Book-ends (answers)

Here is how the two sides of the bird pictures match to each other:

A - 6: Female Mallard





B - 3: White-Breated Nuthatch



C - 4: American Redstart



D - 2: American Robin



E - 7: Song Sparrow



F - 1: Cedar Waxwing



 G - 5: Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Book-ends

You stalk your subject through the brush and bushes, you move around them so the sun shines on them the right way, you pish and squeak and hiss to get them to look up, and when the moment is just right, you press the shutter button - and then when you check the preview, you discover a nice set of tail feathers.

This happens more often than one would imagine. I have quite a large collection of bird back-ends. So I thought I'd offer a sort of a game here: try to match the right back-end (from the top list) to the appropriate front-end (the bottom list), and if you can identify the bird, you get an extra cookie:

A:


B:


C:


D:


E:


F:


G:


Front-ends:

1:


2:


3:


4:


5: 


6:


7:



Answers next week.

A Study in White

If you've done photography, you know that it's hard to shoot any subject that's completely (or almost) white. There is such a loss of detail that they end up looking just like big shiny blobs, even though in life they might look majestic and tranquil. Here are a few times that I think I managed to capture them properly:

Mute Swan:


Great Egret:


American White Pelican:


Snowy Egret:


Two subjects in white! A Cattle Egret and a Philippine Ox:

Lightning strikes twice

I was lucky enough to take one series of shots of bald eagle catching a fish in Yellowstone. Then the same thing happened as we were canoeing on Mongaup Pond. We noticed an eagle sitting on top of a small tree across the lake and got closer. Then right as I started taking some pictures, it took off, flew over our canoe, and grabbed a fish not twenty yards away from us. Look more closely at the 5th and 6th shots (click on them to blow them up) and you'll notice another fish cartwheeling through the air - the eagle's impact with the water has sent it flying.















I can't resist this - joke from a British comedy "Vicar of Dibley".
"Lightning never strikes twice."
"No, it does! My father was struck by lightning twice."
"Really? How did he feel afterwards?"
"Heavy."
"???"
"We buried him the next day."
If you haven't seen the series, download and watch it - very smartly written comedy with a good heart!

Mongaup Pond bald eagles

We discovered a new favorite place for camping this year, at Catskills' Mongaup Pond. One added benefit was a set of nesting bald eagles, which from time to time we saw perched on the trees above the lake. Every time we saw them, we would hike to a place near them and try to creep up. We got pretty close, but not close enough for "wow" shots. Finally, we gave up.

At some point later in the day we rented a canoe. From the canoe, we noticed that one adult eagle was sitting all this time on a tree right above our camping spot! But you could only see him from the water:


This is a juvenile (2nd or 3rd year), and I did get pretty close to him to take this shot:


This is an amusing sequence. We watched from the shore as the juvenile, who was sitting on a tree across the lake, took off and aimed seemingly right for a boat with two people on it. But it was really aiming at some fish that popped up next to the canoe. Check out how close it got to them, and these guys' reaction:

Kestrel munches on grasshopper

Or at least I think it's a grasshopper. At this stage of the dinner, it's kind of difficult to tell...

Forster's Tern dive

The lengths to which some of us would go to get a treat! But I am pretty sure no matter how much we love Twinkies (everyone seems to be talking about them now that they went bankrupt...), we wouldn't be prepared to dive heads-down into cold water to get them.

Check out this Forster's Tern. I was watching it circling around a pond, and I tried to catch a moment when it dove for fish. It's actually pretty hard! I was able to get it just once. The pictures a bit blurry, but I think the heads-down dive is pretty cool:







On a separate occasion, another Forster's Tern couldn't believe its luck. It found a spot where the fish were literally jumping out of the water. It took a pass - and missed! Just take a look at his expression after that.




Finally, I have a montage of yet another Forster's Tern's successful dive. Check out how much of his body goes underwater! BTW, notice that it looks different from the other two terns - that's because this was shot in late August, when the terns already assumed their winter colors.