Tag: Farmington Bay Wildlife Management Area

Harlan’s Hawk

Harlan’s Hawk is today considered to be a sub-species of the Red-tailed Hawk but its classification has a colorful history as it has twice been considered a separate species and twice as a race of the Red-tailed Hawk.  The controversy continues today as several “experts” lobby to have the Harlan’s reinstated as a distinct species. In 1831 John James Audubon originally named this bird Harlan’s Buzzard, after his good friend Dr. Richard Harlan of Philadelphia.    1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in Harlan’s Hawks are quite similar to western Red-tailed Hawks but typically they are “colder/blacker” in overall color, with the tendency toward dusky-white tails in the ventral view.   At rest, wing tips are obviously shorter than tail tips (easily seen here) and their breasts are variably streaked with white.        1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in In this view you can make out another identifying feature – the barring to the tips of the wing primaries (most easily seen here in the left wing). Harlan’s Hawks are found in Alaska and northern Canada but winter in the western United States and the Great Plains.  I’ve had very few (if any) photo opportunities with them but found this juvenile (light eye) two days ago at Farmington Bay. I’m always delighted to photograph a “new” bird, particularly when it’s a raptor. Ron      

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Birds Dealing With Snow And Cold

Birds use a variety of tactics to deal with the harsh conditions presented by an unusually cold and snowy winter.  Some are more effective than others.  I thought it might be interesting to see a few of them that I’ve been able to photograph in the last several weeks. My usual disclaimer for posts relating to behaviors; many of these images are technically lacking but I think they do illustrate some of the conditions these birds are having to cope with.    1/2500, f/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light After a fresh snow, the food source for many small birds is largely hidden and unavailable without some extraordinary measures.  This juvenile White-crowned Sparrow, and others in the flock, were flitting from one snow-covered perch to another in an obvious attempt at knocking the snow off so they could get to the seeds underneath.  Here you can see the snow falling away and immediately afterward the sparrow fed on the uncovered seeds.      1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in When it gets very cold most water sources freeze up completely which makes fish largely inacessable to Bald Eagles so many of them turn to scavenging as their primary food source.  But this species adapted very well  to scavenging eons ago which is one of the reasons Ben Franklin looked in disfavor at the proposal to make the Bald Eagle our national bird.      1/1000, f/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or…

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Christmas Birds At Farmington Bay

Christmas Day is one of our favorite times to photograph birds.  My daughter lives in Florida so I normally don’t get to spend time with family and for me bird photography is the next-best thing.  Besides, we usually have splendid isolation when we’re “out there” while everyone else is at home celebrating the holiday in a more traditional way.  A win/win situation for all. This post is dedicated to “Christmas Birds” – photos I’ve taken on Christmas Day in recent years.  I often think of these birds as extra-special Christmas presents.    1/1600, f/8, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, called in or set up This beautiful male American Kestrel is perched on a short but thick wooden pole at Farmington Bay.  The pole has been a favorite perch for kestrels and eagles for years but now an ugly bat box has been placed near the top of the pole, ruining it for photographic purposes.  I’m all for bats but I sure wish the box had been placed a few inches lower on the pole.      1/400, f/7.1, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, called in or set up Two years ago, this Common Merganser hung around a Farmington Bay pond for much of the winter.  I seldom saw it actively fishing.  Instead, it would just wait around until one of the many Pied-billed Grebes caught a fish and then steal it away from them – very entertaining to watch.      1/1600, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4,…

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An Amazingly Resilient One-legged Ibis

Last week I came across this one-legged White-faced Ibis at Farmingtom Bay.  Normally, these birds feed by slowly wading through the water and locating their invertebrate prey by tactile probing of the muddy substrate.  Their long, recurved and extremely sensitive bill is an ideal tool for this purpose.   But this bird, of course, is unable to wade.  So it would stand in one spot for a few seconds while feeding and then jump to the next spot with great effort.     The problem it had with this method was maintaining balance as it was landing in the new spot, since it couldn’t put down the missing leg for support.     So,  as it landed it would use that long bill as a sort of substitute for the missing leg and foot, thus gaining an additional balancing and support point in the mud.     Here it has just regained balance and is closing its wings and pulling its long bill off of the mud.     Perhaps what the bird was doing can be better visualised from this one photo, where you can tell from the turbulence around the right leg that the ibis has just landed in this spot a split second before and that it is using its long bill to brace itself in order to regain balance.     And here I caught the ibis just as it was “landing” on a new feeding spot – the water is actually fairly deep here. I hope this post isn’t seen as much…

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Kiting Male Northern Harrier

