Posts in Category: action
Florida Scrub Jay. Happy Sunday!
Florida Scrub Jay, Merritt Island NWR, Titusville FL
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
This is my third post of Florida Scrub Jay pics from my encounter with a pair on my last day in Florida for the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. It was an extra, as in unplanned, day. My flight home was canceled, so, after a morning in the flied with my daughter Sarah, and after dropping her off at the airport in Orlando for her fight back to New Mexico, I made one last run out to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge to catch the afternoon/evening light. Since it was extra time, I took the time to go look for Florida Scrub Jays where Sarah and my friend Rich had seen them one day when I was busy teaching a workshop. And they were there! Just two, likely a pair, but it was my first FSJ encounter in over 10 years, and my first ever on Merritt Island. I took way too many pictures. This is a collage of two shots that provides evidence for my contention that the Florida Scrub Jay is the most beautiful of eastern Jays.
The encounter was even more special because it was shared. A couple, the husband a fellow photographer, came up behind me and, feeling generous, I waved them up to stand with me so they could get photos too. (By then I was confident that the Scrub Jays were not alarmed at our presence at all…and in fact they were still sitting on their bushes when we decided we had devoted enough camera memory to them and walked on.) Sharing an experience like this with others, even if strangers, deepens my pleasure considerably. It is the shared wonder…awe reinforces awe…and the result is more joy. It is even more intense if you are sharing the experience with someone you already love, and I really wished Sarah were still there in those moments, but it is impossible not to love the ones you share with…or at least it is for me. I felt like I was radiating good will…good will that encompassed the cooperate Scrub Jays, and certainly my fellow photographer and his wife, in one big bubble of delight.
And I feel a bit of that right now. Partially it is memory, but it is also this sharing by proxy that is this post. I intend for you to share in the joy of discovery, in the wonder I experienced there in the field with these Jays. The thing about the generous eye is that light builds on light. In generosity you always get back as much or more than you give. Always. Because the light in you is met by the light in others, and is amplified. That is the way it works. Always. God is just good that way. God is good in all ways.
Happy Sunday!
Violet Saberwing
Violet Saberwing. Rio Santiago Nature Lodge, Honduras
This is another set from Rio Santiago Nature Lodge, high on the shoulder of the mountain near Pico Bonito National Park. Their many feeders attract a wide variety of hummingbirds year-round. This is the Violet Saberwing, one of the larger tropical rain forest hummingbirds, and certainly one of the more spectacular. It is also one of the most common.
Nikon P610 and P900 at various focal lengths and exposures. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.
Florida Cedar Waxwing
Cedar Waxwing. Enchanted Forest Preserve, Titusville FL
I had only a few hours before a workshop at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival in January one morning, so I decided to visit Enchanted Forest Preserve, which 1) I had never been to, and 2) was only 7 miles from my hotel. Enchanted Forest is a chunk of mixed habitat along the abortive Addison canal, at the very south edge of Titusville. It was early, and it was unseasonably cold, so there not many birds were moving yet at the Enchanted Forest, but I got back to the parking area by the Visitor Center just in time to encounter a small flock of Cedar Waxwings moving through the trees and feeding on berries. Always a treat, no matter what state I am in.
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 320 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Aracari in the sun
Collared Aracari, Rio Santiago Nature Lodge, Honduras
I have already posted a shot of a Collared Aracari in the rain…looking slightly bedraggled, so here is one in the sun. My conclusion: Aracaris always look slightly bedraggled. 🙂 It is just their look…the Aracari way. This bird has its tail cocked off sharply to the right (our right, his left), so he looks a little tail-less. This was taken at Rio Santiago Nature Lodge, on the slope above the hummingbird feeders, while taking a break from photographing hummingbirds (always the real business at Rio Santiago).
Nikon P900 at 1000mm equivalent flied of view. 1/400th @ ISO 100 @ f7.1. Processed in Lightroom.
American Bittern
American Bittern. Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands, Viera Florida
I am just another bunch of reeds. Move along. Nothing to see here! The American Bittern practices its invisibility posture at the Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands at Viera Florida. It seems to me that the first years I went to Florida for the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival, the American Bittern was difficult to find. Over the last 4 years at least, I have seen them regularly both at Merritt Island and at Viera Wetlands. This bird was working along the edge  of one of the ponds, in and out of reeds, never completely visible, but giving us good looks all the same.
Nikon P900 @ 1000mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 110 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.
White-necked Jacobin
White-necked Jacobin
I sat for most of an hour in the little gazebo-like tower on the back of the Rio Santiago Nature Lodge, in a chair at one of the tables, and photographed hummingbirds as they rested in the trees between me and the feeders. This is a White-necked Jacobin. You can just see the white patch at the nape of the neck that gives it its name. Besides being a portrait of the bird, I like the out of focus branches which provide a frame and a context for the bird.
