Posts in Category: marsh
The Song of the Great Blue Heron! Happy Sunday.
Great Blue Heron, Back Creek Marsh, Kennebunk ME.
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light.” Jesus
Of course, Great Blue Herons are not song-birds. They do not sing. They rarely make and sound at all, and when they do it is a guttural grunt, not only un-song like, but un-bird like. But they have a song. It is in the way they move, they way they hunt, they way they are. It is the silent stalking, the slow march across the marsh. Majestic, written and arranged for strings and orchestra. By Vivaldi perhaps. As much dance as song. Even silent, you can see as you watch the Heron hunt in the shallow waters of the marsh that it is hearing the music in its mind…that it moves to a song all its own. And then with a swell of strings, it spreads its great wings and lifts off…keeping time even as it flies. It is the song of the Great Blue Heron. And if you have watched one closely, with generous eyes, you will know what I mean, and hear it, at least in your dreams.
All creation sings the glory of the creator God…the God who creates in love. That is the light we are filled with…the generous eyed ones…the ones who hear the Heron song with the ears of the spirit…and who celebrate such beauty. Happy Sunday!
Evening Willet
Willet, Back Creek marsh, Kennebunk Maine
On my after supper visit to the local beach, with the sun about an hour from setting, but already warm with the evening light, there were several Willets feeding in the marsh grasses and along the edge of the tidal flow of Back Creek near where it meets the Mousam River. Our New England Willets are warmer in tone than western Willets anyway, but the early evening light really brings up the warm, almost rust, color of plumage.
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 320 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Bee in Beach Rose
Bee in Rugosa Rose (Beach Rose), Back Creek, Kennebunk ME
It rained off and on most of yesterday, but about 3 pm I decided to go for a photoprowl on my bike anyway. I pushed through what turned out to be a thin band of light rain and got to the marsh behind the beach in time for the sun to come out. I had some fun chasing bees in the Beach Rose along the road (among other things). The wet flowers, and the freshly washed bees, made for vivid images. I did some tele-macro, and then switched to actual macro as the bees were so busy feeding that they did not seem to mind a close approach. This one was captured at about 80mm equivalent field of view in Close Up Mode.
Nikon P900. 1/320th @ ISO 100 @ f3.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Song Sparrow in Sea Grass
Song Sparrow, Back Creek Marsh, Kennebunk ME
There don’t seem to be as many Song Sparrows nesting on the dunes between the Back Creek Marsh and the ocean as there have been in some years, but they are there. I suspect it has to do with our late spring. The Yellow Warblers that are often nesting with them are, as far as I can see, totally missing this year. Hard to say exactly why. Yesterday we had a high wind and this Song Sparrow was singing from such a low perch I could not spot it before it flew out into the Sea Grass where dune meets marsh. It popped its head up just long enough for a few shots. 🙂
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 220 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Singing in the rain…
Song Sparrow, Back Creek, Kennebunk ME
After it rained steadily all Sunday, and all Monday…and when it looked likely to rain all day Tuesday, I decided that I was not going to let the rain keep me from my photoprowl another day. I put on my raincoat, got out the umbrella, picked up the Nikon P900, and headed out. I figured I could find some moody, rainy landscapes at the least, so I headed for the beach at the end our our road. Of course, before I was fully out of the car, before I even got the umbrella up and sorted out the camera, I heard a Song Sparrow singing in the rain. Classic. The prefect title for a post! So I had to find the bird, fight the umbrella in the wind, and attempt to catch it singing. Before I was done with the bird and few landscapes, the umbrella had blown inside out and I had to dash back to the car to dry the camera off. It was worth it though. If a Song Sparrow can sing in the rain, I can certainly take a few pics 🙂 And I certainly felt better for it! If you look closely at the image you will see the water droplets on the bird’s plumage, and even the tracks of a few rain drops as they crossed the frame.
Nikon P900 at 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/200th @ f6.5 @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet. Cropped slightly for composition.
Dawn light on the marsh
Back Creek, Kennebunk ME
I am posting this morning from Panama City, Panama. By day’s end, if all goes to plan, I will be at Tranquilo Bay Lodge, and will be there for a week. One last shot this morning from Kennebunk (for the time being). This is the first sun as it strikes across the marsh at the mouth of Back Creek, behind the dunes at our local beach.
Nikon P900 in Landscape mode, with multiple exposure Noise Reduction turned on. 24mm equivalent field of view. 1/125 @ ISO100 @ f2.8. Processed in Lightroom.
Song Sparrow Rampant
Song Sparrow. Kennebunk Bridle Path
We have a few Song Sparrows back early…so early that they are not yet singing. It might be that only males or only females have come in this early, but for whatever reason, they are not thinking about establishing territories or nesting yet. They are uncharacteristically skulky…staying low in the brush and mostly out of sight. In another few weeks I expect to see them singing from every exposed branch and fence post top. The birds that are in are particularly vivid as well, with very high contrast between the brown and lighter parts. This bird was along the Kennebunk Bridle Path parallel with the lower Mousam River on the ocean side of Route 9 in Kennebunk.
Nikon P900. 2000mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ ISO 125 @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Green-winged Teal
Green-winged Teal. Tijuana Slough Estuarine Research Center. Imperial Beach, CA
We spent the morning yesterday at Tijuana Slough National Estuarine Research Center. We had good views of Godwits, Whimbrels, and Long-billed Curlews…and stunning views of a few Green-winged Teal. The angle of the early morning light was just right to pick up the green on both head and wings in a way I have seldom seen before, and the Teal floated down smooth water of the Slough to within 40 feet of us.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 200 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly for scale in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Birch Boundary
Birches at the edge of Laudholm Farm, Wells ME
In summer, walking the lower fields of Laudholm Farm, you would think you were on the edge of a deep forest. In winter it becomes apparent just how thin the boarder of trees between fields and marsh is. Really just a few birches and pines and some underbrush is all that separates the two. As I have said before, birches have always been among my favorite trees, and I find this “hedge” of birches and pines irresistible.
The top panel is another accidental panorama…or rather it is two sweep panoramas, taken with the camera in vertical orientation, neither of which caught quite the full sweep I was after. At home it occurred to me to try stitching them for that last bit of sweep. Photoshop Elements PhotoMerge tool to the rescue! The bottom panel is the same birch boundary at 24mm equivalent in an in-camera HDR from further out in the field. Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom, panorama stitched in Photoshop Elements, and collage assembled in Phototastic on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Icy Panorama
Back Creek as it enters the Mousam River a few hundred years from the ocean.
We will take a break from hot Honduran hummingbirds today. This is an unintentional panorama, stitched in Photoshop Elements from two images. I was going to post only one or the other, but in looking at them I wondered if Photoshop could make a seamless pano from them. No sooner thought than tried. It took two tries but PE, using the Auto setting on Photomerge Panorama, did the trick wonderfully well, and even automatically filled out to the edges of the rectangle. Impressive software…and, switching gears, an impressive winter we are having. We had maybe 4 inches of fresh snow by morning yesterday, but it got to the low 30s. We are back in the teens today, with below zero temps for tonight. People are hiring bucket-loaders to pile the snow next to their drives, as conventional pick-up plows can no longer push the snow high enough. Two story houses have two story driveway piles. After the first storm, we have been blowing ours so we have a whole yard to fill…but it is indeed filling up. This shot, with the broken ice (broken by the tide), gives you a good feel for our Maine winter this year. 🙂
Two 24mm equivalent field of view, in-camera HDRs, from the Sony HX400V. Processed in Lightroom and stitched into a pano in Photoshop Elements Photomerge tool.