Month: July 2023

The male Anna’s Hummingbird has been on high alert for the past couple of weeks. Interlopers in his territory have kept him so busy keeping them away from “his” feeders that he has rarely come to the feeders when I’m set up to photograph him there. Instead, he perches high on a bare branch that gives him a view of all of the feeders (there are four that he watches over) so that at the first sign of any transgression, he is off and chasing. Now that it appears that there are female Black-chinned and Allen’s Hummingbirds as well as female Anna’s in the area that dare to feed in his territory, he has been quite busy. A couple of days ago I counted three other hummers buzzing around as he frantically chased them down. The chase sometimes comes so close to me as I’m standing there with my hummingbird rig ready to fire that I have actually ducked as he chases them either over my head or past my shoulder. I decided if I was going to get any shots of him at all, I needed to focus on him as he watched over his territory. I had to wait a bit for him to turn his head just right so that his gorget glowed like a backlit ruby. Milliseconds later, he was off and running again.

A couple of female Bushtits preen after bathing in the fountain beneath them. In the last image the little fluff balls look undecided about whether to jump back into water with the rest of the Bushtit Brigade.

Bird Rock at Cape St. Marys’ Ecological Reserve in Newfoundland is crowded. A Northern Gannet drops out of the air at Bird Rock looking for space to land. These large seabirds mate for life and despite the crowded conditions of their nest site, they know exactly where their mate is.

Most of the Gannets don’t pay attention as this is a common occurrence over and over throughout each day. The bird adjusts wings and feet.

Amazingly, there is a relatively large unoccupied space on the very top of Bird Rock and this Gannet seems to stick the landing.

But no! Milliseconds later, the momentum of the landing carries the bird forward and it ends in a belly flop. We watched this scenario over and over during our week at Bird Rock. Some of the crash landings were on tiny rock ledges and the bird flying in crashed on top of its mate. I couldn’t tell which, if any, of the surrounding birds was the crasher’s mate. But,I’m sure they soon found each other.

I took advantage of the early morning cool to continue my hummer practice. And, unlike yesterday’s post, today’s post actually features a hummingbird. A female Black-chinned Hummingbird was a bit wary of my presence at first but she eventually fed at both of the feeders that I could focus on without moving my rig. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed so much buff color on a female Black-chinned hummer. That plunged me into my Peterson Field Guide to Hummingbirds and I think this might be an immature female based on the buff color as well as the look of the tail feathers from another image. Now if I can capture some of that twisting body language that happens when they leave, I’ll be happy.

Update: This is an immature Allen’s Hummingbird, a first for my backyard!

I was practicing for my upcoming trip to Madera Canyon in Arizona to photograph hummingbirds, so you’d expect to see a Hummingbird in a post I call “Hummer Practice.” You would be wrong. It has been obscenely hot here (109 Sunday and 108 Saturday) and although I need to acclimate because we’ll have similar temperatures in Arizona, I have hardly been outside. I haven’t even been using Auto Capture because I didn’t want to subject my Nikon Z9 to such temperatures for long periods. Monday was much cooler so I finally decided to venture out to practice and fine tune shooting hummingbirds with flash. The birds have no choice but to be outside. And they have been taking advantage of the cooling fountains in my garden, bathing often during the day. So when I was standing at my camera waiting for the resident Anna’s Hummingbirds, the Bushtit Brigade arrived. They didn’t even mind that I was just a few feet away from them. The fountain has been their respite from the unrelenting heat. This female Bushtit waited her turn while the rest of the brigade began to splash around furiously. And, yes, a hummingbird did finally arrive (a female Black-chinned) and it gave me a chance to do some fine tuning to the flash settings, but she stayed close to the feeder so I didn’t get any shots of just her without the feeder in the image. It is actually easier for me to photograph a hummer at a flower than at a feeder because I do not want to include the feeder in the image but including the flower is fine. While a hummer is at a feeder, it is challenging to position it in the frame so that it is not too close to the edge, it is facing into the frame, and the feeder is not part of the image. When the Bushtit brigade arrived, I didn’t have to worry about the feeder at all.

It’s the Fourth of July! We celebrate this date to commemorate our independence as a nation. The Bald Eagle is a symbol of that independence, that American spirit. I saw my first Bald Eagle in the wild on the Fourth of July fourteen years ago from a river raft on the Colorado River. My friends and I were on a white water rafting trip and I was awestruck to realize that I could actually see Bald Eagles in the wild. I must have led a very sheltered life up to that point. I’m pretty certain my 2009 self would be awestruck at how many I’ve seen and photographed in the 14 years since my first sighting. I celebrate my independence every day and I appreciate the marvelous opportunities that I have had over the years because of our independence. I photographed this Bald Eagle while standing ankle deep in the Uganik River on Kodiak Island, Alaska this past May while waiting for Kodiak Brown Bears to come down to the flats nearby so we could photograph them, too. Independence. What a treasure.

A pair of Common Murres touch their bills together in a courting gesture while another Murre becomes a “third wheel” on a rock ledge. Another old idiom, “two’s company, three’s a crowd” was quite apparent in the crowded conditions of the nesting seabirds at Cape St. Mary’s Ecological Reserve. There was often no space between nests and squabbles sometimes ensued. At the risk of sounding anthropomorphic, the third wheel Murre looks as if it wished to be anywhere but where it was.

Welcome to Bobo’s world (or not as the pinning eyeball in the second image indicates that she may not welcome you). Bobo is always my go-to test subject so when I got my Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z14-24 back from NikonUSA after being cleaned, and they said to be sure to test my equipment, I took a few shots of Bobo. She is always curious when I shove a lens in her face. She came to the front of her cage (with security pepper in beak, of course) but almost immediately began to pin her eyes which means she is either excited, interested, angry, or afraid. Any of those emotions can trigger aggressive behavior and biting so it’s always good when she has a pepper in her beak. She would have to drop that first which can delay the bite for a millisecond. She was actually intrigued more than anything and she didn’t act aggressively at all which was good because I was literally just inches from her face. I don’t think I have ever used the Z14-24mm lens for a closeup but at 24mm and with the minimum focusing distance of under 12 inches, it worked out perfectly. I can’t praise NikonUSA enough for the quick turnaround on my equipment. I sent them on Friday, they got them the following Monday and I had them both back by Friday. Very impressive.

The rocky beach at Rohrer Bear Camp on Kodiak Island in Alaska is a great place to take a stroll when the tide is out. The mossy cliffs rise abruptly from near the water’s edge. At low tide, it’s possible to walk around the point and continue down the beach to Jeannie’s house in the next bay. The golds of the moss and the dark gray-black of the rocks are the primary colors with just a touch of orange from the lichens. The beach is strewn with barnacle covered rocks, bits of broken mussel shells, and, if you’re lucky to find one, a piece of shale shaped like a bear claw. Storm clouds brought rain so my beach exploration was cut short.