Monthly Archives: August 2016
Sora, Sweetwater Wetlands
Sora Rail, Sweetwater Wetlands in Tucson AZ.
We had limited time this morning before show hours at the Southeast Arizona Birding Festival, so we went to Sweetwater Wetlands, perhaps the best known sewage treatment plant in America. In winter the old settlement ponds, now converted to a birding destination, attract a host of waterfowl and wintering passerines that you would otherwise be hard pressed to find here in the desert Southwest. In summer…not so much…but it is still good for nesting waterfowl, rails and the normal Desert nesters. Today the birding was slow. We did hear a few Soras on our way around the levie trails, but it was not until the third pass by the main observation deck that this one flew across my view while watching an immature Black-crowned Night Heron way across the pond, and landed at the edge of the reeds. Instead of scuttling back in deep, usual behavior for rails, this Sora spent a good 15 minutes in plain view.
Sony RX10iii at 1200mm equivalent field of view. (In-camera crop to 5mp.) 1/640th @ f4 @ ISO 100. Processed in PhotoShop Express on my Android tablet.
Bobcat: Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum
Bobcats, Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum, Tucson AZ
We spent an interesting morning at the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum on Thursday. The ASDM is one of my favorite places and certainly on of the few “zoos” I really like. The displays are excellent, with natural looking habitats, and of course it goes well beyond, as the name suggests, your ordinary Zoo. It covers the full Sonoran Desert experience… from plants and animals to geology.
So, while I do not generally like Zoo shots, I can not resist sharing this shot of a couple of Bobcats from the Cat Canyon display at the ASDM. It was taken through a window of thin vertical wires that forms one wall of the habitat…so thin that if you are close to the wires and the cats are a good distance behind them, they simply disappear in a photograph. It was a pleasure to catch these two bobcats interacting in the cool of the morning before they settled down for the day.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. Programed Auto with – 1/3rd EV exposure compensation. Spot focus and exposure. Processed in PhotoShop Express on my Android tablet.
Desert Sunset
Tucson Mountain Park, Tucson AZ
An early post for 8/11’s Pic for Today. First night in Tucson. Sunset form Grant’s Pass in Tucson Mountain Park.
Sony RX10iii at 24mm equivalent field of view. Program Mode with six stop in-camera HDR. – 1 EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom on an Android tablet.
Ruby-throat
Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Kennebunk ME
Another shot from the back deck feeding station. Our only hummingbird. A Ruby-throated female that is regular at our feeder. She seems to be the only one in the neighborhood.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ f4 @ ISO 640. Processed in Lightroom.
House Wren in the wood pile
House Wren, Saco Heath, Saco Maine
I have a spotty record with wrens, photographically. I find them hard to photograph, for some unknown reason. I am always happy to try! I am always happy to see on, even if I can’t photograph it. (The obvious exception is the Marsh Wrens of Arcata California with are dead easy to photograph…though I am always happy to see them as well.) So, when I spotted this House Wren hopping around in the pile of broken boards from the old boardwalk at Saco Heath I was delighted. The fact that I got a decent photo is even better! The Civilian Conservation Corps replaced almost the full length of the Saco Heath Boardwalk over the past few summers, and the Nature Conservancy (who owns the property) and the State are doing controlled burns when weather permits to get rid of the old rotting wood. In the meantime it is piled six feet tall in several piles just as you come off the boardwalk into the Atlantic White Cedar grove. House Wrens love wood and brush piles, so it is not too surprising that one or more have taken up residence in these attractive piles.
This has, to my eye, the look of a young bird. I think I see just a hint of left over gape at the back of the beak, but I could be wrong.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 640 @ f4. Processed and cropped to about a 1000mm field of view in Lightroom.
Ebony Jewelwing in the sun
Ebony Jewelwing, Cascade Falls, Old Orchard Maine
Though there was not much water coming over Cascade Falls when I visited on Friday last, there were many Ebony Jewelwings over the stream below the falls. They seemed to like to perch in patches of sun on the rocks and broken branches in the stream. There is nothing so shinny as Ebony Jewelwing in the sun. It looks like it is forged in aluminum and anodized green. Even the wings have their metallic sheen.
Sony RX10iii at about 1100mm equivalent field of view. (Optical plus 2x Smart Digital Tel-converter). 1/250th @ f4 @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom.
Tufted Titmouse. Happy Sunday!
Tufted Titmouse, our back deck, Kennebunk Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Yesterday, when I was in the kitchen beginning to think about supper, I slid back the screen on the back deck sliding-door to chase a squirrel away, and then, when the birds at the feeding station came back almost immediately (including our female Ruby-throated Hummingbird) I left the door open and went for my camera. The light was lovely, with filtered sun after a brief rainstorm on the feeding station and the apple branches we have bolted to the deck for perches around it, and the background of dark trees 25 feet behind the station already in shadow. There was a fairly constant flow of Chickadees and Titmice, and the hummingbird came in for a drink from the feeder several times and perched out on the apple branches. I had a very enjoyable 30 minutes standing and watching and taking pictures. Small active birds are always a challenge, photographically, and there was the added test of getting exposure on the sunlit birds right against the dark background. And of course, there were the birds themselves, going about their business only a dozen feet from me. Thoroughly enjoyable, and perhaps more so, since I was propped up in back door of my own home. When I bolted the apple branches to the deck, it was times like this that I was thinking of…hoping for.
