Posts in Category: p&s 4 wildlife
Golden-fronted Woodpecker
Our first full day in the Rio Grande Valley, after setting up the ZEISS booth at the Municipal Auditorium, my colleague and I did a quick run out to Estero Llano Grande World Birding Center. It was a deeply overcast day, but there were birds about. This Golden-fronted was just off the deck at the Visitor Center. Everything is more colorful in the Valley. Even the woodpeckers!
Canon SX50HS in Program with – 1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1800mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Head-on White-patched Skipper
I really enjoy the National Butterfly Center’s gardens! Really! Enjoy! In the fall of the year there is nowhere better to photograph and study free-flying butterflies. The location, within spitting distance of the Rio Grande River and the Mexican boarder, is ideal for tropical species that are seen nowhere else in the US, and you can easily find 50 species on an average day. And the carefully selected and well tended plantings mean there are many individuals of the most common species, and generally a few rare species. In fact every time I have visited, at least one rare butterfly was on the premises, and generally more than one. A Zebra Cross-streak was seen the day before I got there, and I posed a photo yesterday of the Great Purple Hairstreak…not as rare as the Zebra, but not a commonly seen bug.
This is a White-patched Skipper…one of the spread-winged Skippers. I don’t think it is particularly rare, but it is an attractive bug anyway. This is not a good ID shot, but I like it because to me it captures more of the character of the bug. 🙂
Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1800mm equivalent field of view from about 5 feet. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Great Purple Hairstreak. Happy Sunday!
I was not scheduled to lead a field trip yesterday, and it was really my only chance to get to the National Butterfly Center and it’s butterfly gardens on this trip. The trade show at Rio Grande Birding Festival does not open until noon, so I had a few hours in the morning…three if I left the hotel at 7am to be at the NBC by the time it opens at 8am, and left there in time to be back to open the ZEISS booth. Seemed like a reasonable thing to do. 🙂
I had heard a rumor that there had been a rare butterfly sighting on Friday, and a sign in the Visitor Center confirmed a 3rd US record sighting of the Zebra Cross-wing in the gardens. I did not see the Zebra, and not for want of looking (as far as I know no one saw it on Saturday) but I did see many other beautiful bugs. This is the Great Purple Hairstreak, certainly colorful enough for anyone, and interesting in how the color is carried. It was found by a group of more avid butterflyers who decended on the garden just as I was leaving.
Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And for the Sunday Thought: when I arrived at the NBC at 8am on the day following a rare sighting, the staff, and the other early commers, assumed that I was chasing the Zebra Cross-wing. In fact I was not. As I told those who asked, I was just there to see what I could see and photograph. If the Zebra showed up, I would certainly enjoy it…but I was not about to make seeing or not seeing that one butterfly the test of the quality of my day. And as it turned out, that was a good thing, as I did not see the Zebra. But I had a spectacular day watching and photographing the rest of the bugs, and not a few birds, in and around the gardens.
While I was there someone received a call that a Amazon Kingfisher had been sighted about 12 miles south of Harlingen. The Amazon had only ever been recorded for the US once before. I did not even consider leaving the gardens to go look for it. Even when I got back to the Auditorium (home to the Festival), and saw other’s pictures of the Amazon, I was not seriously tempted to chase it. Rich Moncrief, my associate at the festival, eventually convinced me to go down and look…but the bird was absent while I was looking. It returned about 10 minutes after I left to go back to my duties at the booth.
And I am not at all disappointed. I might take a look tomorrow afternoon, after my morning field trip, if it is still being reported, but I might not too.
Again, I do not like to make one bird, or one bug, the measure of my day. If I had allowed myself to be disappointed, even a little, at not seeing the Amazon (or the Zebra) it would have been an insult to the Red-boardered Pixie and the Great Purple Hairstreak, and even the much more common Queens and Peacocks and skippers I photographed, to the hovering White-tailed Kite and the common Green Jays whose images I caught, and to all the other lovely bugs and birds of the morning. It would have diminished the wonder of everything I did see. And that would simply not be right.
And it would, definitely, be an insult to the giver of all these gifts! Or that’s what I think anyway.
Mexican Screech Owl
We were just finished photographing the resident Common Paraque at Estero Llano Grande World Birding Center when a Ranger and two tourists walked up and asked if we would like to see a Screech Owl.
Well yes!
This is apparently the Mexican variety, common in the Rio Grande Valley, and under study for separate species status. To give a sense of proportion take a look at the normal sized screw head upper left. This is a small owl. And you are seeing it’s whole body. Close study will show its little toes and talons at the bottom of the nest hole. Small.
Canon SX50HS in Program with iContrast and – 1/3rd EV exposure compensation. 1800mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Yellow-rumped Warbler with grub
Evidently the junipers behind the Hawk Watch at Cape May Lighthouse State Park in October are full of grubs. They are certainly full of Yellow-rumped Warblers who feed on grubs. Still, catching a warbler with its grub is largely a matter of persistance. If you take enough pictures of warblers, you will very likely get a grub in one of them. This handsome bird was savoring the anticipation of its meal, or would have been if it were human, and if humans enjoyed grubs…okay…maybe it was just sitting there for reasons beyond our comprehension, holding the grub in its beak.
Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Swamp Sparrow
Swamp Sparrows are skulkers at the best of times. This one sat us for us for all of 30 seconds just off the boardwalk at Cape May Lighthouse State Park, not time enough even to get the camera up to my eye, and certainly not time enough for the digiscoper working next to me to get his scope on the bird, close as it was. He moved on in search of easier shots, and I followed the Swamp Sparrow up the boardwalk for a ways, hoping. It stayed in sight, but pretty much hidden, for many yards. This is the best shot I managed. Despite how much better it might have been, I really like it. It catches not only the bird, but something of its nature. Or that is what I think. 😉
Canon SX50HS in Program with – 1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Autumn Goldfinch in Golden Light
There was a tinge of gold in the late afternoon light as I made my way around the boardwalk at Cape May Lighthouse State Park. When a Goldfinch popped up 15 feet from the boardwalk and sat, apparently thinking about finishing off whatever it had in its beak, I had to get off a few shots. I had time to zoom to frame a bit of the autumn oak leaf as well as the bird…just about…it was off on its way seconds later. I love the way the oblique light outlines the detail in the feathers on this bird…but mostly it is the classic pose, the strong diagonal, and the accent of the leaf that make it more than just a random bird shot. Or that is what I think.
Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. f5.6 @ 1/800th @ ISO 800. 1100mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Close Encounter of the Rabbit Kind
I was taking a turn on the boardwalk behind the Hawk Watch Platform at Cape May Lighthouse State Park when a young man with a digiscoping rig set up motioned me to join him. There in the tall grasses, a few feet from the boardwalk, a rabbit was doing its best to look like “oh nothing…just a shadow in the grass…move along…nothing to see here”. It was so close I do not know how the digiscoper was getting anything more than the eye in frame. This shot is at 1200mm equivalent. You can clearly see both of us humans reflected in the eye. Close encounter of the rabbit kind. 🙂
Canon SX50HS in Program with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. f6.5 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
American Ladies in the Daisies
The American Lady butterfly suffers an interrupted migration. They head north in millions to repopulate North America, well up into Canada, each spring, and in fall they turn around and head south. The fact is none of them make it back to Mexico. Once upon a time they probably did. It is a classic migration pattern still followed by the Monarch. But American Ladies repopulate North American with a new generation each year.
This past weekend in Cape May, the American Ladies were everywhere, and that is not an exaggeration: Anywhere there was a flower still in bloom…from the humble Goldenrod to the giant dasies in front of the hotel where I stayed. Many were well worn…missing trailing wing edges…but still eagerly feeding, not yet ready to give up the fight. Clearly they have no idea that they won’t see Mexico again.
And, among the dasies, they certainly make a brave show, and some interesting images.
Canon SX50HS in Program with – 1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f7.1 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 100. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Tree Swallows Swarm. Happy Sunday!
In the fall of the year the Tree Swallows mass for migration, and at major migration stop-overs, like Cape May NJ, the swarms of Swallows can take on impressive proportions. I caught one in action at Cape May Meadows Migratory Bird Sanctuary yesterday. The Swallows filled a fair patch of sky with an intricate dance of rapid flight and high speed maneuvers, and then, suddenly, they all took the notion, at exactly the same second, to settle on a single bush. The motion of the swarm was like water going down a drain. The birds coalesced and spiraled down toward the bush, settling for seconds in its branches, 500 or more of them covering the bush like a living blanket, and then just as suddenly, they would break away and spiral up, to disperse to their arial maneuvers again. They did this, not once, but at least ten times as I watched. It was impressive!
This shot is just as they decided to take to the air again: actually toward the end of the departure. The Swarm had thinned enough to see individual birds. I like it particularly because of the way the low morning light illuminates the spread wings, and because so many of the individual birds are sharply caught. It has a powerful sense of arrested motion, and as your eye travels over it, many interesting patterns emerge. I have a whole sequence of this leap to flight, and of them this shot best captures the effect of coordinated chaos.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode with -1/3rd EV exposure compensation and iContrast. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 800. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And for the Sunday Thought. We have very little understanding of how the intricate, and tightly coordinated, flight maneuvers of a flock of Swallows happen. These tight spirals in particular are hard to explain. What kind of communication is required to tame the apparent chaos, and how do the birds keep from hitting each other and knocking each other out of the air?
I know that when I see the Swallows in their spiral I feel a thrill, an amazement, an awe. Later on I come to the questions about how it is possible, but while I am watching, I am simply flooded with delight. In fact, I am not sure I want to know how it happens. I have a certain intellectual curiosity about how it is possible, but that curiosity is way overwhelmed by the joy in the fact that it does…and the sense of privilege in being there to see it. I don’t actually have to know how it happens.
And, aside from the difficulty of designing any kind of experiment to determine how it happens in a scientific way, that awe is maybe why we don’t know.
There are some things, I think, that are just too wonderful to yield to analysis. Like love for instance. Or joy itself. I am certain that there is a miracle of coordinated chaos in the chemistry of the brain that mimics the spiral of the swallows, that outdoes the spiral of the swallows, when we settle into delight. And a chemical energy just as restless and irresitably amazing as our thoughts take flight once more. Some things I don’t have to understand. Some things are enough to experience. For some experiences the privilege of being there is all you need to know.
Happy Sunday!