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Ongoing projects

Posts from the ‘Wildlife’ category

Miscellaneous wildlife from the garden

This snake surprised me, at first I thought it was a branch stuck in my boxwood, but no….. It stayed quite still while I tried to find a decent angle. I wish I could have gotten closer.

This is a Northern Harrier, not a Redtail. The field marking is a white patch at the base of its tail, that is easily visible when it flys away from you. It had some very successful hunting in our fields after we mowed, spending the better part of the day for about a week. It was very blaise about our presence and several times flew low and slow enough for Havoc to give chase.

A fuzzy picture of one of our House Wrens. The first nest of the season was in the upper skull (we watched six fledglings leave the nest) and the later nest was in this skull. I don’t know how many fledged from this attempt, they did so in private.

Frogs….

I’ve been photographing the frogs in my garden for years. They are very cooperative subjects….they sit still for ages and don’t mind the camera…. But the puzzle to solve in photographing them is to make the image interesting, so that the viewers response is more than ‘yes that’s a frog, so?’.

These are my most successful efforts to date, as usual it’s all in the lighting.


Sparkles, yeah….

This one almost feels like a studio shoot, draped backdrop and dramatic lighting….


I like the drama of this one, both the lighting and composition.
Every time I do ‘wildlife’ photography I am more in awe of the skill and patience of professional wildlife photographers.

Birds of Prey….part three (long delayed)

This is the second attempt at photographing this particular wildlife rehabilitator. They were at the Rosendale Farmers Market, which made moving around the birds much easier. I was interested in the interaction between the birds and their caretakers. 

 
After answering questions all morning Annie lost her voice, the owl didn’t seem to mind though he was very interested in her hot drink. It’s a Great Horned Owl.
  
I could photograph Screech Owls all day long.
 This is a Barred Owl. I think they should be named Bard Owls instead, but no one asked me. I believe the hawk in the background is a Sharp-shinned Hawk, but it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong and it’s something else altogether.
  

Screech Owls again. 

 
The Barred Owl doing meet and greets somewhat shyly.

  

Birds of Prey…..part 2

This is Xena, a Eurasian Eagle-Owl. 

 
These owls are wide spread in Europe and Asia and are categorized as ‘least concern’ in terms of conservation. These are really big owls, weighing as much as 10 lbs with wing spans up to 6 feet. Like hawks the female is the larger of the sexes. This particular owl was raised to be a wildlife educator/ambassador.

  
This photo lets you see how big she is. In case you’re wondering I haven’t made any adjustments to her eye color. The bright orange is a characteristic of the species.

  
In my second attempt at photographing birds on display I was trying to get something a little more interesting than ‘oh cool look it’s an owl’. I wanted to try and show a bit of the handler/owl interaction. I would have really liked to get some spectator reaction, interaction as well, but that didn’t happen. I was very pleased with the two shots above.

  
This is one of those almost, but not quite shots. The idea is good, shopping with your owl, do they sell mice as well as pork? But the composition just didn’t quite come together, but it’s an amusing moment and the Karl family sell outstanding meat.
I took these at the Rosendale Farmers Market in Rosendale, New York. Which is a lovely little market, that meets behind the movie theater, on Sundays in the summer.

Birds of Prey….part 1

This is my first attempt at photographing owls and hawks. The set up was a little awkward, bright sun, a canopy, and a fixed point of view. The effort was further complicated by the fact that I turn into a total fan girl when I get that close to birds of prey…..ah well. 

 
Barred Owl, it’s blind in one eye and is now used for educational outreach. 

 
Eastern Screech-Owls. They are variable in color and quite small, only 6 oz. it took me an absurd amount of time to realize only one of these were fake.

  
A Red Tail Hawk with a wing injury. It’s hoped that it will heal enough to fly and possibly be released.

  
I think this is a Sharp-shinned Hawk, but it might be a Broad-winged Hawk. They are both much smaller than I realized and there was too much lag time between the event and downloading the images….ah well. This image illustrates the lighting problems I had. The birds were kept in the shade due to the heat, but lack of space forced the handlers into the sun, creating a huge range of lighting conditions. Digital photography makes it much easier to correct a bad exposure, but it’s very easy to over adjust making the pictures oddly unbalanced.

Wildlife rehabilitators amaze me. The amount of time and work they invest in helping these animals is truly staggering……