~Watchful and Vigilant~

~A Male Gambel's Quail~
~Callipepla gambelii~

This proud parent keeps a attentive and unblinking eye from his perch atop a Texas Ebony (Pithecellobium flexicaule).
About 10 feet below him is his family and an adopted family.
Approximately 15 or so chicks and 2 adult females busy themselves feeding and foraging.
What often happens in the harsh desert environment is that one of the female lost her mate to a predator, maybe a bobcat or a roadrunner.
In order to protect her brood she assimilated into another family.
Now free to raise her chicks under the ever watchful and protective eye of her new benefactor.

And now for something completely different!
When I re-birthed myself to The Blip, I had to promise BikerJim to keep it short, sweet and simple. That is a chore for me, so hard to keep those self-imposed guidelines, but I'm trying, oh how I'm trying! The main reason I took a hiatus for the last couple of years is because posting images became a Herculean task. I was coming home in the evening with maybe 100, 200 or 3oo shots in my camera and I had to pick just one. And to complicate matters, after spending sometimes many hours shooting the day away, there would be a fantastic sunset to take to camera. That, in and of itself was very disconcerting. Then I would spend maybe 3 to 6 hours post-processing that one image. After that I could easily eat up another hour or two writing my image blog. And to make matters worse, that image and those words had to be perfect, what hell had I created for myself. Perfectionistic, dyslectic, and very art obsessed BikerJim was losing it, slowly but surely. So I had to de-Blip! Don't get me wrong, I loved my art and all that it stood for, but The Blip was consuming my life, not a good thing!
But now that I'm back in the saddle again, my credo is "short, sweet and simple". I hope you all understand why my postings may not be up to the ol' BikerJim standard, but maybe I am constructing a new BikerJim standard, I think so! I'm enjoying my image making again, and thats whats important, yes?

Thanks for indulging my self-rant.
Please enjoy my art,
the old art is dead,
long live the new BikerJim!!!

See ya around the Blip, TucsonJim