Visit in the wetlands

 

It has been three weeks since I had my last visit in the Green Island Wetlands. The water level in the Mississippi River is still very high and this effects the wetlands as well. It was relatively quiet yesterday afternoon. I have not seen a single duck, not very many Canada Geese, and the strangest thing was that I didn’t see any goslings. I really wonder if the flood has destroyed some of the nests. This all doesn’t mean there was nothing going on. Some Great Egrets stood either in groups or alone in the water and hunted for fish and frogs. I saw a Yellow Warbler, a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, an Eastern Kingbird, and even had my first sighting of a Yellow-throated Vireo.

This muskrat looks like it is dozing but it was actually feeding and chewing on plants in the water under a carpet of duckweed.

Probably thousands of Red-Winged Blackbirds have finished their nests and the females sit on the eggs right now. This female here was irritated by my approach because I drove by very slowly with my “mobile blind”. She left the nest but returned within a minute. The first photo was made as she entered the nest again and pretty soon the breeding business continued. The males sit on higher perches, like trees or the remains of last year’s reeds, and watch out for predators. I have seen them in the past defending their territory very aggressively against crows or even eagles.

Nature clicks #223 - Indigo Bunting

 

It took me a long way from my first photo of an Indigo Bunting in 2005 (with a point and shoot camera at that time) to the one I can show you today. Blue is my favorite color, no wonder that this little finch with its brilliant, almost iridescent, blue plumage was on my personal "most wanted list". We see them usually here in May but unlike other birds they don’t tolerate our presence very well, and so I have many bird feeder shots or pictures that show the bunting in the grass and far away from my lens. I was sitting on the ground aiming for some hummingbirds in the bushes when this beautiful Indigo Bunting landed on one of the perch sticks that we installed. The woods and grassy slope in the back make for a dark background but they are far enough to give a decent bokeh that lets the bird stand out from its surroundings. I hope you enjoy.

Nature click #222 - Rose-breasted Grosbeak

 

It has been an amazing spring for bird photography and right now I’m still in a position to make choices what pictures to publish and which one have to wait or will never be seen by the public eye. So let me start with some photo from earlier this month and finish with a brand new one from today. The Rose-breasted Grosbeak shows up here during the first week in May after a long journey from central or northern South America. Sometimes we see up to eight males in early May and they like our sunflower seed feeders a lot. Usually they stay for a couple days and then move on to Minnesota or Canada.

However, there is always at least one or two pairs left that will spend the summer here and raise their offspring. I looked in my archive but this is the first female with such a yellow chest. Most often the males get all the attention because of their bold black, white, and red color pattern but I think the females are very pretty as well. The photo of the female was made this morning and maybe we will see a young grosbeak sometime soon…

Nature clicks #221 - Eastern Wood-Pewee

 

Last week, while shooting little warblers like a maniac, I recognized a flycatcher sitting on a branch not very far from where I stood. First I thought it was the Eastern Phoebe that we see here all the time. I made a few clicks because the bird was much closer than the phoebe usually is, but it wasn’t before I looked at the photos on the computer screen that I realized that this bird was an Eastern Wood-Pewee. Both birds are very similar and have the typical behavior of a flycatcher. They perch on a branch or stick and as soon they see an insect they try to catch it in flight, mostly very close to the ground, and than return to the perch. How did I found out about the pewee? The Eastern Wood-Pewee has a yellow base at the lower mandible while the Eastern Phoebe’s bill is all black. There are some other small differences but for me this is the most obvious one. This is my best photo of an Eastern Wood-Pewee so far and it will definitely make it into my Iowa Wildlife Gallery as soon I will find the time to make an update…

Iowa landscape: Loess Hills

 

I’m almost sure you like to see something different than little birds and I’m absolutely OK with that. Mother’s Day weekend we went to Cherokee in northwest Iowa to visit Joan’s parents. A little further west, right along the Iowa border, is an interesting landscape, the Loess Hills. I don’t need to repeat what other knowledgable people already have written down about the hills. You know how to use a search engine in your browser and here is a link that tells you everything about the Loess Hills (Click HERE)

I have been there once before and always wanted to come back to try some bird photography in spring. Well, this year I thought it’s time to do it, but it was very, very windy that Saturday and so I really didn’t have much luck with getting birds in front of my lens. However, there is always something to point the lens at and this time the clouds east of the Loess Hills made for a great subject. The Loess Hills are some of the last remaining stands of prairie grass in the region and have an interesting flora and fauna. Using the lines of the landscape was the key for both photos. A lot has changed since the white men has stolen the land from the Indians but including some prairie grass and the clouds in the photo may give us a sense about how the Native Americans and early European settlers may have seen the scene before all the changes took place (although the Red Cedar in the second photo is not native to the Loess Hills.…).

