Posts in Category: Texas
Tern Dive. Happy Sunday!
My visit to Galveston Island State Park on Friday morning provided an opportunity to practice catching Common Terns in flight. There was a long boardwalk across one of the channels and the Terns were hunting on either side, often quite close to where I stood. They hover, which makes them easier than most birds to catch…but they also dive out of their hover to take fish. I only caught the dive twice in a half hour of shooting.
This is a crop from a 600mm equivalent shot. I was using my personal flight shot program on the Olympus OM-D E-M10. ISO 200 @ 1/640th @ f10. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
And for the Sunday Thought: Terns are among the most graceful of flyers…quick, agile…with long flexible wings, and lovely tail extensions on either side. Watching them always fills me with a mix of awe and joy…an almost giddy feeling of happiness. I got my first really good flight shots on Friday, and was able to closely study the way the wings cup the wind as they hover, how they use those tail extensions in flight, and how it is all in service of the hunt…how intent they are on the fish below, and how effortlessly they manoeuver in the air. They are incredibly focused creatures…and that is, I think, a large part of what gives them their grace. When they are in the air, everything in them flows in a single direction…to a single goal, and the goal pulls feather and muscle into forms of elegance.
Wouldn’t we all be better off if we could say the same of ourselves? If our lives lack grace and elegance, is it not because we always pulled in too many directions at once. We are anything but focused. When we meet someone who is as simply focused as a Tern in flight, and that is very rare, we immediately recognize the grace that fills their lives…and it fills us (or at least me) with that same giddy happiness to see them. If they are focused on God and the spirit, it is easy, and right, to call them saints. But, in my experience, even if the focus that collects them and gives them grace is in art, or music, or social justice, or simplicity, or simply love in its best sense…they seem to me to all be, at their hearts, a focus on the one creative spirit that animates us all.
And I have to say, it is certainly my aspiration to someday live a life as focused as a Tern in flight…and as filled with grace.
Little Green Metalic Bee in Heaven!
I think this flower is just Spider Wort. I found it growing at Galveston State Park yesterday morning. I had my screw-on macro lens attached to the 16-50mm zoom on the Sony NEX 3NL and was taking some Wildflower shots in general before I noticed the tiny Metalic Bee working the blue flowers.
Camera as above. ISO 200 @ 1/250th @ f8. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Texas Wildflower Action
After a day of setting up the booth and then tending it from noon until 6pm at the Galveston Feather Fest yesterday, my shutter finger was getting so twitchy that I begged off on the evening’s dinner plans at Bennos Cajun Seafood in order to visit Corps Woods Nature Reserve for a hour or so while we still had light. Corps Woods is a patch of, basically, waste ground along a ditch and a seep across the road from the Coast Guard compound, with a few taller cottonwoods to justify the “woods”. There is a Bushwacked trail and two short boardwalks to observation decks along the seep. Though the birding was pretty slow…there were a few wildflowers to entertain. And I did manage a few shots of a Yellow-crowned Nightheron through heavy brush. All in all my hour there was certainly as satisfying as Cajun seafood 🙂
We have here, I believe, two varieties of Blanket Flower (bottom), Cardinal Flower (upper right), and Lantana. The Lantana was a difficult shot in deep shade using my screw on macro lens on the Sony NEX 3NL. The wind was blowing the flowers around so even though I took multiple shots I did not get one that is totally sharp. The others were framed in full sun at the long end of the 600mm equivalent zoom on the Olympus. The Cardinal flower used the 2x digital extender as well for a 1200mm equivalent field of view.
Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. The Lantana has some additional processing in Photo Editor by dev.macgyver. Collage assembled in Pixlar Express.
Shaggy Pelican in Flight
I am in Galveston Texas for a few days for Feather Fest…a birding and nature festival held on the island each April (except for the year the hurricane came through). I was here the year after the hurricane when there was still a lot of visible damage. It is remarkable how fast a thriving tourist attraction can heal from even a major disaster.