Nikon P900 at 1100mm equivalent field of view. 1/400th @ ISO 280 @ f5.6. Processed in Lightroom.
Skimmer!
Black Skimmer, Merritt Island Causeway, Titusville FL
Just before my trip to Honduras, I spent a week at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival in Titusville Florida and brought back over 700 keepers. Obviously I only got to share a few of those before I was off to the more exotic birds and landscapes of Honduras, so I am going to loop back, over the next few days, and pick up some of the best of my Florida shots.
This Black Skimmer was one in a small flock that is often on the shore, or feeding just off-shore along the causeway between the bridge and Merritt Island proper, right by the parking for the fishing pier. Late afternoon, almost sunset, light coming in low backlighted the Skimmers, and actually illuminated the red on the bill from the inside. Skimmers stand in a tight group, head to the wind, with eyes barely open…when they stand…and this bird is displaying the typical posture (and attitude). I am surprised that no one has coined the phrase “stoic as a skimmer” since that is my primary impression of skimmers on land. 🙂 Just enduring until it is time to get up and out and feed again.
Nikon P900 at 1800mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 400 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.
Toucan in the rain…
Keel-billed Toucan, the Lodge at Pico Bonito, Honduras
The avocados were ripening in the trees on the grounds of the Lodge at Pico Bonito in Honduras when I was there, and avocados attract birds…Lovely Contingas in the high canopy, and Collard Aricaris and Keel-billed Toucans lower down. This year Emerald and Yellow-eared Toucanetts joined them from higher up in the mountains. On my last morning there, waiting for my bus to the airport, shooting hummingbirds from the cover of the porches and decks at the Lodge while it rained, a group of Aricaris and Toucans came through the grounds. I love Toucans, so I put up my umbrella and chased them around the corner and out to the big trees around two of the cabins where I knew they might stop to feed on the avocados. And they were there, feeding in the rain. Shooting from under an umbrella is not easy. You have to balance the umbrella somehow while holding the camera, and you have to pay close attention to the angle of your cover while you attempt to track and frame moving birds above you. As this shot attests, however, it is possible. The rain streaks add to the portrait and the colors of the wet bird are as rich as they get.
Nikon P610 at 1330mm equivalent. 1/100th @ ISO 400 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.
Specticaled Owl
Specticaled Owl, Rio Santiago Lodge, Honduras
Rio Santiago Lodge in Honduras is where you go to photograph hummingbirds, but over the past year the Lodge has had several attractions besides the hummers. Just after I was there in February 2015, a newly fledged Specticaled Owl moved into the area behind the lodge, and beginning last fall was seen regularly within a short hike of the Lodge. The bird is now just about a year old, and can still be found, most days. The guides at the lodge keep track of its comings and goings and generally know about where to look…consequently it is now perhaps the most photographed Specticaled Owl in the world :).
And what an amazing bird it is. Beautiful in all the ways any owl is…but spectacular in its facial pattern. On the day I was there, it was somewhat obscured by branches…but still an amazing sight.
Nikon P900 at 1800mm equivalent field of view. 1/30th @ ISO 800 @ f6.3. (Pretty good for hand-held at 1/30th second.) Processed in Lightroom.
Female Black-headed Trogon
Female Black-headed Trogon, Cuero y Salado NWR, Honduras
You never know what you will see from the boats at the Cuero y Salado National Wildlife Refuge in Honduras. You reach Cuero y Salado via a short bus ride from the Lodge at Pico Bonito to the train station in La Union, where you board the century old, narrow gauge, one car and an engine, banana train for the ride out to the Refuge on the coast. From the Refuge Visitor Center you take small motor boats out into the three channels at the mouth of the Cuero y Salado rivers, up into the mangroves and out toward the beach. Along the way, you see a wide variety of birds and wildlife native to the habitats. This is a female Black-headed Trogon which was sitting on a branch all but overhanging a narrow channel through the mangroves.
We only regularly get one Trogon, the Elegant, in the US, right down along the Mexican border in the sky-islands of Southern Arizona…but there are more than a dozen in Central America. The Black-headed is one of the most widely distributed and most common.
Even though the guides are expert in their handling of the boats, and make every effort to get you and boat still enough for a good view and even a decent shot, shooting from a moving boat is real challenge…and only possible thanks to the excellent image stabilization built into most lenses and long-lens superzoom point and shoot cameras these days. For the shots from the boat, I switched the Nikon P900 to “Active Image Stabilization” which compensates for both small vibrations due to hand holding, and for larger motions when you are shooting from a moving platform. It worked very well.
Nikon P900 at 1800mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 400 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.