It’s been a while since I posted

But, I’ve still been shooting.  Here are a few pictures from the last few months.

A fish kill a few months ago brought out the vultures to clean up.  You usually see them up high.  This time it was easy to catch them in flight.

A trip to Ollies Pond was really fruitful.  I caught a juvenile Little Blue Heron in the rushes for a closeup.  You can tell it from the Snowy Egrets by it’s green/yellow legs.

Great Blue Herons were nesting on the other side of the pond.  The 200-500mm reached across for a shot I could crop to a useful size.

And one of them was flying back and forth looking for nesting materials.

Ollies suffered greatly from drought and it is in the process of recovery.  A lot of marsh plants grew on the rich bottom when it was exposed.  A bit of rain refilled the pond and they died off.  This is leaving a lot of rotting material to enrich the bottom again but it’s a bit ugly now.  Still good for the Moorhens who will help clean it up.

A pair of male Grackles were making blustering mating displays for the local ladies.

And a warbler was perched on a dead stalk looking quite dapper.

I also found an Eagle’s nest near a local church.  I call this one ruffled feathers.

‘Til we meet again.

 

Glacier Bay Alaska

I’ve gotten an opportunity to go to Alaska, not a photo job but with enough time to take a few shots as we go along.  Yesterday I was in Glacier Bay on an absolutely unbelievably clear day.  It started out a bit cloudy but cleared when we were actually in the bay.

Here was sunrise as we approached the Icy Straits.

There was relatively heavy sea fog as the sun rose.  We followed another ship (Princess Line) into the fog.

That ship actually disappeared into the low fog ahead of it and we followed a mile or two behind.  As we passed the strait though the fog lifted to a clear blue sky.  This is Margerie Glacier the mountains behind it are called the Fairweather Range.  Mount Fairweather is over 15,000 feet high.

Fulvous Hairstreak – Electrostrymon angelia

Hairstreaks are very small butterflies very quick and flitty. The Fulvous Hairstreak (Electrostrymon angelia) isn’t one of the more colorful but still interesting. I found this one on some Cilantro in our garden that was going to seed. The flowers are very tiny.

They are tricky too.  Those colorful bits and extensions on the back of the wings serve as decoys to trick predators.  While it is feeding the wings are alternating up and down.  The appendages actually look more active than the front of the butterfly.  As you can see, the wings extend well beyond the body so, it a bird or anole tries to catch it from the head all it gets is a bit of the wing.  The colors are very similar to the front too.  Sort of a Pushmipullyu of the butterfly world.

A nice little find in a walk around the yard.

White Pelicans – A big gulp

I stopped by Ollies Pond for about an hour on the 21st.  Like most small bodies of water here in SW Florida the drought had diminished the size and made it easier for fishing birds to get to their dinner.  This also means that some of the bigger fish that stayed in the deeper water and didn’t get taken are now available.  That’s probably a good thing for raptors like Ospreys and Eagles but it’s tougher on the birds that swallow their prey whole.

There are about 100 or so White Pelicans who have taken to the pond.  They tend to feed in rafts with their feet herding the fish around until someone catches one.  Once they make a catch, they move away to let others feed.

There were two of these working on the pond and as someone got their fish they moved off as an individual and would eventually join one of the rafts again.  It didn’t seem to matter which there was a lot of transfer between rafts.

Now and again a large fish managed to get caught by one of the pelicans.  The two I saw looked to me like Tilapia.  The first was really large and the Pelican was having a lot of difficulty with it.  It was actually damaging the pouch with it’s sharp spined fins and biting.  It moved away before I actually saw it swallowed.

Another one had found a slightly smaller fish and eventually managed to get it down.  You can see the comparison of the neck in the second image here.

 

Say, you guys want some ice cream?

Every now and again you capture a shot that just looks a bit odd.  The guy here on the saddle bronc has just finished a full ride of 8 seconds.  But even with the horse still bucking he looks calm, cool, and collected.  It looks like he’s engaged in a conversation with the pickup crew right in front of the ice cream stand.

As you can see in the next picture though, this was a planned maneuver to block the horse and allow him to get off safely.

