Posts in Category: p&s 4 wildlife
Odd Couple. Song Sparrow with Cowbird Fledgling
It is not pretty, but there it is: Cowbirds are nest parasites. They lay their eggs in the nests of other species. The Cowbird egg hatches first. The Cowbird chick grows faster. The Cowbird chick tosses its legitimate nest-mates over the edge. Soon the Cowbird chick is the only chick in the nest, and gets all the food the parents bring back.
What you see here is a fledgling Cowbird still terrorizing its Song Sparrow host…begging for food in a voice that can not be denied. Does the Song Sparrow know, do you think, that it has raised a monster? Okay, that is a bit too anthropomorphic. The Cowbird is not a monster. It is just pursuing a survival style that has proven successful for untold thousands of years. And, if the season is good, the Song Sparrow may next again and raise a legitimate brood…and, further, there is always next year. There are lots of Song Sparrows.
Nest parasites are only a real problem for species that are already in trouble, where every nest and every fledgling counts. Still, I find it impossible to approve of the Cowbird’s lifestyle. As it happens, it does not need my approval, so there you have it.
Still…how can you not see the Song Sparrow in this next shot as long-suffering? I mean, look at that face! Resignation birdonified.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1240mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical zoom plus 1.5x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Eastern Pondhawk, Roger’s Pond, Kennebunk ME
I first saw an Eastern Pondhawk in New Jersey, while doing my informal photographic Big Day in conjunction with the World Series of Birding (see my Google+ post). It was a female and I immediately decided it was my new favorite dragonfly. I have caught two glimpses of a female here in Maine, both at Roger’s Pond. One landed at my feet last week, but I could not get the camera on it before it was driven off by the very aggressive Blue Dashers patrolling the shore.
This fellow was on the other side of the pond a few days later, and it was not until I got the images home and had my books out that I realized that it is the male Eastern Pondhawk. Very different! And certainly beautiful in its own way, if more subtle than the female. (Further research has shown that this is an immature male, which complicates the picture. The full adult male would lack the aqua shading, though it would retain the green face.)
In flight, and in good light, the apple-green face is very striking, though the dragon needs to be perched to appreciate the subtle slide from aqua to salty blue on the body.
As I say, the female, which I finally caught in camera a few days ago, is very different. I was actually on my scooter circling the pond when I saw her on a reed. I was off the scooter and camera in hand as fast as I could go. Even so, I had only seconds to get on her before the Blue Dashers drove her away again, and I never got as close as I would have liked. Still.
Together, the Eastern Pondhawks are one of the more interesting pairings. If you saw them mating, or otherwise together in the same frame, you might suspect they were two different species. It apparently works for them though 🙂
(It appears that both Male and Female Eastern Pondhawks are actually green. Even males start out green. The blue on the male is a waxy, powdery coating, called pruinosity, which develops on a lot of dragonflies as they mature, covering the true colors underneath.)
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. All at 1680mm equivalent (using the 2x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 125 (male), and 1/1000th @ ISO 400 (female).
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Canada Darner Ovapositing. Factory to Pasture Pond
I hope you will bear with me…I seem to be taking a lot of dragon and damselfly pics lately. 🙂
Darners are generally among the largest North American Dragonflies, and they are flyers, not perchers.
That is to say that Darners hunt on the wing, flying down smaller insects and taking them in mid-air, patrolling their territory endlessly from first light to last, never sitting down all day long. They are constantly in flight…constantly in motion.
Perchers on the other hand, settle often, and hunt from the perch…flying out only when an insect comes near enough to capture, spending a lot of the day resting.
In my experience, Skimmers fall somewhere between, spending most of the day hunting on the wing, but settling for a rest about once every 15 moments.
As you can imagine, Darners are very difficult to photograph. About the only time you find them perched (hung up in Odonata-speak) is early in the morning when it is still too cool to fly (and when they are, by the way, very difficult to find), and when mating (sometimes the females will hang up to wait for a passing male), and the actual act is done while perched.
