In Focus Daily

A couple of years ago at Madera Canyon, we were told that the Berylline Hummingbird had made a rare appearance there. I didn’t expect to see one but at the end of the first day, when I reviewed my images, I found a bird I thought might be the Berylline. Some of those images were out of focus and with lots of other images to review, I didn’t look at them further. I set them aside in a folder labeled “Berylline??” and forgot about them. I didn’t see the Berylline again that year and didn’t photograph it in 2024, either. But in 2025, an adult Berylline Hummingbird, a juvenile, and even a hybrid Berylline/Broad-billed made frequent appearances and I took a number of photographs of the Berylline. Yesterday while looking for something else, I came across those images from 2023 in the folder I’d labeled “Berylline??”. As I scrolled through the images of the bird that I took that day, 6 were background only (i.e., no bird in the image–a common occurrence when you’re shooting hummingbirds), 13 were either out of focus or had only half a bird, but five of the images were good images that I had completely overlooked. Now that I am familiar with the appearance of the Berylline, I can confirm that the bird I photographed two years ago was in fact a Berylline and here it is.

A Pronghorn in Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota relaxes in a meadow this past May. These are the fastest land animals in North America, sustaining speeds up to 60 miles per hour. In the world, they are second only to Cheetahs on land. A few years ago, I witnessed a herd of Pronghorn fleeing predators, a pair of Coyotes that had singled out an injured or ailing Pronghorn from the rest of the herd. The experience was like watching a nature program about the Serengeti on PBS but it was here in the US.

A couple of mornings at Madera Canyon, the Blue-throated Mountain Gem made an appearance. It was a female, so no blue throat, but she’s still a real big gem in her own right. The Blue-throated Mountain Gem is the largest hummingbird in the US, larger than the Rivoli’s. In past years I’ve photographed the gorgeous, blue-throated male but this year, it was just a female, perched on a twig while she waited her turn at the feeders.

Back at Madera Canyon, AZ, the main jewel, the emerald and sapphire hued Broad-billed Hummingbird, looks up, keeping an eye on other hummers near by as they jockey for position at the feeders.

Surrounded by salmon heading upstream to spawn, a three-year old Kodiak Bear Cub splashes through the shallow waters of the Uganik River in Kodiak, Alaska, hoping to snag one of the fish. I’ve been looking at my images from my fall trip to Kodiak in 2023 and I’m excited to be heading back there in just a month. There’s something about the experience in Kodiak that is so incredibly special and the fall trip, with the bears focused on the salmon run, is doubly so.

This Broad-billed Hummingbird at Madera Canyon seemed to have something to say as he flew to one of the feeders. There was a fair amount of competition at the feeders and I suppose this guy was making his presence known.

In the past couple of years, I have developed a deep appreciation for Red-winged Blackbirds. They are the most common blackbird in the US (according to Sibley), and any marshy area has dozens of them. And, until last year, I had not paid any attention to them. I had never photographed one, dismissing them as just uninteresting and too common. Then in May of 2024, I visited Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana with Moose. We spent several days driving the loop watching the Red-winged Blackbirds as they vied for position among the cattails and the common tansy in a frenzied search for a mate. They put on quite a display when they are trying to attract females and their melodic warble is music to the ears. But this image, the bird perched and calmly surveying the area, not in the midst of a displaying frenzy, is one of my favorites.

Steptoe Butte in the Palouse is the place to be for sunset. This is from June, 2024.

The other morning, I came across this rabbit sitting demurely at the side of the Ferrari Pond Trail. It barely moved while I was there, even when I walked by, just inches away. I’m not sure what had its attention. Maybe she was looking for her wayward brother, Peter Rabbit.

As I mentioned yesterday, there seemed to be fewer females this year than last year in Madera Canyon. Of course, once I said that, in reviewing my images I’m finding more females. This is a female Broad-billed Hummingbird, taking a break from the feeder frenzy. She’s likely a young bird with lots of new feathers coming in on her throat.

There seemed to me to be fewer female hummers in Madera Canyon, AZ than in past years. I do know that this is a female and I think it is a female Black-chinned Hummingbird but I am not entirely certain. Merlin’s gave me four choices and this seemed the most reasonable. Although the females don’t sport the colorful gorgets that the males do, to me they are every bit as lovely.

This juvenile Berylline Hummingbird spent lots of time at the feeders in Madera Canyon. He was still savoring the nectar as he backed away from the feeder this past June. What a beautiful hummingbird.

It was back to the usual suspects for photography yesterday at Ferrari Pond. This Black-crowned Night Heron still has the long white plumes on his head that appear during breeding season. I will also note that when the subject is this close to the background, the background can be extremely distracting so I wish the usual suspects would find a better place to perch when I want to photograph them. At least he perched atop a protruding rock so his feet are visible and he wasn’t knee deep in the invasive Azolla that is covering Ferrari Pond.

There were huge silos and rail cars but this dilapidated corrugated metal building caught my eye one afternoon last June in The Palouse. As beat up as it looked, whatever it contained must have been important because its keeper felt the need to add a padlock, however incongruously small.

