Category: Birds

Don’t Worry, Mommy Has Her Eyes On You

I can safely say my body, at the moment, hasn’t been this sore since exactly one year ago today.  Ironically, it is really due to almost the exact same torture I put it through last year although this year was about 13.1 miles easier.  Yep, this is my anniversary of completing the Illini Marathon over in Champaign.  Like last year, I once again battled the running gods by accepting the I-Challenge, but Linda pretty much insisted I only did the half challenge – 5K Friday and then a half marathon Saturday morning.  I’ll leave the rest of the details for a future post, but there are three more medals to add to my wall… and legs that once again are screaming at me.  Since I’m sitting here waiting for the pain to subside, decided it would be a good time for a post so here goes.

Well, this particular post shouldn’t be too much of a surprise if you happened to read my previous post on the Great Horned Owlets.  You probably already guessed, their mother wasn’t very far away.

Great Horned Owl Shot In Rocky Mountain National Park in May 2014

…. and you would be right!  She was actually just on the other side of the tree trunk hanging out on  a branch keeping a very close eye on any dangers that could threaten her cuties.  She was pretty calm about the whole thing.  Imagine a number of tourists driving up, pulling off to the side of the road, jumping out with all forms of cameras and then milling about under the very same tree her precious offspring are spending their days.

To her credit, she would check off all the dangers to her right…

Great Horned Owl Shot In Rocky Mountain National Park in May 2014

Hit the jump to see a few more pictures of Mommy!

Continue reading Don’t Worry, Mommy Has Her Eyes On You

Owl-Let You Take Their Picture

I have one word that defines today’s post topic – that being FINALLY. This happens to be one of those times when I was keenly aware that I was able to get a prized bird in the tin but it seems like it has been forever trying to get them processed and ready for publication. So, without any further delays, please say hello to my little friend.

Great Horned Owl Shot In Rocky Mountain National Park in May 2014

How cool is that! That is the cute and puffy offspring of a Great Horned Owl. This particular nest was shot in the Rocky Mountain National Park back in May of 2014. Pretty sure I have mentioned this before, but we had traveled out to the Denver, Colorado area for the Teacup Dog Agility Nationals. As an incentive, Linda added in a side trip to the Rocky Mountain Park to check out the local wildlife. She knows me to well, I’m in the van and ready to go the minute I hear there’s a chance to spend some time in the mountains with The Beast.

“Who goes there!”

Great Horned Owl Shot In Rocky Mountain National Park in May 2014

Hit the jump to see a few more shots of the fuzzy Great Horned offspring

Continue reading Owl-Let You Take Their Picture

Book Recollection: Sibley’s Birding Basics

Sibley's Birding Basics Greetings everyone! We just returned from a quick birding trip in Iowa over the Easter break. Nothing new from a bird species perspective, but think there are a few wall hangers so it was likely a productive outing. Been caught up in a number of projects as of late not to mention putting the final training runs in before the start of the race season scheduled for next weekend. As a result, going with a short post tonight – my body needs a rest from all the hiking.

Today’s featured topic is another book recollection – Sibley’s Birding Basics by David Allen Sibley. If you are familiar with birds at all you should recognize the author’s name. If not, you need to make your way to your local bookstore and pick up his Guide to Birds – it is an illustrated book which is a nice compliment to the references with actual photographs – you can always draw key features better than you can visualize them from an actual photograph (we’ll just gloss over the nuances of how he was able to draw them so well). This particular book was actually loaned to me by my brother Ron. He probably didn’t realize at the time it would take like a year for me to get through it (sorry). The interesting thing about this book is it isn’t a very large book. Not only is it thin (maybe a 1/4 inch), but it is also small in dimension. Don’t be fooled though, this is a very technical read and one you might find yourself repeating paragraphs just to understand the nuance or detail. It is a very sharp looking published product with gorgeous illustrations, but one thing turned out to be a tad annoying – the type font is too small. One of the reasons it took so long to read is it wasn’t convenient to travel with since it required me to drag along a pair of reading glasses or have really good light. Basically it became my quick nightstand reading material for those days I wasn’t too exhausted to get a few pages in.

From a summary perspective, this book is pretty technical. Recommend just focusing on a few key elements you can use in the field immediately – there is a lot of stuff in there and you might find yourself overwhelmed like I was was at the beginning. For me, the key characteristics that distinguish the Hairy Woodpecker from the Downy Woodpecker was worth the price of admission alone – distinguishing those two in the field is about as fun as trying to identify juvenile Sparrows. Without having them side by side to see the stature differences, they pretty both looked identical until reading the key tail barring difference and the fine feathers on the bridge of the Downy give it a smaller bill appearance. I recommend giving this book a read – maybe a number of reads taking a few more bits of knowledge each time to increase your bird brain.

Hit the jump to read some of the takeaways from my first read!

