Posts in Category: wildlife
Aracari in the sun
Collared Aracari, Rio Santiago Nature Lodge, Honduras
I have already posted a shot of a Collared Aracari in the rain…looking slightly bedraggled, so here is one in the sun. My conclusion: Aracaris always look slightly bedraggled. 🙂 It is just their look…the Aracari way. This bird has its tail cocked off sharply to the right (our right, his left), so he looks a little tail-less. This was taken at Rio Santiago Nature Lodge, on the slope above the hummingbird feeders, while taking a break from photographing hummingbirds (always the real business at Rio Santiago).
Nikon P900 at 1000mm equivalent flied of view. 1/400th @ ISO 100 @ f7.1. Processed in Lightroom.
American Bittern
American Bittern. Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands, Viera Florida
I am just another bunch of reeds. Move along. Nothing to see here! The American Bittern practices its invisibility posture at the Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands at Viera Florida. It seems to me that the first years I went to Florida for the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival, the American Bittern was difficult to find. Over the last 4 years at least, I have seen them regularly both at Merritt Island and at Viera Wetlands. This bird was working along the edge  of one of the ponds, in and out of reeds, never completely visible, but giving us good looks all the same.
Nikon P900 @ 1000mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 110 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.
White-necked Jacobin
White-necked Jacobin
I sat for most of an hour in the little gazebo-like tower on the back of the Rio Santiago Nature Lodge, in a chair at one of the tables, and photographed hummingbirds as they rested in the trees between me and the feeders. This is a White-necked Jacobin. You can just see the white patch at the nape of the neck that gives it its name. Besides being a portrait of the bird, I like the out of focus branches which provide a frame and a context for the bird.
Nikon P900 at 1100mm equivalent field of view. 1/400th @ ISO 280 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.
Skimmer!
Black Skimmer, Merritt Island Causeway, Titusville FL
Just before my trip to Honduras, I spent a week at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival in Titusville Florida and brought back over 700 keepers. Obviously I only got to share a few of those before I was off to the more exotic birds and landscapes of Honduras, so I am going to loop back, over the next few days, and pick up some of the best of my Florida shots.
This Black Skimmer was one in a small flock that is often on the shore, or feeding just off-shore along the causeway between the bridge and Merritt Island proper, right by the parking for the fishing pier. Late afternoon, almost sunset, light coming in low backlighted the Skimmers, and actually illuminated the red on the bill from the inside. Skimmers stand in a tight group, head to the wind, with eyes barely open…when they stand…and this bird is displaying the typical posture (and attitude). I am surprised that no one has coined the phrase “stoic as a skimmer” since that is my primary impression of skimmers on land. 🙂 Just enduring until it is time to get up and out and feed again.
Nikon P900 at 1800mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 400 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.
Toucan in the rain…
Keel-billed Toucan, the Lodge at Pico Bonito, Honduras
The avocados were ripening in the trees on the grounds of the Lodge at Pico Bonito in Honduras when I was there, and avocados attract birds…Lovely Contingas in the high canopy, and Collard Aricaris and Keel-billed Toucans lower down. This year Emerald and Yellow-eared Toucanetts joined them from higher up in the mountains. On my last morning there, waiting for my bus to the airport, shooting hummingbirds from the cover of the porches and decks at the Lodge while it rained, a group of Aricaris and Toucans came through the grounds. I love Toucans, so I put up my umbrella and chased them around the corner and out to the big trees around two of the cabins where I knew they might stop to feed on the avocados. And they were there, feeding in the rain. Shooting from under an umbrella is not easy. You have to balance the umbrella somehow while holding the camera, and you have to pay close attention to the angle of your cover while you attempt to track and frame moving birds above you. As this shot attests, however, it is possible. The rain streaks add to the portrait and the colors of the wet bird are as rich as they get.
Nikon P610 at 1330mm equivalent. 1/100th @ ISO 400 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.
Specticaled Owl
Specticaled Owl, Rio Santiago Lodge, Honduras
Rio Santiago Lodge in Honduras is where you go to photograph hummingbirds, but over the past year the Lodge has had several attractions besides the hummers. Just after I was there in February 2015, a newly fledged Specticaled Owl moved into the area behind the lodge, and beginning last fall was seen regularly within a short hike of the Lodge. The bird is now just about a year old, and can still be found, most days. The guides at the lodge keep track of its comings and goings and generally know about where to look…consequently it is now perhaps the most photographed Specticaled Owl in the world :).
And what an amazing bird it is. Beautiful in all the ways any owl is…but spectacular in its facial pattern. On the day I was there, it was somewhat obscured by branches…but still an amazing sight.
Nikon P900 at 1800mm equivalent field of view. 1/30th @ ISO 800 @ f6.3. (Pretty good for hand-held at 1/30th second.) Processed in Lightroom.