The only other time you can photograph them easily is when the female is ovapositing…laying eggs. The Darner’s I have seen are very deliberate ovapositors…settling on vegetation that emerges from the water and reaching carefully down under the water line (or at least as far as very wet wood) to deposit eggs. This deliberation keeps them still enough for photographs.
I have generally seen them do this while still attached to the male, but this Canada Darner female was all on her own at Factory to Pasture Pond (a little, heavily overgrown pond here in Kennebunk, ideal at this time of year for Odonata). She moved from broken reed stalk to broken reed stalk, carefully working around each to deposit eggs. I never did see the male.
And I have not seen her again either. I watched her for an hour or more and then had to move on, and, despite several visits to the pond and to other ponds nearby, I have not found this or any other Canada Darner. Strange.
I am not sure what kind of water supply Factory to Pasture Pond has. There is certainly no brook feeding it. I suspect the water level will have to say pretty much where it is for the eggs to survive, but I could be wrong. I certainly well be checking for emerging Canada Darners come next July. 🙂
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1240mm and 1680mm equivalent fields of view. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 250-500 (not very good light after all). Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Ebony Jewelwing, Emmon’s Preserve. Happy Sunday!
I have been enjoying getting out most days on Froggy the Scoot (my frog-green electric scooter) on short lunch-hour and after-work photoprowls and dragonfly hunts, but some places are just beyond the range of the batteries in Froggy. Emmon’s Preserve, along the Batson River beyond Cape Porpoise (and managed by the Kennebunkport Land Trust) is just such a place. At something over 8 miles one way, it has to wait for a Saturday when I have a car available (rare in these days of driving-to-work daughters). It takes some planning.
I did manage a pilgrimage to Emmon’s yesterday, in hopes of finding the Ebony Jewelwings in flight, though it is a few weeks earlier than I photographed them there last year. The Batson flows down through mixed forest over a series ledges…little waterfalls and rapids…alternating with deep pools in the Preserve, so it is ideal Jewelwing habitat, and indeed, the male Ebonys put in an appearance soon after I arrived, as the sun worked its way through early clouds and the branches of the overhanging trees. Oddly I did not see a single female yet. I will get back there in the next few weeks to try to video some of the mating behavior.
There are few damselfies so striking as the Ebony Jewelwing. Jewelwings are large (comparatively speaking) broad-winged members of the Odonata family (damsel- and dragonflies), and carry their intensely colored wings vertically above the body most often when perched. They fly much more like butterflies than dragonflies, with a lot of flop and flutter, in short flights from perch to perch, and in even shorter flights as they flycatch from perches. It takes a lot of mosquitoes to keep a a hunting Jewelwing in flight, and, all things considered, I am very much on the side of the Jewelwings. 🙂
In the Ebony, the large black wings that give them their name are spectacular, but no more so than the metallic body flashing in the sun, most often an intense emerald, but sometimes, in certain lights, electric blue.
There is a level of intensity to the green that the camera just does not catch…though some of the shots from yesterday come as close as I have come.
Since the Ebony Jewelwings tend to return to favored perches even after flycatching it is easy to come back from Emmon’s, as I did, with way too many images…but they are, I think, worth the effort…even when it involves planning around drive-to-work daughters.
And for the Sunday thought: While I certainly see evidence that some process similar to that described by evolutionists is operating in nature, it will never be enough, to me, to explain the Ebony Jewelwing.
The Ebony Jewelwing is just too much fun…too whimsical, too utterly beautiful in such unlikely ways…for me to believe that it is the result of any process that is based on random chance and natural selection, no matter how long you give the process to work. I mean, for a simple little mosquito eating machine, or even organism, the Ebony Jewelwing is certainly overly ornate, well beyond any idea of practical functionality…delightful in a way that requires intelligence and a larger view of existence to appreciate, or even to imagine…or that is the way I see it.
