A Trip South

Another winter, another trip to Florida. I've been so busy getting ready--and dealing with an injured chicken--that I haven't been able to post. Now I'm out of town and while I have the Blogger app (trying it for the first time) I don't anticipate I'll be posting much till I get home.

As I've mentioned before I try to get down here once a year to visit my grandma Andree, who is now 89. While in excellent health she is losing her vision and so doesn't get around on her own any more. The photo is of her at dinner tonight, trying to escape the camera. I know my time with her grows shorter with each passing day, so while we spend time at the wildlife refuges in the area the real reason for the trip is her. She has been one of the biggest influences in my life and I wish I had more time to spend with her.

Hairy Woodpecker Pays a Visit

We have a number of regular visitors to our feeders--cardinals and chickadees, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, titmice, nuthatches, doves and jays.  A somewhat less common visitor is the Hairy Woodpecker.  

Very similar in appearance to the downy, the hairy is larger (about 2.5 inches longer) and more boldly marked.  I like to say the downy looks like an un-made bed, at least compared to the hairy.

While the downy is seemingly fearless (I had one eat seeds from my hand a few weeks ago at a local park) the hairy is much more cautious and skittish.  This handsome fellow hopped around the cherry tree outside the studio for several minutes before approaching the feeders.

Finally he flew up to the post and snacked on some suet.  Click on this image to see the subtle color and detail around this fellow's beak.

Pretty bird!

Creeper!

After my disappointing photographic experience in East Tawas, where I had an opportunity to get some great shots of some fairly uncommon birds and blew it because I am not used to shooting small, moving objects, I decided to spend some time experimenting with my camera.  So I took my equipment out to the studio and set the long lens up on a tripod and played around with exposures.

What I determined is that to get birds with no blur, the shutter speed needs to be at least 1/500 of a second, preferably 1/1000 or greater.  That means it has to be a pretty bright day, and that one has to have really good equipment.  A long (telephoto) lens by its nature lets in less light than a shorter lens--the light has to travel farther to reach the camera.  So a good telephoto lens has to have a much wider diameter to allow sufficient light to stop action, like birds.  But a larger diameter means bigger glass and that raises the cost significantly.  A 600mm f4.0 (meaning a large opening to allow lots of light) lens can run you--I kid you not--$10,000.  Those of us of modest means simply can't afford that, so we make do with what we've got, and will be limited to getting the best results only under the best conditions.

At any rate, I was having fun shooting the birds through the studio windows (kind of like a huge blind).  I was focused on some birds in a large red pine when movement on the cherry tree to my left caught my eye.  I looked and OH MY GOSH a Brown Creeper!  I swung the camera around just in time to get this shot of him.

This is one of those birds who I just thrill to see.  They are not all that common, although I've had one hanging around the studio in winter for the past couple years.  I had seen this bird a week or so before so knew he'd returned, but this was my first chance to catch him with the camera.

It didn't take long before he started creeping up and around the tree.

I am fascinated with his coloring.  I thought at first that these shots were really blurry but I went back and looked at the first one and realized that his coloring is like that naturally.  Whereas so many birds' markings are bold and well defined, this little guy's colors are soft and blend into one another.

What perfect camouflage--no wonder they're so hard to spot!

Brown Creepers are in the family of chickadees and nuthatches.  They cling to the trunks of trees and glean insects.  They tend to move up the tree, whereas nuthatches tend to move down--a subtle difference but one worth noting.  I've never seen him on a feeder, so I wonder if he's coming around looking for bits of seeds the other birds may have left behind in the trees.  Both the nuthatches and the woodpeckers take peanuts to the trees, cram them in a crevasse and bash them to bits.  Perhaps the creeper is picking up the pieces.

After this last photo he flew off to another tree where the light was not so good, so I gave up.  I was happy to have gotten a few shots of this elusive little bird!

Au Sable River Walk

Our last day in East Tawas dawned a fiery red.  The warmth of the sunrise belied the frigid temperatures outside.

The bright dawn didn't last long, however.  A strong southerly wind pressed the clouds northward and closed off the sun.  It also pushed to shore the ice that had been far out on the lake, and as far as we could see ice like shards of glass undulated with the waves.

With the change in weather we decided there would be even less to see out at Tawas Point, so we drove up to the Au Sable River instead to take a leisurely walk in the woods were we'd be more protected from the wind.  A few miles down River Road from Oscoda is Eagle Run, a network of trails maintained primarily for cross country skiing.  It's a nice place to hike, too, and with so little snow we didn't think we'd be in the way of any skiers.

We parked at the boat launch and walked out to a fishing dock along the southern bank of the river.  Here we heard the park's namesake eagle, calling from somewhere up river, but they never showed themselves.

Walking back up the road we picked up one of the trails and passed through a stand of red pine.  Karin's sharp eye spotted this Roughed Grouse perched high in a tree.  I had my short lens so couldn't get much of a photo, but at least it's proof!

We didn't walk far, just enough to loosen up and work up an appetite.   One more look at the river and we turned around a headed back to the car.  We stopped at Los Quatro Amigos for lunch (very good Mexican food!) and hit the road.

