Summer Bird Chicks

Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge was a wonderful place to watch nesting birds and young chicks and ducklings.

The Common Gallinule (Note that American Ornithologist Union has split the American species from the Common moorhen and renamed it the common gallinule) lives in freshwater and brackish marshes with tall vegetation.  It has long toes that make it possible to walk on soft and floating vegetation.  It is a good swimmer in spite of not having webbed feet.

The spurs on the wings of the chicks allow them to climb into the nest or to grab vegetation.

Black-necked stilts are easily seen as they wade through shallow water on their long red legs.

On one of our driving loops we saw this stilt sitting on her nest.  For some reason, I think she has a quite contented look to her.

It is amazing at how well camouflaged  the chicks are in the marsh grass.

There were several families of black-bellied whistling ducks.




The parents give a sense of contentment as the ducklings sleep.

This was an older family where the coloration on the chicks seems older and a little different.

Even though it WAS hot, it was so much fun to be out enjoying the birds at Brazoria NWR.

Couch's Kingbirds in Williamson County

I am grateful to a local birder who gave me a head's up about the nesting Couch's kingbirds in my neighborhood.  I went out a couple of days ago and located them easily, but it was mid-day, not the right time of day for photography not to mention the heat.

I got out tonight with my big lens, hoping they would be cooperative.  Henry and I saw them immediately upon parking. One was even in good position for a photograph, but before I could get it located in the lens, it flew to the top of the tree.  The adults were vocal when we first arrived, so I was glad to hear their call.

These birds are listed in TEXBIRDS on the Austin Rare Bird Alert. This is only the second record of this species in Williamson County.  They are normally found in Texas only in the Rio Grande Valley.

I had another opportunity when one of the birds landed in the interior of the tree.  I suspect this is near the nest, although I have not seen the nest itself yet, although I have looked for it.

I have pictures from the Texas Panhandle of Western Kingbirds so I am anxious to dig them out and compare so that I will be better able to distinguish between the two species. 

Middle Creek Wildlife Area

Fellow photographer, Cynthia Sperko told me to be sure and include Middle Creek Wildlife Area Kleinfeltersville, Pennsylvania on the Lebanon-Lancaster County line as a place to take bird photos during spring migration.  Middle Creek is in Kleinfeltersville, Pennsylvania. According to one website, the snow geese show up the first week in March. They are always an amazing spectacle to watch as thousands of them take off simultaneously.  The state website mentions the beautiful tundra swans  that stop by in the fall in November and in the spring in late February and early March. 


The Visit Lebanon County website mentions nine walking trails. Are We There Yet website  also has a good article about Middle Creek.


The tour road is open from March 1st to mid-September, weather permitting.


It turns out that as we drove through Pennsylvania, we stopped for lunch at Lancaster.  If we'd only known, Cynthia works very near where we stopped. I missed a chance to meet one of my online photography friends.  Sounds like I need to go back into her neck of the woods during fall or spring migration.  Check out  Cynthia's website to see more of her beautiful photography.


Thanks, Cynthia,  for the heads up about Middle Creek!

Minister Creek

We've been seeing some beautiful fall foliage as we go along, but I haven't been finding those ideal photographic compositions. We chose to go through the Allegheny National Forest as we crossed Pennsylvania.  It beautiful, but a little past the peak of color. I was so glad to find Minister Creek, I could hardly wait for the car to stop to hop out, grab the camera, and rush over to the creek.  At first glance, I was concerned, because I could tell it was going to be challenging to get a good camera angle. My first try was looking down on the creek:

I didn't like this camera angle, so I started looking for a way to get down to the creek level.  After finding a spot where I could sit on one rock and work my way down, I found that I had an old grapevine hanging down into my composition as well as a leaning tree.  Luckily I was wearing my river sandals and the water was shallow. I waded in and removed the offending, unattached, dead grapevine and put it on the bank. Taking my next shot, I still wasn't happy with that leaning tree:

 

The water was shallow enough that I could wade in  a little more. My feet and the bottom of my jeans were definitely wet, and my toes started getting cold quickly.  But I wasn't about to rush out of the water until I had done my best to capture this lovely place.

 

Milwaukee

I wanted to stop in Milwaukee and capture something that would be representative, iconic.  I knew I didn't have much time. I found the lighthouse, but I also wanted a cityscape.  As we drove the lakeshore, I enjoyed the park with the lovely weeping willows. I saw a spot that might work with a reflection, but when I walked over with the camera, the angle didn't work. As sunset approached, I knew I needed to make a decision. The area near the Art Museum looked the most promising.  