I don’t need to go to nature for evidence that there is a creator (though I enjoy doing so)…the knowledge that there is a creator, and one who is loving all we are and all we know into existence, is inescapable in a relationship with Christ…but if I did need more evidence, then the Ebony Jewelwing would be pretty much enough, all by itself, for me. Happy Sunday!
Eastern Phoebe on the Bridle Path
There are fewer Eastern Phoebes along the Kennebunk Bridle Path this year. Maybe they nested else-ware, or maybe the nest failed, or maybe I just missed the brood when they fledged. Still, I do see them in their usual perches, on the old fence pilings in the marsh east of Rt. 9.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-converter). f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100. This combination always produces such lovely bokeh.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. A little extra work on the shadows around the face.
And the bonus shot, looking the other way.
Snowy Egret in the Maine Evening
On one of my after supper photoprowls this week, enjoying the late summer sun, I was photographing a Snowy Egret, well out from the Kennebunk Bridle Path in one of the marsh pools near the river where they generally hang out, when I caught a flash of white through the trees and up the Path 50 yards or so. I edged out around the small pines that shade that part of the Path, and, indeed, there was another Snowy Egret feeding within 20 yards of the path just up from me. While I expect to see them like that in Florida in winter, I never see them that close in Maine. Just does not happen. Or so I thought.
By staying mostly hidden by the trees I as able to observe and photograph the Egret as it fed for 15 minutes. However, as soon as I went back to the Path and took even one step closer to where it was feeding, it was off. Now that is more like Egrets in Maine. 🙂
50 yards is still a goodly distance for bird photography (I have been within 20 feet of Great and Snowy Egrets in Florida and Texas on many occasions) so these shots are maximum optical zoom on the Canon SX40HS, plus 2x digital tel-converter function for the equivalent field of view of a 1680mm lens. The summer evening light, is, of course, what makes the shots.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f5.8 @ 1/800 and 1/1000th @ ISO 200 and 250.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. A good deal of highlight, white, and blackpoint adjustment was needed to render the contrasty light. (I could have dialed in more exposure compensation in the camera…I considered it at the time…but I have found that I don’t like the unnaturally dark background that produces. I would rather deal with some overexposure in Lightroom than try to pull up muddy shadows, at least with this camera.)
And who is afraid to Friday the 13th anyway!
7/10/2012: Common Whitetail
According to Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East by Dennis Paulson, the Common Whitetail lives up to its name…it is both common and widespread across the US, and it certainly has a white tail. I have seen it briefly and from afar at the Dragon Ponds down in the river marsh here in Maine, and then close up in Virginia by a pond on a gulf course at the resort my company was using for a training. It was real treat to find two males disputing over the little Arrowroot pond between Roger’s Pond and the Mousam River…a pond the size of a bathtub…and a female laying eggs in a corner. Great afternoon light and effective perches made for my first really good shots of the bug.
They call that effect on the abdomen (tail) of the dragonfly pruinosity, from the Latin for “frost”…as in “frosted with a white powder”. It happens to many species of dragonflies on various parts of their bodies, but is most pronounced here on the Whitetail.
And then we have the female ovapositing…laying eggs in the water. She bounded up and down in one spot, striking the surface with her abdomen over and over. The final image is of the male in a somewhat defensive posture. There was, as I said, another male attempting to dislodge this one from the pond. This one seemed to be protecting the female from the other male as she did her thing.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1240 and 1680mm equivalent fields of view. f5.8 @ 1/500 to !/1000th sec. @ ISO 125-200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
7/8/2012: RiBBit. Coastal ME Botanical Gardens. Happy Sunday!
On our visits to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens I always spend some time at the Amphibian Pond shooting frogs and Water Lilies. After-all, that is what it is there for.
You can always hear the pond before you see it. As you come up the rise from the Rose Gardens or across the clearing from the Event Lawn you are greeted by the improbably loud calls of the bull frog. “RiBBit”, though the conventional representation of the sound, does not really do it…at least for the bull frog. There is a deeper, darker undertone that gives the sound its character…a characteristic fall and rise…with just an hint of the echo of deep wells and damp caves at the bottom.
r
i it!
