Tag: ethics

One-footed Merganser In A Hurry

I live near a local fishing pond that attracts a few fish-eating birds, particularly in the late winter and early spring.  For the last few days there’s been a pair of Common Mergansers on the pond and yesterday morning I was finally able to get relatively close to them for a few minutes.  The pond was still about half covered with ice but it’s melting fast.    1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light Most of the time there wasn’t much action with the cormorants but once, when this bird apparently thought its companion might have caught a fish, it rushed over to investigate.  It wasn’t until this morning when I began culling and processing the images that I noticed that it was missing its left foot.      1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light  Since they use their webbed feet to help propel them along the surface of the water this bird could really scoot for having only one foot.      1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light  This image shows the missing foot best.      1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light This shot, and the next two, are of the other merganser.  As you can see it had some kind of fishing lure/hook stuck in its lower mandible.  It doesn’t look like a typical lure so perhaps it’s what’s left of a fish that it had tried to swallow when the hook and/or line got stuck in its bill.      1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500…

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It’s Been A Tough Winter For Birds (and it’s getting worse)

Typical winters are hard on birds in northern Utah (and elsewhere).  But when the season is unusually frigid with lots of snow as we’re having this year they struggle even more to survive. All of  these images have been taken since January 2 of this year.   Upland game birds like this Chukar seem to have adapted to extreme conditions fairly well.  This bird was all puffed up and sitting high on a rock to catch the earliest warming rays of the sun as it rose over the nearby Wasatch Mountains.     Another upland game species that can apparently take harsh conditions quite well is the Ring-necked Pheasant (this is a female).  They seem to forage for seeds at the base of plants where the snow isn’t as thick and their food is more readily available.     But many other species have a difficult time and quite a few birds don’t survive until spring.  The waterfowl that winter over here congregate in the few areas of open water where the flowing water is the last to freeze over.  But when it gets very cold, even those small bits of open water freeze.  I’ve seen  ducks and coots frozen into the ice, some of them still alive.  This female Green-winged Teal has just left one of the last unfrozen patches of water and is approaching an area of frost flowers.     This Northern Flicker is using the protection of the underside of the eaves of a building on Antelope Island State Park.   I thought the angled…

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Poop, Perches and Personal Preferences

Many raptors are “sit and wait” hunters, which means they often hunt from an elevated perch instead of “on the wing” and Red-tailed Hawks are well-known for this practice.  An elevated perch provides good views over a large area and no extra energy need be expended in flight while looking for food.  Typically these birds will use the same productive perch repeatedly over long periods of time, which presents a challenge to the photographer – poop (hereafter referred to as “whitewash”). Whitewash consists largely of crystalline uric acid (it’s more complicated than that but I’ll try not to stray into a discussion of the functions of the cloaca), which tends to be bright white.  That whitewash can create some aesthetic and ethical conflicts between a “natural shot” and an image that has been “Photoshopped” to death, primarily by use of the clone tool. Many photographers routinely clone out whitewash and/or droppings and I’ll admit that I’ve done it before, but for me it’s an ethical dilemma because I much prefer to leave my images as natural as possible since I consider myself to be a “nature photographer”.  In fact, right now I’m struggling with a series of Horned Lark images that I really like, but there’s a large, fresh and very conspicuous dropping right in front of the birds foot that most would find distracting.  I could clone it out but every time I looked at that image I would know what I’d done.   Canon 7D, 1/4000, f/5.6, ISO 640, 500 f/4, natural light, not baited, set up or called in A couple of days…

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Falconry – A Detriment To The Birds?

