Tag: fish

Nesting Osprey Of Flaming Gorge

There’s lots of great Osprey photos “out there” but sadly none of them are mine.  I’ve tried with this species time and again and something has always gone wrong – crappy perches, poor light, couldn’t get close and most often I couldn’t even find the birds.  But recently I finally got some shots of them I like. As I mentioned in an earlier post Mia and I spent three days at Flaming Gorge this week.  I was delighted to find a nesting pair of Osprey as I’ve had very little luck with this species in the past.  The nest was on a nesting platform right next to a boat-launching ramp so the birds were used to human traffic and went about their normal routine even with vehicles, boats and fishermen in the vicinity.  There were no chicks yet but they were obviously incubating eggs.    1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 400, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc One bird of the pair was always on the nest of course but occasionally the other Osprey would fly by very close and then immediately leave again – it seemed to me that it was “just checking up” to make sure that everything was ok at the nest.  I believe this bird is the male.  Sexing Osprey can be tricky but on average males have fewer (if any) dark markings on chin, breast and sides of neck than do females.  You’ll see what I think is the female of the pair a couple of images later.      1/2000, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc  Another shot of the male…

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An Osprey, A Fish And A Thieving Magpie

Yesterday Mia and I returned from a three day camping and photo trip to Flaming Gorge.  We had great weather for most of our time there and as usual the scenery and ambience were awesome.  At an elevation over 6000′ many of the birds that we usually see there apparently haven’t arrived yet but we spent some quality time with a pair of nesting Osprey – a species that I’ve had little luck with in the past.    1/2000, f/5.6, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This pole with all the attached ugly hardware was within a few feet of the nesting platform and early one morning this Osprey landed on the pole with a freshly caught fish.  At first I figured that this bird would deliver the fish to its mate on the nest (I have a lot to learn about this species) but it didn’t.  It’s intention was to eat the fish itself but as you’ll see, those plans were delayed by an interloper.     It didn’t take long for this Black-billed Magpie to show up and torment the rightful owner of the fish.  This Osprey removed and dropped the intestines in pieces and it seemed obvious to me that the magpie had learned that particular feeding pattern and came looking for  tidbits that had landed on the wires below the Osprey.  Here you can see one of those bits in the beak of the magpie that it had picked off of the metal above its head.   So far the Osprey doesn’t seem too…

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Bald Eagles at Farmington Bay

I paid another visit to Farmington yesterday and while I got some nice shots of a few other species I was reminded of the Bald Eagles that were winter residents out there just a few short months ago.  I miss them.  So when it turned overcast this morning and I couldn’t go out photographing birds I decided to revisit some of the eagle images I got at Farmington three months ago.   Canon 7D, 1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This carp may have been an easy catch for the eagle because the water was quite shallow and the fish was likely stunned (though it did appear to still be alive) by the rotenone used to control these fish at the refuge.      Canon 7D, 1/2500, f/7.1, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc Both of these images of the eagle with the  fish were difficult exposures with the white head facing toward the sun but I liked the action and the good look at the carp.      Canon 7D, 1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This is one of my better exposures on both the white head and the very dark body and wing plumage in the species.  Early morning light certainly helped with that exposure.      Canon 7D, 1/1250, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc I like the unusual head turn from this juvenile bird and the Wasatch Mountain background.      Canon 7D, 1/4000, f/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc (wish I’d had lower ISO in this image…

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Fish Eating Northern Harriers

 As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, the winter of 2008 was a particularly brutal one in northern Utah.  During January and February there was much more snow than usual and it was bitterly cold.  During most winters our Northern Harriers rely primarily on voles as a food supply but in 2008 with the voles under the deep crusty snow our harriers were desperate for food.  Birds of North America Online provides extensive information on the dietary habits of harriers.  It lists small to medium-sized mammals (primarily rodents), birds, reptiles and frogs as harrier food sources, stating further that the diet of harriers during winter in their northern range (which includes northern Utah) consists of voles “almost exclusively”.  I can find no mention of harriers eating fish, ever! Each year in early February some of our wetlands managers treat some of our ponds with rotenone (a chemical that prevents oxygen from being absorbed across fish gill membranes) in an effort to control the invasive and damaging carp that do so much damage to the emergent vegetation which is so vital for waterfowl.  So, in 2008 for a few weeks, our desperate and starving harriers began to eat fish!  In the three winters since then I have never seen harriers eating fish even though the dead carp are always plentiful after the rotenone kill.    1/1250, 1/1000, ISO 500 Many of the carp are brought to the shores or ice surface by Bald Eagles which makes them available to the harriers who generally cannot retrieve them from the water.      1/1250, f/8, ISO…

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Pied-billed Grebe Feeding Behaviors

Pied-billed Grebes are fascinating little birds with a chip on their shoulders.  They are pugnacious, full of personality and quite small.  They don’t seem to get a lot of attention from bird photographers, possibly because of their generally drab colors and because they’re so common.  I really enjoy watching and photographing their behaviors. I’ve stated here before that “behavior” is a major focus of this blog and if I have images of interesting behaviors that are less than perfect technically I will still post them if they illustrate the behavior well.  There are several in that category in this post.    Grebe with young carp Carp are the primary food for these birds in many of the ponds I frequent.  Even young fish can make a huge mouthful for these very small grebes.       Swallowing a carp I’ve seen it take several minutes for a grebe to finally work one of these huge (for them) fish down their throats.  And I’ve yet to see one give up on the meal because it’s too big.     A slippery meal Fish are slimy and slippery and sometimes get away from the grebe temporarily, though they always seem to be recaptured.      A potential thief in the background  These birds are very social so there’s nearly always other grebes close by when one catches a meal and some of them will invariably try to steal the prize from its rightful owner.  This can make for some very interesting but challenging encounters for the photographer because the action is usually so…

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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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