Posts in Category: p&s 4 wildlife
Louisiania Waterthrush
I am dropping way back to May for this shot of a Louisiana Waterthrush from Magee Marsh in northern Ohio. I still have a wealth of unshared images from my 10 days at The Biggest Week in American Birding. This was taken the last day I was there. After working a full day at our respective booths (that is the ZEISS booth for me), and then packing the booths, my friend Roy Halpin and I dragged our weary bodies out to the boardwalk for one last pass. We were rewarded with some of the best photo ops of the week. 🙂 That included this very cooperative Louisiana Waterthrush. We watched and photographed it for a good 10 minutes as it worked this partially submerged log: perfect habitat for a Waterthrush, and a perfect setting for our images.
Not only is it a bird I seldom see, but it certainly closer and more cooperative than any waterthrush I have ever encountered. And it was not the only good bird of that last pass on the Magee Marsh boardwalk!
Canon SX50HS. 1200mm equivalent field of view. Program with my usual modifications. f6.5 @ 1/400th and 1/500th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom.
Green Eyed Monster!
The theme is green on MacroMonday, and I happened to photograph this green eyed monster on green leaves yesterday at one of my local dragonfly ponds. It is a teneral dragonfly…one that has only just emerged from its last larval form, and this is not how it will look in a few days. I think it is one of three very similar smallish red Meadowhawks that we have here…White-faced, Cherry-faced, or Ruby. Impossible to tell at this stage. Whatever it is, there were a lot of them at the pond yesterday.
Canon SX50HS. My usual modifications to Program. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom.
Calico Pennant Dragonfly
The Calico Pennant is among the most attractive dragonflies we have in Maine. It is not very big, but the combination of wing patterns and the brightly marked body make it sure to catch your eye when it is around. I have only seen two in Maine so far, and both of them in almost exactly the same spot at one of my dragonfly ponds…though last year’s Calico was not until August, and this one was in June. I particularly like the bokeh in this shot! It is simply a beautiful image…going well beyond an image of a bug!
Canon SX50HS with my usual modifications to Program. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 640. Processed in Lightroom.
Here’s looking at you: Swamp Spreadwing
After days of rain, on Saturday afternoon we had a burst of sunshine…and promising enough skies so I got the scooter out and did a round of all the local dragonfly and damselfly ponds. It was bug city! And, from the amount of mating activity I saw, the odonata tribe was making up for lost time. I took lots of pics, but I can’t resist posting this one…it just makes me smile. 🙂
It is a Swamp Spreadwing…one of the larger damselflies. They were out in numbers at one of the ponds that feed Back Creek along Route 9 in Kennebunk.
Canon SX50HS. My usual modifications to Program. 1800mm equivalent (1200 optical plus 1.5x digital tel-extender). f6.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom.
Vesper Sparrow: North Dakota
My last field trip at the Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival in Carrington North Dakota was a small van trip with just a few of us on Sunday. It provided some of the best bird photo ops of the trip. It was, as I say, a small van, and the driver was the leader of the trip and an avid and skilled birder, so we tended to stop for birds that a bus would have whipped right on buy on its way to presumed greener pastures and scheduled stops. It was all very relaxed, but it the course of the day we pulled up beside a lot of birds, and stopped long enough for some pics. Even if we could not get out of the van, I was often able to shoot across and out the open window of the driver’s side. For this Vesper Sparrow, when the van was not well placed for a driver’s side shot, I opened my door and stood up, hanging out, clinging somewhat precariously, and shot over the roof. Whatever works!
Canon SX50HS at 1800mm equivalent field of view. My usual modifications to Program. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity and sharpness.
Nesting Grebes: North Dakota
Several of the field trips at the Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival in Carrington North Dakota seem to end the day at the same spot: the little rise overlooking the end of Mud Lake, where 50-75 pairs of Western Grebes, and few pairs of Clark’s Grebes, have formed a nesting colony. Grebes build floating nests, loosely anchored to reeds and cattails or underwater vegetation. Nest colonies are probably common among Westerns and Clarks, but the Mud Lake colony is the only one I know of. The first shot is of a pair of Western Grebes.
As you see in the second shot, Grebe eggs are among the largest, relative to body size, of any bird. I visited several weeks ago. By now, the colony must be full of zebra striped baby grebes. Because the nest materials slowly sink, the Grebes are always adding new materials to the top of the nest and rearranging the eggs.
