Nature clicks #182 - House Wrens, intimate biology

 

I'm glad I made these pictures yesterday because today the young wrens left the nest in the gourd that is hanging from our porch. We didn't know how many young House Wrens were in the nest until I saw three little birds today. They were sitting together in another bird's nest that is hidden in a bush just a few yards away from the house. The parents had obviously called them out one after another and gathered them with them in the new place. I believe the nest belongs to the Chipping Sparrows that have raised their offspring and are seen now in the grass teaching them how to catch a bug. The wrens didn't stay very long in this place. A few minutes after I saw them in the second nest they had moved already on and we could hear them chatter somewhere in the woods nearby. We wish them save travels and hope to see some of them next year in late April or early May again. They might be here still for a little while but usually we don't see them again after the second brood left the nest.

Let's talk about the photos I show you toady. The first one doesn't need much explanation. Two of the three young wrens sticked their heads out, waiting for food (the third one was probably pushed to the back by the more powerful siblings) and seeing them with their bills closed was a rare moment. They made a lot of noise yesterday and again this morning right after sunrise. The parents came very frequently with new food and it was a joy for me to capture those moments.

My wildlife photography has a lot to do with showing the beauty of wild living animals but the avid reader of my blog knows that I always try to shed some light on some interesting biological facts about the animals I photograph. I have cleaned many bird houses after the breeding season in the past and it always impressed me how clean they are inside. You don't find much dirt beside the branches and grass of the nest. The wrens remove their excrements instantly and I'm sure other birds do too in order to keep the place healthy. And here is how it works. Raising three, four, or even more young birds requires a lot of insects to be caught and fed to the offspring. The last two pictures are shot within a few seconds. The young bird receives its meal, swallows, turns around immediately, and hangs its butt out of the hole of the nest box. The parent bird picks up the digested food from the backside and flies away with it. When the wrens are very young this happens obviously inside the nest box and we can't see it but we always see the parent birds coming out of the hole with trash. I also saw sometimes the young bird giving the excrements to the parents with its bill. This might not be the most pleasent thing to see for some people but I believe it is very interesting. Being intimate with a critter's biology is essential for making the click at the right moment or to predict when the action may happen that you are waiting for. This includes that someone shows you their butt sometimes... ;-)

Trying to go beyond the ordinary pose

 

I wonder if you get bored by my little reports about some animals I follow with my camera throughout the season but at least I hope you enjoy the photos that sometimes can tell a story better than any words can do. One of the bird species I follow every year are the House Wrens that have their nest either in a bird box in our front yard or, like at the moment, in a gourd hanging from our porch. The young birds of the second brood are still in the nest and I was wondering why I saw suddenly four wrens sitting in the dead cedar branch that we use as a perch for the birds. The question was answered pretty fast when one of the adults started feeding one of them with an insect it just had caught. It was the offspring from their first brood that came "home" for a snack. Usually we never see them again after they left the nest but obviously they are still around here.

I have lots of photos from our wrens and the challenge is now to photograph them in a pose that is beyond the ordinary "sitting bird" pose. Some actions last only a couple seconds, like in the second image showing the bird scratching its neck. The other time to get the camera out is when a light situation looks promising. Early morning is a good time for it at our location.

The adult birds approach the nest every few minutes and always with food in their bills. The amount of food the young wrens eat is amazing. We still don't know how many juveniles are in the nest but I can tell you, they cry very loud as soon the adults bring another snack to the nest. Maybe that made their older siblings a little jealous and drew them back home, who knows... ;-)

Nature clicks #181 - Common Loon

 

I spent the weekend in Northern Wisconsin and worked on a project that I had in mind since a few years already. My plan was to photograph ospreys, also known as "fish hawks", at a location that I had bookmarked during previous visits. The nest can only be reached by boat and I used my kayak to get there. To make a long story short, I saw the ospreys but rain and other circumstances did not allow to claim victory and come home with some good images. With other words, I got skunked! Wildlife photography requires sometimes a lot of patience and so the project remains on the list for another try maybe next year.

