Monthly Archives: December 2012
Interactive Cranes: Bosque del Apache
While the 30,000 spectacular Snow Geese are, without doubt, in charge of the spectacle at the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge each year in November…with their mass panics that fill the air with swirling geese, and their dawn and dusk fly-outs and fly-ins against the sunrise and the sunset…it is still the Festival of Cranes.
The title dates back, in part, to the 1980s abortive attempt to reintroduce Whooping Cranes by fostering them on the flock of Sandhills that make Bosque their winter home. It was a grand experiment, at time when environmentalist needed some reason to hope. It garnered more than its fair share of attention, and inspired the first Festival of the Cranes. The experiment floundered when the Whooping Crane colts grew to breeding age, and it was evident they thought they were Sandhills. Still, there were some exciting years there as the Woopers grew up among the Bosque Sandhills. The last hybrid Wooper/Sandhill failed to return to the refuge many years ago.
And yet, it remains the Festival of the Cranes. Between 7 and 14,000 Sandhill Cranes do make an impression. They are magnificent birds. Larger than you expect, always, in every situation, surprisingly graceful, and endlessly interesting to watch as they feed and interact.
Even though fall is not breeding season, there are always some young males trying out their confrontational skills in November.
At Bosque, during the Festival of the Cranes, the Refuge management has learned to put on a good show for the tourists (FofC is the largest single contribution to the local economy each year, with some $2 million in revenue for local hotels and restaurants and the Refuge itself). They hold the fields by the viewing platforms on the back side of the tour loop dry until the Friday night of the Festival, so they are fresh flooded in the morning on Saturday. The flooded fields are full of Snow Geese, ducks, and Cranes, all feeding together right below the platforms. It is that kind of view that keeps people from all over the country coming back to Bosque in November every year.
They also maintain the viewing areas along New Mexico Route 1, just inside the Refuge, by the shallow ponds where the Cranes gather in thousands for the night. The Cranes come in early, while it is still light, and leave late in the morning, well after sunrise, so they are show of their own both before and after the spectacle of the geese.
And so it remains The Festival of the Cranes.
Eye of Paraque: Estero Llano Grande TX
This is the faithful Common Paraque that roosts right beside a busy foot-trail at Estero Llano Grande World Birding Center in Weslaco TX, and is seen by hundreds of birders a year. it would be thousands of birders a year if the Paraque were easier to see. I know many birders (including me) who have gone to the spot where it roosts only to be defeated by the bird’s amazing camouflage. Even this year, according to the testimony of birders who were there only moments after I was, there were two birds there, and I only managed to see one.
This is a telephoto macro, taken from about 6 feet at the equivalent of 2400mm. I used the Canon SX50HS’ Digital Tel-converter to boost the 1200mm equivalent zoom by 2x. This is exactly the kind of image were the DTC works really well. Canon has managed to build a processing engine into the camera that preserves detail well beyond what one would expect of 2x digital zoom. In a scene without much detail…a distant bird on water for instance, with a lot of open water…the artifacts are much easier to see…but here all you see is the amazing detail of the intricate feather patterns.
It is also shot at ISO 800. Not something I would have attempted only a few years ago. The quality that Canon nurses out of the tiny sensor in the SX50HS is just short of unbelievable. And finally, of course, the image was captured hand-held. A 2400mm! That is Image Stabilization.
But, in the end, it is about the image, not the equipment or the technology. And the image speaks for itself. Eye of Paraque!
f6.5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Pelican Sunset: Happy Sunday!
I went out to the Flight Deck at Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, just at sunset, to catch the geese and cranes coming in. Though it was already crowed (as it was every night during the Festival of the Cranes), I found a likely place to park beyond the platform where there is a break in the trees that shows an expanse of the pond.
I had only been there long enough to get out of the car when I looked up and saw a skein of white birds with black wing-tips coming from the north. “Ah,” I thought, “just in time.”
I think I was on my second burst of shots before it hit me. They were not geese. When compared to Snow Geese, American White Pelicans have a superficially similar pattern of white and black…white body…black in the wings, and when the flocks are flying high you have to look twice. The shape is all wrong of course, with that heavy bill pushed out in front. But still, add the fact that the Geese are expected at the flight deck at sunset, and the Pelicans are not…and you can understand my mis-identification.
It was a flock (not a skein after all…as a “skein” is literally “ducks or geese in flight”) of about 50-75 birds. After a long slow glide in, they settled on the pond and began to feed.
The woman next to me said, “What are those? Those aren’t geese!” No, just Pelicans borrowing some of the Snow Geese Sunset at the Flight Deck. Pelican Sunset.
Canon SX50HS. Flight shots in Sports Mode. The others in Program. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: I wonder how often we see what expect to see when it comes to matters of the spirit? Are we conditioned by the place and the time and our expectations to see what we came to see? Do we miss the spiritual Pelicans in the sunset because we are looking for Snow Geese? I think of Abraham climbing the mountain with his son for sacrifice and his faith trailing behind him the dust…only to have God change the rules, pull the faith forward, and provide his own sacrifice. I think of the Pharisees confident expectations of a messiah to free them from Rome, and how again, God changed the rules and sent them a savior sacrifice to save them from themselves…to save us from ourselves. I wonder, sometimes, how conditioned I am to see God through that story, and if I am mis-identifying the spiritual when I see it…then I remember that God is able to change the rules…is bigger than the story we tell about him and delights to prove it. I might think Snow Goose, but God will be faithful to reveal himself in the Pelicans if that is what is there!
