Posts in Category: Laudholm Farm
Are you done yet…
Chipmunk, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
My late afternoon photoprowl at Laudholm Farm a few days ago was particularly productive. Just down the trail from the Common Yellowthroat with the bugs from yesterday’s post, I heard a chip close by and looked up into the branches of a small tree to find this Chipmunk posing. He was patient with my photography, giving me different sides, and letting me work around for angles for several minutes. He was inside the close focus on the Nikon P900 (16.5 feet) so I could not use full zoom. I even switched cameras for this shot, which uses the Sony HX90V’s Clear Image digital zoom for 1440mm equivalent field of view and a nice close-up. By this time the Chipmunk seemed to be wondering if I was done yet. 🙂 I moved on.
Camera as above. 1/250th @ ISO 160 @ f6.4. Processed in Lightroom.
Uncommon Yellowthroat
Common Yellowthroat, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
Oh, Common Yellowthroats are common enough this year. They are another bird that seems to have benefited from the late spring…if numbers are any indication. They are everywhere I go and in good numbers. On a late afternoon photoprowl on the trails at Laudholm Farm yesterday, I saw at least a dozen. Birds were uncommonly active for a late afternoon, perhaps because it had been rainy and gloomy until the sun broke out at about 3PM. This Yellowthroat had taken a grasshopper/beetleish thing, and was, perhaps, in retrospect, waiting until I passed on to take it to its nest. It hopped around in the branches of a tree overhanging the trail for several minutes as I photographed it. In fact I left it still hopping there when I moved on. I did not see the prey in its beak until I got the images up on the monitor at home.
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 360 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Feisty Red Squirrel
Red Squirrel, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms, Wells ME
This might actually be the same Red Squirrel I encountered on the Laudholm Farms boardwalk a few weeks ago. It was certainly in about the same area. However, if you remember, on that encounter the squirrel was relatively shy, if determined. It would allow me to approach to within about 20 feet, and then it would lose its nerve and scamper on down the boardwalk to find another seed to eat further away. I moved it probably 150 feet down the boardwalk before it scampered off into the forest. This time, the squirrel seemed determined to defend its stretch of boardwalk. I felt like the Borlog and the squirrel was Gandalf. He would leap up to a tree and threaten me, than he would plant himself firmly on the little 3 inch tall rail of the boardwalk and glare a clear message “you shall not pass!” Then he would charge me. Me. He charged. The squirrel. Tail twitching. Ears erect. Eye to eye. He charged down the rail to within six feet of me before thinking better of it and flying off into the forest…only to land right back on his tree and then the rail where he had started: 20 feet from me and glaring.
Not only that, when I first saw him he was eating, relatively speaking, a log. You see it here. He was sitting up, holding this stick in his paws like a giant cob of corn, and was breaking it up and extracting something from the pulp. In his first few charges at me he carried the log with him, and even after he dropped it, it might have been what he was defending.
Eating his log like corn.
Finally, he had already been in the wars. When I got the images home, you can clearly see in many of them that there is a fresh wound in front of his right eye. I suspect he got it scrapping with other Red Squirrels, but it might have been from a unsuccessful predator attack (unsuccessful from the predator’s standpoint). I told you. A veritable borlog of a Red Squirrel! (Oh wait…he was supposed to be Gandalf 🙁
Wounded
The first two shots are with the Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. The last shot is with the Sony HX90V at 720mm equivalent field of view. I switched cameras because on his close approach the squirrel was inside the closest focus on the Nikon. 🙂 Processed in Lightroom.
Backlit Chipper
Chipmunk, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms. ME
The Chipmunks are very active at Laudholm Farms this year…everywhere actually, in Southern Maine. This individual was very busy collecting and eating some kind of seed, in the mowed grass of one of the trails through the meadows. I began shooting it when it was just a dot in the center of the finder…thinking it would surely scamper off into the brush as soon as I approached, but it stayed out in the open, finding more seeds, until I could get this frame filling shot at 2000mm equivalent field of view. I was about 30 feet from it at that point. 🙂 I like the backlight…and the camera held detail in the shadows very well.
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 200 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Grass Pink Orchid
Grass Pink Orchid, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms. ME
The little remnant bog at Laudholm Farm, smaller than a baseball diamond, seems to be particularly healthy as bogs go, and produces several interesting species of bog wildflowers. This is Grass Pink, one of Maine’s few native orchids. The name is peculiar. The single leaf may be grass-like but the flower, at least as it grows in Maine, is certainly not pink. It is obviously purple, which is only made more certain when it grows, in our bogs, next to another Maine orchid, the Rose Pogonia, which is, in fact, very pink (See my post on Rose Pogonia here). According to my little bit of research, the presence of Grass Pink is a good indicator that the bog’s surface and the ground water are healthy and pure. It is very sensitive to contamination. It is one of the few orchids to be “right side up”…having its fringed lip at the top when the flower is mature. All orchids start out with the lip at the top, but the stem holding the flower twists as the flower matures so that the lip is presented at the bottom. Very strange.
Grass Pink is also one the few orchids that can be grown from seed…and you can buy plants for wet sunny corners of your yard…or for inside cultivation. I far prefer to find them growing in the healthy little bog at Laudholm Farm. 🙂
Sony HX90V at 44mm equivalent. 1/320th @ ISO 80 @ f4.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Eastern Towhee x2
Eastern Towhees, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms, ME
I have mentioned before that we seem to have a lot of Towhees this year. They are singing wherever I go, and see them most places. At Laudholm Farms yesterday afternoon, on my photoprowl in search of bog orchids (among other things) I found several and was able to photograph 3 different individuals. The panel above shows two of them, singing within a 100 yards of each other.
