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Great Gray Owl at sunset with golden Tamarack trees in the background. Sax-Zim Bog, northern, MN, 11/3/2021. Photo taken from the car, 20-30 yards away. (Thanks to Mike Lentz Nature Photography and Monika Bobek for their suggestions on where to find this guy.) Click images to see larger.    A short video of a Great Gray Owl at sunset.
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Northern Lights from some lonely forest road in Northern Minnesota, 11/3/2021. This was just a couple of hours after sunset, green on the horizon, a few streaks shooting up and a red/purple fringe. In the early morning dark hours the aurora exploded and sent huge streaks of colored light high in the sky. Unfortunately I was asleep in bed by then. Ah, well. It was a wonderful night. I was happy with the photos that I got, alone in the woods, with the Aurora Borealis and billions of stars (until I got cold, tired and went to bed).  A sneak peek at a small segment of our next canoeing video, highlighting some of the joys of paddling in the quiet autumn splendor and passing on the joys and skills of paddling to the next generations. It will be a few months before we are done with this, but we had such a great day of paddling on Wednesday afternoon I thought I'd share a little now. (Also on YouTube https://youtu.be/SCEAaTGMlKA ) Two photos of Ramondskill Falls in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, in eastern Pennsylvania. The first photo is the upper falls, the second is the lower part of the falls as seen from above (the trail to the bottom of the lower falls was closed). Combined they form the largest waterfall in Pennsylvania at about 175 feet, just a few feet shorter than Niagara Falls. (Click/tap images to see the full image.)  
We had a short drive through Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio and went for a couple of short hikes to take a few photos. A Great Blue Heron and female Wood Duck were very cooperative. We also visited Brandywine Falls.       It seems that one of the biggest events for Iowa birders and photographers this summer is the appearance of Yellow-crowned Night Herons at Maskunky Marsh near Oskaloosa, IA. They are rather unusual in Iowa, normally frequenting the southern Gulf and Atlantic states. This has been a big deal in this location with hundreds of birders and photographers going to the marsh in the last month to see these birds and other herons, egrets and smaller shore birds. Part two of this excitement has been two juvenile Little Blue Herons in the past week. They are all white and only look like their adult version by size rather than color. I spent two mornings there this week coming home with hundreds of photos. Click the images below to see larger (captions below each photo).                    
Three of my photos were accepted to the 41st Annual Cerro Gordo Photo Show this year. Always an honor. Photos in the Photo Show can be seen at the Charles H. MacNider Art Museum until July 10, 2021. Click images to see full image.   
A Great Horned Owlet about ready to fledge the nest (taken today) and its younger sibling (taken last week). It was really dark back in the limestone cave, even on a bright day. I've enjoyed photographing young owls in this same nest for several years, but I almost never see an adult where I can get a photo.
 Male Wood Duck - Click to see larger I just love Wood Ducks and it helps to know someone who maintains nest boxes. I was invited by a local gentleman, Eldon Siemers, to accompany him as he went out to inspect a dozen or more Wood Duck houses that he built, installed and maintains. As we quietly approached each nest box he carefully inserted a cell phone camera in to the box to take a photo to see if there was a hen nesting in the box. Some were empty, but others did have a bird nesting or had unattended eggs. There were 30 eggs in one box, not necessarily from the same Wood Duck. Apparently females may lay eggs in an established nest box where another bird has already laid eggs. There is a lot more to tell about this activity, but it was a very interesting morning.              Click to see larger Pella, IA is famous for the annual Tulip Festival held in April every year. We avoided the crowds and went a week early when many or most of the tulips were in bloom and had a nice walk and drive around town to view the tulips. Click images to see larger.         On an evening drive through Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge (Iowa) we of course, saw Bison and Elk, but I was really thrilled to see several Ring-necked Pheasants in the fading light. (Photos from the car.) [Click images to see larger.]      I spent two mornings in a blind at the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge in the north-central sand hills of Nebraska to photograph the courtship displays of Sharp-tailed Grouse. This was my second trip to photograph them in Nebraska; the first trip to a different location scuttled by floods in 2019. Arriving to the blind in the dark before sunrise I waited until the grouse came out to the "lek", the grounds where they do their courtship displays on the top of a knoll in an open area of the mid-grass prairie of the sand hills. It is an interesting display. The males come out to the lek to impress a female and to discourage other males. The males may strut around an area that they deem to be theirs and aggressively confront any other male who might attempt to walk through or claim the same piece of turf. When females are present the males will put their head down, tail straight up in the air shoulders forward and wings out to the side inflating purple neck sacks and do a rapid tippy-tap dance around and around to try to impress a mostly disinterested female. Sometimes the males are beak to beak doing their dance, trying to out-do the other male. Sometimes they get very aggressive, jumping up in the air and coming down feet first on top of the other male. When the females wander off in to the taller grass most activity stops until a female returns. This goes on for an hour or two after sunrise and then the birds leave, to return again tomorrow to start over again. I don't know at what point a female selects a male to breed with, but I understand that she is on her own to lay er eggs and tend to her nest and young after breeding. Lots of photos and video below. Click an image to see larger. Captions below the photos.                    Sharp-tailed Grouse video: |
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November 2021
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