Oct

31

Pied Kingfisher

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Shot of the Month – October 2019

Pied Kingfisher, Kruger NP (7606)

There are 114 species of kingfishers around the world and most are bright splashes of color with wings.  These small to medium size birds tend to specialize in catching fish though a few prefer insects.  All tend to have large heads, long, sharp pointed bills, short legs and stubby tails.  One of the most common kingfishers is the Pied Kingfisher as seen above.  Bright splash of color??  It seems that the Pied Kingfishers were at the back of the line when the colors were given out as they are rather penguin-esque decked out in their monochromatic black-and-white color scheme.  Click here to see a more colorful variety.

As shown below, Pied Kingfishers are exceptional hoverers — by flapping their wings rapidly they can stay in one place for an extended period time as they scan below looking for fish in the water.  They are actually the largest bird that can truly hover.  While hovering they have to keep their head perfectly still to judge the location of the fish below.  Here is a great video that explains the hunting technique of these skilled fliers.  And another good video here.

Pied Kingfisher, Kruger NP-South Africa (1300)

 

A fresh kill captured on film….Definitely will NOT need a bigger boat for this one.

Pied Kingfisher, Kruger NP (7528)

The Pied Kingfisher can be found throughout sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia from Turkey to India to China.  I photographed this lovely chap in Kruger National Park in South Africa.

Pied Kingfisher, Kruger NP (7459)

 

The Pied Kingfisher – what they lack in color they make up for it with true acrobatic talent and classic formal style and grace.

 

Until next month….m

 

Sources:

Wild Vagabond

Wikipedia

 

 

Nikon D500, Nikon 600 mm f/4 (@ f/5.6), 1/1500 sec, ISO 200, EV -0.5

Sep

30

Love in the Air?

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Shot of the Month – September 2019

Lion (4675), Kruger NP, South Africa

So what’s going on with this big ol’ male lion?  Is he snarling?  Is he about to sneeze?  Did he get a whiff of a stinky warthog?

All good guesses, and thanks for playing along, but all incorrect.

What we got here is a good example of the flehmen response.  Uhhhh, the flaming what?

The flehmen response —  in German flehmen means to “bare the upper teeth.”  Ok, that seem accurate, Simba here is indeed baring his upper teeth.  So we got the “what,” how about the “why”?

Well, many animals exhibit this behavior to draw in air to reach a specialized organ above the roof of the mouth.  This organ has specialized receptors to detect pheremones, scents  and other chemicals.  This organ is called the vomeronasal organ or Jacobson’s organ (Ludwig Jacobson described the organ in 1813, even though Frederick Ruysch found it first in 1732).  The vomeronasal organ is connected directly to the brain and allows the animal to better assess potential prey animals, predators and potential mates.  This process is distinct from smelling and engages a completely different pathway to the brain.

Some animals, like cats and horses have to raise their lips to allow air to reach this specialized sensor.  Other animals, like elephants can access their vomeronasal organ without the lip curl (Thank You Very Much).  Flehmen is demonstrated by most of Africa’s ungulates and predators including giraffe, rhinos, buffaloes, lion, leopards, cheetahs and other cats.  Fun fact:  Hippos can do the flehmen response underwater!  Jacobson’s organ is also found in all snakes and lizards, dogs, cattle, pigs, and in some primates.  Snakes use the organ to sense prey — they stick their tongue out to collect scents and then touch their tongue to the opening of the organ when the tongue is retracted.  Humans do not have this specialized organ.  Both males and females can demonstrate the flehmen response.  For example female sable antelope use flehmen behavior to allow them to synchronize conception and birth of their offspring in a herd.

The male lion above, photographed in Kruger National Park in South Africa, wrinkled up his nose after his lady friend walked over to say “Hi.”

Lion Gaze (4538), Kruger NP, South Africa

And she gave him a friendly head nuzzle:

Lion Nuzzle (4472), Kruger NP, South Africa

After this the male stood up and checked to see if “love was in the air.”  For the non-romantics:  He triggered the flehmen response to draw in air to see if the female was emitting pheremones that would indicate that she was receptive to mating.

 

Love….flehmen…a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…..

 

Until next month….m

 

 

 

Nikon D500, Nikon 200-400 mm @ 310 mm, effective 450 mm), f/4, 1/640s, ISO 560, +0.5 EV

 

 

 

 

Sources:

What is the flehmen response and why is it used?