One of the things about Galveston for the nature photographer, of course, is the Pelicans. I think there are more Brown Pelicans in the air over Galveston and in the waters just offshore at any one moment than I have seen in all my trips to other Pelican hangouts. I did not get checked in at the hotel until close to 5 PM, but that did not stop me from spending an hour on the beach right across the road shooting Pelicans in the air before finding supper. I have to say, the Galveston Pelicans are a scruffy lot…or maybe it is just the time of year…or maybe it is something in the water. Given the recent oil spill in the gulf, I suppose these birds might have some light oiling. At any rate, they are not nearly as smooth and presentable as their California cousins. I hope it is not oil, but it well might be.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. I used my programed “flight mode”…continous 8 point auto focus, etc. I find that it works well on big soaring birds…is more of a challenge on smaller soaring birds (Gulls and Terns), and will take a lot of practice with smaller active flyers (I tried for Swallows last week in Ohio without much success). I am still learning the camera. ISO 200 @ 1/400th @ f8. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Cropped for composition.
Bird of Paradise in Texas
Leaving Bosque del Apache for the moment, just taking a break, here is something for #floralfriday and the day after Thanksgiving…aka Black Friday. A little color to break the shopping gloom (shopping madness?). I always love Bird of Paradise. It is such an outrageous plant. I was, therefore, delighted to find one in bloom outside my hotel room in Harlingen Texas while there in early November for the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival. I generally only see them in San Diego in February and March. And this plant, with just a few blooms, was well exposed and easy to photograph, unlike the often tangled masses of BofP in Southern CA. Had to do it.
Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Macro mode. f2.9 @ 1/45th @ ISO 100. 28mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Atmosphere in Texas
This shot is, of course, all about atmosphere. We were on the King Ranch in South Texas. I was one of the leaders on a birding fieldtrip. We went out onto a section of open grazing lands in search of Spraigs Pipit and grassland Sparrows. It was not long after dawn and the sun, still behind the bank of clouds, was drawing water…which is the highly descriptive term for those streaks in the air. I always try to capture it when I see it, and here it had the sweep of grassland an the line of greenwood along the stream in the distance to set it off. Who could resist?
From a technical standpoint this is a complex image. The drawing water effect is not easy to catch. I started with a 3 exposure in-camera HDR using the Samsung Smart Camera WB800F in Rich Tone mode. The image was better than a standard shot of this very high range scene would have been, but still did not catch the atmosphere. After transferring the image to my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 I processed it in Snapseed using the HDR Scene filter and a combination of Ambiance and Shadow in Tune Image, along with some Sharpen and Structure in Details. That brought it closer but still…
I had some time on a flight from Newark to Denver yesterday so I opened the image again in Photo Editor, a very capable image processor for Android that few seem to know about (the lame name does not help:-). Photo Editor allows you to apply color effects…brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, temperature, etc…to the whole scene or to any shape drawn on the scene…or you can brush the effect on just where you want it. The brush is particularly effective with the Note’s stylus. I used a shape to adjust the color balance of the grasses, which were too blue in the original, and then various brushes to adjust saturation and contrast in the belt of trees. I also used a Clone brush to treat an area of the clouds right in front of the sun which had completely burned out even with the HDR treatment. Then I applied some local area contrast (fine detail enhansement) using the Unsharp Mask tool on just the grasses. Finally I applied a some light noise reduction to the whole image. (I told you, Photo Editor is amazing.)
It is still not a perfect image, but it comes close to catching the drawing water effect…and it was fun!
Red-bordered Pixie
Though the best known US colony of Red-bordered Pixie butterflies might be next to the Burger King in Edinberg Texas, I came across a few at the National Butterfly Center. One was an orange-fringed and very worn specimen, but two were full reds, and appeared quite fresh. This one was tucked back in the foliage high in a small tree. Not the best light but it is such a spectacular bug!
Pixies are Metalmarks though they appear quite atypical for the family. They are only found in South Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley floodplain. Finding the few I found at the NBC was one of the highlights of my visit to the gardens…one of the highlights of my visit to the Valley in fact.
Canon SX50HS in Program with – 1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1800mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Texas Wasp Moth: Happy Sunday!
