Posts in Category: birds
Gartered Trogon. Panama
Gartered Trogon. Above the Changuinola Valley. Panama.
High above the Changuinola Valley in Northern Panama, right up against the Costa Rican border, above Bocas del Toro, we spent a half hour watching a Gartered Trogon, waiting for it to turn so we could see the color… without success. Then we walked across the highway to the small restaurant where we were going to eat our lunch, and found this one sitting over the parking lot. 🙂 That is the kind of trip we are having based in Tranquilo Bay Lodge…one of the best birding destinations in Central America.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. Program Mode. Processed in PhotoShop Express on my Android tablet.
Nest Building Verdin
Verdin. Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum, Tucson AZ
Though I am in Panama for a short night’s sleep before a 5am pick-up for our flight to Bocas Del Toro and Tranquilo Bay Lodge, I will take a moment to post this shot from the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum in Tucson. There are, of course, a lot of wild Desert birds who call the grounds of the ASDM home. This Verdin, building a nest, is one of them.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Woody the Woodpecker
Acorn Woodpecker, Ash Canyon B&B, Sierra Vista, AZ
Yet another shot from the Ash Canyon Bed and Breakfast south of Sierra Vista, Arizona. The Acorn Woodpecker is the archetypal house breaker, hammering on any solid surface, destroyer of aluminum siding and cedar shingles indiscriminately…made famous by the Disney cartoons of Woody the Woodpecker. They are the most common woodpecker in the foothills of Arizona’s Sky Islands.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Bewick’s Wren
Bewick’s Wren, Ash Canyon B&B, Sierra Vista AZ
This is another shot from Ash Canyon Bed and Breakfast south of Sierra Vista Arizona. Birders pay $5 to sit in the shade of the trees on the property and watch birds at the feeding stations around the yard…and it is always well worth it (photographers pay an extra $15 to bring a tripod in :). Many birders who come are looking for Lucifer’s Hummingbird or Spot Breasted Oriole, the two specialties of the house, but it is a great place to see and photograph all of the birds of the foothills of Arizona’s “sky islands”. This is a Bewick’s Wren, of the interior race of Bewick’s Wren, and it was hopping about under the feeders, less than 10 feet from my chair at the corner of the back porch.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 640 @ f4. Cropped for scale and processed in Lightroom.
Anna’s Hummingbird
Anna’s Hummingbird. Ash Canyon Bed and Breakfast, Sierra Vista AZ
On our last day in Arizona, Sally and I visited the Ash Canyon Bed and Breakfast south of Sierra Vista. Though it is a modest establishment it has a world class reputation among birders. It is one of the best places for both Spot-breasted Oriole and Lucifer’s Hummingbird. This, however, is a incredibly cooperative Anna’s Hummingbird. It came and sat above us, and allowed me to approach within 4 feet. Not so long ago, there were no Anna’s Hummingbirds in Arizona. They have expanded their range steadily eastward from Southern California over the past decade.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 220 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.
Green Heron and genetically confused duck
Green Heron and a Mallard/Mottled/farm/? duck, Sweetwater Wetlands in Tucson AZ
We were back at Sweetwater Wetlands in Tucson AZ this morning, this time with a group of 25 young birders. The early highlight of the trip was this Green Heron, always a good bird, and especially good to introduce young folks to the wonderful world of birds. It is pretty, interesting, and, when visible at all, they tend to pose nicely. The bird next to it is a genetically confused hybrid between…definitely a Mallard, possibly a Mottled Duck, and very likely a common farm-yard duck…along with possibly others. 🙂
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/1000th @ ISO 100 @ f5. Processed in PhotoShop Express on my Android tablet.
Sora, Sweetwater Wetlands
Sora Rail, Sweetwater Wetlands in Tucson AZ.
We had limited time this morning before show hours at the Southeast Arizona Birding Festival, so we went to Sweetwater Wetlands, perhaps the best known sewage treatment plant in America. In winter the old settlement ponds, now converted to a birding destination, attract a host of waterfowl and wintering passerines that you would otherwise be hard pressed to find here in the desert Southwest. In summer…not so much…but it is still good for nesting waterfowl, rails and the normal Desert nesters. Today the birding was slow. We did hear a few Soras on our way around the levie trails, but it was not until the third pass by the main observation deck that this one flew across my view while watching an immature Black-crowned Night Heron way across the pond, and landed at the edge of the reeds. Instead of scuttling back in deep, usual behavior for rails, this Sora spent a good 15 minutes in plain view.
