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BROOKVILLE
Backyard teems with beauty, wildlife
Abraham Lincoln has turned his yard into a sanctuary for all sorts of wild things.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
BROOKVILLE — Since moving to Brookville in 1962, Abraham Lincoln has been shooting wildlife in his backyard.
The builder had removed the top soil and Lincoln had a hard time getting grass to grow.
Abraham Lincoln of Brookville has more than 16,000 photographs of wildlife taken in his backyard, which he has transformed into a wildlife sanctuary. Here, an immature Cooper's hawk perches on his fence. Determined to make the land a better place for his family and for local wildlife, Lincoln, his wife, Patty, and his five children transformed the landscape into a wildlife sanctuary. With 16,000 photos, he can prove it.
For example, he has hundreds of photographs of raccoons. He knows them by name — Round Face, Slit Ear etc.
He picks out individual squirrels, like Stubby, whose tail was probably bitten off. Lincoln has a collection of Cooper's hawk photographs.
The first time he saw an immature Cooper's hawk on his fence, his knees got weak.
"My knees felt like they were rubber and wobbled, and I could hardly hold the camera up straight."
Since then, he has captured hundreds of photographs of hawks and thousands of pictures of birds from ruby-throated hummingbirds to screech owls and crows, in his backyard.
His camera has zoomed in on countless bees carrying massive loads of pollen in their leg bags.
He has up-close and personal looks at everything from wasps, bald-faced hornets, bumblebees and honey bees, to narcissus bulb flies that masquerade as big bees.
Years ago, he was accepted into the National Wildlife Federation's backyard wildlife habitat program.
Lincoln just recently photographed a pileated woodpecker in a tree across the street.
His camera is relatively new: a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT. He uses three lenses: a standard 100mm lens, the 18x55mm lens that came with the camera, and the 75x300mm zoom lens that he uses most of the time he is not shooting close-ups.
