Posts in Category: prairie
Red Deer in the Oostvaardersplassen
While watching the Konik ponies from the observation tower at the Oostvaardersplassen on Sunday, a small band of Red Deer ran the full length of the Konik herd and around the near end on their way to the open plain beyond. There was a large crowd of Dutchmen in the tower, and they all rushed to the glass and exclaimed loudly for the whole run. I was able to wedge in at the far side of the window, shooting at a sharp angle through very dirty glass. Still!
Red Deer are the only “native” herbivore currently on the Oostvaardersplassen in any numbers…both the Konik ponies and the Heck cattle stand in for extinct species. There are also a few (maybe more than a few) Roe Deer who have wandered into the refuge from surrounding areas…naturally colonizing the new lands around Lelystad, but, a least in late summer, they do not form herds and are not as visible.
The Red Deer of the Oostvaardersplassen are the most heavily managed of the mammals. Being more fecund than either the Konik ponies or Heck cattle, they outstrip the available fodder every year…and the herd is cut off from other natural areas by dykes, expressways, rail lines, and miles of agricultural land. The plan was to build a system of wildlife corridors, and wildlife bridges where necessary, to connect the natural areas of Holland, and all of western Europe, but the economic crisis of the last few years has put it on hold. For now, every year the wildlife managers on the refuge have to cull the herd to remove animals that would not live through the winter. They are as humane as possible about it, but the fact remains that until the wildlife corridor system is complete it is a less than ideal solution.
None of that, of course, detracts from the beauty of the Red Deer. Rut season at the Oostvaardersplassen is a major tourist attraction in Holland, and you can book a day in a mobile blind to observe the Stags in their seasonal dominance battles.
I was interested in the interaction between the Konik ponies and the Red Deer. The Deer were of the “keep our heads down and pretend we don’t see them” mind, while the ponies were very aware of the deer passing through.
Eventually the herd of Red Deer got free of the herd of Koniks, and raced away to the dryer ground on the other side of the ponds, putting up the geese as they passed.
A Dutch gentleman, perhaps feeling the giddy enthuasium of his fellow countrymen in the observation tower needed some explaination, took me aside to say that, in Holland, the discussion has always been about “how to be man” and that the Dutch are just learning to respond to the very different rhythms of the natural world. With places like the Oostvaardersplassen, they have made a good start.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 840mm equivalent field of view. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness, and color balance (to compensate for the glass).
Wild Konik Ponies of the Oostvaardersplassen
I am just back from 3 days in Flevoland in the Netherlands, visiting the Oostvaardersplassen where the Dutch Birdfair was held again this year, for the first year since 2008. The Oostvaardersplassen is 22 square miles of sea-bed, reclaimed in 1968 with the rest of Flevoland, and now set aside as a nature reserve under the management of the State Forestry Service. It is a RAMSTAR important bird site, and is managed primarily for nesting and migrating birds…and is a major stop-over on the European migration. It consists of part of a large lake (the Markermeer), extensive reedbeds and wetlands, and a dryer upland area. If left on its own, the dryer area would quickly fill in with willow forest, eventually constricting and narrowing the marsh, making the area less attractive for birdlife. To keep the upland more open requires large grazing herbivores. Before human settlement, these would have been the Tarpin (wild horse), European Bison, Red Deer, Moose, and Auroch (wild cattle). To simulate natural conditions herds of Konik ponies, Heck cattle, and Red Deer have been established in the reserve and allowed to develop naturally. Both the Konik ponies and the Heck cattle are attempts to breed back to something like the original wild stock.
On Sunday, between intense rain storms, I hiked out to the observation tower overlooking the plains of the Oostvaardersplassen.
I had been there the day before and seen a few Heck cattle, two Roe deer, and three Konik ponies in the distance, but on Sunday, the whole herd of Koniks was relatively close to the tower. To cap the experience, the sun broke through for a few moments.
These images were taken through the very dirty glass of the observation tower and required extensive work with the spot removal tool in Lightroom, as well as some color balance adjustment.
The Konik ponies are beautiful animals in any light, and even through dirty glass.
All images Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness…color correction and spot removal.
