World Bird Wednesday XXVIII

 Taking a Dim View

                " All round the room my silent servants wait, My friends in every season, bright and dim. "

                                                                                                               Barry Cornwall

I've got to say, May was a hell of a month for water birds around here. Michigan is experiencing it's second wettest Spring ever, or at least since 1880 when these things began to be recorded. The wetlands are filled to the brim and there's plenty of birds fishing and frogging the road side boarders. A car makes a wonderful blind as I idle ever so slowly along Rangle road deep inside Fish Point Wildlife Refuge. This is a hot spots to be sure, a whole lot can be seen here like this young Black-crowned heron lurking in the reeds plying it's trade in the twilight.   

Late in the day is a good time to see Sandhill cranes who seem to get a burst of energy around sunset. The maddening thing is that conditions are continuously worsening as the light dims through evening. The temptation to grab a higher ISO is there every second in the battle to keep the shutter speed up. My 400mm  f5.6 lens is stuck there wide open this time of day and not at it's sharpest sweet spot of f8. It's a juggling act between the graininess of raising ISO, the blurriness of lowering shutter speed, and the thin depth of focus from a wide open lens at it's lowest f stop. I usually shoot jpegs and not in RAW format because of the ease of processing the seven hundred to a thousand pictures I generally take in a day out. I know I can shoot underexposed, therefore at faster shutter speeds in RAW format and retain detail that can be restored by lightening the exposure in post processing, maybe it's time to start doing that. If you'd like to read a wonderfully organised tutorial about these issues as they relate to bird photography in-particular click here. 

   How often does a Sandhill crane fly low and straight over your head? Not often is right!  Mucking through this puzzle of light is the game we play. Getting a picture is the prize for guessing right.

Sometimes you know your ability or your equipment is over matched but you take a shot anyway. You shoot because you'll never be here again, it's fun to try, and you might get lucky! These are all the reasons anyone needs to take an unreasonable chance. This is how us dim witted guys wind up with lovely women!

                            "Experience is a dim lamp, which only lights the one who bears it."
                                                                                                                             Louis-Ferdinand Celine

           Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday

This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds.


World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.

You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents, the BIRDS.

                                                        
 
#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/


#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!


You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature.The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!

The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs. Click on them and view their beautiful posts.

                        Come on it's your turn!

World Bird Wednesday XXVII

                  Working On My Night Moves

Until a couple of weeks ago I had no idea Michigan even had Night-herons fluttering about. My wimpy "Birds of Michigan" field guide doesn't mention them and I only saw my first one in Florida last winter. No wonder I find myself fascinated and confused at the same time like a love sick kid. Night herons seem much more cordial to a photographers presence than the elusive Green heron that bolts at the slightest disturbance. Very curious, and why should the dull colored "second summer" Night-heron in the first picture be sporting adult breeding plumes? Perhaps this is perfectly normal and more than likely it is. The world seems to be spinning faster these days when even my own nieces and nephews are far ahead of the traditional learning curve when it comes to the pleasures and privileges of adulthood. I suppose it makes more sense when kids try to act like adults then when oafish grownups misguidedly don the trappings of youth in a hapless display of extended adolescence!  

Here is an adult Black Crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) ankle deep in the marsh. There is something reminiscent of a penguin here with his short bottom and formal tuxedo plumage. It must be the long winter that has me seeing penguins in a Great Lakes marsh in May. Even the pitfalls of my own excruciating obsolescence wouldn't account for an hallucination of this magnitude!

          Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday!

  This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds.

  World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.
  You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents, the BIRDS.

                                                 

#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/


#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!

You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature.The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!

The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs. Click on them and view their beautiful posts.

                     Come on it's your turn!

World Bird Wednesday XXVI

                                                  

                             Making A Splash

I have been spending many a happy hour the last couple of weeks haunting a swamp about thirty miles from my home. I am intoxicated with the big birds that collect there and the challenge of photographing them in-flight and hunting. It doesn't take long to get good at anticipating the fishing stroke of a Great egret. They like to stand upright and nonchalant in the water waiting for their prey to swim close. When the neck coils and the head lowers in preparation for the strike its time to ready your shutter finger for action. Many a happy accident has occurred prophesying the moment of truth this way. This stylised splash (I see a fish!) is an example of that.

Now that I've made several trips into the Fish Point Wildlife Area my eye has begun to drift from the Grand Marque birds and settle on some of the smaller yet equally mesmerising perching songbirds. Hot out of my camera from yesterdays little jaunt through a Great Lake's wetland and here for your consideration are a trio of small fries that made a big splash on my birding week! 



 

Palm Warbler (Dendroica palmarum)

  With sights such as these I sometimes wonder why I am alone in the wetlands so often. Where are the others? Talk about marching to a different drummer or taking the road less traveled. If you want some elbow room at a crowded pub try starting a conversation with, "I'll bet you would have enjoyed being with me in the swamp today!" That should do it.

Yellow Warbler (Dendroica petechia)

   
 "Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music"

                                                                                                                               Friedrich Nietzsche

American Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla)

           Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday!

 This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds.


World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.

You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents, the BIRDS.

                                                          

 #1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/


#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!


You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature.The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!

The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs. Click on them and view their beautiful posts.

                    Come on it's your turn!