Vemeronasal organ (Wikipedia)

Flehmen Response (Wikipedia)

 

Aug

31

Woodie

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Shot of the Month – August 2019

Wood Duck (5525)

This month we visit with a dandy of a duck — America’s own Wood Duck.  The male is supremely colored (per usual) — his head is adorned with an iridescent green and maroon crest while his face is deep purple with white stripes.  He also has a red bill, with another white stripe with a jazzy yellow patch at the base.  And that glorious red eye (ok, well, two red eyes).  But there is more Johnny!  His chest and rump are dark red while his back and wings are a shimmering dark blue-green.  There is even more, just check out the images to see it all — the drake wood duck is a paint-by-numbers dream come true!

Wood Duck (6205)

 

Wood Duck (7422)

Of course all of this fancy dress is to attract the ladies — lady ducks that is.  These colors do not last year round however — once the breeding season is over, usually by early summer, the colors fade until next mating season.  In late summer the male grows gray feathers with blue markings.  The female wood ducks are much more humble in their coloration — they have gray-crested heads (no one ever said, “Oh look – Gray!!”), and generally covered in splotches of brown, gray-brown, and some white.  This coloration is quite sensible as it helps the females draw less attention to themselves and the chicks.  “Blah” is much better for blending and avoiding getting eaten.  Just sayin….

Female Wood Duck (7057)

Female Wood Duck

Woodies are cavity nesters — the female lays her eggs in an existing hole found in a tree.  This sounds like a reasonable plan till you realize that these holes are usually about 30 feet above the ground.  How do the chicks get down?  Elevator?  Nope.  One day after the eggs hatch the female leaves the nest and goes to the ground and calls to her chicks.  The chicks respond with peeping calls and climb up to the entrance of the hole and launch themselves outward to the ground.  Wow!

Check out this video to get a sense of how crazy this is.  (This video is of Mandarin chicks, but the idea is exactly the same).

Once they are all out mom leads the ducklings to water.  The female stays with the chicks and tries to keep them safe but does not feed them.  The ducklings are able to feed themselves from day one.  After about 8-10 weeks the chicks are fully feathered and can fly.

Interestingly, the diet of wood ducks changes as they get older.  As ducklings woodies dine primarily on aquatic insects.  As they grow to adults they shift over to a plant diet eating mainly aquatic plants, nuts and seeds.  Favorite food for a wood duck?  Acorns!!  Who knew??!!  In fact wood ducks have an expandable esophagus that allow them to swallow multiple acorns — one woodie was found with 30 acorns in his throat!

For those keeping score at home, wood ducks are “dabbling” ducks – dabbling ducks place their head under water while looking for food as their butts and feet stick up in the air.  Other dabblers include mallards, northern pintails and green and blue-winged teals.  Alternatively there are diving ducks, which well, you guessed it, dive and submerge completely below the surface of the water.

Wood ducks are, unusually for ducks, built for arboreal life as well as for life on the water.  Their feet are not only webbed, normal for a duck, but also have sharp claws, not so normal, which facilitate perching on tree branches.  The wings of wood ducks are also more broad than other ducks to make them more adept at twisting and turning in flight which is handy when navigating tight places between branches.  Woodies are most at home in wooded wetlands and along slow-moving, tree-lined rivers.  The don’t like open water.  Look for wood ducks around the edges of swamps, sluggish streams, overgrown beaver ponds, and wood-fringed marshes.  Check out the map below to find an acorn duck near you.

Wood Duck Range Map (Source)

And speaking of odd names, other aliases for the wood duck include summer duck, woodie, Carolina duck, swamp duck and squealer (they can be noisy).

 

I have to say that I still find it odd to be out walking in the woods and look up to find a wood duck perched on a branch — just don’t seem right.  A duck.  In a tree.  One that eats acorns, no less.  Sounds like a bizarre duck/squirrel experiment gone horribly, albeit beautifully, wrong.  Oh well, get out there and find yourself an acorn duck – they are a wonderful sight to behold.

 

Until next month….m

 

 

 

Sources

Cornell Lab

Saint Louis Zoo

Bird Web

National Wildlife Federation

Wikipedia

 

Nikon D500, Nikon 600mm w/ 1.4x TC (850 mm, effective 1275mm), 1/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400

Jul

31

Black Bear

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Shot of the Month – July 2019

Black Bear - Yellowstone (6831)

Heeeey BooBoo, did you know that we have three bear species that live in North America?  It is true.  We gots the Polar Bear, the Brown Bear (Grizzly) and Ursus americanus, aka the American Black Bear (ABB).  The ABB, is the smallest of the three bear species, is the most common, and can only be found in North America.

The ABB can be found in at least 40 states in the U.S. and ranges from Canada to Mexico.  It is estimated that there are 600,000 black bears in North America with half found in the U.S.  Black bears are typically found in forests where they can find a rich variety of fruits, nuts and vegetation.  Black bears may have originally gravitated to woodlands and thick vegetation to avoid larger more aggressive bears like the grizzly that tend to favor open habitats.   These bears are omnivores and their flexible diet allows them to live in a range of habitats including coniferous and deciduous forests as as well as open alpine habitats.

