NATURE CLICKS #538 - SHARP-SHINNED HAWK

Sharp-shinned Hawk, Little Maquoketa River Valley, Iowa

Life isn’t always easy for the birds that come to our feeders and heated water bowls near the house. Yes, they have food and water but it also attracts predators, like this Sharp-shinned Hawk. When most of the birds suddenly hide in panic in nearby bushes and the woodpeckers freeze motionless on a tree trunk, it is a sure sign that a hawk is somewhere in the trees or is gliding through the woods.

Today the sound of a little bird hitting a window made me aware that something was going on outside. The hawk was perched just above some of the bird feeders. I believe it is a female “Sharpie”. The bird was fifteen minutes in that tree and gave me plenty of time to change the lens on my camera, open the window, and start shooting before she took off. Who knows, this might be my last “Nature clicks” blog post for 2022, but nature is always full of surprises and we have still seven days left this year…

CHRISTMAS WITH THE CARDINALS

My German photography friend Maren gave me the idea to blog a photo of the Northern Cardinal in the snow. It’s a nice subject for a Christmas blog post but lack of time prevented me from going out in the freezing cold and make a photo like this one today. Although we have at least a dozen cardinals here at our feeders, but the strong wind of this blizzard blew already most of the plentiful snow off the branches. With other words, this photo is from last year.

Wishing all friends, readers, and visitors of my website and blog a wonderful Christmas weekend! Stay warm, but go out and try the new toys and tools for photography you may find under the Christmas tree… 😊

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Ferns and lichens, Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas

While I’m writing this blog post snow comes down and will probably not stop before tomorrow afternoon. Well, it’s a good reason to post a photo with some green in it. In my first article about the Ozarks I talked about the challenge to find interesting details in late fall, when most leaves were gone already. These ferns and lichens on a rock wall along Cedar Creek in Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas are a good proof that beauty in a landscape is not just found at the great vistas. I’m pretty sure I will process this image as a black & white sometime later but for now, let’s enjoy some color.

Nikon Z6II, Nikkor Z 24-70, f/4 S, GITZO tripod GT2931 Basalt, KIRK BH-3 ball head,   @ 70mm, 1/50s, f/8, ISO 800

BACK AT THE LIGHTHOUSE

Manitowoc Breakwater Lighthouse, Lake Michigan, Wisconsin

I’m back from probably my last business trip this year, this time to the western shore of Lake Michigan. Native Americans, who called this place home in the days before European settlement, named it Manitowoc, home of the good spirits. I have been there before in September 2021 and came back with some pictures of the Manitowoc Breakwater Lighthouse that marks the entrance to the marina. (Click HERE for a link to my blog post from last year )

This time the image was was created from a different angle and different light. The late afternoon sun was muted by a layer of clouds but the building stood out against the darker clouds over the lake. A little snow on the ice in the foreground and tweaking the white balance towards a colder tone give this photo the peaceful wintry mood I felt yesterday at the lake shore. Maybe this was just the prelude to a big snowstorm and arctic temperatures that are expected here in the Midwest still before Christmas…

Nikon Z6II, Nikon FTZ adapter, Nikon Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm, f/4,  @ 200mm, 1/400s, f/5.6, ISO 400

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Pines in the fog, Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas

The majority of time in the Ozarks we had blue skies and sunshine, but the few days with clouds, rain, or fog were actually the ones I enjoyed a lot more for photography. It seemed like we had to wait all summer long for the mood a foggy landscape can provide and that I like so much.

This meadow in Petite Jean State Park, Arkansas was actually an overflow campground, probably used in the summer when camping space in such a popular location is in high demand. Well, at his time of the year nobody was there and these wonderful pines, hugged by the fog, were just the right subject for a photo. Color’s didn’t play any roll and selecting black and white as my medium was a choice quickly made. A campground usually comes with some men-made facilities, like electrical outlet boxes, water faucets, or garbage containers. There were a few of these items visible between the trees in the background, but for such items, that just do not contribute to the photo, I don’t hesitate to use tools for content-aware replacement in Adobe Photoshop. What you won’t see in any of my nature images is sky replacement or any manipulation that changes the context of the subject.

