TIME FOR BRANCH HOPPING

Nikon D750, Sigma 50-500mm / f4.5-6.3 APO DG HSM, tripod, gimbal head

My website and blog has always been about sharing knowledge with other people that own a camera and try to get the best out of it. Sharing wildlife encounters and the locations where to find wildlife is part of it. Other photographers do the same and so we all benefit from each other one way or the other.

Last night I received an email from my photography friend Linda, telling me that the little owlet had left the nest at Mud Lake down at the Mississippi River. After a young Great Horned Owl leaves the nest they usually stick still around for a while. During this period of so called “branch hopping” they are still fed by the parents but it is not necessarily the same tree where the nest is located. And here starts the problem for the avid birder or photographer. The fresh leaves on the trees come out at the moment and every day it becomes a little more difficult to find the tree and the branch where the young owl spends the day.

My neck got already soar after wandering around and scanning every tree near the nest with my eyes for 45 minutes. Almost ready to give up for today I finally discovered the owl in a tree near the nest I had looked at several times before. They really blend in well. For the next 50 minutes I had an unobstructed view to a subject that turned the head once in a while and opened and closed its eyes for the most. Other than that, it was all about watching the light of the setting sun and playing with every possible setting on my new Nikon D750.

It always amazes me how fast they grow. I discovered the female Great Horned Owl sitting on the nest February 15th, saw the young owl March 16th for the first time, and now it has left the nest already. As I wrote here in the blog before, this happened for the third year in a row, but it is, at least for me, one of the most fascinating wildlife stories that unfolds here in the Mississippi Valley. Special thanks to Linda for sharing the information with me!

WAITING FOR THE LONG SHADOWS

Nikon D750, Sigma 50-500mm / f4.5-6.3 APO DG HSM

After some days with cold and very windy weather conditions we finally got the spring back here in Eastern Iowa. I used the sunny day for a visit in the Green Island Wetlands. Not every picture turned out like this one. I struggled a little bit with the high contrast from the very powerful sun, especially during the early afternoon. The long shadow of the Killdeer may tell you that this photo was made not too far away from sunset. It pays back to stay and wait for these long shadows, the light is just so much better...

The Killdeer did its usual trick, pretending it was injured, to lure me away from this particular spot. It may want to use it for breeding sometime soon. More to come…

PRACTICE WITH PAINTED TURTLES

Nikon D750, Sigma 50-500mm / f4.5-6.3 APO DG HSM, tripod, gimbal head, DX-crop mode

A Painted Turtle is a great subject to practice wildlife shooting or to test new equipment, like I do right now with the new Nikon D750. If the turtles move, they move slowly (with one exception I will talk about in a minute), or they don’t move at all. The yellow lines on its head provide good contrast to lock on focus, which is important for a sharp image. And as a bonus, the turtles are always good for a unique gesture. The first one was not my sharpest shot of this critter but the gesture with the open mouth makes all the difference for me. It looks like the turtle is yawning, but what you don’t see in the first photo is a second turtle, just climbing up the log on the other end. Well, the meet and and greet on the log went well and after some butt sniffing (yes they do that like dogs!) both finally ended up taking a sun bath together.

You may think taking these shot is much easier than photograph a bird at the same distance, but this is not true. If the Painted Turtle senses danger, because you walk right up to them, they will drop into the water as fast as a bird will take off. The good thing is, most of the time, especially when the sun is shining, they will climb back up on the log again after a few minutes. The short break while they are in the water allows to establish a good shooting position near the log. If you are carefully and make your own moves as slow as a turtle  ;-) , they may accept your presence and you get a second chance to make the click.

Nikon D750, Sigma 50-500mm / f4.5-6.3 APO DG HSM, tripod, gimbal head, FX-mode

I switched back and forth between FX and DX crop mode on the D750 while shooting the action as just described. Full frame (FX mode) served very well to make the images with both turtles on the log. For isolating the turtle on the left, like in the first image, I used the DX crop mode. Back in the days of shooting slides on film, rule #1 for having a keeper was ‘Get it right in camera’. I enjoy photography as a form of art and as a craft. Get it right in camera is part of the craft.

WILDLIFE AND A LARGER SENSOR

Nikon D750, Sigma 50-500mm / f4.5-6.3 APO DG HSM, tripod, gimbal head

A filled travel schedule and business meetings in between prevented me from doing serious shooting during the last couple days again. Feels like torture when you have a new camera and no time to work with it… ;-)

This shot of the Great Horned Owl juvenile is from last Friday and pretty much straight out of camera, except for the usual sharpening process. By using the full size of the 24 MP sensor in FX-mode on the NIKON D750 a 500 mm focal length is just what it is, 500 mm, like in the days of film photography. However, the camera can be used in two different crop modes and the DX-mode with a crop factor of 1.5 provides the same angle of view for a particular lens as it is on my NIKON 300s DX camera. With other words you have, kind of, the equivalent of 750 mm focal length. And here lies the big challenge that comes with the change to a full frame camera. You have to get physically closer to your subject in order to use the full potential of the sensor. As mentioned before this is not always possible, like with the owl high up in the nest, but for shooting many other critters I just have to get better. That means to learn more about their biology and behavior and invest more patience and time so that finally the wildlife comes to you. Long way to go… :-)

GROWING OWLET

I have been traveling the last few days but finally had a chance to check the nest of the Great Horned Owl again this evening. As you can see, the light was perfect and the little owlet sticked its head out of the nest, as if it would greet me at my arrival. Most of the time I spent there today the young owl had its eyes closed and you could only see the upper part of the head. The third year in a row I’m amazed how fast a young owl is growing. I have not seen the mother at any of my visits lately but I’m sure she does everything to feed the juvenile owl and is out on the hunt for prey.