Savannah Sparrow
A week ago today I made a brief run out to the Blueberry Plains (Kennebunk Plains otherwise) to see how the Northern Blazing Star bloom was shaping up. While there this Savannah Sparrow popped up and put on a little show for me. The Kennebunk Plains is one of the few places in Southern Maine where Savannah is likely to be seen. Further south, in Cape May, New Jersey for instance, I see them a lot right behind the dunes along the ocean, but for some reason, here, they rare in that habitat. Much more likely on the Plains…which stands to reason given their name. 🙂
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view (840 optical plus 2x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/320th to 1/500th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Blazing Star, Kennebunk Plains
On Saturday I went back out to the Kennebunk Plains to see how the Northern Blazing Star is doing. When I was there two weeks ago there were a few early plants in bloom, and the promise of a very good year for the endangered plant.
And it is a good year by all appearances. The stands are healthy, blossoms are plentiful. I have no way of judging whether the plants are spreading, but the stands that are there seem denser this year, and I am going to take that as a good sign. I suspect this sand plains habitat was once more extensive in New England and Maine, when wildfire was not as controlled, and that the endangered status is as much for the habitat itself as for the Blazing Star that grows there.
The first shot here is an extreme telephoto macro, using the full zoom on the Canon SX40HS plus the 2x digital tel-converter function for the equivalent field of view of a 1680mm lens on a full frame DSLR. The depth of field, however, is that of a 150mm lens. It produces an interesting macro effect. f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 125. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
2) about 170mm equivalent field of view. f4.5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 100. 3) 840mm equivalent. f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200. 4) 24mm equivalent, f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Wide on the Kennebunk Plains
This image is only…can only be…a tease to get you to open it the full width on your screen. Click the image and it will open in the Smugmug lightbox on my WideEyedInWonder site, automatically resized to make the most of your machine.
This is another shot that depends on the amazing skies we have been having in Southern Maine this July. When I got to the Plains on Saturday (see Northern Broken-dash on Northern Blazing Star) these clouds were barely peaking up over the western horizon. Two hours later this was the scene. If you need further incentive to view the image large, it only really works that way. Here, where the foreground detail is obscured by the size, the image is too static, with the horizon splitting the fame. If you view it full sized though you will see that the rich detail of the plain makes it a much more balanced, and dynamic, composition. Just saying.
This is almost 180 degrees. If I am facing straight ahead in the center, I have to turn almost full right and full left to photograph the far edges. It is, therefore, what our naked eye would see, if we looked at things that way (and if our view were rectangular 🙂
Four 24mm equivalent frames from the Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Blended in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements 10. I cloned out a sign that filled the lower left corner. Final processing in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/24/2012: Prairie Ramble. Happy Sunday!
I told a bit of my Prairie Ramble story in the Prairie Sunflowers post a few days ago. It was my last field trip at the Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival, and was quite different. The mission of the Arrowwood, Chase Lake and Horsehead trips was to find as many birds as we could see in the day, 60 of us, moving rapidly from stop to stop on a big tour bus and spending from 30 to 60 minutes at each stop. On the Prairie Ramble a much smaller group set out to enjoy a relatively small area of unbroken short grass prairie by walking it for several hours. I told a bit of the history of the section we walked in the previous post. You might want to click the link above and review. And on the Prairie Ramble we were just as interested, perhaps more interested, in the plants (bugs, reptiles, etc.) we might find there as we were in the birds. Very different. As befits the adventure, this is going to be a long rambling post with lots of stops and close looks. Find a few moments to enjoy it. 🙂
The lead shot here shows the terrain we walked to good advantage, and Ann Hoffert (who has been the primary force behind Potholes and Prairies for all 10 years of its existence) and Freddie (a film maker from the UK, here doing a trailer for possible National Geographic Channel show on birding) provide the human scale. There is even a prairie pothole there on the right. The potholes are semi-permanent or seasonal wetlands that from in low areas of the prairie and provide habitat for hundreds of thousands of migrating and nesting waterfowl, and millions of nesting song-birds. And I may actually be underestimating the numbers by a factor of factor of 10.
When we got to Prairie it was still misting after a night of heavy rain, and everything was soaked. At the same time the front was passing off ahead of a stiff wind from the west. It was not ideal conditions for walking the hills or for photographing the small prairie plants, and those of without boots were soon wet to the knee. :)The next two shots are Prairie Smoke, one of the classic wildflowers of the short grass, and a very unique and interesting plant.
Rich Bohn, a native of the North Dakota prairie who works with one of the agencies attempting to preserve as much of this habitat as possible, had walked this section a few days before and was able to lead us directly to many of the most interesting prairie plants and grasses.
The wind was blowing so hard that in order to get sharp close-ups of some of the taller flowers, like the Deathcamas in the 4th image, I had to resort to stilling the flower with my hand. Deathcamas is, as its name implies, deadly poison to both humans and livestock.
