Posts in Category: wildlife
Purple Gallinule!
Purple Gallinule, Everglades Wildlife Management Area, Miami FL
No north American bird is as absolutely unlikely as the Purple Gallinule…or that is what I think! I mean, look at it. Such outlandish color. Really? How are we supposed to take this seriously? And I have never had views of Purple Gallinule like I had yesterday from Everglades Nature Tour’s airboat on the Everglades Wildlife Management area west of Miami. We stopped the boat and Captain Ozzie whistled up the Gallinule and it came up to a few feet from from the boat, feeding all around us on the lily pads, climbing on the reeds, etc. Quite a show. Of course the light was terrible. Intermittent rain…just enough to keep me damp and make me very conscious of my camera’s non-weather-proof status…but such a treat! And the Sony again pulled it off at ISO 3200. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 275mm equivalent field of view. ISO 3200 @ f5 @ 1/1250th. Shutter preferred. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Crane at first light
Sandhill Cranes calling at first light. Bosque del Apache NWR
I attempted this post this morning from the airport on my way to the Everglades. It did not work. So…better late than never.
I love the light on these Sandhill Cranes at Bosque del Apache NWR in the first sun of the day.
Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom.
A Density of Snow Geese
Close up of Snow Geese in mild panic.
When the Snow Geese (and the Ross’ Geese mixed in) rise in panic at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, thousands of birds at a time, you are presented with an almost overwhelming spectacle…so overwhelming that it is hard to decide what to shoot. Do you go for the wide shot showing the shear multitude of birds? Do you zoom in for a shot of the density? As they come overhead, again, how to frame that energy? Of course, you attempt to do it all, every panic, but no matter how nimble your zooming, you do not ever really manage to catch more than a few thin slices of the event. And that is when you don’t remember you could be shooting video! 🙂
This is the panic as it passes close over at 1200mm equivalent field of view. These birds are not as densely packed as they sometimes are, but still it is a frameful. Sony HX400V. Sports Mode. 1/800th @ ISO 160 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Windows tablet.
Mule Deer at Bosque
A small group of Mule Deer at Bosque del Apache NWR
The herd of Mule Deer at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge seems to be doing well. They are not as tame as the White-tailed Deer at Lighthouse State Park in Cape May New Jersey, which will calmly graze withing feet of your, but they don’t spook when you stop on the road to take photos. I regret not getting out of the car for this and the rest of the photos I took of this group, since there is some heat distortion from heated air escaping from the open car window. Still it is rare to see the buck. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 160 @ f6.3. Processed, and cropped slightly in Lightroom on my Windows tablet.
Crane on Mountain
Sandhill Crane off Willow Deck
The vast majority of my images from Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and the Festival of the Cranes were taken between 30 minutes before dawn and 90 minutes after. The early morning light at Bosque is, of course, spectacular, and I love it…but my timing is more a matter of circumstance than anything else. Bosque has always been a working trip for me. Come 8:30ish, and I have to be on duty at the ZEISS booth in the Expo Tent, and, most days, preparing for a workshop I am leading. This adds incentive on those mornings when I really do not feel like dragging myself past the breakfast at the hotel, eating granola bars in the car, and arriving somewhere on the Refuge before dawn. Not that I have ever regretted it. 🙂
Some of the best light is just at first light off Willow and Coyote Decks on the back side of Farm Loop. Early in the week these fields were dry and empty, but on Thursday they began to flood the fields to bring the birds in close for the weekend…something they do every year for the Festival of the Cranes…and by Saturday and Sunday the stretch of road between the decks was one of the best places on the Refuge to photograph Cranes and dabbling ducks…there was even a small raft of Snow Geese there both mornings. Because of the dramatic backdrop of the mountains to the west, and the angle of the light, it is also a great place to practice flight photography.
I have a sequence of shots of this Crane as it crossed my line of sight and then banked away toward the ponds on the Route 1. In this shot it is just beginning its turn.
Sony HX400V in Sports Mode. ISO 160 @ 1/400th @ f6.3. Processed and cropped for scale in Lightroom on my Windows tablet.
Sandhill Crane in Early Light
A Sandhill Crane poses in the dawn light at Bosque del Apache NWR
This shot was taken a few moments after the sunrise shots from yesterday’s post, as the rising sun reached the water where the Cranes had spent the night. You can tell by the posture that this bird is not yet even thinking of getting up and way to the feeding fields. I love the quality of the dawn light.
Sony HX400V at 2400mm equivalent field of view. (1200mm optical plus 2x Clear Image Zoom). Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 800 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on a Windows tablet.
White-crowned Sparrow at Bosque
White-crowned Sparrow: Bosque del Apache NWR
Though the Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes are much more obvious, there may, in fact, be just as many White-crowned Sparrows at Bosque in November as there are Cranes. They do not flock together in the open. They spread through the trees and brush, but they are everywhere…singing their wispy little song, and chattering to each other. They are most visible around the Visitor Center feeding stations of course, but this specimen was out on the refuge, in the water channel over which I was shooting Geese and Cranes. He intruded on my attention so often that I had to stop what I was doing and photograph him! 🙂
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 125 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly for scale in Lightroom on my Windows tablet.
Marsh Wren at Bosque
Marsh Wren playing hide and seek in the reeds.
We were looking at Cranes and Geese shortly after dawn near the Farm Deck at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge when this Marsh Wren popped up in the reeds beside us and lead us a merry chase trying to get a good look and any kind of photo at all. It stayed in this one small clump of dense reeds growing along the water channel, but it keep well out of sight, chattering all the time so we would know it was still there. Eventually it was joined by an equally as noisy, but less elusive, Sony Sparrow.
I did my best to turn it into a Bewick’s Wren…which I have not seen in close to 20 years…since I lived in western New Mexico, but, it remained, stubbornly, a Marsh Wren. Bewick’s Wren at Bosque would have made a better title. 🙂
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.
Away in the Dawn
Sandhill Cranes taking off at Bosque del Apache NWR
Watching Sandhill Cranes taking flight just after dawn at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge has to rate as one of the great photographic moments of my time on the planet. It always gets to me. There is a posture that the crane takes as it is deciding to leave. The bird on the left has it. They lean forward and point to the horizon, holding that pose sometimes for a minute or more, and then slowly at first, step along the line of their attention, then faster, then faster, and then a hop and a flap of those great wings and they are airborne. Most often the intent is transmitted to at least a few birds around and a whole group comes up and wings away in a line. This shot catches just such a moment, though the bird in the background is away, while the bird on the left is still thinking about it, and the bird on the right is just beginning to wonder about it. 🙂
Sony HX400V in Sports Mode. 1/640th @ ISO 1000 @ f6.3. 1200mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom on my Windows tablet.
Curtain of Starlings
Starlings panic at Bosque del Apache NWR
While watching the Snow Geese rise in a full blown panic, I could not help but notice the “mini-panic” in the large flock of Starlings feeding in the foreground. It looked like a curtain of living birds. 🙂
Sony HX400V in Sports Mode. 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1/640th @ ISO 200 @ f6.3. Â Processed in Lightroom on my Windows tablet.