Female Black-headed Trogon
Female Black-headed Trogon, Cuero y Salado NWR, Honduras
You never know what you will see from the boats at the Cuero y Salado National Wildlife Refuge in Honduras. You reach Cuero y Salado via a short bus ride from the Lodge at Pico Bonito to the train station in La Union, where you board the century old, narrow gauge, one car and an engine, banana train for the ride out to the Refuge on the coast. From the Refuge Visitor Center you take small motor boats out into the three channels at the mouth of the Cuero y Salado rivers, up into the mangroves and out toward the beach. Along the way, you see a wide variety of birds and wildlife native to the habitats. This is a female Black-headed Trogon which was sitting on a branch all but overhanging a narrow channel through the mangroves.
We only regularly get one Trogon, the Elegant, in the US, right down along the Mexican border in the sky-islands of Southern Arizona…but there are more than a dozen in Central America. The Black-headed is one of the most widely distributed and most common.
Even though the guides are expert in their handling of the boats, and make every effort to get you and boat still enough for a good view and even a decent shot, shooting from a moving boat is real challenge…and only possible thanks to the excellent image stabilization built into most lenses and long-lens superzoom point and shoot cameras these days. For the shots from the boat, I switched the Nikon P900 to “Active Image Stabilization” which compensates for both small vibrations due to hand holding, and for larger motions when you are shooting from a moving platform. It worked very well.
Nikon P900 at 1800mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 400 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.
Woodnympth at the feeder
Crowned Woodnmypth, Rio Santiago Lodge, Honduras
Part of what makes Rio Santiago Lodge a great place for Hummingbird photography is how close you can get to the feeders. If you sit on the terrace under the thatched roof of the open-air restaurant, there are feeders hanging just above your head. Moving around in the restaurant is a challenge because if you are not careful you will bump your head on a feeder and get showered in sugar water (or get skewered by a Long-billed Hermit or Saberwing :). Even on the open slope above the lodge where most of the feeders are, you can sit within 8 feet of an active feeder. That makes shots like this possible. This is another Crowned Woodnmpth using one of the home-made feeders off the deck above the lodge.
Nikon P610 at 1440mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/320th @ ISO 1000 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Just a Blue-crowned Motmot
Blue-crowned Motmot, the Lodge at Pico Bonito, Honduras
Just another Blue-crowned Motmot. Okay, just because the Blue-crowned Motmot is the most common of the Motmots at the elevations around the Lodge at Pico Bonito (and even up at Panacam Lodge at the edge of the cloud forest), does not mean that it is not a spectacular bird. It was, indeed, almost the very first bird I saw at Panacam, and among the first I saw at Pico Bonito. Still. Under any other circumstances, it would be a knock-out bird. It has the long weird tail, the bright blues and greens, the deep rust of the breast, the red eye, and a sexy name: Motmot! This bird was along the entry road at Pico Bonito, in the trees overhanging, and we walked under it on our way to try to photograph Lovely Cotingas. I found myself at the back of the group by the time I finished photographing it. No one else took a second look. Birders!
Nikon P900 at various exposures as the light changed between shots, and at various focal lengths from 1000mm to 2000mm. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.
Crowned Woodnymth
Crowned Woodnymth, Rio Santiago Lodge, Honduras
This is a collage of two shots of the Crowned-Woodnymth Hummingbird taken at Rio Santiago Lodge, in the high rainforest of Honduras. Rio Santiago maintains nearly a hundred feeders on the slope above the lodge, and on the terrace by the outdoor restaurant, and attracts too many hummingbirds to count, During the height of the season, June and July, they go through 435 pounds of sugar a week. I have only visited in February, but I will be back in late June this year. The best part of Rio Santiago, however, is not the feeders, but the abundance of natural perches and blooming flowers, which makes hummingbird photography there, as far as I am concerned, a unique experience.
The Crowned Woodnymth, which was, until recently, called the Violet-crowned Woodnymth, is one of the most colorful of Central American hummingbirds. Blue, green, violet, and black shimmer in almost any light…each so intense that it just about overloads the digital sensor in your camera. I am not sure why they took the violet from its crown. I suspect it is a relumping of some of the closely related crowned woodnympths, which were once considered a single species, then split, and now lumped back together again. This collage shows a bit of the attitude of the bird too. It is a feisty little thing, well capable of seizing its share of the sugar water. It is also one of the more common of Honduran Hummers, so you see a lot of them, both at the Lodge at Pico Bonito, and at the Rio Santiago Lodge.
Two frames from the Nikon P610 at 1100mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/320th @ ISO 1400 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage. If you are interested in joining me in June at the Lodge at Pico Bonito and Rio Santiago Lodge, check out the information on the trip at Point and Shoot Nature Photographer.Â