On this morning at Farmington Bay we weren’t having very much luck with birds so Mia suggested that we hang out next to a high dike where the south wind was creating an updraft that we’d seen a male Northern Harrier kiting in earlier.  Despite the less than perfect light angle it turned out to be another one of Mia’s good ideas because it wasn’t long before the harrier returned to play in the updrafts and hunt the dike edges.  1/1600, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc Two things made this an especially interesting situation – the fact that the harrier was kiting (giving us more time with the bird) and the variety of backgrounds we got when the harrier would move just a few feet in the air.  It was a partly cloudy day and the bird was usually hanging just above the snow-covered Wasatch Range to the east so at times I got thin white clouds in the background, or a mix of clouds and blue sky, or both sky and mountains or the mountains alone.   Throw into that mix the fact that the light was constantly changing because of the clouds and you’ll understand the exposure difficulties that morning.      1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc  Because of the challenging light angle much of the harrier was often backlit but the head turn in this shot giving light on the head and eye made this image work for me.     1/1250, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4  Here the light was…

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Farmington Bay Bald Eagles 2012 – A Bust!

Farmington Bay Wildlife Management Area is typically a mecca for birders and bird photographers during January and February.  When it gets very cold many of Utah’s wintering Bald Eagles congregate there and create quite the spectacle for avian enthusiasts.  Though I’m not particularly fond of photographing birds among throngs of people I usually can’t resist the unusual opportunity with these magnificent birds and join in the fray multiple times during the “season”.          1/1250, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc One thing that especially appeals to me about Farmington Bay is the opportunity to photograph these eagles in flight with the Wasatch Mountains as a background.  Even though such a background makes it much more difficult for focus to “lock on” the bird I really like the dramatic backdrop the dark, often shaded mountains provide when there’s light on the eagle – much more appealing for me than the typical blue sky background.        Typically there are hundreds of eagles at the refuge during “prime time”.   I once counted 225 birds and that’s just the ones I could see.  Others have reported from 300-400 birds.  This photo should give you some idea, though it shows just one small portion of Unit One.  The concentration of birds was about the same that day everywhere you looked over the ice.        This is the famous “eagle tree”.  I’ve seen as many as 20 birds on this one perch alone.  Of course the eagles prefer to look south over the ice and water so it’s difficult…

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Lamenting the Loss of a Favorite Perch

This was a perch I had a love-hate relationship with for almost four years.  It was a small, very old and sun-bleached snag along the road down unit 1 at Farmington Bay Wildlife Management Area.  I loved it because American Kestrels liked to use it as a hunting perch, it was close to the road, not too high and it was natural and photogenic.  I hated it because it was on the east side of the road (I could only shoot from the road in my vehicle – open the door and the kestrel skedaddles) which meant that I was usually shooting into the sun in the morning which is my favorite time to photograph birds.  Back-lit kestrels are generally not a pretty sight… That road down unit 1 is closed for the nesting season (March through September) and I was very disappointed to see on my first trip down the road this fall that the snag was gone.  It may have fallen down on its own, been removed by refuge managers (which I doubt) or perhaps it was vandalized – I just don’t know.  But I will miss it, as will the kestrels I’m sure.  Avian photographers on this continent are well aware of how difficult this species is to get close to – they’re very skittish and almost never allow a close approach for photography.  That changes in mid-winter when it’s very cold.  They simply are much more reluctant to fly when it’s that frigid and the photographer can occasionally get quite close to them, especially when shooting from a vehicle.   But most nature photographers…

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Weather Loach in Utah – Another Invasive Species

  On December 12, 2007 I photographed this Common Goldeneye with a fish at Farmington Bay Wildlife Management Area.  At the time I didn’t pay much attention to what kind of fish it might be and then just kind of forgot about it.  Male Common Goldeneye with unidentified (at the time) fish    The moment of capture Then, on October 2, 2008, I took some photos of a Snowy Egret fishing, also at Farmington.  Finally, I became curious about the unusual fish – noticing the atypical elongated almost eel-like body in particular. I made some casual inquiries of refuge personnel about fish species present there but didn’t get anything definitive that would match this fish.   More time went by, then I finally showed Justina Parsons-Bernstein some of the photos and asked her about the fish.  She is the Director of The Great Salt Lake Nature Center at Farmington Bay WMA and she was also curious as to what species of fish it was so she sent some of my images to a vertebrate specialist with the state of Utah.  He keyed it out as a Weather Loach. It turns out that the Weather Loach or Dojo Loach as it is also known (Misgurnus anguillicaudatus) is quite a remarkable fish.  The name Weather Loach comes from the fact that it is highly sensitive to minor changes in barometric pressure and when it perceives such a change its behaviour becomes erratic, active and animated.  Humans have kept them captive as a weather indicator for centuries.  They are a very hardy species, capable of surviving poor conditions by swallowing atmospheric…

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