Posts in Category: p&s 4 wildlife
Jay on Suet
It was cloudy and dark most of the day yesterday despite the Weather Channel’s promise of partial sun, but the birds are becoming more active at my new feeding station. Yesterday we had a lot of Blue Jays in the neighborhood. I watched them forage not only our feeders but all the yards I can see from the house…whether or not they have feeders out. We are also getting Titmice everyday, and a few Chickadees and Juncos. I put up a thistle feeder yesterday…hoping for some of the rumored winter finches. We shall see.
Blue Jays are always handsome…and they are prettier in a photograph than in real life. In real life it is hard to get by their constant fuss and bother to see the beauty. And it really requires a close view…binoculars or camera…to being out the subtle shades and the fine feather detail that make them more than a big noisy blue bird.
Canon SX50HS at 1800mm equivalent field of view. Bad light. f6.5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 800. Program with –1/3 EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Variegated Meadowhawk, Estero Llano Grande TX
The Variegated Meadowhawk is a widely distributed dragonfly across much of North America. It breeds in a wide variety of habitats, and it flies both early in the season and late, so it is very likely that you have seen it somewhere before. According to the books it is a bit shy of people, but where I see them in numbers, they are relatively easy to approach.
This is a tel-macro, taken at full zoom plus 2x Digital Tel-Converter function (2400mm equivalent field of view) from just about the closest focus distance (4.5 feet) on the Canon SX50HS. I especially like the bright weathered wood of the boardwalk contrasted with the water, which is thrown completely black by the bright foreground.
f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 125. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Coyote on the Prowl: Bosque del Apache
One of the little tricks birders learn fast is “always look where the birders are looking.” If you see birding-types in the field with their binos or spotting scopes intently trained on a bush or a tree, then it is a pretty safe bet they are looking at bird, and more than even odds they are looking at a bird you might also want to see. So you always, always stop and look.
Something similar happens among photographers at Bosque during peak visiting times like the Festival of the Cranes. If you see a car load of photographers out of their car along side the road and set up with cameras on tripods, then it is a pretty safe bet to pull up behind or ahead of them (not so close as to scare off whatever they are photographing, but not far enough off so you miss the action:) and get out and at least evaluate the situation.
That is how I found this Coyote, working the dyke on the other side of the water channel along the tour loop at Bosque. I was only soon enough and quick enough to get this one shot before he/she disappeared into the reeds on the other side…but still…I might have driven right by if not for that “look where the photographers are looking” trick.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Million $$ Junk Bird!
I have said this before…and it is still true…I have never seen a more spectacular junk bird than the Green Jay. Junk birds are birds that are so common that birders do not look twice. House Sparrow. Juncos in winter. Mallards on a pond. Etc. Now, I can (and should) say that to a real birder, there are no junk birds…but the fact is that even the best, most conscientious, most righteous birder pays little attention to the most common birds most of the time.
And there is no doubt that if you live in South Texas, especially in the Rio Grande Valley, Green Jays are junk birds. They are that common. Put out a feeder, they come. Don’t put out a feeder, they still come. They are everywhere, all the time. And their habits in your yard, like the habits of most Jays, are, shall we say, not endearing? The very definition of junk birds.
However, if you don’t live in South Texas, the bird that you are most likely to be impressed by on your first visit, is the Green Jay. I mean, it is in-your-eye vivid, and so striking, so over-the-top exotic, that you will never forget your first encounter. “What was that?!?!?!”
And, being a junk bird, it is easy to see. If you only make one or two trips to the Rio Grande Valley per year, you will never get tired of seeing Green Jays. I know I have not!
I have not got tired of photographing them either. I have enough Green Jay shots from my Texas trips to make a calendar…most likely a 5 year calendar. (Not yet a Mayan Calendar…but I am working on it.) 🙂
These shots are from the National Butterfly Center gardens in Mission Texas.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. –1/3 EV Exposure Compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/100th and 1/125th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
The Backlit Goose Shot: Bosque del Apache NWR
This kind of backlit goose shot is highly prized by the hundreds of wildlife photographers who gather at Bosque del Apache NWR during any given November. You see them lined up along the tour loop, a dozen at at time, with their huge white Canon 500mm, 600mm, and even 800mm lenses on tripods looking like the massed guns of a battleship (there are always a few black Nikon’s mixed in the way a few Ross’ Geese mix with a flock of Snowys). The sound of mirror’s slapping in a dozen DSLR bodies as a flock of photographers all let off on the same in-coming goose is one of the enduring aural impressions of Bosque in November. If you are standing on the edge of the road, you can actually hear it over the geese. 🙂
The thing about the backlit goose shot is, of course, the way the sun shines through the wings.