NATURE CLICKS #269 - GADWALL (FIRST SIGHTING)

Nikon D300s, Sigma 50-500mm / f4.5-6.3 APO DG HSM           

I took a little detour on my way back from a business trip to Davenport, Iowa this evening and checked all the current “hot spots” in the Green Island Wetlands. I have by far not seen all the birds that come through the Mississippi Valley during migration and so it is not really a surprise, that even after living here now for more than ten years, I still have a first sighting of a new species once in a while.

Today I found a single male Gadwall foraging in the shallow waters of the wetlands. Well, it was not totally alone, it obviously enjoyed the company of several Northern Shovelers. At some point the Gadwall even made a courtship display for a female shoveler or it just tried to impress the males, I’m not sure…;-) The Gadwall is not an uncommon bird in North America, I just had not seen one yet before.

Photographically, this photo is not a master piece. The great looking duck was too far away with no chance for me to get closer, and so I decided to crop the picture a little bit.

NATURE CLICKS #268 - RUSTY BLACKBIRD

Female Rusty Blackbird

Everybody here in the Midwest is familiar with the Red-winged Blackbird. They are found almost everywhere along roadsides or bodies of water. The arrival of the first Red-winged Blackbirds is always a sure sign that winter comes to an end soon. This year I saw my first one March 13th. Not so known is the Rusty Blackbird. They come through here on their way to Canada, where they have their breeding grounds.

I read that this blackbird had a population decline of over 85% since 1966 (source: iBirdPro app). One reason more to be happy about seeing them again last weekend in the Green Island Wetlands. Most of the time I have seen them foraging in very shallow water or in the mud along shore.

Male Rusty Blackbird

NATURE CLICKS #267 - TURKEY VULTURE

Nikon D300s, Sigma 50-500mm / f4.5-6.3 APO DG HS         

I came across this Turkey Vulture a couple days ago while driving down the winding road to Finley’s Landing at the Mississippi River. The bird stood on a boulder beside a bridge that crosses the creek, which carved this little side valley of the big river. I’m glad I had the camera on the passenger seat, ready to shoot. The vulture gave me about twenty seconds to stop the car, lower the window, and finally make a few clicks. It is very rare to see a vulture beside the road in a decent setting. Mostly they feed on some roadkill and that is not always pretty. I don’t know what this one was after but I’m happy the bird gave me the chance to get real close before it took off.

The Turkey Vultures migrate south during the winter but we have seen the first ones back here already in late March. They are some of the most elegant flyers and have a very sophisticated immune system that protects them from disease associated with decaying animals.

WHERE DO YOU WANT TO HEAD WITH YOUR WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY?

Lesser Yellowleg

There are several reasons why I chose this particular photo to tell a little part of the probably long story about spring migration of the Lesser Yellowleg. First, I like the gesture of the bird, looking at the sky for a Bald Eagle that soared above our heads. Second, it is the concept of using negative space, the space that surrounds the bird and that emphasizes the main subject. And third, it is very difficult to find a spot in the Green Island Wetlands that is not cluttered with stumps of old reeds or just mud hills that stick out of the shallow water. It would have been easy to clone out the reed stumps in the upper right corner of the photo, but I think it gives the image a little more dimension.

If you would ask me, where would you like to head with your wildlife photography, I would say, I really like the combination of light and story telling, and I enjoy a claim for artistic expression in a photo. With other words, I don’t care so much for the last detail in an eyeball of a critter, although sharpness is still important, but gesture will play hopefully a bigger role in my future images. I may answer this different sometime in the future, but as of now, this is it, and that’s why I like today’s image…

FIRST OF THE YEAR

Eastern Phoebe

Before I continue with another migrating shorebird that made a stop in the Green Island Wetlands last weekend, I like to report my first of the year Eastern Phoebe. No, it wasn’t here in our woods but thirty miles south in Bellevue State Park. The landscape is very similar to ours, steep and rocky slopes with deciduous forest. I looked in my archives and found out that the arrival of the Eastern Phoebe has been always around the first week in April during the last few years. This small flycatcher is fun to watch when they catch prey in mid-air. It forages from atop tree branches or other perches. A sure sign of spring… ;-)

NATURE CLICKS #266 - PECTORAL SANDPIPER

Well, I spent another full afternoon behind the camera along the Mississippi River. I liked some of the results from yesterday but there is always room for improvement. Identifying sandpipers is really not an easy task and any time I post a picture of a sandpiper species I would like to add a question mark. Most of them we see only during migration and this makes it difficult to have it spot-on every time. So if you are a birder that really knows about shorebirds and you disagree with my identification, please don’t hesitate to bring me back on the right track.

