blurred, and there is a wooden fence in the background.

A couple summers ago we put in a pollinator wall, and a big part of it is this Candy Swirl Honeysuckle. #SomethingBeautiful and also something good for the environment. I loved this shot of the bee, flinging pollen as it hovered.

#Photography
#PhotographersUnited
#Pollinators
#Bees

Backyard pond at night, with a Buddha statue and solar lantern reflected in the water. Beyond the lantern is a small waterfall.

Backyard pond, built for our dogs to cool off in the summer. Buddha sculpture with a tree branch behind, and a waterfall on one end. There is grass surrounding, and water lilies in the water.

Ha. We have a small pond in our backyard, put in for the dogs. Originally it was 2 ponds with a river in-between, but too much maintenance! So we cut it back to the one, but hadn't built it right, so last summer we tore it all out and redid it. Here's how it looks now. :) Will look up oldbones, ty!

A dark desert playa at the bottom and a sky packed with stars, Milky Way, and also shooting stars (meteor shower).

A meteor shower over the Black Rock Desert (where Burning Man is held) in northern Nevada provided a whole night of #SomethingBeautiful last July.

#Photography, #Astrophotography, #BlackRockDesert, #PhotographersUnited, #MilkyWay, #MeteorShower

A beautiful coopers hawk, with feathers ruffling in the breeze, perches on a wooden fence.

A photo of a coopers hawk, sitting on a fence above a homemade waterfall. The photo is taken through a door so you can see the glass panels and framing, and also the wall of our neighbor's house in the background. The waterfall has some grasses growing in one corner.

A few years back, there was #SomethingBeautiful outside the french doors in our dining room. This gorgeous (and patient) Coopers Hawk is no dummy - lots of songbirds visit our waterfall. Not bad for shooting through glass.

#Photography, #BirdPhotography, #NaturePhotography, #PhotographersUnited

"Definitely not the croc" made me laugh out loud! Beautiful pups. :)

Watercolor and ink paintings of 5 different species of bumble bees plus a miner bee and a leafcutter bee. Handwritten ink notes are interspersed among the illustrations. August 7, 2021, Nachusa Grasslands, 88 degrees- felt like 95+, hot and humid with some clouds. Five species of bumble bees are depicted. Bombus pensylvanicus- American Bumble Bee- found on early goldenrod, Bombus auricomus male- Black and Gold Bumble Bee- big eyes! Territorial. Below that is the female feeding on beebalm. Then Bombus vagans-Half-black Bumble Bee- hairy looking! In the middle is Bombus affinis-Rusty-patched Bumble Bee feeding on Joe Pye Weed. Below that is a Bombus citrinus female- Lemon Cuckoo Bumble Bee and the male feeding on Joe Pye Weed. The queen invades host colony, kills other queen, eggs and larvae and forces workers to care for its own eggs. Hosts-B. impatiens and B. vagans. At the top right are 2 smaller native bees- Andrena aliciae- yellow-faced miner bee and Male leafcutter bee- brushy front legs. Note at bottom- Rusty-patched Bumble Bee workshop (federally endangered) - looked for B. affinis, B. pensylvanica, B. vagans, B. citrinus male and female and others. Between all the groups, 15 Rusty-patches were seen! Preferred habitat- border between woods and prairie

Working on this page brought back great memories of attending the bumble bee workshop at Nachusa Grasslands back in 2021. We were able to get close looks at many different species, but the conclusion was that our native bees are precious and need care.
#SciArt #insects #naturejournal #prairie

Thank you. Very kind. :)

A great white egret stands on a curved branch of a downed tree. The background is a soft, dark tangle of branches and grasses, and there are grasses in the foreground as well.

Feeling a little overwhelmed of late, had to take a bit of a mental break to quiet thoughts. I endeavored for my brain to look like this photo, #SomethingBeautiful photographed while drifting by on a kayak on the Cosumnes River.

#PhotographersUnited
#BirdPhotography
#Kayaking
#Silence
#Solitude

The tip of a wooden kayak bow at the bottom, and water that looks like liquid silver, due to the gray sky conditions. There is an island directly ahead (Fannette Island) covered in snow, and then a shoreline covered in snowy pine trees with a mountain rising behind. There is a road in the distance, but at this time it was closed, due to the snow.

#SomethingBeautiful from another angle, following up yesterday's post. This day out on the water, it looked like we were paddling through liquid silver. Gorgeous, every step of the way.

#PhotographersUnited
#LiquidSilver
#Kayaking
#Photography
#WinterPaddling
#LakeTahoe

Thank you for sharing, and for your perspective on "subtle" drone use. ;) I absolutely agree.

In general, cold doesn't bother me much (so long as I know I can get warm eventually. Ha) and I so very much prefer Tahoe without all the people on it! It's magical. :) Thanks for the kind words!

Than you for your kindness.