Continue reading Book Recollection: Sibley’s Birding Basics

A Mellow Fellow

We are still in bonus time here at blog headquarters. I was able to get my monthly quota in pretty quick this month thanks to a strong push out of the gate. That means we get some extra time to focus on subjects that have already been featured in a previous post. I’ve typed it once, I’ve typed it a hundred times, the greatest thing about being a birder photographer is every outing is like a new beginning. Even if you have a bird in your gallery, you can always try to improve your image. Better technical, more interesting posture or even unique behavior. Note, “birder photographer” was not a typo. It is amazing how many times the question comes up as to whether you are a birder or a photographer as if they are exclusive titles. With my brother Ron on this, we are answering this question with a resounding “Yes” from now on hehehe.

So, welcome back to the blog…

Yellow Warbler shot on Colorado Trip - May 2014

… the Yellow Warbler. You may recall that this brightly feathered bird made its debut back on April 15th, 2015 (link here). Mr. Yellow from the previous post was found at Lake Andes in South Dakota. This new specimen was spotted on our trip to Colorado back in May of 2014. True to the statement above, I happen to like these first two shots better than the previous set (especially the first one).

Yellow Warbler shot on Colorado Trip - May 2014

Hit the jump to see a few more shots of the yella fella.

Continue reading A Mellow Fellow

Just Me and My Peeps

Well, at least I was strong out of the gate this month. Unfortunately, things have slowed down a bit as of late due to massive amounts of spring cleaning taking place around the house. Cleaning brought a bonus with it this year. Linda was continually making comments regarding my Halloween Lab still sitting in the middle of our newly remodeled basement. Personally, I think this is a fabulous place for animatronics construction, but I can see her point – it has been there pretty much since last August. Decided it was best to heed the warnings and cleaned out the small room previously used for the remodeling staging. I must say it looks pretty nice and might put a project post on it when I get time – expecting big things now from the evil depths of the new lab! Knowing my readers have been waiting patiently, decided it would be prudent to dust the cobwebs off the blog.

Say hello to my little feathered friend.
Birding Texas November 2013
Want to spend a day nose deep in reference books, try to ID a non-breeding adult shorebird. You have to admire the experts in this field since they basically ALL look alike – at least to me. For starters, I usually check the regions to see if there can be any narrowing there. This particular specimen was taken at Galveston, Texas back in Nov 2013. Well that did little to narrow the field since the Texas Gulf is a favored stomping ground for all the Peep breeds..
Birding Texas November 2013

Hit the jump to find out what this Peep is!

Continue reading Just Me and My Peeps

The Ugly Duckling

We are hot out of the chemicals today! Over the weekend I was able to power through a few more months of back processing in the digital darkroom. For those keeping track (and I know you are), I am officially only 23 months behind on my photography queue. May not seem like much, but that represents a lot of work on this end – combing through thousands of shots each month, picking out good candidates, processing them in Lightroom and Photoshop and then deciding which ones are worthy enough to put on display to the public. Notice I didn’t say “pretty” enough to put on display!?! That’s because there are posts like this one …
Muscovy Duck shot in Ft Myers in March 2015
that just might frighten my readers. Some creatures just ran out of luck when it came to the cuteness DNA gene. Take for example the Sloth or the Blobfish. I guess if you are going to put things in perspective, the Blobfish is clearly the winner of the least likely to get invited to a prom award. Clearly there is at least one creature for everyone or we wouldn’t have the ability to even view such oddities.
Muscovy Duck shot in Ft Myers in March 2015

Hit the jump to see a few more varieties of this intriguing duck

Continue reading The Ugly Duckling

Book Recollection: 51 Birding Tips

Good Birders Don't Wear White - Lisa WhiteTurns out February was a very good month for getting through my reading queue. This is the first of no less than 4 books that had all their pages perused and turned. Granted one of these books was for pleasure only – a rarity since I like to try and get something out of my time spent with an author. One of the books covered war photography and the other two had a bird theme. We’ll get to the other three books soon enough, but let’s start with one of the bird related ones. Today’s featured recollection is about a book entitled Good Birders Don’t Wear White with a subtitle of 50 Tips from North America’s Top Birders. This sounded intriguing when it came up on an Amazon search for something else I was looking for. Ended up adding it to my wish list which Linda used for a birthday gift. Unfortunately, she purchased two of them accidentally thanks to a shopping cart snafu. Rather than bother with returning it, my brother Ron ended up getting some extra reading material. There were big expectations now that it essentially cost us double – Ron, don’t read this review if you had your heart set on reading it.

