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I spent a morning with a couple of puffed up Great Horned Owlets, in north Iowa, stretching their legs and wings and probably getting close to fledging the nest. We had a bit of a staring contest from about 30 yards away. I watched for about 3 1/2 hours and did not see any adult owls, but I'm sure that they saw me and were keeping their distance. [Click images to see larger, and play the video below.] Watch the video:
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While in Nebraska I went out looking for Snow Geese. There are often large numbers (hundreds of thousands) at Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in NW Missouri or Desoto National Wildlife Refuge north of Council Bluffs, Iowa in March, but they were both flooded and the roads were closed. I found a few thousand way out in a wetlands about a quarter of a mile from the road, and did see a few fly by, but not huge numbers I was hoping for.
I have never seen Sharp-tailed Grouse, so since I was going to be in in Nebraska to photograph cranes I made reservations with Calamus Outfitters in central Nebraska near Burwell to go out in a blind before sunrise to photograph the Sharp-tailed Grouse doing their courting activities. To the left is a male Sharp-tailed Grouse, trying to impress a female. Their mating display includes loud clucking vocalizations along with a little shuffling of the feet dance, pointing their tail feathers straight up in the air, putting their head low to the ground, puffing out their purple neck sacks and spreading their wings. There may be several males doing this display at one time to entice a female and hopefully the opportunity to breed. It happens on a grassy prairie area called a 'Lek', very early in the morning before sunrise, the end of March and early April. They are very similar to Prairie Chickens. We walked quietly out to the blind in the dark to get ready to watch and photograph the display. The lek was on a grassy knoll and here was a stiff wind blowing from the north so of course most of the birds were on the other side of the knoll where we couldn't see them from the blind. We could hear them clucking and only a few came up to the top of the rise where we could see them and get some photos. [Click the images to see larger, and view the video below] Video - Male Sharp-tailed Grouse doing their mating dance, trying to impress a female: I have made multiple trips to central Nebraska over the years to photograph Sandhill Cranes. This year was a late spring in the area and the cranes didn't come in to the Platte River until late and bunched up more than they have in years past. There were record numbers at one time estimated at around 650,000 cranes the week that I was there the last week of March. It is always an amazing sight to see and hear, even more so when there are so many. The have an interesting dancing ritual where they puff their chest out, spread their wings and jump straight up in the air - often chest to chest with another crane. This can be territorial, establishing social relationships and/or bonding. See the last three photos and the video below. [Click images to see larger] Video of Sandhill Cranes dancing:
Take a few minutes, sit back, relax, and enjoy a quiet canoe float down the river in North Iowa with my good friend Dale Mills who wrote and narrated the text for the video. Dale has canoed the Winnebago River for every month of every year for at least a couple of decades. He is very passionate and poetic about canoeing, nature and conservation. Update, Sept. 5, 2019:
See also the second in the series "A Spring Sojourn via Canoe". and the third in the series - "Autumn Artistry via Canoe" I have traveled many miles on many occasions to photograph Bald Eagles. It is nice when I can photograph some just a few miles from home. This one gave me a nice fly-by while I sat and watched for several hours as they rested on the nest, perched on branches and stretched their wings with their aerial maneuvers. A long telephoto lens allows me to keep my distance, yet get some close-up photos.
[Click images to see larger] Monday, February 18, the night before the full Moon. The rising nearly full 'snow supermoon' tonight, over a snowy Winter farmland with a long telephoto lens (600mm + 1.4 = 840mm). This month the moon is at its closest orbit to the Earth about making it appear 10% larger and 30% brighter than average. Due to refraction in the atmosphere it appears largest near the horizon when rising or setting. The night before the full Moon there is still light in the sky because the sun has not yet set.
Just outside one of the eastern entrances to Death Valley National Park, near Beatty, NV is the ghost town of Rhyolite. This was a late gold rush era mining town with a short life from 1904 until about 1916. Death Valley and the surrounding areas have some of the darkest night sky in the country. I had hoped to get some images of the ghost town and stars and Milky Way on a clear night. Unfortunately as the moon was setting and the sky got darker the clouds moved in very quickly and stayed for the next four nights (along with rain). Below are the remains of the old bank building, with the constellation of Orion, the Orion nebula and Sirius in the the sky. Also an interesting pole with shoes and boots hanging from it - (a shoe tree?). Then the clouds moved in and I was done with night photos.
(Click images to see larger) We spent three days in Death Valley National Park last week (January, 2019). While many of the areas were closed due to the shutdown of the federal government (grrrr), we did see some of the notable features including the salt flats of Badwater Basin 282 feet below sea level - the lowest place in the western hemisphere, sand dunes, mountains and valleys, desert, a 200 year-old volcano crater, and very little wildlife (see previous post about the coyote). It is a pretty hot dry place most of the year, but it was cool, cloudy and rainy for most of our visit with one good day of sunshine.
(Click the photos to see larger.)
We have driven by this tree many times in previous years but never taken the time to stop and enjoy it. The tree, a few miles south of Faribault, MN, has been decorated for several years by Jerry Lageson and has something like 45,000+ lights on it. Most people go whizzing by at 70+ MPH on Interstate 35 and get a fleeting glimpse. There is not an easy exit to get to the side road and requires a few miles south on I-35, then a few more miles back north on county roads, across the interstate, them back south again to get to the tree. This was a perfect early December night right after a new fallen snow. Here is a news feature (after the commercial) from KARE 11 TV.
I call them Winter birds, because Pine Siskins usually spend their summers much farther north, and occasionally show up in our backyard for part of the Winter. Yesterday I counted 53, but I'm sure that number was low, because there were many in the trees and bushes that I didn't count (it helps to have lots of feeders out).They are about the size of a Goldfinch, with a very streaked breast and pointed bill. They eat copious amounts of thistle seed and black-oil sunflower seeds and don't seem to care if they go up the feeder or down the feeder, as long as they get to the seed.
I was notified today that I won two awards in the Voyageurs National Park Association 2018 Photo Contest. Third place for a Common Loon photo and Honorable Mention for a photo of the Milky Way over the Ash River. My two photos are below. You can see all of the winners on the Voyageurs National Park Facebook page. I also see that the Voyageurs National Park Association used my Milky Way photo as their cover photo on Facebook. |
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March 2024
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