Tag: warm light

Northern Harrier Basking In The Rising Sun

Just a single image this morning. Normally I can never get close to a harrier perched in a tree but this one made an exception for me.    1/800, f/8, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc, natural light, not baited, set up or called in As I approached this juvenile male (solid rufous breast, light iris) on a cold morning, the rising sun was still behind the mountains so it felt secure in the shade as I positioned my pickup for the best angle I could get.  When the sunlight finally hit the bird he was determined to soak in the warmth (rather than fly off) so he spread his tail, fluffed up and posed for me for several minutes.  The light was directional but I liked its effect.  I’ve added no saturation to the image. Ron

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Male Northern Harrier In Warm Light

Just a single image this time. I found this male Northern Harrier trying to catch some warming rays soon after the sun came up on a cold morning this past winter.   1/1250, f/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc I was too close to keep from clipping body parts as he lifted off but as you can see I was fighting for depth of field and shutter speed in this light anyway so I was reasonably happy to get what I did.. One of the few things I miss about frigid winters is the approachability of some of the raptors when it’s very cold.  I could never get this close to a perched harrier in the summer months. Ron

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Just A Shot That I Like… #21 – Red-tailed Hawk In Dramatic Light

Strongly directional light can be a blessing or a curse and all too often it’s the latter.  It makes proper exposure a challenge because it’s very easy to blow the highlights and/or have shadows so deep that there’s no detail there at all.  But when things work out the effect can be appealing and dramatic.       1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 640, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This old cedar stump is a favorite perch of Red-tailed Hawks at the base of Utah’s Stansbury Mountains in the west desert.  It’s usually a frustrating situation for me though because I can’t access a proper position to get the sun behind me and for most of the day the sidelight is just too harsh for an exposure that works well.  But on this one morning the hawk was on the stump just as the sun came over the Oquirrh Mountains to the east so the light was soft and warm enough to make an exposure that I liked and I thought the shaded upper background worked well with the light on the bird’s head. Ron  Ron 

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Just A Shot That I Like… #14 – Prairie Falcon Warming In The Early Morning Sun

As I’ve mentioned previously in this blog Prairie Falcons have been one of my nemesis birds for a very long time.  But recently I had several close up opportunities with the species.     1/3200, f/6.3, ISO 500, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This juvenile falcon had been hunting smaller duck species along the shore of the Great Salt Lake and would occasionally rest on some shoreline rocks.  This time I caught it enjoying the warming rays of the sun just minutes after sunrise.  Here the warm light has just reached the bird and perch but hadn’t yet hit much of  the water in the background.  I’ve posted several images of this species recently and perhaps I’ve overdone it but I guess my excitement over finally “conquering” a nemesis just got the best of me… Ron Addendum:  A note to any bird photographers who may notice my camera settings for this image and wonder about them.  I certainly didn’t need 1/3200 shutter speed for this static image but I had already taken multiple shots of this falcon with more appropriate settings for a perched bird so now that I had enough light I decided to increase my shutter speed in preparation for take-off.   But of course the bird took off  facing away from me so I deleted those images. 

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Birds, Lamentations And Musings From My Recent Trip To Western Montana

Recently Mia and I spent just over a week in western Montana on another camping/photo excursion.  It was a trip packed with wonderful birds, breathtaking scenery, colorful characters and almost too much drama for me.  We spent two days at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, then four days on the western Montana farm near the Canadian border where I grew up and then spent one night at Red Rocks again on the way home.   In this post I’ll include a sampling of photos from the trip in the rough order they were taken.    Canon 7D, 1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 800, EV +1.00, 800 f/4, 1.4 tc This Long-billed Dowitcher photo was taken at a pond on the refuge that often has many birds of good variety but it’s difficult to get good light at this location.     Canon 7D, 1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 800, EV +0.00, 500 f/4, 1.4 tc This Least Sandpiper gave me a similar pose as in the previous shot but I liked the head turn and lighting better (even though it made the whites a challenge to expose properly).      Canon 40D @22mm, 1/60, f/14, ISO 500, EV +0.33 Mornings at Red Rocks are often spectacular.  Here the sun is just beginning to rise on a layer of ground fog with another layer of low clouds just above the fog.  Roads similar to and much worse than this one were the source of the drama I referred to earlier.  On this trip we had a total of four flat tires, most…

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Great Horned Owl Fledglings and Juveniles

Great Horned Owls (hereafter referred to as GHO’s in this post) have been resident on the Dudley farm in NW Montana for years and are usually successful in raising one brood of youngsters.  Typically they’ll nest in one of the several old granaries available to them.     Peekaboo youngster Most of these older granaries have seen their better days since many were constructed  in the 1930’s and have had to withstand the fierce Montana wind but the owls love them for both roosting and nesting.  Here you can see a very young GHO peering out at me over the back of its sibling.       Siblings on granary floor These are the siblings on the granary floor.  It has been used only for junk storage for many years so it’s very cluttered but the owls don’t seem to mind in the least.   Chicks in tree nest GHO’s will often nest in trees but like other owls and falcons they do not build their own nests, preferring to take over the previously used nests of other species such as Red-tailed Hawks (most commonly), other hawks, crows, ravens and herons.  I found this nest next to a major road about 35 miles from the farm.   I don’t know what species originally constructed this nest but the spring after these photos were taken the nest was being used by a pair of Swainson’s Hawks.  Interspecific  recycling in the bird world…      Three GHO chicks in a tree This is the same nest as in the previous image.  As you can see the…

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