Posts in Category: marsh
Golden-crowned Sparrow
I have seen all my Golden-crowned Sparrows in Arcata California. They are so common, and so tame, at Arcata Marsh Nature Center that you have to pay attention so you do not step on them as they forage in the trails. Exaggeration : ) but not by much. I have had them literally at my feet. In fact, they spend so much time on the ground that it is a challenge to get one perched up on bush. I don’t know about you, but Sparrow on the ground shots are not my favorites. Though it is, of course, for many species, completely natural…it never looks natural to me. That is why I was happy to find this specimen up in the bush.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/800th @ ISO 1000 @ f7.1. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Cropped for composition and scale.
One More Marsh Wren
I can not actually promise this this will be the last of the Arcata Marsh Wrens that I post this season. I have hundreds of images from this past trip 🙂 They are just so much fun to watch and to photograph. On this second day of cold rain in a row in Southern Maine, the singing Marsh Wrens of Northern California make a nice antidote. Or that is what I think anyway.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/800th @ ISO 800 @ f7.1. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Arcata Song
The Marsh Wrens of Arcata Marsh are certainly special, but so are the sparrows. Golden-crowned Sparrows are, sometimes literally, underfoot everywhere. Occasionally they will even get up in a bush and pose nicely. And it is always a treat when a Song Sparrow pops up on something and sings, right out in plain sight, 10 feet away…paying not the least attention attention to you and your camera. This specimen let me walk all around the back side of it with my bean-bag-head monopod, looking for better angles. For a bird photographer it simply does not get any better than this!
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/800th @ ISO 800 @ f6.7. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Nesting Building among Wrens
Along the edge of one of the ponds at Arcata Marsh Nature Center there was a male Marsh Wren guarding territory and building a nest every 100 feet or so. We had a chance to compare three males working closely together. Nearest the corner of the pond was Macho Wren. He seemed to think that zipping rapidly back and forth across the corner of the pond, singing loudly (and not very musically), with his tail cooked up tight over his back in maximum excitement posture would win him a female, even though we never saw him actually do any work on a nest. Next down the shore was The Rookie. Clearly a first year male, this wren picked up the right materials and brought them to the nest site, but generally dropped them before getting them into the nest. He had read the instructions in his genetic code…but did not quite understand the point of them. Finally we had Home Depot Wren, utterly competent, filled with porpose, building not just a nest but a castle. He never dropped a thing. He was weaving a base of wet reeds and roots of cattail pulled up from below the water line. I suspect it will be waterproof when dry, and lining and thatching it will cattail down. The roof arched up several inches. Spacious accommodation for a growing family! And, on each trip out for materials, he took time to find a reed and sing his best song! Now that is my kind of Wren! I hope the females of his species recognize and reward his efforts. He deserves to pass on his genes.
I have to say…for me, there are few things in life more filled with quiet joy than an intimate view of a Wren building a nest.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/800th @ f7.1 @ various ISOs to suit. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Assembled in Pixlar Express.
Ring out the News! Happy Easter!
Shout it out. Sing it out. He is risen. He lives! And because he is risen we live. Because he lives our lives are a celebration. If only we could be always as simple (and as infectious) as the wren!
Happy Easter.
Marsh Wren Trimuphant!
They call the festival “Godwit Days”, and when the migrating Godwits are in the bay on the mud flats in their 300,000s, it certainly justifies the name, but Arcata California in the spring will, for me, forever be about the Marsh Wren. I know of no where with a similar abundance of wrens. On a good day, there is a singing male every 30 feet or so along the cattail shore of many of the ponds at Arcata Marsh Nature Center at the edge of town. This year they seem to be past establishing territory. Most of the males I saw were collecting nest materials, and only taking a few moments out to sing over their work. That still gave me several opportunities to shoot the singing males on reed tops or sharp folds in last year’s leaves.
On a good day, the spring light in Arcata is also just right for wrens…with just enough warmth to bring out the rich hues of the plumage.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. 3 of the 4 with 2x digital extender for 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/800th @ ISO 400 @ f7.1. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Assembled in Pixlar Express.
Twofer on Rails.
