Posts in Category: wildlife
Green-winged Teal
Green-winged Teal. Tijuana Slough Estuarine Research Center. Imperial Beach, CA
We spent the morning yesterday at Tijuana Slough National Estuarine Research Center. We had good views of Godwits, Whimbrels, and Long-billed Curlews…and stunning views of a few Green-winged Teal. The angle of the early morning light was just right to pick up the green on both head and wings in a way I have seldom seen before, and the Teal floated down smooth water of the Slough to within 40 feet of us.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 200 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly for scale in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Double-crested (ah ha!) Cormorant
Double-crested Cormorant, La Jolla CA
Being an east-coaster, I have, on occasion, wondered what the “double-crested” in Double-crested Cormorant was all about. Crest? Double crest? When I saw this bird on the cliffs of La Jolla, California I knew it was a cormorant…pretty unmistakable…but it did not occur to me that it might be a Double-crested until I looked it up. It was a real “ah ha!” moment. So that is where the name comes from! Though, in all honesty, I might have called it Double-eyebrowed Cormorant, still, I get it now! It turns out that eastern Double-crested Cormorants never get the “crests” the bird is named for. Ah ha! And the western birds only have the crests for a short season in late spring and early summer, breeding season. They must have crested out early this year because I have been visiting San Diego every February/March for 13 years, and this is the first time I have seen them. 🙂 Ah ha! Gotta love that eye too…
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/320th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed, and cropped for composition, in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Eye of Pelican!
Breeding plumage Brown Pelican, La Jolla CA.
I have a short list of “must get to” places when I am in San Diego for the San Diego Birding Festival each March. The cliffs at La Jolla are high on that list, and, if weather and time cooperate, are generally my first visit. Harbor Seals with pups at one end of the cliffs, Sea Lions (this year also with pups) at the other, and breeding plumage Brown Pelicans, Double-crested Cormorants, Brant’s Cormorant, a host of western gulls and a few terns, and generally a lot of ground Squirrels in between. It is a wildlife photographer’s dream. The birds can be quite close on the rocks the top of the cliffs…the Sea Lions are medium distance (except for the adolescent and pup nestled up in the shade of a bush right against the fence this year), and the seals are a good way away on Children’s Pool Beach (which is closed for the birthing season)…but all are close enough for some amazingly satisfying shots.
Like this shot of the Brown Pelican’s eye…need I say more. Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 100 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Egret Plumage
Great Egret, Gatorland Rookery, Orlando FL
Today we will drop back almost a month to my Space Coast Birding Festival trip.
The lovely breeding plumage of the Great Egret came close to killing off the bird. Back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the lady’s hat trade consumed Egrets by the thousands, and the carnage sparked one of the first spontaneous conservation movements in the US…one that lead directly, if eventually, to the protection of most non-game birds within our borders. So you might say that these lovely plumes did their part to save the birds…all the birds in the US.
There are few places where you can get as close to breeding Egrets as you can at the rookeries at Gatorland and St Augustine Alligator Farm in Florida. These commercial ventures, whether you think them hokey or educational, have, in their own way, helped to save the birds as well. Providing a protected, alligator infested, pool with big trees over and surrounding is simply an invitation to Egrets, Herons, Storks, and Spoonbills to come and nest…and they do. And because there are people there everyday, they get used to the people, and nest withing feet of the boardwalks. This shot is a telephoto macro taken from about 20 feet at 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1/1600th @ ISO 125 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Grove-billed Ani, Aguan Valley, Honduras
We birded from the bus (once it was light) all the way from the Lodge at Pico Bonito to the Honduran Emerald Preserve…three hours both ways. Much of the trip was in the interior valley of the Aguan river…beautiful open country with rushing tributaries and a backdrop of mountains on either side. We pulled up beside a large “tank”, a scrape pond made for watering cattle, to look for ducks and waders, and this Grove-billed Ani was sunning itself on a fence post not far from the bus. This shot was taken out the open window of the bus.
Anis are not the most beautiful of birds, but they are interesting. The massive bill and the always somewhat disheveled plumage with its touch of iridescence are pretty unique. This bird is letting the sun into its feathers to kill mites that live there.
Sony HX400V at something over 1200mm equivalent field of view (using Clear Image Digital Zoom). 1/800th @ ISO 400 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Rufous-tailed Hummingbird
Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Rio Santiago Lodge, Honduras
In honor of several inches of fresh snow on the ground here in Maine this morning, we will return to hot Honduran hummingbirds. This is the Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, photographed at the Rio Santiago Lodge, high up on the shoulders of Pico Bonito in Honduras. The Lodge is 5 km up a single track road, at the very end. Strangely enough, there are not one, but two churches, just below the lodge. I am not sure what population they serve up there on the mountain, apparently far from any dwellings. The lodge is famous for hummingbirds. They maintain over 50 feeders, hung from the outdoor patios and the trees on the grounds. We saw 12 species while we were there, and there is potential for a half a dozen more.