It is, after all, the Pelicans that make a Pelican Sunset.
Great Kiskadee: Estero Llano Grande
Another bird from stop at Grebe Marsh at Estero Llano Grande State Park World Birding Center in Weslaco TX on the final day of my Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival trip. The Great Kiskadee is a striking bird at any time, but much easier to expose on a cloudy day. With any sun at all, the mask goes jet black and you lose the eye, and the white above and below burns out. This level of illumination is just right 🙂
I really like the alert pose.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/800th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
The Power of Flight: Sandhill Crane
There are very few places as good as Bosque del Apache to photograph birds in flight. There is rarely a time of day anywhere in the refuge were there are not Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes in the air. If you stop anywhere on the tour loupe where the birds are on the ground, and just stand and wait you will be treated to excellent, and often intimate, views of the birds coming in and going out.
This Sandhill Crane was on its way in. I picked it up a ways out and followed it in. The camera was in Sports Mode so it locked focus on the bird and followed. I got off a burst of 10 shots just as the Crane passed close overhead. At 1200mm of equivalent reach, I could reach right out and practically touch the bird…but it was not easy keeping any portion of the big bird in the frame. I found two keepers in the sequence.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Odd Couple: Estero Llano Grande
On my last day in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, despite slightly dodgy weather, I drove out to Estero Llano Grande State Park World Birding Center for one last bit of birding and photography, Texas style. I sat on a bench at Grebe Marsh and watched this pair feed around each other for 30 minutes. The White Ibis and the Tricolored Heron conscientiously ignored each other. They shared one small corner of the pond, and were actually feeding in each other’s wake (looking for what was stirred up as the other bird passed), but neither was admitting the other’s existence. It looked odd, but it is, of course, common behavior when mixed species feed together.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 465mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 500. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Little Brown Bat: Bosque del Apache NWR
This is not the kind of wildlife Bosque del Apache was set aside to protect…not by a long shot…but it is wildlife that has certainly found a home there. This is, literally, a Little Brown Bat…which happens to be an apt description and its common name. Two of them had found a day-roost right over the main entrance door of the Visitor’s Center at the Refuge, under the overhanging roof, where, on Festival of the Cranes weekend, six or seven thousand people walked right under them. I must have done so myself several times before someone pointed them out.
The light was dim up under the roof and the bats were just far enough to require full zoom on the camera. This is a good testimony to the quality of the image stabilization…hand held at 1200mm equivalent and1/60th of a second. That should not be possible.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/60th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
The Eye of Hawk: Cooper’s Hawk
You would be surprised at how many times I have found a hawk in this tree at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in Socorro New Mexico, especially considering that I only visit once a year for a few days. Twice it has been a Kestrel, hunting grasshoppers in the semi-flooded field below. This time it was a Cooper’s Hawk hunting somewhat larger prey. You have to love that eye!
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 250. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Giant Swallowtail: National Butterfly Center
The National Butterfly Center has one of the best Butterfly Gardens in the nation, but I am coming, the more often I visit, to appreciate the much less managed trails through native vegetation that extend out from the garden proper. On this last trip I managed to capture several bugs there, with one very rare, that had not seen in the gardens. This is a Giant Swallowtail, not an uncommon butterfly in Texas or else ware, but a real treat wherever it is seen. I found it in native vines along the dyke-top trail east of the gardens.
Canon SX50HS. Program with auto iContrast and Shadow Fill. 1800mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 320. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
A Stack of Cranes: Happy Sunday!
This is an unusual shot. The normal flight pattern of Sandhill Cranes is in a line, with each bird drafting the one ahead, riding the wave of the first birds passage a little above or a little below. They don’t do the V thing geese do, with each bird a body length to the left or right of the leader. In all my flight shots of cranes from this year’s trip to Bosque del Apache, this is the only one where they are stacked up.
Of course, if you look carefully you will see that the highest bird in the stack is actually the second bird down (notice the position of the top bird’s feet under the wing of the second bird), which throws the apparent order into total confusion. I am no longer sure where the birds were in actual relationship to each other. It might actually be two intersecting groups of two, caught as one group passed the other.
Whatever is actually going on, it is a striking image…and there is no escaping the beauty of those huge wings.
Canon SX50HS in Sports Mode. Just under 700mm equivalent field of view. f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 320. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And for the Sunday Thought: I thought I was going to write about the absence of drafting behavior in our kind, until I remembered trucker convoys on the highway, and racing strategy (both bicycle and auto). You would have to consider the first as pretty much the same kind of cooperative drafting as geese and cranes employ, where the lead position rotates through the group to average out and distribute the advantage to the to each individual in the group…and the second as a competitive adaptation of the technique, where individual advantage is taken a the expense of the leader…but both are undoubtedly genuine examples of the behavior in human kind. We do draft one another, when there is enough advantage to be gained. No different than geese and cranes. From my observations of cranes, I even suspect that their drafting behavior is closer to the racers’ than it is to that of the geese and truckers.
I am not certain there is a clear spiritual lesson in there anywhere…or rather, I am pretty certain there is not.
What would spiritual drafting look like? Would it be something like the veneration of the saints…or the orders of religions orders? And which form of drafting would each of those be…cooperative or competitive…geese or crane?
Can we see the spiritual drafting principle in Jesus’ words. “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Can we ride the wave of his passage as the Son flies to the Father and eternity? And do we look like a flock of geese or a line of cranes as we go?
Or maybe we look like a stack of cranes…a rare site indeed…ungainly and unlikely but with the beauty of our wings fully spread?