Posts in Category: action
Yellow-throated Toucan
Yellow-throated Toucan: Danta Corcovado Lodge, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, December 2022 — We were on the van leaving Danta Corcovado Lodge to travel to Las Cruces Biological Research Station and the Wilson Botanical Gardens for the next adventure, but we did not get out of the driveway before we had to stop for this Yellow-billed Toucan eating palm nuts right beside the road…in the open…in the sun! Needless to say, we all piled out for some photos. Toucans, when you come right down to it, are not “nice” birds…they raid the nests of their neighbors for both eggs and chicks…but they certainly are big and bold and colorful. That bill is a hollow, fairly fragile, shell…otherwise they would be even more aerodynamically challenged than they are. Sony Rx10iv at 591mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Pro and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f7.1 @ 1/1000th.
Regal Sunbird in the sun, singing
Regal Sunbird: Mgahinga National Park, Uganda, August 2022 — Of course you will never forget your first sighting of a Regal Sunbird, especially when you slithered down the side of mountain to get it, and Bwindi will always have that honor for me…but here we are a day later, just beyond the ranger station at Mgahinga National Park, and we have one singing in the sun! Each of these photos deserves a closer look. Such a bird! Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Pro and Apple Photos. ISO 640, 500, and 400 in the changing light @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Carolina Wren! in Kennebunk
Carolina Wren: Kennebunk, Maine, USA — Look who showed up under the feeders on our back deck! Carolina Wrens are not unheard of in Maine, especially at feeders during the early winter, but this is a first for our yard! In fact, most range maps had a little extension up the coast of Maine as far as Portland colored as regular, even breeding, for Carolina Wren, with an area up into southern Canada where they are “rare”. I just don’t think of them as coming that far north, and this is my first, not only for our yard, but for Maine. It showed up a few days ago for a few moments when Carol saw it and was able to describe it well enough so that I knew what it was…but then yesterday, early, it came with the neighborhood mixed feeding flock and was on the deck for long enough for me to get the camera. These shots are through the glass of the deck door. I would love to have one settle in and nest in the yard. Wouldn’t that be something! Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Pro on the Mac Air. ISO 1600 and 2000 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Bare-throated Tiger Heron
Bare-throated Tiger Heron: Rincon River Bridge, Rincon, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica — The Rincon River Bridge in Rincon, just a mile or so from the Bay, is famous for one bird: The Yellow-billed Cotinga which can often be seen in flight, and rarely perched, there early in the morning. This is a very hard bird to see elsewhere, and I suspect that most birders who have seen it, have seen it right there on the bridge, just at sunup. We went. We saw it…though we did not get a look at a perched bird…but while we were there we had some fun with Herons and other birds as the sun finally burned off the morning mist. This is a Bare-throated Tiger Heron. I looked it up…or tried to…and there are 6 species of Tiger Herons. The name, apparently, comes from the striping in the plumage and the overall rufous coloration. They used to be Tiger Bitterns. I long ago stopped looking for logic in bird names. 🙂 This one looked particularly ruddy in the morning sun. I am not sure what was going on in the second shot with the ruff of feathers around the throat…this is not behavior I have seen in Herons before. It might have been a trick of the wind…but I had the impression that the ruff was intentional and part of the hunting posture??? If anyone know different, please chime in in the comments. 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 and 160 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Mixed feeding flock…
Pic for today: Mixed feeding flock: Las Tardes Community Ecology Project, Corcovado National Park, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, December 2022 — White-throated Shrike-Tanager, Rufous Mourner, Ruddy-tailed Flycatcher, Black-cheeked Ant-Tanager, White-winged Tanager, Twany-winged Woodcreeper. As I mentioned yesterday, we had already turned back from our exploration of the road into Corcovado National Park above the Las Tardes station when we encountered this mixed feeding flock of hard to see and hard to photograph birds moving through the undergrowth at just about eye-level. (In fact, if I had not stopped to tie my shoe, we would have missed it.) Yesterday’s Black-striped Woodcreeper was with these birds…along with a few others that I did not manage even a bad shot of. That is the way it happens in tropical birding. We had seen very little until this point in our hike, and then, for a few moments there were so many birds we did not know where to look. And of course, they were all buried in undergrowth so the photographers among us were very frustrated. Just how it goes in the tropics. Sony Rx10iv at around 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications and multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. (Disclaimer: Facebook may rearrange these photos randomly, so I will add the names to the individual photos as captions.)
Golden-naped Woodpecker
Golden-naped Woodpecker: Las Tardes Community Ecology Project, Corcovado National Park, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, December 2022— This is from the road above the Las Tardes project. The Golden-naped Woodpecker is “near-endemic” of Costa Rica…only found in the south Pacific lowlands and foothills and just barely into Panama across the border. This is a female…the males have a small patch of red on the crown. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f4.5 @ 1/1000th.
Blue-vented Hummingbird
Blue-vented Hummingbird: Bougainvilla Hotel, San Jose, Costa Rica, December 2022 — It was before sun-up when we met to bird the gardens at the Bouganvilla on the first morning of our trip to Costa Rica this year, and this was pretty much the first bird we encountered. The Blue-vented Hummingbird (formerly Steely-vented Hummingbird) is a common hummer of the dry north-west of the country that just makes it up into the central valley…so the Bouganvilla was the only place we were going to see it on this trip. 🙂 It is a small, energetic hummer that feeds from a variety of flowers. Sony Rx10iv at 517mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications, and multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. Equivalent ISOs 1600, 3200, and 1250 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Lesser Violetear making ears at me!
Lesser Violetear Hummingbird, Batsu Gardens, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica, December 2022 — As I said yesterday, this used to be the Green Violetear until the species was split into the Mexican and the Lesser Violetear. I don’t quite get the Lesser…since there is no Greater, and the Mexican and Lesser are exactly the same average size??? The mysteries of bird names are many. This posture is an aggressive or defensive pose…with the ears flared out…and is generally only seen in confrontations between two Violetears. There was another Violetear hovering…after the same perch. Sony Rx10iv at 586mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications and multi-frame noise reduction. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. Equivalent ISO 1250 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Lesser Violetear and White-throated Mountain-gem
Lesser Violetear and White-throated Mountain-gem: Batsu Gardens, San Gerardo de Dota, Costa Rica, December 2022 — As I mentioned it was a missy, mostly cloudy afternoon at Batsu Gardens and Marino put out flowers for us to photograph the hummingbirds. This is two of the classic high country hummers of Central America: the Lesser Violetear and the White-throated Mountain-gem. The Lesser Violetear used to be the Green Violetear before it was split, pretty much at the northern border of Costa Rica, with the birds north now called Mexican Violetear. The Lesser ranges to the edges of South America. (And, no, there is no Greater Violetear.) The White-throated Mountain-gem is even more confused. It is endemic to the Talamanca Mountains and higher volcanos of Costa Rica and Panama, but some authorities consider the Panama birds to be the Grey-tailed Mountain-gem, a separate species endemic to Panama. Whatever! Still both attractive hummers of the high mountains. Sony Rx10iv at 493mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 2000 @ f4 @ 1/500th.
Elephant on water
African Elephant: Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda, August 2022 — Still on our way from the Northern sector of QENP to the Ishasha sector, we came upon a small herd of Elephants making their way across a wetland below the road, grazing as they went. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Photo and Apple Photos. ISO 100 @ f4 @ 1/500th.