Pretty cool maneuver and one that takes excellent horsemanship on everybody’s part to pull off and make look easy.

Pink Shirt, One Barrel, One second

Another few shots from the Arcadia All-Florida Championship Rodeo.  This time it’s a Barrel Racer rounding one of the barrels.  When I shoot action like this I shoot at about 3 frames per second.  That’s pretty slow by some photographers standards and my cameras will shoot faster but that also produces a lot more shots to go through to select those you want to present or preserve.  These four shots took 1 second to complete.  The first shot at zero 16:57:14 by the time stamp and the last at 16:57:15.

If you think this is quick for one second the lady in the pink shirt is one of the pro riders and gets around the whole arena making three barrel turns in less than 20 seconds.

The Rodeo Rider Safety Crew

These guys may dress a little funny and look like clowns but it’s really a serious business that requires all the skill and athleticism or the riders.  Here are a couple of close shots of them in action from the 89th Arcadia All-Florida Championship Rodeo being held this weekend at the Heard St. Arena.  It will be the last one there as it is moving to the new Mosaic Arena next year.

Benefits of the drought

It’s not often you can find a benefit in something like a drought.  For nature photographers it does have some benefit.  As ponds dry up they get smaller and the critters preyed on by our wading birds get concentrated in small locations.  The bigger lakes aren’t drying as much but little flood control retention ponds that the birds have stocked dry up as intended waiting to hold the next storm runoff.

One that I like to visit is the retention pond behind the Kings Highway Walmart.  That parking lot has a lot of water running off when it rains and there are two ponds there.  A deep one is fenced off but there is a large shallow settling area which gets the water first.  Here are a few shots from that location over the last few days.

Anhingas spear their catch and have to flip it around to swallow it.  I caught this one at just the right time.

I’ve always thought that Little Blue Herons always looked mad about something.

Roseate Spoonbills use the spoon to stir the bottom  The other wading birds follow them around to catch what gets missed.

This Great Blue Heron has managed to catch a Cottonmouth Black Swamp Snake for lunch.  They don’t seem to have any problem with venomous snakes.  Further study shows me that this is a non-venomous Black Swamp Snake rather than a Cottonmouth.

You seldom get four species in one shot.  I could have had a Glossy Ibis in this one but it was a bit too far out of shot.

It took a while to subdue the snake and the Black Swamp Snake was always trying to get away.

A Kingfisher in flight.  I have never gotten what I consider a good shot of these small birds.  They are very shy and skittish.  The reduced size of the pond though kept it fishing near me.

And then, like any good fisherman wanted to show off it’s catch.

Misty Mornings

The polar vortex up north has brought SW Florida some foggy mornings.  Not usually good for a photographer.  Looking out across the canal if was difficult to any detail at 100 yards even with the sun well above the horizon.

As I walked around the yard I noticed a nice near perfect spider web in our magnolia tree.  A straight on shot had a very confusing background and the details of thedew-decked web were lost in it.  Shooting from the side gave a more abstract look to it.  The mist even gave a touch of color to the background.

This image has actually been turned 90 degrees because verticals don’t work too well on screens.  The left side is actually the top of the web and the curves are the result of the weight of the dew drawing the web into downward curves.

It looked nice like this but I thought a tighter crop and conversion to monochrome looked better.

The next day I was out to run some errands and when I got into view of the Peace River I saw that the sun had risen enough to begin burning through the fog.  I detoured to the Punta Gorda Boat Club where I found the anchored boats well lit while the horizon had disappeared in the mist.

I tried a couple shots to capture the view but didn’t think they were much but painted ships upon a painted ocean.  Then a fisherman came through to add some depth and motion to the scene.

 

Elusive Butterfly – Ceraunus Blue

These are pretty little butterflies.  Their wingspan seldom gets much over an inch at full extension.  You see them as bright flashes of blue as the males fly around but they flicker out and disappear as soon as they land leaving the more dull underside of their wings on display.

I caught this one at just the right moment to see the full display.  The next shot shows the closed wings and the much less flashy exterior that makes them hard to find at rest.

The females are still blue but a bit less flashy.