The format of the book is a series of magazine like articles from a number of well known birders (and a bunch of others I probably should know based on their bios at the end of each article). Each author is given 4 to 7 pages or so to bestow pearls of birding wisdom on the reader. The book is actually very short so each is a quick read which worked out perfectly for my pre-sleep reading material. Take in a few different authors and hit the lights to be ready for the next day’s grind.
Edited by Lisa White. It didn’t take long to get through the 261 pages – each tip is a fairly easy read but the real speed element was a result of content – felt like I was rushing through it to actually get a tip that wasn’t obvious or trivial. As far as 50 tips go, it should have been titled 4 good tips buried in a sea of words. Maybe I’ve just been birding too long and the experiences and knowledge has built up more than I thought – would be interesting to see how a new person to the birding world would take to this advice. As noted, there were a few good nuggets like recommending you buy a Duck Stamp to help out conservation efforts, pishing to draw birds out of brush and confirmation that talking to people about birding is a good thing (take that Linda!). However, these are countered with a multitude of tips ranging from the absurd (cranking bird songs through your car stereo) to the insane (recommending I sketch a bird in the field when I have a perfectly good camera with me). In summary, I will add a 51st tip – if you have spare time to read a book related to birding, spend that valuable time with another product – something like Arthur Morris’ book reviewed last time (link here).

You can see some of the takeaways for this book below after the jump, but all in all, this was a disappointment.

Continue reading Book Recollection: 51 Birding Tips

Why So Blue Woody?

So far it has been a pretty productive blogging effort this March. Think this is my third post and the month is only 5 days old! Truth be told, there was a slight lull in my daily grind with the recent neck surgery which put a hold on my run training schedule. This gave a lot of extra time to work up images ahead of time – that is the most time consuming part of this little enterprise. Fortunately, that lull is over now and I’m back to pounding the pavement every other day (today put in 10 miles, but need to start pushing it – race season commences mid April and losing 13 days because of the stitches didn’t help). While the legs rest for a bit thought it would be a good time to exercise the fingers and pound out a post (never hurts to get ahead of the self-imposed blogging quota).

Since I led this month with two back to back bird posts, figured it was about time to go with something different…
Steller's Jay shot in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado in May 2014
Ummm, well admittedly that is another bird, but it is different! This time it is not a new bird on my birding list. See, completely different. The Steller’s Jay already debuted on my blog 8 years back (link here) It is quite shocking to think I am in my 10th year of blogging – where has the time gone? The time not spent running that is ha. Like the previous time, this Steller’s was shot in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado back in May 2014. If you live in the heartland (or fly over country for the coasters) like me, you are going to have to make your way out west if you want to have a chance to see these rather cool looking birds. Probably a good thing for our birds seeing how intimidating these Jays look in person – might give our local birds a complex.
Steller's Jay shot in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado in May 2014

Hit the jump to see a few more images of the Steller’s and maybe learn some interesting facts.

Continue reading Why So Blue Woody?

A Lazi Bunting

How are doing today everyone? I thought I would follow up my last birding post with a slacker Bunting, yes, quite the “Lazi” Bunting (hey, I heard that groan all the way over here!).
Lazuli Bunting shot at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, Colorado May 2014
That loyal readers is called a Lazuli Bunting. Like the last post on the Phainopepla, this Bunting also represents a new check in my North American Bird List. Starting to get a respectable number now in a desperate attempt to keep up with my brother Ron’s tallies. I have benefited significantly from his recent introduction into the bird blogging arena – you may not be aware, but we have a birding rule between us that doesn’t allow us to count a new bird on our lists unless we have posted about it first on our blogs. Don’t feel sorry for him though, he was properly warned before taking on this new responsibility. These last two posts alone would put me at 2/3rds of his new (post blog) bird count heheheh.
Lazuli Bunting shot at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, Colorado May 2014

Hit the jump to see and read more about this shoot!

Continue reading A Lazi Bunting

Latin for Damn Evil

Well folks, it is a new month. Anyone that has been around this blog for a while know that means the post quota counter on the wall gets reset to ZERO. It is a bitter sweet event. It brings with it the personal satisfaction of completing another successful month of blogging but it also means four more weeks of fretting about getting new material out to my loyal readers. However, this time I am in a very good position – drum roll please …. thanks to a lot of hours in front of this computer I can announce the image queue has been trimmed to January 2016. That’s right, this photographer is now only a bit more than 2 years behind (champagne for all). Takes a lot of pressure off when you easily have 2 year’s worth of post material just waiting to be introduced into the world. Let’s get to it shall we!?!
Phainopepla shot at Corn Creek on edge of Mojave Desert, Nevada in December 2014

So we all know the old saying, March comes in like an evil demon and exits like a cute and cuddly baby chick. In honor of it actually being March (you’d almost think I plan this stuff out), thought it would be fitting to feature …well… an evil demon of a bird. I’ll be honest with you, today’s featured bird scares the crap out of me. It scared me with I was looking through the glass when the pictures were taken, it creeped me out when I was processing the pictures in the digital dark room and looking at it right now makes me want to go find my childhood plush dog, grab a carpet square and ball up like a baby on my den floor. In case you are wondering my constant toy as kid was a golden colored Snoopy looking stuffed toy named Henry (don’t laugh, but I still have it sitting on the top shelf of my closet). Wow, how did I get on this…back to demon spawn.

Phainopepla shot at Corn Creek on edge of Mojave Desert, Nevada in December 2014

Hit the jump to find out what this crested specimen is.

Continue reading Latin for Damn Evil