OZARK MOUNTAINS (6) - MY FAVORITE PHOTO

Blackbirds in murmuration, Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge, Arkansas River Valley

Not far from Petit Jean State Park, where we camped during Thanksgiving weekend, is a wetland area along the Arkansas River. It reminded me a lot of the Green Island Wetlands I enjoy so much here in the Upper Mississippi Valley. Despite a couple gray days in a row we cruised Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge three times and although it wasn’t bird watching prime time, we enjoyed looking out for wildlife very much. The key story, unfortunately not captured in a picture, was the brief sighting of an Armadillo.

One of the most impressive views we had was the display of thousands of Red-winged Blackbirds in murmuration. In Europe this behavior is known only by starlings but here this flock of blackbirds and some grackles just performed incredible.

Why is this my favorite photo of the whole trip? If you look at the lower left quarter of the image closely, you may see the white spot on the tail of a Northern Harrier. The raptor took its turns and any time it came close to the huge flock of blackbirds they took off and went into murmuration to discourage the harrier during its hunt. When the blackbirds crossed in front of the colorful tree in the background, I knew I had an image that tells the story of fall colors, bird migration, and if nothing else, about the time of the season.

As more as I dive into photography it slowly becomes evident to me that the emotional side of an image, the story it carries to the viewer, is more important than the technical aspects of a photo. I understand that someone who works for a client or tries to sell their photos to a customer have maybe to follow other rules than the pure artist or hobbyist, but story telling seems to be still the key for a satisfying image.

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Palisades Overlook, Petit Jean State Park, Ozark Mountains, Arkansas. *Click on the photo for a larger view.

This was probably one of the most interesting vistas we enjoyed in the Ozark Mountains. Yes this is the same viewpoint I had already a few days ago but it was the day before Thanksgiving and sun and fall colors made for a great show at the edge of Cedar Creek Canyon. Down below in the background lies the Arkansas River Valley.

This panorama is stitched together from two photos. They were merged in Adobe Lightroom and it took less than a minute to do. It still amazes me how far this software has come over the years.

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Grasses in the river bed, Haw Creek Falls, Ozark Mountains, Arkansas

Today I have something for the more art-minded viewers. In my first blog post about the Ozark Mountains about a week ago I mentioned the challenge to find interesting details in the landscape. Deep in the woods of the Ozarks we checked out a campground at Haw Creek Falls. The summer was dry, not just in this part of the country, and many creeks and rivers have still low water levels and the waterfalls of Haw Creek were not very impressive  to say it mildly. But a hike with the camera on the exposed rocks in the river bed seemed to be promising. Harsh light can be your friend sometimes and these grasses in the river bed, that obviously had not seen a flash flood this summer, stood out against the dark background of the river nicely. The curves of the rocks gives us an idea how the water has carved out this valley over a long period of time.

And here is one of the aspects I like about the Nikon Z 6II, the first mirrorless camera that I use since exactly a year now. I really love the ability to set the camera into a particular picture mode and see a preview of the photo right in the viewfinder before I even make the click. In this matter I set it to monochrome. My presets in camera include a red filter applied to the image and relatively high contrast and sharpening. I still shoot in RAW mode, and if I don’t like the final result, it allows me to go back to color because all color information is still stored in the RAW file. In this case, with “Grasses in the river bed”, it was exactly what I had envisioned and saw in the viewfinder when the click was made, except for the fact that I cropped the final picture slightly.

Nikon Z6II, Nikon FTZ adapter, Nikon Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm, f/4, GITZO tripod GT2931 Basalt, KIRK BH-3 ball head  @ 200mm, 1/400s, f/4, ISO 100

OZARK MOUNTAINS (3) - THE WILDLIFE

To be honest, while traveling not very far south during our trip to Missouri and Arkansas I didn’t expect to watch a lot of wildlife during this late time of the year. Although we had forest in almost every direction all the way to the horizon in the Ozark Mountains at times, we saw very few White-tailed Deer. Luckily camping in a tent provides the great advantage to greet the first birds in the morning as soon they may appear, and say good night to the last ones (mostly the Cardinals) in the evening.