While I tried many things, shooting multiple images to merge for a panorama, I ended up happiest with these two wide angle shots. 

I like to pick a spot and start near sunset and photograph for 30 or 45 minutes to get the changing colors from sunset, dusk, twilight and dark.

More Texas Wildflowers

Monday, we headed east and south to the La Bahia road. US 290 always has wonderful wildflowers. These were shot just west of Burton.

I was looking for attractive mixes of wildflowers and found a place where the bluebonnets and the paintbrush were intermingled. I started with the wide shots, getting the full riot of colors.



Then I worked my compositions closer, with more simplicity.



Concluding with a single bloom.



As I worked on these last night, I found myself going the DA route to get what I wanted. A radial gradient filter to darken the edges around the paintbrush and make it stand out from its background. Artistic filters that both simplified and sharpened.

Then I decided I wanted to see how this would look using polar coordinates to create a circle.

Wrens

Last weekend I went on a field trip to Chalk Ridge Falls Nature Area below the dam at Stillhouse Hollow Lake. Right near the parking area we saw two wrens - a canyon wren and a rock wren. I wanted to go back with my big Sigma lens and see if I could get photos.

We went this morning. At first I was disappointed - no wrens in sight. But I meandered the path below the dam, rewarded by a sighting of a kestrel and a phoebe as well as watching the vultures (both turkey and black) begin their morning soaring, riding the thermals around the dam. As I was heading back to the car, I saw movement at the top of the boulders along the dam slope. Yes, it was the rock wren. But so much farther away than on Saturday. I dutifully took my photos, knowing quite well that I would have a little wren in a big picture. It would still be a good memory, even if not publishable quality.

I came on back to the car, and stopped to study the area where the water was spilling out. It was on these rocks that we had seen the canyon wren the day before. I was about to give up, when I saw movement again. Yes . . . it was the canyon wren, but really far away - a very small bird in a big frame. And there was a swallow as well, a rough winged swallow, I think.

I came home and took a look to see if I had anything and began to play with two of the images. Now one of the phrases of common wisdom in photography: "garbage in-garbage out" which means it is really difficult if not impossble to create a high quality image in photoshop when the original is not good. And, I agree with that statement which is one of the reasons I work really hard when I am working with the camera to capture the best image possible. But sometimes, that is not always possible. These two little birds were a long way away and not willing today to come down and play with me. I'm hoping to go back more than once with the big lens and hope that I get lucky enough that I have the chance to capture them up close and personal with publishable images. But I wanted to have images to share with the group that went birding last week.

I started with the rock wren. I picked the frame that looked the best and did the standard conversion from RAW. Then I used Genuine Fractals to enlarge the image, knowing I was going to be cropping a lot and would need all the details I could keep. Then I chose my crop, knowing that even with the crop, I would not be able to fill the frame and have a decent image. Then I went to Topaz Sharpen which can do a really nice job in bringing out details that are trying to hide in the pixels. I had to use enough Topaz that this really becomes "digital art" rather than straight photography.



I went in with the canyon wren and did things a little differently. I upsized in Camera Raw. I left him smaller in the final crop because there just wasn't enough detail to make him look good larger. Once again some creative work in photoshop left me a a image that if nothing else will be a great memory shot for me of one of the few canyon wrens I've ever seen.

My Winter Backyard Birds

Because the weather was so cold and snowy the birds were flocking to my bird feeder. After driving around to get the scenic photos, I decided to sit on the porch (with the propane heater running) to see if I could get some snowy day bird photos. We were expecting two more bands of snow, so i was hoping maybe I would be lucky and get some snowy branches or birds with snow flakes on them. While we did more snow, it didn't accumulate, but I enjoyed my time on the porch. And I was pleased with the bird photos I got.

We get tons of white crowned sparrows in the winter. The adults are easy to identify with those solid white markings.