The colors on a hummingbird, especially the gorget on head and throat, are not pigment…they are the result of light refracted through tiny bubbles in the feathers, so the colors vary greatly depending on the angle of the light and its intensity. I think this is the same bird in each frame. It returned to the same perch but the images were taken over the course of a couple of hours, and the light was changing all the time.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1/125th second at ISO 1000-1250. Processed and cropped for scale in Lightroom and assembled in Phototastic on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
(Violet) Crowned Woodnymph: Happy Sunday!
Crowned Woodnymph, Lodge at Pico Bonito and Rio Santiago, Honduras
This is my second hummingbird collage in a row. Yesterday I featured the White-necked Jacobin. Today we have four shots of the Crowned Woodnymph, until recently called the Violet Crowned Woodnymph. The White-necked Jocobin and the Crowned Woodnymph were the most numerous hummingbirds at the feeders both at the Lodge at Pico Bonito and the Rio Santiago Lodge in Honduras. The first shot here is from Pico Bonito…the others are from Rio Santiago. And, as I mentioned yesterday, all were taken in the subdued light of a cloudy afternoon. The shots at Rio Santiago were taken the the shadow of impending rain.
The hummingbirds of Central America are enough to make we want to visit again and again. Sony HX400V. The light levels were low, but there was enough light for ISO 320-1250, with shutter speed pegged at 1/125…which is about as slow as I would dare to go with a hummingbird, especially hand held at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Phototastic on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
It is interesting that the White-necked Jacobin collage from yesterday went somewhat viral on Google+…and, in fact, it is still getting 10Â new +s an hour, and garnering views 24 hours after posting. As of a moment ago it was at 1734 +s, 301 comments (plus about 30 removed as spam), 132 shares, and 802,000 views. I was totally amazed when it went over 500,000 views, half a million, but now a million views is in sight. It is slowing, and probably will not make 1 million, but still…that is a awesome number of views for me. Humbling, and, honestly, a little scary. What kind of world do we live in when I…in all honesty, just a guy from Kennebunk Maine…can post a picture which is seen by 800,000 people in a single day, when over 1700 of them take the time to hit the + button, and over 300 are moved to comment? To keep things in perspective I have to remember that cute kittens get a million or more views on a regular basis…but still…if someone had told me, even last year, that a photo of mine would have that kind of audience I would have laughed right out loud. I mean, really?
Still, I value every view…every + and every comment. I am humbly thankful. And I have to believe that may of those who viewed the collage saw what I saw in it…the simply fantastic beauty of our natural world…and that a good percentage of them saw behind the beauty to the source…to the artist…to the creator of all beauty…who beyond creation gave us the gift of appreciation…the eye to see the beauty, and the heart to feel the wonder…the spirit to enjoy. Thank you God. Happy Sunday!
White-necked Jacobin
White-necked Jacobin at the feeders at the Lodge at Pico Bonito
I was really hoping for a sunny afternoon at the Lodge at Pico Bonito in Honduras when, during our siesta time, I could just sit on the porch at the Lodge at Pico Bonito and photograph the hummingbirds coming to the feeders. There were at least a half dozen species. As it was, we only had one afternoon like that…our first…the rest of the days the rain-forest cloud cover had moved in by noon. Just the way it happened on our week there.
This is a White-necked Jacobin, one of the more common hummers at the Lodge feeders. A medium sized hummingbird, it is certainly an eye-full.
Except for the perched shot, these are all Sports Mode on the Sony HX400V at about 470mm equivalent field of view and 1/400th. I was fairly close to the action. The perched bird was further away. Shot at 1200mm equivalent @ 1/250th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Phototastic on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Next trip maybe I will get more sunny afternoons!
Mangrove Common Black-Hawk
Mangrove Common Black-Hawk, Cuero y Salado Wildlife Refuge, Honduras
The bird checklist for the Lodge at Pico Bonito lists two Common Black-Hawks: Common and Mangrove Common. They are both the same species, so far, but the feeling in Honduras is that they are distinct populations, and perhaps different birds. This is the Mangrove variety, found in the mangroves along the Cuero y Salado rivers near the Caribbean coast. It is a juvenile bird. We were birding from boats, and I had the distinction of spotting this young bird from across the broad river as we motored back to the docks. At first, due to the proximity to water, and the distance, I thought it was an Osprey. A closer look convinced me otherwise. Our second boat (the one with the guide in it) saw us suddenly turn and head for shore and looped back, so everyone had great looks as the bird perched on a snag and hopped along the shore.
Sony HX400V. 655mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 400 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Lineated Woodpecker
Lineated Woodpecker, Aguan River Valley, Honduras
Taken from the bus, on the way to the Honduran Emerald Reserve, in the Aguan River Valley of Honduras. A relatively large woodpecker, a size larger than a Hairy Woodpecker here in the US. We were stopped for other birds, and the Lineated appeared in a roadside tree. Just a grab shot, but a very interesting bird.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Cropped for scale. 1/800th @ ISO 400 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.