BB
You can not even say it properly without a frog in your throat.
There are generally a few frogs basking in the shallow water were the stone path crosses a corner of the pond, or hauled out on the rocks sunning themselves, if it is early morning yet. This specimen is, apparently, considering the wisdom of climbing out…especially with me standing there. I am not really that close. I was using the 1.5x digital tel-converter function and full zoom so this is at 1240mm equivalent from about 6 feet. He had his space.
The other thing about frogs is that, even at the best of times, if you look them in the eye as we are here, they seem to be thinking the dark thoughts their voices express. It is all projection of course. We project human feelings based on a similarity of the frog’s countenance to the human expression associated with the emotions. Still I can hear some mother saying, “Oh stop making that frog face and cheer up! Things are not all that bad!”
And for a frog in the Amphibian Pond on the grounds of the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden, a pond teaming with just what a frog eats…barring an encounter with a member of the heron race (who I have never seen in the gardens)…life is indeed pretty good. It just comes down to who has the loudest and most convincing riBBit (at least for the males).
And where do we go from here for the Sunday thought now? This is the kind of whimsical rabbit trail that must lead to some significant insight…the, shall we say…frog leap to enlightenment at the end. ??
Or is it that sometimes a frog is just a frog?
What I really like about this photo is that it makes me smile. There it is. I can’t look at it without smiling, at least just a little bit. It tickles me somewhere I need tickling. And really, I have come to expect that of nature, whether in the face of a frog, the majesty of a mountain, the intensity of a storm, the beauty of butterfly wings, the awesome ingenuity of the structure of a dragonfly, the promise of sunrise, or the benediction of sunset…I always feel lifted up toward joy…in touch with significance…just a bit more alive…and happy about it. And thankful. Always thankful to the spirit that is all in all for every expression of grace.
And that is what I am always trying to photograph. RiBBit!
7/7/2012: Song Sparrow
On one of my lunch-time photoprowls this week this fellow popped up a ways down the trail and challenged me not to take his picture. I was not up to the challenge! Such a bold singer. Such a tease.
I like the bird here, of course, but I also like the bokeh and the balanced framing with the leaves in the corners.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view 840mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 200.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
7/4/2012: Twelve-spotted Skimmers, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
Happy 4th of July to you all.
You may have noticed that I am going through a dragonfly phase(or more properly, an odonata phase, since I am equally interested in damselflies). Though I had taken a few dragonfly images before, I mark a particular photograph of a Twelve-spotted Skimmer taken at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens almost exactly a year ago as the beginning of the phase.
Yesterday my wife and I took a trip back to the CMBC (it is somewhat of an anniversary tradition), and there were hundreds of Twelve-spotted Skimmers patrolling the ponds and the walks of the gardens. The TsS is a spectacular dragon at any time, but turn a hundred of them loose in a world-class botanical garden on a bright summer day and you do get some pretty interesting photo ops!
The lead two images are the male (I saw only three females the whole day). The following image is the female, and the third is a female in flight, as she deposited eggs in the water of one of the ornamental pools. The blur to her right is a male diving on her. Then a head on shot of a perched female.
Some of the males were showing their age. You can see the nick out of the edge of the wing in the 7th shot and evidently the 8th is the survivor of a bird attack. Still, I could not resist him on the furled iris.
And last but not least, two shots of unusual poses: on a giant rose blossom, and decorating the Hillside 8 sign.
Finally I can’t resist adding this dragonfly…not a Twelve-spotted Skimmer as near as I can tell…but impressive none the less. It has a 6 foot wing-span and is mounted about 10 feet from the ground at the Azalea gardens. The avid dragonfly collector can take it home (well, can have it shipped home) for only $14,000.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Various combinations of zoom and digital tel-converter for equivalent fields of view from 840mm to 1680mm. f5.8 at ISOs ranging from 100 to 320 and shutter speeds from 1/100th to 1/1000th.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.