Up to 85% of the ABB’s diet is made up of vegetation which can include roots, grasses, fruits, berries, hazelnuts, oak acorns and whitebark pine nuts.  The majority of the bear’s animal diet is made up of insects like bees, yellow jackets, ants and their larvae.  And like Winnie the Pooh, they love honey and will rip apart bee hives for the tasty treat.  And depending on the location ABBs will hunt for fish (salmon, suckers, trout, catfish).  Black bears rarely hunt on large game but they will take the occasional mule or white-tailed deer fawn and may take elk or moose calves.

Despite their name, black bears can in fact be found in a variety of colors including brown, blond, cinnamon, rust and even white.  This color variation can cause some people to misidentify a black bear for a grizzly bear.  The size of black bears can vary dramatically depending on season and the availability of food.  Males typically range from 130 to 660 pounds while females typically come in at 90 to 175 pounds.

Black bears have relatively short, non-retractable claws that make them very good at climbing trees.  I photographed the female black bear above in Yellowstone NP in Dunraven pass where she was climbing whitebark pine trees to feast on the pine seeds.  Mom would climb the tree and bite off the pine cones and drop them down to her cubs below.  The large seeds, or nuts, of whitebark pine are a high-energy food rich in fats, carbohydrates, and protein. This makes them an important resource for bears (black, grizzly) fattening up in the fall before denning.  Unfortunately the whitebark pine is endangered and at risk for extinction.  Many of the causes of the decline of the tree are due to humans — the warming climate is allowing the mountain pine beetle to thrive and decimate the tree population.  Also, over the last hundred years humans have suppressed fires in yellowstone and in other alpine areas — turns out that fires were an essential tool in keeping forests diverse and robust.  You can learn more about this crisis here.

 

 

If you spend much time in the woods of the US or Canada you have a pretty good chance of seeing a black bear – fear not, black bears are generally not aggressive.  That being said, please give all wild animals ample space and admire from a safe distance.  Otherwise, you may just find Yogi and his brethren in your pick-e-net basket!

 

Until next month….m

 

 

 

 

Nikon D4S, Nikon 600mm, f/4, 1/800 sec, ISO 6400, EV +1.0

 

 

 

 

 

Sources for this post include:

Defenders of Wildlife

National Wildlife Federation

North American Bear Center

National Geographic

Wikipedia

 

Jun

30

The Beauty of Isolation

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Shot of the Month – June 2019

 

Tulip, Washington State (4028)

This month a photo of a tulip that demonstrates the power of isolating your subject to help create a compelling image.  In this shot there is no doubt about what this photo is about — our eyes can’t help but be drawn to that lone red tulip in the center of the frame.  In this image I used several techniques to isolate the subject:

Choice of depth of field

In this shot I used a very shallow depth of field (aperture of f/5.6) to ensure that almost all of the other flowers in this field were out of focus.  Our eyes are naturally drawn to the part of the image that is in focus.  For comparison look at the same image taken with a very wide depth of field (aperture of f/22).  In this version Tulip (4045)the field of flowers is more in focus and, at least for me, more distracting.  I find that my eye jumps around more from one part of the photo to the next and weakens the visual impact.  Click on the image to see it larger.  Here is a primer on understanding depth of field.

Point of View (POV)

To get this image I shot while crouched on my knees to get a low angle — this allowed me to shoot up and through the red flowers in the foreground and create depth in the image.  This POV also allowed the red tulip to appear higher into the field of purple in the background and helped create more separation and space between the subject (red) and the foreground (red).  Don’t be afraid to move around and explore the scene to make sure you are including the elements you want in the shot, and perhaps even more importantly, explore how your POV can help remove elements that weaken your image.  Try higher.  Then lower.  Move to the right.  To the left….shake it all about….

Contrasting Color

I was immediately drawn to this scene by how the red tulip popped visually against that purple background.  The lovely green stem of the subject also adds more contrast and leads the eye to the subject.

Centered Subject

Tulip (4041)

Landscape orientation is not as compelling for this shot

While it is often not recommended to center your subject it can sometimes be a useful technique under the right circumstances (See my post here on this topic).  I usually try multiple compositions with the subject to the left, right and centered to help find what works best for the scene.  I also often shoot in both landscape and portrait orientation to see which leads to a stronger composition.  Given the vertical nature of the flowers portrait orientation worked best.

 

Wow, so much to consider to just get a pretty picture of a flower!  These are in fact just a few of the ways that one can isolate the subject of an image.  What are the others?  Hmmn, that sounds like fodder for a future post….I just need to get outside and get the shot….stay tuned.

 

Until next month…m