You might notice that the bird on the right is freshly banded. June Ficker has operated the mist nets and banding station at Laudholm Farm for 25 years…an incredible achievement. She and her team of volunteers give banding demonstrations each Wednesday morning in the summer when the weather cooperates, under the spreading Copper Beech between the barns and house at the farm. In fact, I may well have see this bird banded last Wednesday on my way back to the car from a photoprowl. 🙂
For more information on June Ficker and bird banding at Laudholm Farms, visit here.
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.
Least Terns in Flight
Least Terns, Little River, Laudholm Farm Beach, Wells ME
Yesterday, prompted by a post on Maine Birds, I took a walk to the mouth of the Little River on Laudholm Farm Beach at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center. There is a protected colony of Least Terns there, on both sides of the river back a few hundred yards from the sea, as well as a few Piping Plover nests…Piping Plover is an “endangered” bird. I saw terns in good numbers and a few Plovers. I say protected colony because it is very visibly posted and “roped” off, more heavily on one side of the river than the other, and they have erected actual cages around the Piping Plover nests. Maine Audubon and the Fish and Wildlife Service have monitors on site for most of the breeding season, especially on the north side of the river where dogs often run free. Dogs are prohibited from the beach but that area backs up to summer homes. On the south side, it is Laudholm Farms behind the beach and access is through the Farm itself, which has a strict no dogs policy. Then there are cats, foxes, gulls, raccoons…even Blue Jays. It is a big deal every time a Piping Plover nest successfully fledges, and every chick that reaches maturity is a victory!
The Least Terns were actively feeding in the shallow ripple sections of the river where it crosses the sand of the beach…and. of course, I had to try to catch them in the air…in flight. It took me a while to get my hand and eye in…and I have not done a lot of Birds in Flight (BIF) with the new Nikon P900…so out of several hundred exposures I got maybe a dozen keepers. This panel of 4 shots is representative. Not easy. Quite frustrating. And lots of fun!
Nikon P900 at various focal lengths: from 650mm equivalent field of view to 1200mm. Generally ISO 100 at 1/640th. Cropped and processed in Lightroom. Assembled in Coolage.
Eastern Towhee 2
Male Eastern Towhee, Laudholm Farms, Wells ME
I mentioned in previous posts that we seem to have a lot of Eastern Towhee’s this year…the females are everywhere I go…but that I had not seen many males. In the past few days I have encountered two males, widely separated, so they are indeed here as well. This male was singing along the trail at the Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm. Not easy light, but a decent image of this interesting bird.
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/30th @ ISO 800 @ f6.5. It is hard to imagine that any camera could manage this image! Processed in Lightroom.
Brown Thrasher
Brown Thrasher, Laudholm Farms, Wells ME
Brown Thrashers are another bird (in addition to Cedar Waxwings and Eastern Towhees) that seem to be present in Southern Maine in larger numbers this summer than in any summer past. I don’t know why that would be…but I certainly have seen more of them over the past few weeks than I ever have in Maine. This fine specimen was singing loudly from the top of a bush by the parking at the Wells Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm on my way back from my walk there the other day. The warm light of the late afternoon really lights up that eye!
There seems to be some question as to where the name “thrasher” came from for this group of birds. It might be a derivative to thresher which was Old English and became Thrush. On the other hand, anyone who has ever seen a thrasher feeding on the ground, knows they do thrash about just a bit 🙂
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/640th @ ISO 100 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Red Squirrel Story
Red Squirrel, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
I took a late afternoon walk at Laudholm Farm (Wells National Estuarine Research Center) yesterday…down across the mini-bog, through the low-lying forest to the road to the beach, and around the boardwalk to the open fields and back to the farm buildings and the car. Just before I started the boardwalk section, I put my camera away in its bag so I could have both hands free to get a drink from the water bottle I carry in my vest, so, as I started down the boardwalk, I did not have my camera out an ready. “Now that’s not right” I thought, “what if I see something?” So I stopped to dig the camera out and get it turned on. I was still fumbling with it when I looked up and saw a Red Squirrel sitting on the boardwalk eating some kind of berry, not 20 feet in front of me. “Ah! There you go!” I thought. “Thanks for the reminder!”
The Squirrel, as it turned out, would probably have waited for me to get the camera out anyway. I got of a series of shots at 20 feet, zooming in and out for framing, and then took a step closer. Squirrel on the run! But it only ran another 20 feet down the boardwalk before it found another of those apparently irresistible berries, and stopped to eat it. More pics before I took a step closer. This continued for several hundred feet down the boardwalk, with the Squirrel searching the edge of the boardwalk for berries, until I finally told the Squirrel that I had played with him long enough and he would have to let me by so I could continue my walk. He hopped into the forest when I made it clear that I was not going to respect his 20 foot boundary any more. 🙂
I have lots of shots in forest shadow and a few in patches of sun…but this one with the dappled light…warm light due to the lateness of the day…is my favorite. It brings out the red in Red Squirrel very nicely.
Nikon P900 at 1400mm equivalent field of view. 1/125 @ ISO 400 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.
And the moral of the story, of course, is “always have your camera ready!”