Sony RX10iii at 1200mm equivalent field of view. (In-camera crop to 5mp.) 1/640th @ f4 @ ISO 100. Processed in PhotoShop Express on my Android tablet.
Ruby-throat
Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Kennebunk ME
Another shot from the back deck feeding station. Our only hummingbird. A Ruby-throated female that is regular at our feeder. She seems to be the only one in the neighborhood.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ f4 @ ISO 640. Processed in Lightroom.
House Wren in the wood pile
House Wren, Saco Heath, Saco Maine
I have a spotty record with wrens, photographically. I find them hard to photograph, for some unknown reason. I am always happy to try! I am always happy to see on, even if I can’t photograph it. (The obvious exception is the Marsh Wrens of Arcata California with are dead easy to photograph…though I am always happy to see them as well.) So, when I spotted this House Wren hopping around in the pile of broken boards from the old boardwalk at Saco Heath I was delighted. The fact that I got a decent photo is even better! The Civilian Conservation Corps replaced almost the full length of the Saco Heath Boardwalk over the past few summers, and the Nature Conservancy (who owns the property) and the State are doing controlled burns when weather permits to get rid of the old rotting wood. In the meantime it is piled six feet tall in several piles just as you come off the boardwalk into the Atlantic White Cedar grove. House Wrens love wood and brush piles, so it is not too surprising that one or more have taken up residence in these attractive piles.
This has, to my eye, the look of a young bird. I think I see just a hint of left over gape at the back of the beak, but I could be wrong.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 640 @ f4. Processed and cropped to about a 1000mm field of view in Lightroom.
Tufted Titmouse. Happy Sunday!
Tufted Titmouse, our back deck, Kennebunk Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Yesterday, when I was in the kitchen beginning to think about supper, I slid back the screen on the back deck sliding-door to chase a squirrel away, and then, when the birds at the feeding station came back almost immediately (including our female Ruby-throated Hummingbird) I left the door open and went for my camera. The light was lovely, with filtered sun after a brief rainstorm on the feeding station and the apple branches we have bolted to the deck for perches around it, and the background of dark trees 25 feet behind the station already in shadow. There was a fairly constant flow of Chickadees and Titmice, and the hummingbird came in for a drink from the feeder several times and perched out on the apple branches. I had a very enjoyable 30 minutes standing and watching and taking pictures. Small active birds are always a challenge, photographically, and there was the added test of getting exposure on the sunlit birds right against the dark background. And of course, there were the birds themselves, going about their business only a dozen feet from me. Thoroughly enjoyable, and perhaps more so, since I was propped up in back door of my own home. When I bolted the apple branches to the deck, it was times like this that I was thinking of…hoping for.
This Tufted Titmouse came several times. The image has almost a “studio” feel to it, a portrait, as though I posed and lit the bird for best effect. The lighting and the background gives the bird unusual dimension…and that, along with the level of detail in the feathers and in the bark of the branch, makes it look uncommonly “real”…alive and present. And of course, it was images like this that I was thinking of when I bolted the apple branches to the deck. 🙂
Still, for all my forethought (or hope) and what little skill I can claim with the camera, it is the bird that makes the image. The bird, bold enough to perch on my apple branch, close, while I stood completely visible in the open door. The bird with its little spark of life, trusting that little spark of life to me in exchange for a sunflower seed or two.
I think it is bred into us, even stronger than our hunting instinct, this desire for the peaceable kingdom…for an Eden-like experience where we are surrounded by all that lives…by every living creature, neither threatened by, or a threat to it…at peace with life itself. I think it is part of our heritage as children of God…the overflow and outflow of the creative love, the caring heart, that made the whole of the natural world we are part of. Our kinship with all that lives is an expression of our kinship with God, who created all in love.
And yes, it was to celebrate that kinship that I built the feeding station on our deck…and the foresight expressed was one instance (still too rare) of my eye being generous, and the light within me reaching forward in time to encounters and images like this. Happy Sunday!