Posts in Category: wildlife
Painted Lady Backside
Common Buckeye in an uncommon pose.
A birding couple I met on the beach on Saturday told me about Timber Point and Timber Island trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. They were up for the day from Massachusetts, chasing eBird reports of birds of interest. I live practically next door to Rachel Carson Headquarters, and I had never heard of Timberpoint or Timber Island. A little research turned up the facts. It is a new trail and a new property for the NWR system, acquired after a locally organized fund-raising drive that covered the $2 million plus purchase price. It is a point of rocky upland and mixed forest extending out along the ocean side of the Little River across from Goose Rocks Beach and south of Fortunes Rocks. At low tide you can walk out to Timber Island. Local volunteers, along with the Civilian and Youth Construction Corps, built trails and boardwalks as needed and one raised deck overlook, and installed a Tide Clock near the head of the passage to the Island. It is altogether a wonderful spot and one that I will add to my regular round of photoprowls. It was dead high tide when I was there yesterday of course, but I plan to get back there the first sunny day we have at low tide.
There were lots of the typical birds of the Maine fall: Yellow-rumped Warblers, White-crowned Sparrow, Song Sparrows, Lincoln’s Sparrow, Brown Tree-creeper, Rufus-sided Towhee, Blue Jays, etc…as well as hundreds of chipmunks busy gathering acorns…and 5 species of butterfly: Cabbage White, Clouded Sulphur, Red Admiral, Painted Lady (pictured here in an uncommon pose), and Monarch. I will post an extended Photoprowls piece later today.
I like this backlighted pose of the Lady…which is good since every effort to get on the sun side of the bug lead to its moving deeper into the brush off the trail.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 320 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Inquiring Yellow-rump
Why?
Why? Pure anthropomorphism of course (and proud of it!). No, not really. But if a bird could frame the question, this one certainly is. This specimen was part of the flood of Yellow-rumped Warblers on their way south the second half of last week. For days they were everywhere within a mile of the coast. I am headed for Cape May, New Jersey, and the Autumn Bird Show the end of the month. I generally catch the height of the Yellow-rumped migration there…but it looks like it might have passed early this year. Time will tell. Yesterday, after a day of rain, the wind set in from the south-west, and there were no Yellow-rumps in the trees along the Bridle Path. Why indeed! 🙂
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Cropped slightly. ISO 400 @ 1/640th @ f6.3. -1/3 EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Cheeky Chipper!
Cheeky Chipper!
I watched this Chipmunk cross the Kennebunk Bridle Path and slowly work his way up a little sapling and into a larger oak tree. This involved a daring vertical leap from a perch considerably smaller than the chipmunk that it took him several moments to work up to. From there he skinnied out to the very tip of a branch with a bunch of leaves and, apparently, a cluster of fresh acorns. I watched a he worked his way back along the branches, but by now he knew I was watching, and had his eye on me as a possible impediment to getting safely back across the path. We had a bit of a staring match, often interrupted by my camera coming between us, and then I stepped out of the way to let him pass. I don’t know about you, but this picture makes me laugh! 🙂
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred at 1/640th @ ISO 1600 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet. Not bad for ISO 1600. And this is a shot that would not have been possible without the manual focus assist on Sony. 🙂
Semipalmated Plover
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If you look closely you can actually see the semi-palm between the toes of this winter plumaged Semiplamated Plover (perhaps a juvenile). After a several days of cloud and rain, as soon as the sun came out yesterday, I grabbed the cameras and headed for the beach. I am still working on final test shots for the comparison of the new Canon SX60HS and the Sony HX400V…and I wanted to test the Sony with the in-camera sharpness turned down. I have also switched to shutter preferred for my long telephoto bird shots and I wanted to see how that mode works in good light. Geeky. I know. So the very cooperative plovers at the water’s edge were a nice surprise! There were three, and they were just slowly working back and forth near high tide on the rocks of the road embankment where it crosses Back Creek. The late afternoon sun was a treat as well.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent. Custom tuned Landscape Creative Style (+1 Saturation, -1 Sharpness), -1/3 EV exposure compensation. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 160 @ f6.3. Cropped slightly for scale (so you could see the semi-palm). Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet. And honestly, this is about as good as it gets from a superzoom P&S camera!