Nature clicks #220 - Orchard Oriole

 

I like to interrupt my series about the warblers for another first sighting we had a few days ago at our house. For the first time we had an appearance of two Orchard Orioles. The birds showed up several times at one of our hummingbird feeders, which also has been used frequently by the many Baltimore Orioles we are lucky to see every year in May. To brake the jinx I made of course a few clicks while they were at the feeder but the goal for me is always to get a shot without it in a situation like this. I used the brief moment when the orioles landed and held on to the grape vines that grow on our balcony. They just hesitate a little before they hop onto the hummingbird feeder, to make probably sure everything is safe, but it is enough time to make the click.  I can tell you, we had three amazing weeks with the birds in May 2014 so far and I haven’t even been able to show you all of it yet… ;-)

Nature clicks #219 - Orange-crowned Warbler

 

When I have a first sighting of an animal I try to make my research about the species with several sources to make sure the critter is correctly identified. Sometimes the photo doesn’t reveal all the distinguishing marks and some doubt is left. It took me a while to draw a conclusion about the Orange-crowned Warbler but now I believe that’s what it is. Many warblers have a variety of color patterns and females and immature birds can look totally different than the male adults.

The photo was made right after a rain shower under low light conditions and revealing the colors required fill flash again. The Orange-crowned Warbler has its breeding grounds in the western part of the US and almost all Canada. The Mississippi Valley is an important migration route for the northern subspecies and so it is no surprise that we have seen it here last week.

Nature clicks #218 - Blackpoll Warbler

 

I’m glad and thankful that you came back to my blog even if I have almost nothing posted but photos and stories about warblers recently. It was an exciting week with many sightings during their migration to the breeding grounds up north or just because of their arrival, since some will stay here in Eastern Iowa during the summer.

The Blackpoll Warbler was another first sighting for us. We saw males and females feeding on little insects for three days. The two shots of a male are pretty much what I saw, with just a slight cosmetic crop. The female image is a long stretch. It is not tack sharp and I had to crop a little more because I couldn’t get close enough. My blog is not just a portfolio platform for the best of my photography, it is also about sharing biological facts or giving hints about wildlife locations. This is why you have sometimes to put up with a shot that is not so great, but still tells a story within the story. This is what the photo of the female Blackpoll Warbler is about today…

Gear testing and great company today

Click in the photo or just  HERE for a larger version of this photo.

Don’t worry, there will be at least two more posts about the warblers that we had here during this week. But before that I like to thank my photography friend Dave Updegraff for shooting together with me today and letting me test some photo gear that he owns. We used the gorgeous weather and just clicked away in our front yard. Birds were here again in abundance and I enjoyed exchanging thoughts, sharing our ways to make a photo, and discuss our workflows and other photography stuff. I had a great time this morning!

I thought this female Ruby-throated Hummingbird is worth a closer look because of the details in its feathers, and so for the first time I publish an image that has a higher resolution and size. If you click on the photo the larger version will open in a new window. I hope you enjoy!

Nature clicks #217 - Cape May Warbler

 

The last week taught us again how much we are blessed with the location where we live. Today we counted the 70th bird species that we saw here around our house on top of the bluffs of the Little Maquoketa Valley near Durango, Iowa. No, this post is not about today’s discovery, this has to wait for another blog post :-) .We know the close proximity of the Mississippi River plays a role in having this large variety of wildlife. The Mississippi is a highway for migrating birds but even all the species that are here all year long, or just during the summer, make for a never boring time when it comes to wildlife.

My “warbler week” series continues with the beautiful Cape May Warbler. I have seen this species last spring for a fraction of a minute. My 2013 shots were all blurry and I wondered if I will see this bird again. Last Tuesday came my chance. I saw the warbler from my office window, run outside, and shot like a maniac for a few minutes. We saw it later again but I never got this close a second time.

Rule #1 in wildlife photography is, if the eye is not sharp the image goes to the trash can or at least will not be published. Sometimes I keep a blurry photo just for the sake of identification and documentation within my own photo library. But there is always an exception to any rule and this is what this photo is about. I caught the moment when the Cape May Warbler was about to swallow a tiny little insect that looks like it was glued to it’s tongue. The body of the bird is sharp and the head in its extremely fast movement really tells the story how fast these warblers move and pick up little insects from the leaves.