I have a pretty good zoom lens on my camera, but nothing works better than getting close to your subject, so close that your subject fills the camera’s field-of-view. These photos have been collected over the month of April. They comprise two birds and two turtles: Mourning dove, Robin, Red-eared Slider and Snapping turtle. In all of these pictures, I’ve zoomed in on an eye. You can feel the petrified fear of the dove and experience the creepy otherworldliness of the snapper. I think that this last photograph is the best of the lot, what with that alien eye peering out from the primordial soup. The two turtles were both photographed in Forest Park, in about the same location, but a couple of weeks apart. Likewise the two birds were taken in Tower Grove Park, in two neighboring trees, also a week apart. When Anne and I do one of our weekend bicycle rides we always stop in these locales and when you stop, you often see things that otherwise you would have missed.