Chipmunk Posturing
As some of you know I am testing a new camera, the Canon SX60HS, an upgrade (?) to the Canon SX50HS which I used as my primary camera for two years. The jury is still out. There are things I really, really like…but I am uncertain about the image quality overall. I need more time with the camera…more sunny days to give it a fair test. Yesterday was not a sunny day. I went out specifically to photograph moody fall color, but this chipmunk insisted on posing…maybe posturing is a better word…25 feet off the Bridle Path. There were a lot of chipmunks, and they were making a lot of noise. I located this one because it was sitting on its branch yelling at me for passing 🙂
Canon SX60HS at 1365mm equivalent field of view. Cropped slightly for scale and composition. ISO 800 @ 1/160th @ f6.5. Program with -1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Female Green Darner
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From the looks of things the flood of Green Darners coming south may be over. This is from last week, at Laudholm Farm, on a particularly busy Darner day. I was able to photograph both male and female Greens as they perched, though the specimens were more than a mile apart. That might give you an idea of the size of the swarm. At both locations, there were 10-15 Darners visible in the air at any given moment. That is a lot of Darners on any day. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. ISO 100 @ 1/250th @ f6.3. Program with -1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Chinese Mantis
We always called these “Praying Mantis” when I was growing up. A little research this morning tells me that we have two species in New England…European and Chinese, both introduced, and both common. The large size of the bug and length of the antennas (antenni?) make this Chinese. We found it in the lower meadows at Laudholm Farm on Saturday. It flew in right in front of me and landed. The flight is highly distinctive and surprisingly unlike the bug when it lands. My wife did not see it land and could not find it, even though she believed me (I think) when I said it was there. 🙂
Sony HX400V at just over 1000mm equivalent field of view. ISO 200 @ 1/250th @ f6.3. Program with -1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Snowy Egret
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It is rare in Maine to get this close to a Snowy Egret. I have photographed them close in Florida at places like the Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands at Viera and Merritt Island NWR many times. It is easy. In Maine, though, they are generally way out in the marsh, well away from any path I can walk. On Monday, I came upon a group of Snowys feeding in the marsh pools right off the observation deck on the forest boardwalk at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm in Wells. Such a treat! (And while I was photographing the Egrets, a group of 15 Whimbrels flew in just beyond them!)
Sony HX400V at 2400mm equivalent field of view (1200mm optical plus 2x Clear Image Zoom). ISO 80 @ 1/640th @ f6.3. Program with -1EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Green Darner Invasion!
I have never seen as many Green Darners as I have this fall. For weeks now, on a good day, you can see hundreds (probably thousands if you stayed in the right spot long enough) coming through on their way south. They come in swarms. There will be a few Wandering Gliders mixed in, and the occasional Black-saddlebags, but mostly they are all Greens. They bring out what I assume are our resident Canada and Green-striped and Black-tipped Darners to do battle over their territories, but the Mosaic Darners could be migrating with them. Hard to tell. And hard to find one of the Greens perched. I did find one male and one female that sat long enough for photos on my last trip to Laudholm Farms. This is the male.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm and 2400mm equivalent field of view. ISO 250 @ 1/250th @ f6.3. Program with -1/3 EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet. Assembled in Pixlr Express (web version).
Slender Spreadwing
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The meadows at Emmons Preserve have been very good this summer and last for Odonata. Still a beginner, I have many first sightings and first photos from Emmons. I have, if memory serves, at least one other photograph of this species, but it is rare enough be just a little exciting when I get another. The total lack of pruinocity on the tip of the abdomen and its length and thinness make this almost certainly a Slender Spreadwing, and the light tips on the wings are good for that species too. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 2400mm equivalent field of view. ISO 160 @ 1/250th @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.