Monthly Archives: February 2010

No Place to Hide

The recent snow storms along the Eastern U.S. left many people without power, telephone and dare I say it, internet service! The snow was so heavy on Friday there wasn’t even places for the birds to hide.

Black Eyed Junco and White Throated Sparrow in snow storm

I decided to venture out on Friday because photographing landscapes and wildlife is usually better in bad weather, much to the chagrin of the photographer. The other reason I went outside was I had seen from the kitchen window something I had never seen before. During the storm, a flock of approximately 50 European Starlings attached our bird feeders. The tree was completely covered in them. I quickly found that these birds are very skittish when it comes to people. As soon as I opened the door to go out, they flew away without me being able to make 1 click.
However, as the saying goes, all clouds do have a silver lining. As I was standing under the tree with the feeders, a Red Bellied Woodpecker flew right past my head and landed in the tree. I have been trying to photograph this bird for a year. Like the Starlings, the Red Bellied Woodpeckers don’t like people. But the combination of the commotion of the swarm of birds and heavy snow was enough to camouflage me. I was able to get the lens up before the bird knew I was there. He didn’t stay long however, just long enough.

Red Bellied Woodpecker in tree during Snow Storm

As I mentioned before I try to use the bad weather to take some landscape photographs. I tried my hand with a few black and whites which I thought made sense given the overcast skies and heavy snow.
Japaneese Maple covered in Snow

I love trying to find interesting patterns that occur in nature. They are always there and are always changing.

Hyena

My African safari was full of great memories. One of the best finds by our guide was a Spotted Hyena den chock full of pups of various ages.

Hyena Pups at Den
Hyena Pups at Den

Hyena Pups with Runt

How we happened upon this den was an exciting story. On our first game drive in Botswana, we happened upon a pack of African Wild Dogs. When it became too dark to photograph let alone see, we started our journey back to camp for the night. No sooner had we packed up our gear when we heard the dogs and hyena fighting. We turned on the spotlights on the jeep and headed toward the noise. It seems as the dogs were making their way, they happened upon the hyena den and a territorial spat ensued. While we couldn’t make any clicks with our cameras, we now had a new location to scout over the coming game drives.
The next day we returned to the den to find only pups, no parents! It truly amazed me how these pups took care of themselves while their parents were out gathering food. We worked this area for an hour or so. As the pups became more comfortable they came very close to our vehicle. They are very photogenic animals.
Hyena Pup

On our last game drive at Chitabe, we happened upon one of the adult Hyena picking over the remains of an Elephant. Was this soon to be lunch for the Hyena Pups? We couldn’t tell you as we had a flight to catch!
Hyena at Elephant Carcass

I have been working on a series of posts about what is involved in preparing for an African Safari. I have received a lot of inquiries in this regard and I figured putting together all the emails into a post or two would be useful. Stay tuned!

A Day at the Beach

Those who know me know I love the beach, especially those on Long Island. I will always consider Long Island home even though I no longer live there. I chose to head out to Quogue to visit my parents this weekend, President’s weekend, given my daughter was off from school. I was amazed at how quiet it was. All the better for us!
New snow had fallen and the landscape photography was excellent.

Snow Spotted Sand Dune

Away from visiting with my parents, one reason I went out to Long Island this weekend was for the bird photography opportunities. With no one around I knew I would have ample time to work areas with minimal interruption from cars or beach goers, a luxury not afforded during the summer months.
The biggest “find” I had for the weekend was spotting a lone American Bittern at a very small salt marsh. It was truly amazing that I was able to catch this bird out of the corner of my eye while driving. You can see from the picture that he is camouflaged well with his surroundings.

American Bittern in Salt Marsh

This was my first chance to photograph an American Bittern. Observing its behavior and hunting style was a thrill. Unfortunately I only came away with a few marginal pictures. I was experiencing some focusing problems with my camera combination, a Nikon D700 and 200-400 f/4 with 1.7 TCe. I’m not sure if the error was operator induced or mechanical but most of the issues were back focusing so I am thinking I need to calibrate the camera and lens combination.

Another cool behavior I was able to witness for the first time was courtesy of the Herring Gulls.

Floating Herring Gull

This flock of Herring Gulls would dive for clams and crabs, fly to an area where the bay was covered in ice, and from about 50 ft. in the air, drop their catch on the ice. This would have the effect of breaking the shells and stunning the prey so the gull could make quick work of eating the insides. It was amazing to watch this behavior over and over again.

On my way back from a great morning of photographing birds, I spotted a Great Blue Heron heading out to the bay. I just had to stop and make one more click!

Great Blue Heron in flight

Mystery of the Dark Eyed Junco’s Solved

One of the nice surprises of the winter has been the appearance on our property of a flock of Dark Eyed Junco’s. After doing some research it seems that these birds are very loyal, as in once they make your property home good luck in getting rid of them!

Dark Eyed Junco Eating Holly Berries

They have been a lot of fun to watch. They swarm and communicate just like any busy family. I might even try to capture some video of this as pictures don’t do the interaction justice.

But then a funny thing happened. Last week, several of these birds mysteriously started to kamikaze into our windows. We couldn’t figure out what it was but came to the conclusion that the sun at this time of year must have put a funny reflection into the sliding doors and the birds thought they were flying to another tree. Mystery solved, or so we thought.
Dark Eyed Junco Landing on Feeder

Then over the weekend I was watching the activity at the feeders from the family room. All the birds seemed uneasy. In an instant they scattered and from over the house came a red tailed hawk. The hawk grabbed one of the Junco’s out of mid air, perched on a nearby tree, bit the head off of the Junco and flew away. So much for my “sun in a different part of the sky” theory. So it seems the birds were fleeing from the hawk when they hit the sliding doors.

As I am sure many of you have heard, the eastern U.S. is in the midst of a heavy snow storm.

Stone Wall Covered in Snow

Given that the Junco’s are black and gray, I am watching to see if the hawk uses the snow to help isolate some of the birds. So far no sign of the hawk.

Southern Giraffe

One of the most pleasant surprises on my recent trip to Africa was the number of Giraffe we encountered.

Southern Giraffe, Chitabe Camp, Botswana

Southern Giraffe sitting while eating

Here are some interesting facts about Southern Giraffe:
Giraffes roam over large areas of bush and savannah, living often in semi-desert regions where they get most of their water from their food. Similar to camels, they can go 2-3 days without water.
Giraffes are browsing ungulates, feeding almost exclusively on the new shoots of shrubs and trees. Acacia trees are their favorite food source. The Giraffes use their long prehensile tongue and lips to strip the leaves off the thorny branches.
While Giraffes can live in herds of up to 15 animals we only witnessed small groups of 2-6 during our safari.

Given how busy we all are in our daily lives it saddens me that we don’t have adequate time to appreciate certain aspects of our wild heritage. I was one of those people until I made a conscious effort over the last 2 years to change that. I have been deeply moved by what I have seen and where I have traveled over that period of time. I can’t wait until I get a chance to go back to Africa!

Southern Giraffe Profile