It is a shot that requires the sun at just the right angle, and the goose coming in just about straight overhead. The primary skill involved is timing (after being in the right place at the right time), and today’s cameras with fast sensors and rapid capture ability…not to mention auto focus…make it a lot easier than it was a few years ago.
It can even be done with a Point & Shoot, as is evidenced by this shot with the Canon SX50HS. Sports Mode on the SX50HS is the best of any Point & Shoot I have yet owned. Focus is fast and accurate, and in Sports Mode seems tuned to pick up moving targets. Once you are locked on, the camera will shoot at 5 frames per second for 10 shots, and it focuses between frames. That is totally amazing performance for a Point & Shoot. The full fledged pro DSLRs do better of course, but the proof is in the results, and I have a strong feeling that a shot like this one would be prized no matter what camera it was captured with.
I have cropped this slightly from the full frame, and edited out another bird’s wing that protruded into the frame from the lower left, but I selected it from a sequence of shots of the same bird because it had the best wing position.
1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Pin-tailed Pondhawk: Estero Llano Grande TX
I suppose one of things that has caught my interest (and held it so far) about dragonflies and damselflies is that suddenly I have a whole lot more to learn…and…a high likelihood of finding something totally new on each outing. It is getting harder and harder for me to get life birds…birds I have never seen before (not because I have seen so many of the possible birds in North America, but just because I have seen most of the common ones :). I can get, however, a life odonata at almost any pond and on just about every trip! What fun.
This is a Pin-tailed Pondhawk from Estero Llano Grande World Birding Center in Weslaco Texas. It was one of several species flying on the November day when I visited. We don’t have Pin-tails in Maine. We have lot of Eastern Pondhawks, and Easterns were flying in Texas with the Pin-tails, but this black furry Pondhawk was a new species for me that day. What fun!
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Flight of Cranes: Bosque del Apache
I have been working with my Bosque del Apache images extensively over the last week, putting together my Bosque del Apache: November Days ebook, but there are still images in there that surprise me. I came across this one yesterday while my wife and I were looking for an image for the wall, and it struck me immediately with its wild energy. It is not in the book, not because it did not make the cut, but because I missed it in going through the images all together! (The book is free, and can be downloaded at this link: Bosque del Apache: November Days.)
This is a pre-landing pass. Cranes do not land in such a mass. A few drop out at a time. These birds were still headed for a pond further along New Mexico Route 1, flying strongly and with intent.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 1200mm equivalent field of view f6.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Anhinga: Estero Llano Grande TX
The Anhinga is sometimes called the snake bird, not, surprisingly, because it feeds on snakes (it does not), but because it contorts its long and highly mobile neck into such snake-like postures. It seems that no contortion is too extreme. This bird is, of course, facing the other way. That is the bird’s back we are looking at. I can not even begin to imagine how it got its head around there. It looks to me like it might hurt. 🙂 While this female appears to be in full breeding plumage, it still lacks the bright green eye shadow it will sport in January when the season really comes on.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view (1200mm optical plus 1.5x digital tel-converter). f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 640. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
4 in the Afternoon Glow: Happy Sunday!
Late in the day, in that brief interval between afternoon and evening, the low sun turns the fields and fall cottonwoods at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge to gold. The mountains to the west, as the shadows lengthen, are molded and contoured, sculpted. The Sandhill Cranes are restless. They know it will soon be time to move to night quarters…to find shallow water to stand in while they sleep…and they are moving, in small groups, field by field, closer. The angle of the sun is such that the wings, those great wings, are often lit, as they land, as much from below as above. This is the Bosque at its most subtle, and, in many ways, most beautiful.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. Zoomed back from full to about 700mm to catch the group. f5.6 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. The image looks even better a bit larger. Click it to open the lightbox, auto-sized for your monitor, on WideEyedInWonder.
And for the Sunday Thought: It is the between times that are often most beautiful to us as human beings…dawn and dusk…early sun and late. We pause. We ponder. We are just a bit more open to the wonder. Those are the times when unsuspected beauty is revealed in quite ordinary circumstances. 4 birds, 4 cranes, coming in for a landing. The world is thinner, with the light edge on to every solid thing, and the spirit shows through. 🙂
Blue Jay Outside my Window
Blue Jays might not be very nice birds, considering their habits around feeders, their propensity to raid other birds’ nests for eggs, and their general noisiness and bother…but no one can deny they are a handsome bird. Classic profile with jaunty crest, every shade of blue known to man, and those bold wing patterns…this is well dressed bird!
On a trip through the living room a few weeks ago, I caught this specimen cavorting in the ornamental Cherry outside the window and was able to grab my trusty Canon SX50HS in time to get off just one shot, through the not particularly clean, and certainly not optically flat, glass of the window. It is still the best shot of a Blue Jay I have gotten to date.
As above, Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. With a bit of special attention with the local adjustment brush around the eye.