Nikon D300s, Sigma 50-500mm / f4.5-6.3 APO DG HSM

I saw several of the Pectoral Sandpipers in the Green Island Wetlands yesterday already but there were a lot more today and they were closer too. They have a really long journey to their breeding grounds. The Pectoral Sandpiper spends the winter in South America and breeds on arctic tundra from western Alaska across extreme north Canada. (source: iBirdPro app and NG Complete Birds of North America)

I talked about using “peak of action” in wildlife photography lately. The first image is a good example how it worked. Something took the bird’s attention for a brief moment, maybe there was a predator in the sky, and most of them interrupted their feeding frenzy and stopped for a few seconds. The shutter of the D300s was rattling… :-)

NATURE CLICKS #265 - WILSON'S SNIPE

Nikon D300s, Sigma 50-500mm / f4.5-6.3 APO DG HSM

It was a great day for bird watching. A little windy at times but warm and pleasant. Lots of new arrivals in the Green Island Wetlands. Among them where several Wilson’s Snipes. They are on their way to Canada and the northern U.S., where they will breed this summer. I found the birds at the end of the day after a five hour visit in the preserve. They probed with their long bill in the mud with high frequency. The diet of a Wilson’s Snipe includes mostly larval insects, earthworms, and mollusks.

I shot other birds earlier in the afternoon but nothing can beat the quality of the light during the last two hours before sunset. The Wilson’s Snipe isn’t a first sighting for me. I found them before during the first week in April in 2013, but last year I missed them. 

More to come, so please stay tuned...

Face to face

I hope nobody wants to talk photography today… ;-) This heavily cropped photo is just here to show you the little owlet, that I had the pleasure to see face to face this week for the first time. We had a couple windy days and most of the time the young Great Horned Owl stays low in the nest and only the upper part of its head is visible. It looks like the parents feed it well, at least they are not much at the nest. I have seen the mother flying over into the reeds along the river a couple times. With other words, their food source is really not far from the nest.

NATURE CLICKS #264 - HORNED LARK

It wasn’t an easy task to make the photos I show you today. There was a reason why I never was able to make any decent shots of the Horned Lark here in Iowa before. They live and breed in the open country, where no tree or bush can hide a desperate photographer ;-) I have seen them in a field just outside of the Green Island Wetlands many times before but never came close enough to make the image work. Yesterday evening I found a pair of Horned Larks foraging along one of the levees that separate the ponds in the wetlands. I maneuvered the car, which as you know serves as my mobile blind, several times in position. Many birds seem to accept the presence of a car quite often, while opening the door and getting out of it, may spook them away immediately. The two larks didn’t show much interest in me this time, but getting close was only one problem I had to overcome.

All images: Nikon D300s, Sigma 50-500mm / f4.5-6.3 APO DG HSM

Most wildlife photographers are familiar (or at least should be) with using the peak of action, the short moment between movements, for the shot. It has been quite often best described with a bouncing basketball. The brief moment when the ball reaches its highest point and the speed is zero. This is the moment when you have your chance to make a sharp shot, no matter what your shutter speed is. The only way to make this work for your photography is trying to predict this moment a tad before and then use the ability of the camera to shoot several frames per second (the Nikon D300s does 6 fps). The Horned Lark gave me a hard time. Both were foraging, head down, and with high speed and intensity. Yes, there was peak of action but it occurred very irregular. Sometime the birds didn’t stop for more than ten seconds. Other times I thought I nailed it, but the lark had their eyes closed. Well, as you can imagine I had my good share of misses yesterday evening…

The good thing was that the light got better with every minute while working with the birds. You may ask why some of the grass and background looks black. The DNR (for my German friends: Department of Natural Resources, similar to Naturschutzbehörde) had a controlled burning in the area the week before. This is a way to keep prairie and marsh land in good condition. Wild fires have always played an important role for the health of these ecosystems and landscapes.

NATURE CLICKS #263 - RING-NECKED PHEASANT

I went out today to find all kind of birds near or in the water of the Mississippi and other wetlands. And there were lots of them today. However, my most surprising encounter today was this Ring-necked Pheasant. I found the bird in full courtship display on a piece of marshland at the Mississippi near Sabula, Iowa. His behavior indicated that he was either posing for a female or tried to impress another competitor. Although, I never saw another bird between the reeds and brushes along the river shore.

This wasn’t a first sighting for me but it was the first time that I was able to shoot a number of pictures of a pheasant. The Ring-necked Pheasant is a native to Asia and was introduced as a game bird in California in 1857 (source: iBird Pro app). I’m very happy that I finally can add this species to the BIRD GALLERY - NORTH AMERICA. Check it out if you like.