As some of you will remember, I’ve recently made two posts calling into question some of the ethics of the “sport” (some don’t like that term) of falconry.   This was the bird that prompted my most recent post – an “escaped” female Peregrine Falcon that I photographed along the Antelope Island causeway a few weeks ago.  You’ll notice that she still has her leather falconry anklets above her feet (only one can be seen in this photo).     And last year, this escaped male American Kestrel was loose near Farmington Bay WMA and it still had not only its anklets but its jesses.  The extreme danger to the bird of having those long, dangling jesses engangle and kill the kestrel is obvious. In both posts I questioned the ethics of falconry in general, but admitting my relative ignorance of the subject I asked (on the second post) for more information from my readers to “enlighten” me on the subject. For those who haven’t seen those posts and have the interest, here’s the links: Escaped Falconry Bird – Peregrine Falcon Escaped Falconry Bird – Peregrine Falcon, Again   Mark Runnels, a master falconer from Oklahoma, responded to the second post with a series of very detailed, knowledgeable and thoughtful comments on falconry – responding to each of my concerns dispassionately and eloquently. However, that post was made on September 17 and Mark didn’t begin to comment until October 23, which means that his valuable information likely went under the radar for most of my readers (very few folks come back to a…

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The Dusky Grouse And The Good Samaritan

Remembering to call this species the “Dusky Grouse” is going to be a challenge for me.  For years they’ve been called Blue Grouse, with two recognized sub-species – Dusky Grouse and Sooty Grouse.  But based on recent mitochondrial DNA studies the two sub-species of Blue Grouse are now recognized as separate species.  Apparently the common name “Blue Grouse” will no longer be used.   1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light  I came across this male a couple of days ago while high in the Wasatch Mountains on Francis Peak along Skyline Drive.  I was driving up a steep, narrow road and just as I stopped to photograph the bird a hunter in a pickup came down the road right in front of us.  If he had continued forward the bird would have spooked but when he spotted it and noticed our long lenses pointed at the grouse he very considerately stopped for several minutes so that we could get our shots.  When we had our images I motioned for him to continue, which he did and yes – the bird flew off.   I talked to him for a minute or so and thanked him for his kind deed. In the past I’ve taken the occasional pot shot at hunters on this blog.  But the considerate act of this sportsman reminds me once again to avoid stereotypes – that the unethical, inconsiderate and/or unsportsmanlike behavior of a few renegade hunters should not reflect on the entire group – just as similar behaviors of relatively small numbers of nature photographers should…

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Juvenile Red-tailed Hawk Honing Its Hunting Skills

For the past few weeks I’ve been working a pair of juvenile Red-tailed Hawks with varying degrees of success.  Mostly they’re just toying with me – staying just out of range or on the wrong side of the road in poor light.  But on two mornings the lighter colored of the two birds put on quite a show.  It chose to do its “sit and wait” hunting from a series of dark rocks close to the road and didn’t seem to care that I was there.  And close.    1/2000. f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, not baited The rocks are on the side of a small mountain with vole-laden prairie grass between me and the hawk so the bird would perch on them and then take off for prey it spotted – often in my general direction.  The prey is presumable nearly always voles though these young birds are usually unsuccessful.  It did catch and eat a small snake once but the action was buried in the grasses.  I’ve yet to see it actually catch a vole and that makes me feel sympathy for the hawk but on the other hand all these attempts at prey have given me some nice photo ops.       1/2000. f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, not baited Usually the setting had grass and/or rocks in the background and often it was close enough to the hawk to make focus-lock difficult but here the background was a little further away.  On both days by the time the bird cooperated the sun was high enough that the…

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Landing Red-tailed Hawk

I haven’t often succeeded in photographing a landing raptor.  When they take off they usually don’t come back and when they do it’s often difficult to maintain focus on them as they land because of close backgrounds.  However, this immature Red-tailed Hawk gave me just such an opportunity a couple of days ago.    1/2000, f 7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4 It was hunting from a huge rock outcropping and looking down over the valley in the background of this image.  I spent quite a while with this bird but it was side lit and I wasn’t very optimistic about getting a decent take-off shot because I expected it to spot potential prey in the valley below and take off away from me, giving me butt shots only.       1/1600, f 7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4 Which is exactly what happened. However, I saw where the bird landed far below in the valley, missed the prey and took off again so I wondered if I could be lucky enough for it to return to the same perch.  I wasn’t particularly optimistic because I was so close to the rock (you’ll notice from my techs that I had even removed my tc).  The problem was that as soon as the hawk took off from that distant perch it disappeared behind the same massive rock outcropping on the side of the mountain that had been its perch and if it did return I wouldn’t know it until the very last split second, as it flared up to land on the rock from behind and below it. So I prefocussed on the likely…