We never did see a Snowy Owl, but as just about everyone knows (NBC Nightly News will have a segment tonight about them) they have migrated quite far south this year, spotted in places like Oklahoma and Missouri.  Lori and I will be driving over to Saint Joseph and Lake Michigan this Friday to visit a bookstore and to watch a live art show jury (which I hope will be very educational!) so maybe we'll get lucky yet and spot one along the water there.  Still it was nice to get away for a weekend and especially nice to add two more birds to my "life list".

Artwork--"Baltimore"

I have one more post from our Tawas trip from a few weeks ago, a short walk down the banks of the Au Sable River, but I wanted to get this up as I just finished it this afternoon:

"Baltimore", 10x8, colored pencil on Bristol board.

This is a bird that showed up on our balcony several years ago, and I had completely forgotten about it until I was looking through some miscellaneous photos in a folder on my computer.  I really liked the pose, and even though I just did a piece with orioles in it last fall ("The Offering") I decided to go ahead and do this one too.  This size original is my best selling size, and I need to have a boat load of them when the season starts.  I have a long way to go!

Next up I think will be a Dark-eyed Junco.  I have a client whose been asking about one, but until recently I didn't have any poses I was all that excited about.  I do now, though, so hope to get started on it next week.

The Not-So-Common Common Redpoll

After seeing the Long-tailed Duck--which everyone was excited about--we were pretty satisfied, and not feeling so bad about not seeing a Snowy Owl.  As we walked back down the pier, the girls pointed out some small finch-like birds in the weeds along the shore.  Once again binoculars went up, and I hurried over with my camera.

(Remember, click on an image to see a slide show of full-sized images!  They look much better bigger.)

Well, the day got better still!  There among the milkweed was a small flock of Common Redpolls!

I had only seen this bird once before, during our second winter here in Pinckney.  We had a good sized flock--15 to 20 birds--show up at our feeders for several weeks in January.  This was so much better, seeing them in a more natural habitat.

They were quite intent on eating and didn't pay much attention to us.

The female lacks the purple-ish breast of her male counterpart.

Redpolls are a winter visitor to Michigan, breeding in the sub-arctic regions far to our north.  Food supply determines how far south they venture, and so they are often a highly desired bird of those keeping a list.  I was thrilled to get to see them again.

Redpolls are fairly nondescript it until you see them head on.  I just love their rosy foreheads and yellow bills.

This little lady paused to check me out, her sweet face hidden behind the stem.

Short Walk on a Long Pier: The Long-tailed Duck

On the drive up to the house where we stayed we passed through East Tawas.  U.S. 23 passes very near Tawas Bay here, and we noticed a number of waterfowl dotting the surface. I thought it might be a good place to come back to, so after we left the park we drove back to town and stopped at the East Tawas State Dock.  This is quite an impressive structure, able to dock over 100 boats and offering electric, gas, showers and pump-out services.

Photo courtesy Michigan DNR

There was a lot more ice around the pier than there had been the day before, but as we approached the dock we could see some waterfowl out in the bay. I guessed they were mergansers, but then I noticed a much larger bird closer to shore, diving just beyond the thin ice.  I moved to the railing and waited for it to surface.

I wasn't sure what it was, and for that I was excited, since it probably meant it was not a bird I'd seen before.  When it dove again I walked farther down the pier.  Once again it broke the surface, but dove quickly.  As it dove I caught a glimpse of its tail and I knew what we'd spotted.

A Long-tailed Duck!!

Such a pretty thing, it is not all that common here in Michigan, at least inland.  Sibley's shows its winter range to include the Great Lakes, but it tends to frequent the ocean coasts.  I remembered the conversations of some of the birders I was with at the festival in Tawas last year--one of these birds had been spotted (at great distance) at the Foote Dam Pond on the Au Sable River, and there was much excitement about it.  This is a bird that breeds in the Arctic, and to have one in Michigan in May caused quiet a stir.

We watched it dive, its tail feather last to submerge, and wondered at an animal so suited to a life in frigid waters.

 

Another "life list" bird, great payment for birding on such a chilly afternoon!

I didn't post many images of this bird because not that many came out very well.  That is entirely my fault, and I learned a good lesson here about shooting wildlife.  I rarely shoot with the camera in full auto mode, knowing the camera isn't going to think like I do.  But that means I actually have to think and pay attention to what is happening. When shooting moving objects with a long lens, shutter speed is of the utmost importance.  A fast shutter speed is needed to stop the motion of the animal you're trying to photograph, and helps stop the effects of camera movement as well.

I have always been more of a landscape photographer, where depth of field is more important than stopping movement, so I have always shot in aperture priority mode (I set the aperture, which determines depth of field, and the camera picks the corresponding shutter speed).  But what happened with the Long-tailed Duck is that the aperture setting I had chosen forced the camera to pick a shutter speed much too slow to stop any movement (usually around 1/40th of a second).  I wasn't paying any attention, too excited about the duck to pay attention to what the camera was doing.  There are other factors that contributed to the blurry photos, but this is the main one.  So from now on, the camera that has the long lens will always be in shutter priority mode, and I will try not to let my excitement ruin my pictures!!

Next:  Common Redpolls by the pier.