The juveniles lack those prominent white head markings and for years I've had trouble distinguishing them from chipping sparrows. I've been sure the ones near my house have all been juvenile white crowns because they are always hanging around the mature ones. Experienced birders always scoffed because chipping sparrows are a lot smaller than white crowns. On this snowy day, I had a lot of different juveniles whose markings differed from one another just slightly. After photographing them, I pulled out both my Sibleys Guide to Birds and my Sparrows of the United States and Canada. After careful comparisons between the juvenile white crowns and chipping sparrows, I'm very confident that the ones I saw were all juvenile white crowns. I noted that chipping sparrows have a darker beak, only one white wing bar, and darker legs. My birds had yellow orange legs, two distinctive white wing bars, and yellow orange beaks in addition to being similar in size to the adults.



I don't know how many juveniles I had, but as I'm going through the images, I have many more juvenile images than adults.



I was especially happy that this Lincoln sparrow visited while i was out with the camera. I'd seen him in the yard and was pretty certain that I had the correct ID, but a picture confirms the identification so much better because you have time to study the markings in detail with a bird that is not hopping around and flying off.



He came back several times giving me several opportunities to get a good shot of him.



One of my favorite winter yard birds is the Harris Sparrow. He's one of the larger sparrows, but I love how the bright browns and blacks contrast against that very white breast. He has such distinctive markings that I find him easy to identify. With the males and females looking alike, it keeps the identification simple.



When I first starting watching the orange crowned warblers in my yard, they were sneaky. They would come in quickly to eat and fly quickly away so fast you couldn't get the details in the field marks. Today, they were hungry and stayed around long enough for me to get some good photos.



The day wouldn't be complete without the cardinals.






Also seen coming to the feeder, red winged blackbird females, northern mockingbird, brown headed cowbirds, and Carolina chickadees.

North to Labrador

When we turned north from the St. Lawrence seaway, we entered a beautiful unpopulated area. The clouds had come in, so for the most part we drove the almost deserted road and enjoyed our surroundings. We knew that we would be going by the large Manicougan Crater.



The Manicougan crater has a lake filling the deeper parts. When we were on the edges, the terrain had steep almost mountainous hills to climb. The crater is so large, that you might not realize you were climbing the sides of the crater if you didn't know from the map. Skies were dark, gray and foreboding . . . so I didn't try to get any shots of the rim of the crater. In retrospect . . . I should have tried.

I had a few windows for photography. The scenery is peaceful sometimes flat, sometimes rolling hills, with many lakes that appear as you cross the bends in the road.



I can't resist trying to photograph rainbows. There is just something magic about seeing a rainbow . . . the beauty . . . the symbolism of God's promise . . . the wonder of the phenomenon itself . . .



As we drove along the road, the skies stayed pretty gray, I knew that doing straight photography would leave me with memory photos that wouldn't really show others the beauty of this area. But the in camera motion photography can capture some unique things even when the lighting is less than optimum.





While the lakes tend to look the same as you go down the road and I know that lake photos can also have a "sameness" from one lake to another. I wanted to try something to make a lake image that would stand out as memorable. I think this attempt, a motion blur enhanced in Photoshop with Topaz artistic filters makes a pleasing image of one of those lakes along the way.

Barn Swallow Family

We don't get barn swallow chicks every year. Sometimes we're not home when the parents are rearing them. But this year, we're home. I'd seen the mother sitting the nest. We now have chicks - one noticeably younger. Today was my first day out to try to capture this porch miracle. The last time I was home at the right time with chicks was back in 2003 and I only had a 100-400mm lens. I'm hoping that with patience and my Sigma 300-800mm that I will get some good shots this year.

I don't have time to watch the mom when I'm shooting - she often comes in very fast. But look how far in she puts her head to feed the chick. Notice too how she balances her tail against the nest.



Sometimes I was able to get off a burst of shots, she's checking me out. I'm using fill flash with my better beamer hoping to get better exposures of the nest that is in the darker area under the eaves of my house.




You'll have to click on this image to see it full size - that's a dragonfly. I bet i could look it up and identify it from the patterns on those wings.



The chick gobbles it down.



I didn't get any prize winning shots today, but at least I've gotten started with this set of barn swallow chicks!

Tuesday's Bird Photos

I'm trying to get myself more disciplined in photographing the birds that show up at my house. So . . . while I do my morning time on the porch, I've been setting up my 300-800mm lens. I write my morning journal, read my Bible scriptures for the day, and right now I'm working through the Artist's Way book. When a bird shows up, I break and attempt to get a photo.