Golden-crowned Kinglet, a tiny bird I have seen only twice before. The branches of a Red Cedar are a perfect setting for making an image of this bird, but most importantly, that’s where the kinglet found little insects while gleaning quickly between branches.

The large Pileated Woodpecker seems to be more widespread in the Ozarks than here in eastern Iowa. We found a pair at every campsite. Making a picture is another story. They know how to drive a photographer crazy…

The Yellow-rumped Warbler is a bird that may not migrate as far south as many other warblers. To no surprise we found them still in southern Missouri during late November.

Female Northern Cardinal. Who needs an alarm clock if the first sound in the morning comes from the action of Northern Cardinals?

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Between rain showers, Palisades Overlook, Petit Jean State Park, AR

We spent Thanksgiving weekend in and around Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas. While we found mostly bare trees in the northern part of the Ozarks, fall colors were still present south of the Arkansas River. I made some photos of this vista from Palisades Overlook in nice sunlight with a blue sky the day before, but I like this shot between rain showers across Cedar Creek Canyon much better. Clouds moved fast through the canyon and the colorful trees below tell the story that fall finally came to an end here as well. An hour later we had a great Thanksgiving dinner at Mather Lodge, one of Arkansa’s historic treasures, built in the 1930’s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Beats camping food by far…😉

Nikon Z6II, Nikkor Z 24-70, f/4 S,  @ 24mm, 1/250s, f/8, ISO 400

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Old barrage at Alley Spring Roller Mill, Ozark National Riverways, near Eminence, Missouri

Hi everybody, we are back from a road trip that led us through parts of the Ozark Mountains in Missouri and Arkansas. Not a time when most people travel with a tent as their daily shelter for the night, but despite a few cold moments we managed it well. Photographically spoken it wasn’t a trip with a lot of great vistas but finding interesting details in the landscape was the challenge I tried to take on every day. I hope you may enjoy some of the photos I share here in the blog during the next weeks.

NATURE CLICKS #537 - NUTHATCH COMPARISON

Red-breasted Nuthatch

White-breasted Nuthatch

The Red-breasted Nuthatches are winter guests here in Iowa. We are lucky to see a couple around here since about a month. They are as acrobatic as their cousins, the White-breasted Nuthatches, during their efforts to find food on trees, or like in this photo at a feeder. The white-breasted breeds here and is present all year long. As you know, I do not make a lot of bird images at a bird feeder, but in this matter I wanted to show the difference in size between both species and the raster of a suet feeder is an excellent scale for this purpose. The Red-breasted Nuthatch prefers coniferous forests, which of course they find up north in their breeding range. The larger White-breasted Nuthatch inhabits mixed deciduous and coniferous forests and prefers the presence of oak trees (source: iBird PRO app). They built their nests in dead wood, often higher up in a tree. Well, we have plenty of dead wood around here and so far we have seen every year a successful brood.

Nikon Z6II, Nikon FTZ adapter, Nikon Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm, f/4

NO DOUBT

We were greeted this morning with a few snow flakes, coming down slowly but steady. I grabbed the camera and walked out the door, still in my pajamas, and made a few clicks of the pumpkin at the edge of our porch. Halloween is over but we leave the big fruit there until it starts looking ugly. The orange of the pumpkin goes well with the blue of the wooden post. There is still a blossom on the petunia behind but the photo leaves no doubt, winter is knocking at the door…

DISCUSSING BLUEBIRDS

Tonight the Dubuque Audubon Society had a program about bluebirds. Jessica Carryer from the Joe Davis Conservation Foundation over in Illinois discussed everything from habitat, how to monitor a bluebird nest box, to all other aspects of conservation of this beautiful bird species with the audience. It was very interesting and gave me and other members of the Audubon Society new ideas for our own conservation efforts.

I thought this was a good reason to present you another photo from a shooting in July with my photography friend Kevin, who is also very active building and monitoring bluebird nest boxes.

This male Eastern Bluebird tried to lure the nestlings out of the box with a good size insect in its bill, but he little guys were not ready to leave that day. The location of Kevin’s bluebird box was perfect. The birds liked it obviously and it was very “photography friendly”, which allowed us to shoot with natural light from a safe distance, and without a bright sky or distracting background.