As we wandered the prairie, seeing what was to be seen, we found small caterpillars on the rocks. Lots of small caterpillars! Julie Zickerfoose, well known naturalist and writer (her most recent book The Blue Bird Effect was featured on Oprah recently), was with us, and got down to examine the bugs more closely.
She eventually convinced us that the caterpillars were actually eating the lichen on the rocks. Unlikely as that sounds, a little research, first on my smartphone and then on my tablet when we got back to the bus, determined that there is indeed a Lichen Moth (2 actually) that lives on the prairies of North Dakota. It later turned out that Rich Bohn, unknowingly, had a photograph of the moth itself on one of the plants he had photographed in this section a few years before. You see both the caterpillar and its pellet-like droppings in the image.
There were a few other bugs of note. We found a morning stilled Dot-Tailed Whiteface dragonfly and some Marsh or Boreal Bluet damselflies. The dragonfly was so cold and wet I was able to pick it up so the whole group got an excellent look at it. I put it back down before my hand could warm it enough to get in motions while the air was still too cold.
At the other end of the spectrum from caterpillars perhaps, we found several of the tiny Prairie Rose plants in bloom. This is a wild rose (rosa pratincola) and a close relative of the eastern wood rose (rosa woodsii), but it only grows inches tall (at least on the short grass prairie of North Dakota). There are few things more delicate in this life than a wild rose.
Over the brow of the first set of hills, we found this perfect prairie pothole, where a few White Pelicans, some Mallards, and a family of grebes were cursing in the mist.
There were birds nesting on the shot grass itself of course. We flushed what was probably a Grasshopper Sparrow (shown in the following image) from this nest. That was fortunate as the nest was right in our path and so well hidden that one of us would likely have stepped on it. We were careful to cover it once more before we moved on.
As the morning progressed and we wandered deeper into the prairie, the sun broke through and the clouds flew off to the east. However, it got even windier. Here we have Julie and Ann on the left and two of my fellow ramblers on the right, cresting a hill on the prairie, and then a shot of the prairie under clearing skies.
Better light made close-ups a bit more likely, and the rising wind made them a bit more unlikely. A wash. This is a Penstimon with a tiny grasshopper or katydid passenger.
As we headed slowly back toward the bus, we walked up on this Prairie Garter Snake…one the lager Garters I have seen, and very fresh looking, either from the wash she got in the wet grass or because she had recently shed a skin.
And a few moments and several hundred yards further on we happened across a Northern Leopard Frog, which was undoubtedly what brought the Garter snake out onto the short grass.
And we will finish as we began (almost) with one last shot of Prairie Smoke and an image of a few of my fellow ramblers on the short grass prairie…by now under a clear blue sky.
And after all that there is still the Sunday thought. I will keep it short. The Prairie Ramble is a celebration in so many ways of spirit as it works out in humans, and I can only be thankful. Thankful that this little remnant of short grass prairie exist at all, and to all the individuals who have kept it unbroken over the years. Thankful to North Dakotans like Ann Hoffert and Rich Bohn (and so many others) who are currently working to save the prairie…Ann through promoting tourism and birding, and Rich by working directly with farmers. Thankful most of all, of course, to the creative spirit who loved this complex and wonderful ecosystem into existence in the first place, and then gave us the gift of the capacity to enjoy it! Happy Sunday.
6/23/2012: Marsh Wrens of Another Stamp. ND
I have to admit that after the Marsh Wrens of Arcata Marsh in California earlier this year, the Marsh Wrens of North Dakota are difficult. Same feisty little bird. Same habit of singing at the top of their lungs for hours at at time from a few chosen perches, but the wrens of California perch up high in the cattails where you can see them…while the wrens of North Dakota skulk down deep in the reeds where getting on them with a camera is most difficult! Downright inconsiderate of them.
These are from the same little pothole wetland that provided my fill of Yellow-headed Blackbirds. It was one of the stops on the way out to Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge on the Chase Lake Field Trip at the Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival. With a bus load of birders pulled up along side, this Marsh Wren is well photographed (but then, unlike Arcata, it is unlikely to see another birder all year!)