Finally we have a Clark’s Grebe on a well hidden nest. Note the line of black on the face is well above the eye, and the bright yellow of the bill (as compared to the greeny-yellow of the Western’s). In the water, the Clark’s gives an impression of a lighter bird overall, gray where the Western is black, but it is hard to see unless you have the two species side by side.
Canon SX50HS in Program with my usual modifications. 1800mm equivalent flied of view. Processed in Lightroom.
Industrial Strength Green Heron
Last year I was amazed to find Green Herons living and nesting at two ponds within the village limits of Kennebunk. This is one of a pair that nests in the drainage ponds on an industrial estate (now converted to a hospital and fitness complex), a few hundred yards from US1, and right behind one of the two shopping centers in town. They have returned this year, and are, if anything, even more active and visible around the ponds. If, in my dragonfly hunting, I get too close to one at the pond edge, they just fly up to these snags in the a mini-wetland that has formed behind the berm that protects the parking lots of the estate.
No matter the setting, the Green Heron is a handsome bird! This one appears to fully aware of it too.
Canon SX50HS with my usual modifications to Program. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 640. Processed in Lightroom. Cropped slightly for scale and composition.
Hard to impress. Happy Sunday!
I did not actually see this frog through the electronic viewfinder of my Canon SX50HS. I was just framing the luminous water lilies with the long end of the zoom, for effect. When I edited the image in Lightroom, the frog was there, making his frog face, big as life.
Some critters are just had to impress. I mean, there he is, surrounded by exceptional beauty…I love the way the light is cupped in the pink lilies and the patterns the pads make in the water…and Mr. Frog still has his business-as-usual frog-face on.
Canon SX50HS with the usual modifications to Program. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 250. Processed in Lightroom.
And for the Sunday Thought: We are already half way there. Some critters, and people, are hard to impress. There were lots of people…boaters, fishermen and women, joggers, dog walkers, and picnicers…at Roger’s Pond yesterday. I wonder how many of them gave more than a glance to the water lilies? I wonder how many of them, like froggy here, were too absorbed in the day-to day to take time to admire what the sunlight was doing with the lilies?
Or am I being unfair to the frog (which clearly is a more important question to me than it is to the frog). Frogs just have that unfortunate face, from our particularly human point of view. We read misery, displeasure…boredom at the best…into those bulging eyes and that down-turned mouth, because, obviously, in humans that is what it would say. We attribute feelings to froggy which, in fact, he almost certainly does not share. For all I know, froggy was as enraptured as I was by the light in the lilies. Or not. Probably not. Enrapture might well be one of the perks of the particularly human point of view. It might in fact, be part of our common inheritance as children of the Creator God. I suspect it is.
But then, am I being unfair to all the other people at Roger’s Pond that day (which is clearly a question that is more important to me than it is to them)? If enrapturement…a deep and satisfying appreciation, an arresting appreciation, of beauty…is a human characteristic, then certainly more my fellow humans around the pond might have been experiencing it in the presence of the luminous water lilies. Yes? Despite appearance to the contrary.
I can’t read anything into the attitude of the frog. Maybe I should avoid reading too much into the attitude of the humans.
After all, I did not even see the frog in the image until I looked closer in processing. Some people are just hard to make an impression on!
Happy Sunday.
Chipper Strikes a Pose
There is nothing quite so cute as a Chipmunk striking a standing pose…with those little feet, hands even, and that big eye. This fellow seemed to know he was on camera. At Roger’s Pond in Kennebunk ME…where I was photographing Clubtail Dragonfies.
Canon SX50HS at about 1000mm equivalent field of view. My usual tweaks to standard Program. f5.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom.
Snipe! Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival
I try to avoid posting birds for #wildlifeonwednesday, but sometimes I just get carried away. This Wilson’s Snipe was sitting on a post right beside the road, and a van load of birders at the Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival just pulled up beside it. I took pics from the passenger seat, across the driver and out the driver side window. The light was perfect. The bokeh was attractive.  It just does not get any better than that. 🙂
I have never seen a snipe on a post in Maine. I have seen snipe, but mostly in flyovers and fleeting glimpses at marsh edges. In North Dakota sitting on posts is apparently the snipe thing to do. During the course of 4 field trips I saw at least half a dozen snipe on poles. Fence poles. Power poles. Short poles and tall. The North Dakota snipe like to sit on top. ??
Canon SX50HS. My usual modifications to Program (see Program Modifications page above). 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 500. Processed for intensity, clarity, and sharpness in Lightroom.