Tag Archives: bird

Pelicans

I was out shooting with my friend Hayman in the San Francisco Bay area. Our primary goals were aviation (of course) but one of the nice things about the Bay is that some cool wildlife also lives there. I am always keen to see the pelicans that live there. They will often be seen cruising along the shoreline. Occasionally you will see them fishing as well. The plunge into the water with wings folded back is very impressive.

I suspect if you grew up with them around, you wouldn’t be so bothered and maybe view them as nothing more than a larger seagull. However, I didn’t grow up with them so they always get me interested. This day wasn’t the best to try and shoot them but I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity whenever one (or more) flew by. Hopefully I will be back in the Bay before too long and I might make an effort to focus on them for a change.

Little Birds

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There are plenty of interesting birds when you visit Hawaii. The large birds that live on the cliffs like the frigates and boobies are cool as are the Nene, the state bird of Hawaii which is a rare type of goose. However, there are a few other birds that are plentiful to see and, where we stayed, it wasn’t difficult to find a lot of them coming to visit. Some were even rather brave about landing on the balcony while we were sitting there.

Two types of bird caught my eye on a regular basis. One was the red-crested cardinal and the other was a mynah bird. The cardinals showed up pretty regularly. According to a friend of mine, they have a duller color to the crest when they are immature and then it becomes fully red when they are adults. We saw plenty of the immature birds and a reasonable number of those that don’t make fart jokes!

The mynahs are less dramatic but, with the right light on them, they still look pretty good. They certainly made for something to keep an eye on while we were otherwise taking it easy!

Kilauea Lighthouse

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We repeated another part of the trip from last year when we went out to Kilauea lighthouse. This is a peninsula which not only provides a good navigation reference but is also a great spot for watching some bird activities. The birds roost on the rock faces and head out to sea to fish. However, some are less inclined to do the hard work.

The frigate birds prefer to wait for the boobies to return from fishing and then harass them into dropping their catch and scooping it up themselves. Out by the lighthouse is a great place to watch this happening. The lighthouse itself is undergoing restoration at the moment and is covered in protective material. It doesn’t make a good photography target for the time being. Glad I saw it last year! however, the fencing around it apparently was popular with a young booby. Not sure why he would choose that when there is so much human free space around but there you go!

There were also some dolphins swimming around in the bay below us. They were a long way off and hard to spot but it was still exciting to spot them. I could really spend ages out on the headland. The wind blows you about but the birds are so close and the view is so good, it is hard to find a good reason to leave!

Cranes – Probably Not Here!

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A sign of spring is when wildlife starts showing up that you haven’t seen for a while. I had a couple of experiences within a day of each other of exactly this. One seemed perfectly reasonable but the other was probably not the best idea. We were walking in a state park up in Wisconsin when we heard a lot of noise. At first I thought it was geese but, as the huge flock of birds approached, it became obvious that they were cranes.

The cranes flew around a lot as we walked, some were high but others were quite low. We walked on with not too much more attention to them as they honked their way around the area. However, the following day I was down at O’Hare. I saw something large and wispy in the sky and realized that it was a flock of birds. As they came closer, lo and behold but more cranes were coming to town!

Now, O’Hare is not exactly a bird friendly location. Having flocks of pretty substantial birds in the vicinity of so many aircraft did not appear to be a particularly good combination. The birds swirled around for a couple of minutes, fortunately a little higher than the aircraft on approach. Then they drifted off in a different direction and i didn’t see them again. Not a great idea but, thankfully, no harm done this time!

Evil Frigates

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Early in our visit to Kauai, we paid a visit to the lighthouse and wildlife refuge at Kilauea Point. We were there to see the lighthouse and the surrounding coast but the wildlife element was an interesting addition. There were tons of birds in the area. Along the cliffs we saw a lot of Red Footed Boobies. These are a pretty decent sized bird that is akin to a small albatross. The boards also mentioned the presence of frigate-birds. These weren’t close in but appeared to be out towards the lighthouse.

Once we got out on the peninsula on which the lighthouse sits, we became a lot more familiar with the frigate-birds. It turns out that they are something I have seen on one of the TV nature programs that the BBC produces in great detail every five years or so. Frigate-birds are a prehistoric looking creature. Their wings make them look like a pterodactyl and their beaks have a most evil looking hook on the end.

The thing that the TV show explained and that we got to see in action is their preferred method of getting food. The boobies head off out to see to catch fish. They bring the fish back in a pouch in their throat and then use it to feed the chicks. The frigate-birds are not so interested in making much of an effort so they hang around and wait for the boobies to return. They then attack them trying to make them spit out their catch. Nice, huh?

Anyway, we got to see this at close range. The frigate-birds would pick a target and go for them, sometimes in pairs. The attack would continue for some time as the boobies tried desperately to get out of the way. If they got close enough to the shore, that seemed to be good enough and they could get back to their roost. Otherwise, the frigate-birds would be pretty tenacious. Quite something to witness at close quarters!

Swallows but no Amazons

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When trying to be smart and come up with an amusing play on words for a title, I realized I could be on dangerous territory with this one. Instead, I decided to play it safe but dull! Back to the topic…

I was sitting on the shore of Lake Michigan recently watching the swallows do their thing. I find them a fascinating bird to watch since they have a level of agility that is hard to comprehend. I guess when you eat by catching insects in mid air, you have to be pretty sharp. Catching a swallow on the wing is a trickier proposition altogether. They are hard to pan with and they are small so a long lens helps keep them visible but makes the panning so much harder!

Getting them standing on a non-moving surface makes for a far easier time. Of course, that isn’t so exciting. There is always the option to keep trying to get a bit closer without scaring them off.

Then again, you can always try and get the flying shot. These will never be published but they were better than I expected!

Flashing at the birds

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While hanging around up in Door County in Wisconsin, I have been taking a bunch of pictures of the local wildlife. Mainly a lot of birds in the vicinity of our hotel and that is always a fun challenge. To add to the challenge, one of the afternoons that we were back at the hotel, the weather closed in and it began to rain. There was a patch of grass outside our balcony that seemed to be a popular spot for some robins so I started taking some shots.

As you are probably aware, robins are quite bold creatures so, with a little patience, you can end up with them coming reasonably close in. However, with the light having faded fast as the weather deteriorated and the natural shade of the area, it was not looking good to get a good shot. I started out by bumping up the ISO but that was only helping so much and, without a tripod, I was still going to get mixed results.

At this point I decided to try something that everyone who shoots wildlife a lot probably does to some extent but that I had not tried before and that was using some flash to boost the excitement. I had no idea how much to use so experimented with a little extra FEC, then zero and ultimately one stop under on FEC. The latter seemed to have the best results judging by the quick view on the back of the camera – always such a reliable indicator!

I was using the flashgun straight with no boost like a Better Beamer (if that is the right name) so it was a bit of a raw experiment but the results seemed to be be pretty pleasing so this is something I will have to think about further in due course.