World Bird Wednesday XXV

                                           The Other Side of the Sign

"Sign, sign everywhere a sign!" Even with this old battle cry in my head I knew this time I would obey the rules gladly. After all, who could argue with giving Mother Nature a few square miles of wetlands without humans trouncing through it. Just look what's happened here on the Southern shore of Saginaw Bay because of it. By a strange confluence of natural and man made influences and stirred by the law of unintended consequences a Wildlife Refuge has emerged. I was there eyeing an egret at the very edge of this little paradise when a green truck with a Ducks Unlimited sticker pulled up along side me near an observation platform. And so I met Jack, resident of the swamp and local historian whose first hand knowledge of the area goes back through the 1940's. Back then, he told me, the farmers that owned these lands straightened out the river that flows through here and dikes were built around a patchwork of square mile fields. Later the Michigan Department of Natural Resources purchased the area and set it aside for duck hunting and habitat preservation. I asked Jack if he had a magic wand would he restore the area to his childhood remembrances or leave it as it is? He emphatically said,"As it is now! When these changes were made it supercharged the wild life in this area. Back then if one of us kids had shot a goose we would have been a legend today you could shoot a hundred."

Sandhill cranes. A rare sight in Michigan.

Today the wildlife is vast and diverse here. Countings are conducted weekly and my new buddy let on that he was about to make a bird count in the restricted non-hunting area and had the keys to the forbidden kingdom to prove it. "Let's go," I said. "Let's go!" he replied. So much for the sign. The gate blocking the two track that runs along the top of the levee wall and into the refuge was opened. I jumped in his truck and we were off.



A Long-tailed Duck or Oldsquaw (Clangula hyemalis) still in winter plumage was added to my life list!

                                                          Below a Yellow-Rumped warbler also climbed aboard as a lifer.



What ensued was a bumpy roll through the preserve and a whole lot of bird talk. We really didn't do much counting or photography as we went on our five mile tour but the quantity and variety of species left my head spinning. That my benefactor is a game bird hunter of some note and also a person with a lifelong devotion to habitat development and conservation kept our exchanges lively. I tried to draw a rough comparison between the gunslinger aspect of wildlife photography (see-aim-focus-shoot) and the potent thrill he got from dropping ducks with his shot gun. It was a tortured analogy at best but I was doing my best to get along. Still, and I admit this as your tree-hugging variety nature lover, our interests met harmoniously more often than not. I appreciated what the hunters lobby in concert with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources had wrought for our mutual enjoyment and benefit. How do the ducks fare with this arrangement?

Come hunting season that will depend on which side of the sign they land on.

Another lifer, White pelicans high above our heads!

            Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday!

This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds.

World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.

You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents, the BIRDS.

                                                          
#1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/


#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!

You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature.The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!

The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs. Click on them and view their beautiful posts.

                        Come on it's your turn!

World Bird Wednesday XXIV

                                                         Saginaw Bay Revealed

The view back inland from Tawas Point lighthouse on the North shore of Saginaw Bay.

From space the mitten shaped Lower Peninsula of Michigan, kerplunk in the middle of the Great Lakes, is perhaps the most easily recognisable geological feature of  continental North America. Saginaw Bay is the portion of Lake Huron that lies between the thumb and the rest of the mitten. Here are wetlands, forests, and shoreline dunes all in close proximity, giving shelter to the wide variety of wild life that depends on these terrains. The sky watch is equally impressive. Sunrise, sunset, and cracking thunder storms over the vast lake can easily bury the needle on one's Awemeter.  

Recently I found a terrific web site known as Saginaw Bay Birding. It is dedicated to optimising the enjoyment of birders exploring the major avian migration route that flows up and down Lake Huron's western shore. Using it's informative pages I have begun to seek out some of the hot birding spots that strand Saginaw Bay's 1,143 square miles.  I drove out to the big water early this week with a mind toward observing a much discussed hawk migration. For the best part of two days I meandered  Saginaw Bay's wetlands and shore lines, but at journeys end I wound up seeing more McDonalds restaurants than migrating hawks. Hawks schmawks! Thankfully there was no shortage of photogenic subject mater and my feelings were in no large way bruised by being stood up by Buteo. 

 

This busy Northern Flicker was caught resting in the trees below the lighthouse at Tawas Point. Usually they're spotted foraging on the ground unlike their more traditional woodpecker brethren.

What did you notice first, the Pie-billed grebe( whoops! make that an American coot) or the Painted turtle? Your answer to this question can go a long way in determining whether your inclinations run toward Ornithology or Herpetology. I am pretty solidly in the Ornithology camp but I can still like you if your a Herp!

   On the other hand, if you just cringed in sympathy with the minnows plight, ichthyology is probably your thing!

         

             Now it's time for World Bird Wednesday!

This is the home of World Bird Wednesday. A place for bird photographers from around the world to gather and share their photographs and experiences as they pursue Natures most diverse and beautiful treasurers, the birds.
World Bird Wednesday will be open for posting at 12 noon Tuesday EST North America through midnight on Wednesday.
You are invited to link your blog with other bird photographers in a weekly celebration of these most diverse and intriguing of Earth's residents, the BIRDS.

                                                  

 #1. Simply copy the above picture onto your W.B.W. blog entry. It contains a link for your readers to share in WBW. Or you can copy this link on to your blog page to share W.B.W. http://pineriverreview.blogspot.com/

#2. Come to The Pine River Review on Tuesday Noon EST North America through Wednesday midnight and submit your blog entry with Linky.

#3. Check back in during the course of the next day and explore these excellent photoblogs!


You don't have to be a Bird Watcher or expert photographer to join in--just enjoy sharing what you bring back from your explorations and adventures into nature.The idea of a meme is that you will visit each others blogs and perhaps leave a comment to encourage your compadres!

  The thumbnails below are links to our contributors blogs. Click on them and view their beautiful posts.

                      Come on it's your turn!