She had just surfaced from beneath the pond as we watched from the floating boardwalk in Arizona, her beak glistening with water and droplets covering her head and back. She is a female Lesser Scaup, a common bird that winters in much of the US, including California, but I had never seen one (at least to my knowledge and recollection), let alone photographed one until late last month.
I’m feeling a little frigid since I returned home after Christmas, kind of like I’ve been left out in the cold like this Bison in Yellowstone a few years ago. My heater went out. But, as a friend pointed out to me today, I’m not a stranger to frigid temperatures so 63° in my house shouldn’t be that big a deal. So I’m putting on my big girl pants and sucking it up. The good news is that the new system will be installed tomorrow.
Sadie is just over a year old. She is either in constant motion or sound asleep. But she is a bundle of energy when she’s awake. Several times a day she and Arthur go into the backyard to toss and retrieve a ball to help her expend some of that pent up energy. She concentrates hard on watching Arthur, crouching down far on the opposite side of the yard, waiting, and calculating where the ball needs to be before she makes her move. She doesn’t move until the ball is at that place, then she starts slowly, inching forward in a crouch, springing up and sprinting forward before launching into the air and catching the ball. She almost never misses. Then the game is on to race back to Arthur and drop the ball for him to do it again. What struck me, though, is that as much as she seems to live for this game, she makes Arthur work to find the ball before he can pitch it back to her. She circles around a few times in the garden, not on the grass near Arthur, but in the shrubs and bark where she drops the ball, usually near the center of a dense shrub. Then she races at top speed to the opposite side of the yard and readies herself in a crouch waiting for the next round. I took this shot just as she slowly began her move, before making her high speed lurch to meet the ball. I discovered that except when she was in a crouch or just beginning to move, most of the shots I took contained only the top or bottom of a dog and her sudden and unpredictable bursts of speed challenged my panning skills.
A big brother is always a big brother, no matter how grown up or how old you are. I’m lucky to have two big brothers but Arthur (known as Art to everyone but me) is my oldest big brother. He’s always had my back and looked after me when I needed looking after. And, as this image shows, big brother is still watching, even as he appears a bit exasperated about events that had just transpired. I won’t say I was the cause of the exasperated look, but then again, as a little sister, it has always been my responsibility to annoy the hell out of my big brothers whenever I had the opportunity,
Merry Christmas! With a little help from an Adobe Photoshop AI feature, Generative Fill, I added a Santa hat to a Ring-necked Duck (one of my favorite images of the year) to create this Christmas greeting.
The male Vermilion Flycatcher enjoyed bathing in the spray from a sprinkler in Arizona last month.
Watching this American White Pelican work at swallowing a fish was fascinating. In late November, I posted (click here) an image of this Pelican as it had finally gotten the fish under control in its pouch. In this image, taken a few frames before the fish was under control, the Pelican was struggling to keep the squirming fish inside its pouch. You’d think having that giant stretchy pouch would make it easy. After watching this bird struggle, it’s amazing they manage to eat at all.
The tiny Costa’s Hummingbird was quite cooperative a few weeks ago in Arizona. He was in a shrubby area with lots of obstructions so I took my camera off the tripod and walked a few feet to get a better view. The Nikkor Z600PF is lightweight and hand-holding it lets me move easily to follow a bird without the burden of a tripod. I was able to track him and when he perched, the freedom of hand-holding let me move easily to avoid obstructions.
A Great Egret stalks unsuspecting prey in the shallow waters of Willow Creek Reservoir near Prescott, Arizona earlier this month.
Bright yellow flowers attract the eye naturally, but this trio (looking like a face with out-stretched hands waving at me) seemed to jump into the frame and shout, “you-hoo! Take my picture!” So I did.
It’s a little early for an appearance by Peter Cottontail but even as they were installing Christmas lights throughout the preserve in Arizona, there he was, looking a little disgruntled that Santa would be getting all the attention for the time being.
The Gambel’s Quail is very similar in appearance to the California Quail but their territories barely overlap. I’ve seen and photographed Gambel’s Quail in both Arizona and New Mexico but I have only rarely seen, and have never photographed, a California Quail (my state’s bird). I took this shot of a male Gambel’s Quail a couple of weeks ago in Arizona.
She was there, ever so briefly, the female Vermilion Flycatcher, poised on a branch in the morning light. Somewhat drab by comparison to her flashy male counterpart for whom the species gets its name because of his red-orange feathers. Vermilion is a red-orange pigment that was originally derived from the mineral cinnabar. She has a bit of color on her flanks but it is more a pale ochre than a bright vermilion.
A Snowy Egret waits patiently on the edge of a pond.
On a recent fall afternoon in Yellowstone, a Bull Bison relaxed in the sunshine to chew his cud and ruminate on his day. My new Nikkor Z600mm PF brought me closer letting me fill the frame with him all without jeopardizing the National Park Service rules to maintain a required 25 yard distance from these beasts. I didn’t even need a teleconverter. It was the first day I’d used the lens, receiving it only the day before leaving for Yellowstone. It proved itself immediately. It is now my favorite wildlife lens.
It strolled leisurely across the grass in front of us, giving me enough time to capture several shots before it crossed the road and disappeared. The Greater Roadrunner is the iconic bird of the Sonoran Desert (and cartoon fame) and while it may stop briefly, it usually lives up to its name and scurries down the road out of sight. I was fortunate because I was just setting up my gear when it came into view.
Sometimes the water is so smooth that there is little distortion to the reflection of a wading bird. In this case, the reflection mirrors the bird almost perfectly. With so many birds coming and going on the ponds and with the occasional stiff breeze, most of the reflections I captured created zigzag images or unrecognizable blobs. When I saw this stilt slowly stalking something under the surface with a good reflection, it caught my attention so I pressed the shutter release before it got too close to other birds that would disrupt the clear reflection.
Preening is the ritual that all birds engage in to make sure their feathers are at their best. Great Egrets are no exception. They smooth their feathers with their beaks to help the barbs on the feathers interlock. An oil gland helps them maintain and waterproof their feathers. I watched a small group of Great Egrets as they preened in unison standing in a shallow pond. This Great Egret moved away from the group as it finished its preening with a stretch. Its beak is covered with downy feathers and the water behind it is covered with more downy feathers, all shed during preening. The neck stretch and wing stretch combine for an elegant look on this Great Egret.
As I have said many times, Bighorn Sheep are among my favorite mammals to photograph. The Rocky Mountain Bighorns that we encountered in Yellowstone a few weeks ago were delightful to watch, especially the rams as they tried to interest the ewes and, when rebuffed, they went back to grazing as if that’s all they intended in the first place. They ventured fairly close to us as they munched on the grasses and when I attached the 1.4X teleconverter to my new Z600mmPF lens, I got really up close and personal photographs. I especially love that he’s looking right into my lens.
The Sonoran Desert is home to birds that thrive in the dry, mostly treeless, conditions there. The Gila Woodpecker is one of those birds. While they are often seen nesting in Arizona’s iconic Saguaro Cactus, they also spend time in the Palo Verde trees also native to the Sonoran Desert. The Palo Verde (Spanish for green stick) are aptly named as the trees are deciduous and trunks are green so much of the year, they do look like green sticks. We spotted this Gila Woodpecker in a leafless Palo Verde as it moved around the trunk searching for bugs.