Welcome to My First Photo Email

The adventure begins!!

Welcome to my new photo email newsletter. Rather than sending it through dozens and dozens of emails, I am now using a "Substack platform" for my newsletters. This will make it much easier for me to create and post. Your email addresses will be private now and there will be an archive of past posts that you will be able to go through. You will also be able to search for any particular feature through the site's search engine.

If you ever do want to respond to my emails, you can message me on the site, or you can comment on a post which will then be viewable by others. You can also respond by forwarding the email to my personal email which all of you have.

In any case, thanks for being a regular follower. I am glad that you enjoy my photos and commentary. I expect there may be a few glitches that I'll need to work through for a little while. Please be patient. And now, to the birds.......

The special bird for this special post was seen at the Holy Trinity Monastery in St. David this summer. The males are called Peacocks and several roam the grounds

https://holytrinitymonasterycenter.com

One of the species of birds called pheasants, the Indian Peafowl is native to Asia. I had never heard the term "Peafowl" until I learned it for this email. The males are called Peacocks and the females are called Peahens. https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/indian-peafowl

The males can be very territorial and we parked our car in a spot that this bird seemed to feel was its personal space. I made the mistake of staring at it and it approached the car, raising and shaking its long back feathers. Those feathers are actually not tail feathers, but do cover the tail and seem to appear at the tail. They are actually feathers on the bird's back. Martha Stewart owns several Peafowl and wrote about them in her blog: https://www.themarthablog.com/2024/02/a-special-time-of-year-for-my-peafowl.html

Peacocks are beautiful birds. I've seen them wandering through the Reid Park Zoo, and at the Monastery they roam the ground freely. It is hard to miss them. The Monastery is adjacent to the Santa Cruz River and, with a few small ponds, is a spot known to southern Arizona birders.

Again, welcome to my "new" newsletters.