The activity at Ferrari Pond has slowed lately, despite our unseasonably cool-ish temperatures for the past week. The American White Pelicans seem to have moved on. I haven’t seen a Coyote in weeks. I’m guessing the activity will get even slower as the temperatures climb back up to expected norms in the high nineties to low hundreds this week. Of course there are the usual suspects there, including a Black-crowned Night Heron that seems to have claimed this area as his own. I seem him either in the pond near the bridge or on the spillway at Angler’s Cove. Yesterday, he wasn’t in any of his usual haunts. Instead, he was preening high up in the Weeping Willow on the edge of Angler’s Cove. I photographed him when I arrived and then thirty minutes later when I left. He hadn’t moved an inch. And, I have a better solution for my new light weight photo rig. I’m now using the Nikon Z6III instead of the Z8, saving more than half a pound. The Z6III and the Z28-400 combo makes the perfect walking around duo!

This is probably the same GBH that I featured yesterday but, once again, it proved to be a Photographer’s Friend to me on my morning walk yesterday. This is a favorite perching place in Ferrari Pond for Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, and Double-crested Cormorants as the whitewash under this GBH attests. I was talking with a friend at the edge of the pond and not paying attention when the GBH did a slow wing stretch. I missed that stretch but captured his neck stretch that I think also served as a quick check to see if he was missing anything beneath him in the water while he was preening. He flew off shortly afterward. It was actually a pretty good morning at the pond. I photographed a Beaver swimming across, watched a Cooper’s Hawk fly over, and saw a Belted Kingfisher perch on the same dead limb where the GBH had perched.

Yesterday I brought my new light weight walking photo rig, my Nikkor 28-400mm lens attached to the Nikon Z8, on my morning walk to Ferrari Pond but I arrived later than I planned so I missed sunrise there. Of course I’d hoped to see the River Otters again but, since I was ready for them, they stayed hidden. I did see a Beaver’s head in the distance swimming across one of the ponds and several Mallards swimming under the bridge. As I began my walk home past Angler’s Cove, a Great Blue Heron, often called the Photographer’s Friend because these birds are so easy to photograph, stood on the bank and preened, then lifted one foot to tuck it in to conserve warmth on this oddly chilly summer morning. Rather than return home with nothing on my first morning with the new rig, I stopped and made a few clicks…well, to be honest, I made several clicks.

Yesterday morning, I missed a Romp. A Romp is the group name assigned to River Otters when they are on land. When they are in the water, they’re called a Raft. But I digress. Yesterday on my morning walk at Ferrari Pond, I saw a River Otter cross the trail in front of me, followed by two more, then a few seconds later, a fourth. It was my first time seeing River Otters here. As I fumbled to get my phone out of my fanny pack so I could take a record shot, all four stopped, looked at me with great curiosity then, when I finally extricated my phone, they disappeared into the tules. I’ve been going there for a few months, driving then walking the loop. I’ve gotten some memorable photographs but I stopped driving over with my heavy camera and lens because I wanted to focus on my walk so I walk there now without my camera, a 3 1/2 mile round trip. A recent visit to my doctor resulted in her admonition that I lose at least 35 pounds and that I continue walking (“How fast do you walk?” she asked me.) She didn’t seem too impressed that I completed the 3 1/2 mile round trip in about an hour and 10 minutes, or 20 minute miles. I didn’t think that was slow but I guess I will have to work on it. Now that driving over again is out of the question and that I need to keep up my walking regimen (I’ve walked over 10,000 steps each of the last seven days), I needed a lighter weight photography solution other than my cell phone which camera I abhor. I remembered my friend Emerson had a 28-400mm telephoto that weighs about a pound and a half. I contacted him to see if he would recommend the lens. He did so I hightailed it over to Action Camera, my local camera store, and bought it along with a sling bag to replace my fanny pack. I got home, went outside with it to check on the hummers and one of the male Anna’s Hummingbirds was cooperative enough and turned his head into the light for me. Hopefully, tomorrow’s post will be River Otters! So far, the new lens gets an A.

For the past few days, a couple of Black-crowned Night Herons have been hanging out in the tules near the bridge that crosses Ferrari Pond. In the early morning, I stop on the bridge and watch as they stand, almost motionless, waiting for their next meal to wander by. I do not bring my camera on my morning walks so I just appreciate seeing them. Since I’ve not photographed the local Black-crowned Night Herons recently, I’m featuring this Black-crowned Night Heron that took off from the bushes surrounding one of the ponds at the Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch in Gilbert, AZ last December.

We’ve been having unseasonably cool and cloudy days. It’s rare to have clouds in the summer here. I’ve heard there have been some spectacular sunrises which I’ve missed because although I’m out for my walk by 6 AM or so, I don’t arrive at the sunrise location until about 6:30 and it’s over by then. Since I haven’t photographed one of the gorgeous local sunrises, I decided to post a similarly unusual but also gorgeous sunrise from last year at Monument Valley. Before departing on our last morning, we photographed sunrise and what a spectacular sunrise it was with very rare morning fog enveloping much of the valley and the mittens. Can’t wait to return there next year.