I don’t see many Rails in Maine. The Sora, a least should be there, but, evidently I am not often where it is. So when a friend told me about an easy Sora in a ditch along 8 Mile road on Galveston Island while I was at Feather Fest last week, I had to go see. And wouldn’t you now, while photographing the Sora (which was as easy as promised) what should wander out in same section of ditch but a Clapper Rail. The Clapper is much more restricted in its range, and, according to the range maps, does not reach Maine at all, so it was a real treat.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/800th @ ISO 640 and 1600 @ f6.7. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Assembled in Pixlar Express.
Spring Tide HDR
We have had really high tides the past week, flooding parts of the marsh that I have never seen under water. This area along the Kennebunk Bridle Path normally remains high and dry at the highest tides. These high, spring tides, are, I hope, another sign that Spring is finally coming to Southern Maine. Here, with the transparency of the sea water, the wind ripples, and the clear light, it makes an excellent subject for HDR. This is my usual single frame HDR, processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Sony NEX 3NL with 16-50mm zoom. 24mm equivalent.
Spring Flood: Happy Sunday!
Yesterday was the first day you could really feel spring in the air here in Southern Maine. It got, eventually, up to 50 degrees, but it was not so much that, as the lack of wind and the power of the sun that made the day feel springy. We have two days of constant rain (beginning at mid-night last night) promised now, which should put finished to the considerable amounts of snow and ice still on the ground, and then, hopefully, the winter dam will break and spring will come rushing in. Impatient birds are already moving in and through. I saw a pair of Song Sparrows along the Kennebunk Bridle Path, one lone Great Egret, and an Eastern Phoebe…as well as a Bluebird in the fields leading in to the beach. The buds are just beginning to show red on the maples. Maybe spring will come afterall.
This is a flood tide on Mousam River. All but a tiny bit of what you see here is normally marsh and well above water. I liked the green of the deepest water (backed up against the old dyke and path where an unnamed tidal creek passes through toward the Mousam) in the foreground, the variations of blues beyond, and the wispy clouds over the sea. The Sony NEX 3NL caught it all in this 24mm equivalent view, and HDR processing and image tuning in Snapseed brought it out, so the image is pretty much what I saw with my naked eye at the time.
And for the Sunday Thought: I have had to learn to appreciate the last-dregs-of-winter / before-spring-really-comes time in Southern Maine. It sometimes seems to stretch on for months. Mud season. Each year for several years now though I have found more of interest in that interval. I watch the birds come back. I watch the last drying of the grasses and reeds of last summer, their final turn toward gold, before the new green shoots come out. I watch for the first dragonflies in the pools where the sun warms them in the marsh along the river. And the changing skies of the season have their own attraction. This year we may actually miss much of that, since we stand to pass directly from winter into spring without that long pause. I might even actually miss it.
I have found that the more closely you look at any season, the more intimately involved you are in its development and passing, the more interesting it is…so that there is interest in any season and in all seasons, if you will only look. It requires a bit of discipline actually. You have to make your self look beyond, deeper than, the apparent dullness of the days. And that is, of course, a spiritual discipline that will repay itself where ever you apply it. Dull is what I am when I don’t look. It has nothing to do with the world around me. Certainly the Creator lavishes the same amount of attention and love on each day. There is always wonder to be found. Even in mud season in Southern Maine.
Spring Raptors
Though the thermometer might not know it or show it yet, and though we still have, in places, over 3 feet of snow in the yard, it is spring in Southern Maine. The angle of the sun, and the length of the day can not be disguised. Certainly birds, if a bit late, are trickling back through New England. I saw my first Turkey Vulture last week, and, more than any Robin, the Turkey Vulture is the sure sign of spring in Maine. Sorry…but it is true. The TV is the first of the big raptors to return, and I was not surprised to see a Red-tailed Hawk out over the marsh on the Mousam on Saturday and a Red-shouldered beside the interstate in New Hampshire on Sunday, just below the Maine border. The raptors of summer are coming. Sure as sunrise creeps earlier and sunset later day by day.
This series of a Red-tailed Hawk in flight was taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M10 and 75-300mm zoom at 600mm equivalent. I have a flight shot setting programed into my E-M10 and set on one of the programmable function buttons so I can switch to it instantly at need. The individual panels are heavy crops even at 600mm, and it was not good light…but still.
Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014. Collage assembled in Pixlar Express.