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) and 3) 1240mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical zoom plus 1.5x digital tel-converter). f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. 2) and 4) 1680mm equivalent (2x digital tel-converter). f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/22/2012: Prairie Sunflowers
My last day at the Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival I took part in what was called the Prairie Ramble. Our fearless leaders were Julie Zickefoose (of The Bluebird Effect fame) and Keith Corliss (a local historian and birder) but Rick Bohn, a life long resident and expert in the plains (and an excellent photographer) was with us and had done much of the scouting and preparation for the outing. He had staked and labeled many of the wildflowers and grasses of interest in the short-grass prairie, and found us a nice set of tepee rings. Our primary destination was the School Sections between Carrington and Chase National Wildlife Refuge. The School Sections are land that was set aside by the government to support higher education in the state (part of the “land-grant college” movement). The idea was that the land would be put into production and the funds realized would go directly to support a state college. Much of the land has been sold off by now (in all states, not just in North Dakota) but these 4 sections (4 square miles) of prairie remain unbroken. They are grazed by cattle and sheep every summer, which maintains them in much the same state as they would have been in when wildfire and buffalo kept the grasses short and the woody plants out. As such they are a real treasure…a place where you can still experience something of the unbroken high prairie, with its wildflowers, its bugs, its reptiles, birds and mammals. 4 square miles sounds huge, but it is just a tiny dot in the farmlands that lap right up to its boarders.
It was still misting after an night of heavy rain when we got to the School Sections, the clouds still looked ominous, and the grasses were soaked and soaking, but we piled out of the bus with good-will, galoshes (those who remembered to pack them), and rain gear and set off on a long slow circuit of the hills above the road. By 10am. when this image was captured, the rain clouds were fleeing east ahead of a 20mph wind and the sun was breaking through big puffy cumulous clouds. These are Prairie Sunflowers, and got down low to catch them against the sky. For this image I left two of my fellow ramblers in for scale (and for fun).
The second shot is a more traditional composition (and is probably what my fellow ramblers thought I was taking in the first shot 🙂 )
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) 24mm equivalent field of view at the macro setting. f4 @ 1/800th @ ISO 100. 2) 62mm equivalent field of view and macro, f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/21/2012: Prairie Perspective
On my first full day in North Dakota for the Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival, I took a field trip which toured much of the Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge. Arrowwood sits in the valley of the James River, which, given the slow current of the James, is a surprisingly broad eroded depression in the high prairie, giving the impression of actual hills at its boundary if you look east or west. This is a view up the valley to the north…and the valley bottom itself is even flatter than the rolling prairies that surround it. The Refuge contains several larger bodies of water where the James has been dammed. The largest by far is Arrowwood Lake. What you see in the relative distance in this image is Mud Lake, the second largest on the refuge. The lush green growth along the road has its own story: a year to the day before this image was taken, all this was under 10 feet of water as the James River flooded for the second time in 2 years. Looking to the east or west you can easily see the “high water line” where this green growth meets the more subdued prairie grasses.
That evening, also at Arrowwood, I met a British film-maker, Freddie, who was on assignment to produce a trailer for birding show to pitch to National Geographic Channel. He had flown direct from London and, after a frustrating day stranded at the Chicago Airport, had continued to Fargo, where he rented a car and drove to Carrington across the prairies. He was now a day into his North Dakota experience, and was simply, as he put it, “blown away.” (Apt considering the 20 mph wind blowing around the edges of the new Arrowwood Visitor Center where we were standing, or trying to stand.) Nothing in his considerable experience of the world (he is a trekker and has traveled extensively) had prepared him for the Potholes and Prairies country of the the Dakotas…the sweep of the rolling landscape, the vastness of the sky, the isolated farms with their shelter belts dotting the prairie. He kept using the word “unimaginable” and I can identify. That was my impression of the place when I first visited it the mid 80’s. Unimaginable.
This image catches, I think, just a bit of that unimaginable grandeur. The people (fellow birders who had wandered away from the bus) and the road give it scale. The storm clouds moving over (and away…it cleared a few hours later) provide the drama. And the unbroken, wide horizon stretches the eye and the mind to vast dimensions.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/1000 @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/19/2012: Arrowwood Panorama
The James River flows from the northern boarder of North Dakota through the center of the state, down to the southern boarder. Flows is being generous. There is a total of 3 feet of drop in elevation from the north to the south. Three feet of drop! That means that the James river is essentially a long thin lake in North Dakota. It has the slowest current of any river in the US. This is a bend in the James at Arrowwood National Wildlife Refuge near Carrington…a panorama of two shots stitched in PhotoMerge in PhotoShop Elements 10. You can view it full width by clicking the image.
And yes, the water was that color blue!
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Two 24mm equivalent shots. f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Stitched, as above, in PhotoShop Elements. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.