I first saw this creature at the National Butterfly Center among the butterflies that also frequent the Mist Bush. This shot is from the butterfly gardens at the Bentsen Rio Grande State Park World Birding Center Visitor Center. I thought it was a wasp. It looks like a wasp, but like no wasp I have seen. A wasp in fancy dress? Art deco wasp? Clown wasp? Like maybe a wasp from somewhere far south of the border where they are not afraid to flash bright colors? A tropicana wasp? Take another look.
And then, while researching the White-tipped Black Moth that I also photographed at the NBC, using some photo keys to moths of the Rio Grande Valley, I found that there are moths that do not look my idea of a moth at all. When it came to identifying this bug, I thought of those odd moths I had seen, and typed “wasp like moth Rio Grande” into a Google search. Texas Wasp Moth came right up on top.
What an outrageous creature! I mean, look at those disco booties and the way too colorful feet…and what what is with the matching orange and black stripes? Then consider the totally unnecessary white accents, and the frivolous bright yellow tips on the antennas? Who designed this thing? 🙂
Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1800mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And for the Sunday Thought: Well we are already started on it. Who designed this thing? Who has sufficient whimsy? Who has that kind of sense of humor…because I know this bug makes me laugh. And the fact that it is not even a wasp at all, but a harmless moth in an over-the-top costume, well that just caps it. I might have trouble getting by the stinging wasp thing, but as a moth, this is just a wonderful, amazing, delightful creature. Or that is what I think.
And of course I know, rationally, that it was not designed for my amusement or delight. But that whole beleaving, faith-based, seeing-wonders, wonderfilled side of me has to suspect that it was designed for someone’s amusement and delight. It is such a good joke! Too good a joke to have happened without intent. A lovely joke! A joke created and delivered with love. A living joke, that can only have come from the heart and the mind…from the loving intent of the creator of life. Or that is what I think. And thinking that makes me happy. I enjoy being able to share the joke…the delight…the wonder…the whimsy of the Texas Wasp Moth…with its author…and with you.
Now come on…doesn’t this non-wasp bug just make you simile! That is a good thing. Or that is what I think. 🙂
Happy Sunday!
Mocker in the Morning.
While hunting butterflies at the National Butterfly Center, I came around the end of one of the taller plantings to find another butterfly watcher sitting quietly on a bench about 20 feet away. Nothing odd in that. But between he and I, this Northern Mockingbird bird sat out in the sun, just sitting, not 10 feet from either of us. I had to zoom back to normal 1200mm equivalent from my butterfly working 1800mm to get the whole bird in the frame. Even stranger, the stranger and I stood talking about the bird for several moments before I walked on. The bird was still there, sunning itself, apparently unconcerned about what we humans were up to in its garden.
Granted, if it lives in the NBC garden, it sees a lot of humans, especially at the height of butterfly season in the late fall, so it is pretty used to us…but still, that is a pretty bold behavior for a Mocker.
Canon SX50HS in Program with – 1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And the bird was still sitting there when I walked away.
Bordered Patch, with bling!
Of the 8 Snouts in tropical America, the American Snout is the only Snout that occurs regularly in the US, mainly along the border with Mexico, but it has been reported as far north as Southern Canada. They go through periodic explosions, keyed to the cycle of drought and wet in the Southwest and southern Texas. I don’t know if this was an explosion year, but there were certainly Snouts everywhere in the Rio Grande Valley in the highest numbers I have seen in my 10 years of visiting there in November. I am talking about 6 of every 10 butterflies you looked at were Snouts. 🙂
Embarrassment! This is not an American Snout at all. I was photographing Snouts in the Bush below and just assumed this was the underside. It is in fact a Bordered Patch. Which of course has its own interesting story. Paint my face red. 🙁
This shot is from just after the National Butterfly Center gardens opened for the day at 8 AM…before the sun crept up over the sheltering belt of tall trees to the south-east to warm and dry the vegetation. If you look closely you will see that the butterfly is still covered with dew…tiny drops of water like jewels…the bling from my title. I took a lot of pictures of Bordered Patches this trip, and this is my favorite.
Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1800mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.