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Harlequin Ducks Along Antelope Island Causeway Have Apparently Been Killed

As many of you are aware there have been three Harlequin Ducks along the Antelope Island causeway for many weeks now – two females and one male.  These ducks are extremely rare in Utah as there’s only been a handful of sightings of the species in our state over the years.  These three ducks have been enjoyed by bird lovers and others at the first bridge on the causeway for about six weeks this early winter.  They were quite approachable by people and were a delight to observe and photograph. According to reports, all three ducks are now dead – “harvested” by hunters.  Here’s a link to a very enlightening (in more ways than one) discussion of the reported incident on a hunting forum.  Killing these rare ducks along the causeway is apparently perfectly legal.  Whether or not it is ethical is very much open to question – including by many in the hunting community.     Harlequin Duck. Photo taken on 10/30/11 at first bridge along causeway      Female Harlequin Duck – photo taken on 11/17/2011 at first bridge along causeway     Male Harlequin Duck coming into breeding plumage – photo taken on 11/17/2011 at first bridge along causeway    Though I’m not a hunter I’ve been an avid supporter of hunting for many years – including extolling the positive effects the practice has had on wildlife populations to my high school zoology and biology classes for 33 years.  Should it turn out that the person reporting the killings of these ducks has been less than truthful and the birds turn up again in the future I…

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“Baiting” – A Matter of Definition and Ethics

Baiting just may be the most hotly debated topic in the bird photography community.   Part of that debate revolves around the fact that not all nature photographers agree on a precise definition for the term.   I’ve followed and participated in discussions of this “hot topic” in nature photography discussion forums for years now and it seems that the most mainstream definition, the one that the vast majority of avian photographers subscribe to, is a version of this: baiting – using food or other items or methods to artificially lure birds in close to the photograpaher.  This would include using recorded bird calls, “setups”, back yard bird feeders, stuffed raptors (many birds come in to “mob” raptors) and a variety of other ingenious methods used by some well known “nature” photographers.  One of the most controversial forms of baiting is using live bait (often pet store mice) to bring in raptors – owls in particular.  This practice can have many negative efffects on the birds – from making them dependent on an artifical food source to spreading disease to causing birds to be hit by cars – not to mention the ethical dilemma of “nature” photographers photographing birds in unnatural situations.  To bait or not to bait is an ethical decision that virtually every bird photographer must make.  For me that decision was easy – I do not bait my intended subjects.  I do sometimes photograph birds at my back yard feeder simply for the practice but I don’t post those images on online forums, include them on my website…

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Barn Owls in Flight

Flight shots of Barn Owls are very difficult to get because these birds are almost strictly nocturnal and typically fly and hunt only at night.  Photographing birds in flight in the dark or very low light is virtually impossible without using artificial lighting methods which I will not do for ethical reasons. Barn Owl in flight during in full daylight   I had never even seen a Barn Owl in flight until the winter of 2007-08.  That unusually frigid winter began early and brought more snow than usual to the valleys of Utah.  Suddenly, during January and much of February, Barn Owls were hunting the marshes close to the Great Salt Lake during daytime – sometimes until 10 or 11 AM.  Their usual strategy was to hunt for voles (very similar to mice) along the edges of Phragmites growth in the wetlands.  Typically it was very cold on those mornings – often between 0 and +20 degrees Farenheit which made it very uncomfortable standing outside in front of a tripod mounted camera for hours on end!  I very nearly lost some digits to frostbite many times but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.    Barn Owl hunting voles along frosty Phragmites edges I usually preferred to get Phragmites in the backgrounds of my flight shots if possible because they make such a nice backdrop.  In the photo above, there had been heavy fog with sub freezing temperatures so literally everything was covered with a heavy coating of frost.  A magical setting.        Barn Owl skimming Phragmites in background Sometimes the…

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