It wasn't all bad, I saw Bald Eagles, a Belted Kingfisher, and just before I returned to the boat ramp a family of Common Loons came out of the reeds. The male positioned himself between me and the female with her two chicks and he made a hell of a noise. The call of a loon is very loud and impressive. The light situation was everything but good. Behind me were huge thunderstorm clouds moving in and the only chance to make the click was to shoot into the sun. In order to maintain a fast shutter speed I dialed in ISO400 (as you know not my preferred way to photograph wildlife). A fill flash would have been helpful but because I try to take as few items as possible into the kayak, the flash light was, of course, in the car... :-o It was the first time that I had the Common Loon during summer in front of my lens. The only pictures I had so far were made during the winter season in Southern California. Their plumage looks much nicer during the breeding season and just watching them was very exciting. Both images are not cropped and the low perspective and clean background make them good keepers in my books.

I wished I would have had more time with these beautiful birds but the thunder was already rolling and I just wanted to get off the lake. Playing it safe is mandatory and dying for a picture isn't worth it...

Nature clicks #180 - Red-spotted Purple

 

So far it has been a year with very few butterflies. I wonder if the draught last year plays a role in it. A few days ago one of my favorites showed up feeding in our yard, the Red-spotted Purple. They never sit still and it is a challenge to make a good click. It is always an act of balance what aperture to choose for this kind of an environmental image. If you open the lens all the way up to f/2.8 you may get a good shutter speed to freeze the action of the butterfly but depth of field is so shallow that only a small part of the insect is in focus. At the other hand if you stop down too much it's not just difficult to get a sharp image but also the background becomes way to distracting. If a butterfly moves around there are not too many choices for choosing the background. Now the technical geeks may say, why not pumping up the ISO into astronomical heights? Well, for me part of the challenge is to shoot in the basement between ISO100 and 200 in my wildlife photography. Of course, this doesn't work out always but on a sunny day I will stick with ISO100 for a maximum of detail. The alternative is not making the click at all, and this is not really an option... ;-)

Weekend on the water

 

We spent last weekend over in Southwest Wisconsin and explored Yellowstone Lake State Park and ones more Governor Dodge State Park. Both have wonderful lakes to paddle and swim and that's how we took advantage of the nice summer weather. It was also a nice opportunity to practice shooting again from the kayak. There is no room for error when you take the camera with a long lens attached in the boat but I managed to come back with dry gear. ;-) The flat parts of the lakes have a lot of water plants that cover the surface and this is right now the playground of thousands of dragonflies, damselflies, and other insects.

I believe these damselflies are Circumpolar Bluets but I have not been able to identify them yet for sure. They hardly sit still and even fly around in a "double pack" while obviously in a mating mood. I tried the 50-500 with the tripod fixed to the kayak but this didn't give me enough flexibility to work with insects. It works for birds if you can get close enough. I finally had better results with the Sigma 150/f2.8 macro lens and the camera just loose on a strap around my neck. Of course, the keeper rate is not as high as on solid ground but as I said here in the blog before, if I come home with one image that I like, I'm a happy man... :-)

Any news about the House Wrens?

 

I like to share this image with you from today. After raising successfully the first brood we can see now the wren parents feeding a second set of young ones. We can already hear the offspring quietly chirping in a hollow pumpkin body that hangs at our porch, only a few feet away from the nest box that they used for the first brood in the front yard. I think it is interesting that they have never used the same nest location a second time within one season.

I'm not a big fan of suppressing the background while using a flash light in my nature photography but I tried different settings and finally liked this one the best, despite the background is almost black. Probably because the pose of the approaching wren with food in its bill tells really the story what's going on here. Earlier this year in spring I talked about how much I enjoy waking up by the chatter of the House Wrens. I absolutely don't mind listening to this sound at least for a couple more weeks...

Nature clicks #179 - American Beaver

 

It was my dear wife Joan who discovered the beaver family in the Little Maquoketa River down in the valley during a bicycle ride last week. I knew it would be sheer luck to find them at the same spot. Nevertheless I tried it and spent an hour waiting, and endless slaps for the mosquitos, but to my surprise the beavers showed up again. The beaver parents took care for four young ones and I was really happy to see them.