Today was a somewhat cloudy day, not too dark, but I knew that I was going to need the flash to make anything work. I'm still experimenting with fill flash. I want it to look natural, not "flashed." The theory is that you set your exposure for the ambiant lighting and then use the ETTL setting of the flash at -1. (I'm not an expert here . . . and I'm still trying to find settings that work for my lighting and equipment.) Some of my images this morning were way too dark (I had the exposure compensation set too dark) and then when I set exposures to make it brighter, then I got that "flash" look.

But I had two photos that came out in the OK range.

With a gray sky, this is not a great shot of one of my white wing doves. I darkened the leaves a little using a layer of Selective Color. But that gray sky really pulls my eye away from my subject. But it was one of the "better" shots of the morning.



The blue jay has been amazingly camera shy. It seems to sense when I have the camera and lens pointed in his direction and immediately flies off. Since I cut off his tail (remember I had to be quick . . . no time for careful framing here) I decided to crop in and attempt more of a portrait feel. Here the flash worked pretty well adding light without that over bright look.



Neither of these is likely to get submitted anywhere, although the blue jay might make a good notecard. But I've learned in the past that when you set up regularly, some days don't yield any great shots. But . . . every now and then you have a great opportunity.

Monday's yard birds

I'm trying to get out more frequently at home to capture the birds that are coming in to my feeders. We've had a string of cloudy days and this is the first sunny day recently where I've had a chance to shoot with the sun helping me.

The sun can be your friend providing nice, bright, warm lighting to your subject as in this white crowned sparrow.



I've got some other shots where the sun was NOT my friend where it blew out details in either the bird or the surrounds.

When the sun is out, the ambient lighting even in the shade can give you opportunities for some good bird shots.

Here's one of the red bellied woodpeckers that are coming in regularly to the suet feeder. I suspect that this pair is feeding chicks because they come in regularly and carry off food. Today was the first time that there seemed to be some rivalry - I heard some woodpecker wars and I don't know if perhaps I know have two pairs of woodpeckers coming in.




I have a lot of white wing doves coming in. Sometimes I can see thirty or more at a time. They startle easily and the sound they make as they all fly off at once is amazing. What powerful wings they have!



I have visualized a couple of images that I'm trying to get. One of these visualizations is to capture one of the white winged doves coming in with its wings outspread. Here is one of my attempts to capture that idea:

NANPA - Texas Hill Country Regional Event

I spent this past weekend in Fredericksburg, Texas at the North American Nature Photographer's Texas Hill Country Regional Event. We had photographers: Kathy Adams Clark, Sean Fitzgerald, Mike Murphy, and Laurence Parent. As we came into Thursday, the weather forecast was not encouraging: rain and thunderstorms for the next several days. I was not daunted, some of my best photographs have been taken on rainy days.
We woke Friday morning to radar showing a strong thunderstorm heading straight for Fredericksburg. The two groups going to Block Creek Natural Area headed on out and got there before the storm broke. Kathy Adams Clark's group photographed hummingbirds from the porch. My group, led by Sean Fitzgerald enjoyed some great slide show presentations as the rain hammered the metal barn roof. The worst of the storm passed and my group got into their photo blinds.

While there wasn't great light for photography, it was certainly a good time for capturing behaviors and wet birds. I really enjoyed watching this house finch as he shook both himself and his head trying to rid his feathers of excess water.




That really is a head there- what a spinning top he created with his head!




I heard someone complaining at one point about just getting finches and sparrows . . . but I'm pretty sure this is a clay colored sparrow . . . not one I see at my house!



While I have also photographed the golden fronted woodpecker in Amarillo, it was fun to see it again here in Central Texas.



A treat even for the ranchers was this rose-breasted grosbeak - a first for their property.



The prettiest bird of the day was the painted bunting. I had loaned my big lens to one of the other participants, so I was shooting with my 100-400. He really never came close enough to a good perch for any of us to get a great shot that morning. But I hear that on some of the other days, some of the photographers got some good shots of this colorful bird.



We did have much better lighting later in the event. There were several different blinds that attracted more species such that each photographer probably came home with a different mix of birds depending upon where he/she was sitting. I didn't get back during the better lighting, but I found myself promising myself another visit to Block Creek Natural area so that I could take my time at all the blinds. One of the nice things about the blinds at Block Creek Natural Area is that you have the opportunity for up close and personal images of the various birds. I hope I get back soon. And I hope I can visit some of the other ranches that are part of the Texas Hill Country Nature Photography Alliance.