Posts in Category: p&s 4 wildlife
Texas Black Saddlebags
Actually this might not be a resident Texas Black-saddlebags. BSBs are long distance migrants and this specimen looks well worn. It could conceivably even be one of the BSBs I saw emerge at my pond in Maine earlier this summer. Wouldn’t that be strange and wonderful.
The BSB is the single most abundant dragonfly I am seeing on this trip to Texas…even Wandering Glider is a distant second. There are BSBs everywhere I have been in the past 5 days, and in large numbers. Impressive.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Great Kiskadees for Songbird Saturday
This is another shot of the Great Kiskadee displaying at Estero Llano Grande World Birding Center. It is a rarely observed behavior and I feel privileged to have seen it, and even more so to have caught it, however imperfectly, as a digital image.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 500. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Red-saddlebags At Last!
I have photographed Black Saddlebags in both Texas and Maine, and I have one really bad photo of a Carolina Saddlebags from my Kennebunk dragon pond this summer, but my ambition for this trip to south Texas and New Mexico was to find and photograph a Red Saddlebags. They don’t get as far north as Maine and a friend who posted a pic from NM said the last record for the upper Rio Grande Valley is sometime in September, so my only real hope was Texas.
My first day in Harlingen I got out to Estero Llano Grande World Birding Center…which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite places for birding, bugging, and photography…and, sure enough, there were a smattering of Red Saddlebags among the abundant Blacks. I had, however, about given up on getting one to sit still for a photo when I found a little reed tip out by Grebe Marsh where one was returning with fair frequency. I watched it for fifteen minutes, missing it every time…it was in touch-and-go mode…but I made note of the location to check on my way back to the visitor center.
And there it was, on my way back, on the same reed tip…and this time it sat while I got a few shots, and then returned twice to the same perch for more shots at different angles. I was so blessed!
The perch was high, above eye-level, so the angle is not great…but still…a Red Saddlebags!
It, like the Blacks it was flying with, was a well worn bug…likely a migrant from further north mating one last time on its final journey south. (Some of the Blacks were tattered enough for me to believe I might have photographed the same bug a few months ago in Maine.)
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.
Red-crescent Scrub-Hairstreak
Increasingly Birding Festivals are as much about butterflies and dragonflies for me as they are about birds. I suppose it is just a phase I am going through. This week I am at the Rio Grande Valley Birding and Nature Festival in Harlingen Texas, and there is almost nowhere in the US that is better for butterflies than the Rio Grande Valley. As for dragonflies, there are actually more species in New England than anywhere else, but there are some dragons here I will, of course, never see in Maine. And I do pay attention to the birds as well!
I walked up on a knowledgeable gentleman photographing this Hairstreak at Estero Llano Grande State Park and World Birding Center yesterday. He was quite excited as it is a rare species: the Red-crescent Scrub-Hairsteak. I almost certainly would not have even seen it (it is tiny), and I certainly would not have seen it as anything special, if the gentleman had not been practically on his stomach trying to get a good angle on the bug. As it was I had to go ask.
With the reach of the Canon SX50HS’ long zoom I was able to get decent shots over his shoulder. Estero Llano Grande has extensive plantings for butterflies…and lots of ponds for dragonflies.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. –2/3 EV exposure compensation. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 160. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Squirrel Attitude
This is another shot of the fall industry of the squirrels in our back yard. And yet another shot in less than ideal light. I don’t know what it is about our squirrels. They do not come out to play on sunny days?
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 2400mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 320. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Yellow Legs
There were several Greater Yellowlegs in migration along the Kennebunk Bridle Path where it crosses the marsh pools between Rt. 9 and the sea.
They were busy enough feeding that they did not pay much attention to me. I was able to reach out with the long zoom on the Canon SX50HS and catch them.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. Both shots are at 2400mm equivalent field of view (full 1200mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-converter function). 1) f6.5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 160. 2) f6.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. I should have bumped the exposure compensation down to 1/3 or –2/3EV…but I am still learning the camera.
Yellow-rumped Warbler on Deck
Well, it is a actually the new “man-made-material” boardwalk out behind the hawk-watch platform at Lighthouse State Park in Cape May, NJ. It was a dull afternoon with heavy clouds and the Yellow-rumped Warblers were coming down onto the boardwalk to pick up either seeds or bugs…I could not see which. Then they would hop back up to the lower branches of the trees next to the boardwalk. Up and down. Down and up.
I like the feet here. You don’t often get to see a small bird’s feet in this kind of detail. The subdued light, and the plain grey background, really brings out the remaining color in this fall plumaged bird.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view (full zoom plus 1.5x digital tel-converter function). f6.5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Horned Grebe in Winter Plumage
Yesterday, I took a lunch-break drive down to the beach where Back Creek comes into the Mousam River behind the dunes. There were 4 winter plumage Horned Grebes diving just off the bridge. They are interesting little birds, especially when the sun catches in that bright red eye. We don’t see them in close during summer, but they are often off the beaches here in winter. The are very active birds, swimming rapidly on the surface, and then diving and staying down for 30-60 seconds…often coming up unpredictably 100 yards to one side or the other of where they went down. Not easy to photograph, but just to attractive not to try!
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1), 2) and 3) @ 1800mm equivalent field of view (1200mm optical plus 1.5x digital tel-converter function). 4) @ 2400mm equivalent field of view (2x dtc). All hand-held.
1) f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 250. 2) and 3) f6.5 @ 1/250th @ ISO 80. 4) f6.5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 80. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Big Grey at Lighthouse State Park
Friday was the only day in Cape May during CMBO’s Autumn Weekend Festival with decent light, and it did not really get bright until 10am when I already had to be at the Convention Center for set up. Still I took the trail early that runs out over the boardwalk behind the Hawk Watch at Lighthouse State Park, past the pond, and on around through the newly manicured pine forest, across the marsh again on boardwalks, past the second pond, and back around below the dunes and behind the pond by the Hawk Watch Platform. It is always further than I think it is, and takes more time, especially if you stop for any photography.
None the less, I could not resist stopping for this acrobatic Grey Squirrel in the pine forest section of the trail. It was making a big deal of scampering up and down a tree trunk about 15 feet from the trail, taking very obvious exception to my being there, but unwilling, for some reason, to give up its tree. Everything is still an experiment with this new camera (Canon SX50HS), and the light was not bright enough to really hope for sharp shots of this rapidly moving critter (or even accurate focus)…but still…I shot off several different bursts and was able to sort 3 keepers from the lot. Not bad at all.
I especially like the bright yellow green leaf behind the squirrel that completes the composition.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/60th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Terns on the Wing
In the same murky dawn light as I found the Gannets in on Saturday, ahead of Hurricane Sandy, in Cape May New Jersey, there were terns fishing. The Gannets in-close were a surprise, but, of course, I expect the terns in Cape May.
These are Forester’s Terns, as were most of the terns fishing along the beach that morning. Despite the dim light I was practicing with the Sports Mode on the Canon SX50HS. I really need to find some birds in flight in decent light to see how it really works. (I will be in New Mexico at Bosque del Apache NWR next month. Maybe there 🙂
Canon SX50HS. Sports Mode. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
The top image benefits from a larger view. Click on the image to open it in the lightbox on WideEyedInWonder.