Camouflaged well by surrounding trees, the river was between me and the beavers and the remaining light made for camera settings like ISO 400 and 1/50s exposure time. The only way staying in business and using the maximum focal length of 500 mm (750 mm on the D300s) was to use the peak of action. The beavers moved most of the time and just having the shutter going while they had those tiny breaks of action sometimes led to a halfway sharp image. I used the term "halfway" because none of my shots was tack sharp.

I know, in some areas beavers are seen as a pest because of some trees they may take down in order to feed and establish their life. It takes a smarter approach to see the whole picture and the role the American Beaver can play in a healthy environment.

The Little Maquoketa River is not very long in comparison to the big rivers that cross the US from north to south. However, I really believe it is important to realize that even the smallest stream plays a role how things turn out when the water finally hits the ocean. Watching beavers only a few miles away from the Mississippi River is just a wonderful experience and I hope I can see them again soon in our valley.

Nature clicks #178 - Wood Duck - juveniles

 

If there is anything special about the first image it is just the fact that I was able to make it and as a bonus, making it with killer light. Wood Ducks are extremely shy and it is very difficult to get close to them. It was already 7PM last Saturday when I saw these three juveniles down below the levy in the water. There was obviously no mother nearby and they just stayed and tried to camouflage with the mud and algae carpet on the water surface. As good the algae and water plants might be for the ducks, they kill an image like this. Background is key for a good wildlife photo and this one looks just yucky, despite the great light on the young ducks.

I was wondering if I saw the second brood already when I watched only a few minutes later this female Wood Duck with twelve tiny ducklings swimming across another pond in the wetlands. Water fowl lives a dangerous life and many predators, from hunting birds to foxes and big fish that try to catch a young bird from down below, can have an impact of how many birds will make it into an adult life. Finally the hunting season in the fall is not helpful for some of the bird species that are in a decline anyway. It makes me sometimes sad to see that only two or three ducklings survive but I know it is part of understanding nature in its whole complexity.

Earlier in the spring this year I saw very few Wood Ducks in the Green Island Wetlands and wondered if this was the result of the dry summer with low water levels in 2012. I guess they were just hiding better than other years... ;-) I'm very happy now to see all the "Kindergarten" activities in the lakes and ponds along the Mississippi River.

Grebe showing off

 

This immature Pied-billed Grebe was only one of many young birds I saw last weekend in the Green Island Wetlands. First it splashed all around and cleaned its feathers for several minutes. It seemed to tell me, look, I can clean myself all alone already.

Than it flapped its wings in order to dry them or just raised them up to let the sun do the rest. And last, it showed off and let me know that it can conduct an orchestra... Well, I know, this is probably asking too much for a little bird but it obviously made this pose that looks like it would conduct a bunch of musicians... :-) Don't you think?

On the photography side, the light at 4:30PM was still very intense but had already a warm touch. It was necessary to dial in an exposure compensation of minus one stop in order not to blow out the highlights on the light parts of the feathers.

This is the best I'm able to get from the wetlands at the moment. The carpet of algae is definitely not an eye pleaser and shooting from slightly above, the only way you can do it there if you use the car as a blind, is never a good angle for a great image. However, after another week of traveling I was happy to be back in the wetlands and I hope you enjoy the photos of the juvenile Pied-billed Grebe and the little story they tell. More to come...

Nature clicks #177 - Pallid-winged Grashopper (nymph) ???

 

The last day of this holiday weekend became a very warm one. The bird traffic in the yard has slowed down and usually days like this are good to look for butterflies in the garden. This summer is different. We had very few butterflies so far and even the omnipresent Hackberry Emperor hasn't been seen yet. I saw a couple swallowtails earlier this spring but have not seen any lately. We wonder if the draught last year plays a role in this pattern.

I took a stroll this afternoon around the flower patches in our yard with the SIGMA 150/f2.8 attached to the camera. It is my oldest lens but I still like the optical quality of it. It has a nice focal length that gives you some distance for macro work on insects.

Joan and I are not sure about this grasshopper species even after studying all our books and guides about insects. We believe it is the nymph of a Pallid-winged Grasshopper but we are not 100 percent sure. The size (about 3/4") and the little wing buds on its side show that its metamorphosis is still in process.