This Tufted Titmouse came several times. The image has almost a “studio” feel to it, a portrait, as though I posed and lit the bird for best effect. The lighting and the background gives the bird unusual dimension…and that, along with the level of detail in the feathers and in the bark of the branch, makes it look uncommonly “real”…alive and present. And of course, it was images like this that I was thinking of when I bolted the apple branches to the deck. 🙂
Still, for all my forethought (or hope) and what little skill I can claim with the camera, it is the bird that makes the image. The bird, bold enough to perch on my apple branch, close, while I stood completely visible in the open door. The bird with its little spark of life, trusting that little spark of life to me in exchange for a sunflower seed or two.
I think it is bred into us, even stronger than our hunting instinct, this desire for the peaceable kingdom…for an Eden-like experience where we are surrounded by all that lives…by every living creature, neither threatened by, or a threat to it…at peace with life itself. I think it is part of our heritage as children of God…the overflow and outflow of the creative love, the caring heart, that made the whole of the natural world we are part of. Our kinship with all that lives is an expression of our kinship with God, who created all in love.
And yes, it was to celebrate that kinship that I built the feeding station on our deck…and the foresight expressed was one instance (still too rare) of my eye being generous, and the light within me reaching forward in time to encounters and images like this. Happy Sunday!
Pitcher Plant
Pitcher Plant, Saco Heath, Saco Maine
I took the new Ford C-Max Hybrid on its maiden photoprowl yesterday…a swing north to Saco Heath, then cross-lots on back roads to Route 1 and eventually to Cascade Falls and back home. I am not sure I have been to the Heath this season at all. I know I missed the early bloom of Rhodora and Sheep Laurel and High-bush Blueberry, and the Grass Pink Orchids. I was surprised to find the Pitcher Plants in full bloom. I had remembered them as early bloomers, but I was happy to be proved wrong. Not only were they in bloom, but there were more than I have ever seen on the Heath.
Saco Heath, if you are just tuning in, is a raised peat bog, where the peat and sphagnum moss have risen above the level of the ground water. It is one of a very few in Maine and the only one in Southern Maine. The environment in a peat bog is highly acidic and very poor in nutrients, so it is populated by a group of rare plants that are specialized to nutrient-poor soils, and by stunted Pitch Pines. There a slightly higher section of the bog that supports one of the only stands of Atlantic White Cedar in Maine. The area is protected by the Nature Conservancy, and by the State of Maine. A boardwalk, renewed over the past several summers by the Civilian Conservation Corps, runs right across the heath to a loop of trail in the Cedar stand.
Pitcher Plants survive in the nutrient poor sphagnum surface by capturing and digesting insects. They are carnivores. The “pitcher”, a tube of adapted leaves, contains a digestive fluid at the bottom. Bugs crawl or fall in and contribute most of the nutrients the plant needs. The flower is very large (3-4 inches across), on a tall stalk, and more “interesting” than “beautiful”. As I say, there were many of them along the more raised sections of the boardwalk in the Pitch Pine hummock, and along the edges of the White Cedar hummock.
Sony RX10iii. The first shot is a telephoto macro and the bottom side-view is a wide angle macro. Exposure varied. I was shooting in Program and shutter speeds were from 1/60th for the pitcher shot to 1/320th for the telephoto. ISO ranged from 100 to 250. All shots at f4. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.
Eastern Amberwing Dragonfly
Eastern Amberwing, Quest Ponds, Kennebunk Maine
There is a poem.
I got out to one of my dragonfly ponds
today, for a photoprowl. Mid-80s and
clear, but with enough breeze to make
it tolerable…pleasant actually…and lots
of dragons and damsels doing their thing
around the pond. Eastern Amberwings,
my first this year, not much bigger than
a bee, but holding their own among
dragons 4 times their size…flying low
to the water like orange sparks, resting
on floating clumps, clots of algae, males
and females playing tag across the pond.
I kept hoping one would land close in
to shore for a photo, but they held well
out, busy with Amberwing concerns,
and I had to settle for distant shots…
so little they are, they hardly show
in the frame, and wouldn’t at all if they
were any other color. Amberwings.
And that says all you need to know.
One of my favorite Dragonflies and one of the smallest. A skimmer. The males like this one have bright orange wings…the females have clear wings with orange/brown spots…the same color as the body. Like all skimmers, they take no guff from anyone…including the much larger Green Darners and Black-saddlebags that frequent the same ponds in our area…not to mention the Twelve-spotted and Widow Skimmers. You rarely see them more than a few inches above the water, so they only really share airspace with the Azure Bluets with abound at this time of year.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Cropped heavily for scale (about equivalent to 1200mm field of view) and processed in Lightroom.
One good tern deserves another :)
Common Tern, Mousam River, Kennebunk Maine
Another Common Tern in flight shot from my recent session at the mouth of the Mousam River here in Kennebunk Maine. This one was taken at the full 600mm equivalent of the Sony RX10iii, and then cropped for scale. Just keeping a tern in the frame at 600mm is a trick in itself. 🙂
As above. Exposure 1/1000th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Processed in Lightroom.