Tag Archives: wildlife

Kingfisher Fishing Successfully

When we visited Seattle not long after moving back to the US, I got a shot of a kingfisher as it sat on a cable at the locks in Ballard.  I guess this must be a good spot for kingfishers because, when we went down to see the boats, I found another kingfisher hanging out near where we parked.  The sound that they make is pretty distinctive and I heard it before I saw it.  It was sitting on a branch for quite a while before it dived down, grabbed something out of the water and landed on one of the wooden guides along the water to enjoy its snack.  I will have to spend more time down there and see if I can get some better shots of these speedy little critters.

Exposition Park Cats

As I walked into Exposition Park, I saw a cat wandering along the sidewalk near the road.  I stopped to watch it for a while, and it became a bit nervous when it realized I was watching it.  It soon retreated and I thought little more of it.  I assumed it was a wild cat rather than someone’s pet.  It was only a few minutes later that I came across another pair of cats.  They were playing together and initially seemed interested in my presence and then retreated too.  I assume that the park must have a few cats in residence.

Closest Encounter Yet with a Shortie

I was not intending to get photos of owls when we passed through Skagit, but I ended up getting some of the closest shots yet.  There were some owls on the ground pretty close to the road.  I am not sure whether they were guarding food or just contemplating their next moves.  However, one of them took off and flew around very close to where I was and, for a brief moment, it flew straight towards me.  I grabbed a few shots and then it was gone and shortly afterwards, so were we.  A lucky break for sure.

Experimenting With Enhance Levels in Lightroom

In one of the bigger updates of Lightroom and Photoshop, Adobe introduced the Enhance functions adding either resolution or noise reduction.  The noise reduction has been very effective for some of the shots I have taken with very high ISO levels.  I decided to edit a shot with varying levels of noise reduction to see how things look.  Since I had a bunch of cheetah shots taken in low light, I figured that would be a good subject.

You can vary the noise reduction level from 1-100.  I made five edits with one unchanged and the remainder at 25, 50, 75 and 100.  I then layered them in to one file to show the comparison.  The unchanged edit is on the right while the 100 noise reduction is one the left.  I felt like my previous experience had been that a level around 50 was a good outcome for much of what I had shot.  When I looked at these results, I again concluded that the middle level was the best compromise.  The 100 was just too much and 75 looked like things were a bit smudged.  You can judge what you think.  I shall experiment with levels each time I use it but it does give me a good idea of what to start with.

Look Both Ways When Crossing the Road

While parked up at East 90 and watching the birds hunt, I glanced behind me – always a wise plan – and saw a northern harrier coming in my general direction.  It flew low across the field and over the road before finding a perch.  As I looked through the images afterwards, I found it funny to see the bird crossing what seemed to be not far behind a vehicle.  I hope it had been taught how to cross the road.

A little while later, the same process was followed by a bald eagle.  The shot makes it look like it was actually coming along the road but I think that is just compression of perspective.  It was probably this side of the road.  It also safely made its way across without having any conflict with passing vehicles.  Maybe the local birds have copies of the Green Cross Code (for those of you of a certain age that grew up in the UK).

Trumpeter Swans Along the Road

The snow geese are famous visitors to Skagit County in the winter, but they are not the only large birds to show up in big numbers.  The trumpeter swans also appear and, while they might not be in the large flocks of the snow geese, there are still loads of them around.  They also don’t seem to mind being close to the humans.  I had seen a bunch of them as I was driving around and pulled off the road at one point as so many were in the adjacent field.

The fun thing about photographing swans is getting them taking off.  Two or more of them flying at low level as they build speed is pretty cool.  You might normally wait for ages for this to happen but, with so many of them around, it seems as if there is almost always a take off occurring.  Consequently, while some might seem distant, you know another will be closer in before too long.  (I do like the head on look but that does require getting to more inaccessible spots usually.)

After shooting at the same spot for a while, I continued south.  I was getting back to an area south of Mt Vernon when I came across even more swans sitting right by a side road.  They were ridiculously close to the road and, when I pulled up and stopped, they did start to drift away a little.  I guess even swans can be slightly circumspect when it comes to humans arriving.  However, they quickly got used to me and I got some shots of them too!

How I Misjudged Hyenas Before Seeing Them

There were many animals I was looking forward to seeing when we visited Kenya and Tanzania.  One that I hadn’t thought much about and, if I had, it wouldn’t have been positive, was the hyena.  They have a pretty bad image since they clean up all of the debris that is left and will also do their own hunting in the pack.  While this is no different to many other animals, they seem to have been given a more negative image.

When we arrived, we immediately saw loads of hyena.  They were out walking alone and moving in groups.  They are not the sleekest looking animal, but I found myself surprisingly interested in them.  When one would come into view carrying a trophy from a carcass, I would see this as a positive when others were focusing on the negative.  We saw one hyena limping across the road with an obvious wound on its leg.  This reminded me of just how perilous life is for everything in the wild.

Later in the trip we came across a den for the pack.  One hyena was walking back in with a wildebeest leg in its mouth.  This was going to feed some hungry mouths.  There were some cubs in the den, and we could hear them before we could see them.  They were fighting with each other between sessions suckling from their mother.  It was really fun to watch this whole pack of animals in their social setting.

I’m not expecting anyone reading this to suddenly love hyenas.  Some of the pictures will probably reinforce thoughts that yo might already have had about them.  However, I will say that I saw them in a very different light over the time I was in Kenya and Tanzania, and I will never think of them the same way again.

Struggling to Get the Owls

My Skagit trip was primarily looking for geese, but I was also going to see whether the short-eared owls were back out and about.  I ended up in East 90 again which has a solid reputation for the owls.  As I pulled up, various other raptors were flying very close by, so I knew the chances of seeing stuff were going to be good.  Unfortunately, the owls were not playing ball.  There were loads of them flying but they seemed to have staked out their interests further across the fields and away from the road.  The northern harriers were the ones close by.  The owls seemed to be wheeling about each other off in the distance so I had to make do with longer range images of them and get some of the other residents instead.

What a Selection of Fungi

The colder, damper conditions that fall and winter bring have resulted in plenty of fungi appearing and that seems to have been reflected in the blog recently.  I seem to be adding pictures of fungi a lot.  This time they are from the areas around where I work.  At lunchtime I walk down the hill to get something to drink with my lunch and, with these guys springing up along the sidewalk and close by, it was time to get the phone out and capture some shots.  Modern phones are so useful in situations like this.

Butterfly on the Lavender

While playing with the macro lens, I have spent plenty of time watching the insects in the back yard as they feed on the flowers.  The butterflies are quite fascinating as they have a proboscis that they curl up when they are not using and then extend to extract the nectar from the flowers.  As I was observing them at work, it occurred to me that the stills didn’t really give a good way of seeing what they are doing.  Instead, I switched to video and filmed them as they fed on our lavender bushes.  Here is some video of them busily getting fed!

https://youtu.be/OpzZAb30sZs