Bird Photography - Fine Art Prints

Cameras and photographers like light.  Some days that look all gray and dis

mal have plenty of light.  Sanderlings and a plover in the fog.

 

Squibby beach:

                                                 Translucent ……………………

 

    

 

 

 

  

 Birds are cool!  Lanny

These images and more are available for purchase. Contact me or View store.

 

White-rumps?  Yes, I actually do know how it should be spelled, but it seems too prissy like that, and more fun this way.  I opt for fun in writing.  Otherwise what a drudge!

So, when is an Ipswich an Ipswich and not a Savannah?  This is a stiking (not a word you would typically associate with an Ipswich Sparrow) bird with some partly washed-out Ipswich features … but with moderate streaking on the underparts and fairly sharp savvy head markings as well.  It would be a stretch to call this a full-blown, really pale Ipswich, but it’s part way there.  National Geo. shows it as princeps.  Peterson has an Ipswich looking like this.  And it behaved very unlike a typical savvy: curious about me and Stella, walking about in the open, not far away and standing in one spot for a while to check us out, even approaching us.  Maybe that’s what they do on Sable Island!

 

 

Stellaaaaaaaa!

The white-rumpeds are still around and add a little flavor to the Sanderling-Dunlin thing. 

 

Three species:

Two species.  Right side bird is a Dunlin.

All the shorebirds and all the gulls launched out over Tisbury Great Pond at the same time.  Likely falcon on the cruise?  Yes, a high adult peregrine.  Boost the strip of sandpipers below the falcon shot.  There are two white-rumps in there. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How about these Dusty Miller pastels!

There were perhaps six Horned Larks in all.  It’s hard to keep track, ’cause they are sooo sneaky.

 

Birds are cool!  Lanny

These images and more are available for purchase. Contact me or View store.

 

 The ambition was fair, even promising.  Two days previous a Black-tailed Gull had been spotted and nicely photographed at Herring Cove Beach next to Provincetown.  Look up this gull in a reference, if you can find it at all, and you will be impressed with how little likelihood there is of one showing up anywhere near Massachusetts.  I was told this one was probably the third or fourth record in the state.  A lot of small pinkish shrimp, like krill, were either in the shore waves or already washed up on the beach there and around the corner at Race Point and lots of gulls of many sorts had shown up to devour them with little effort.  Lots of gulls would translate, according to one observer, as about fifteen hundred birds.

 Anyway, I wanted to attend a monthly meeting for serious birders held in a small auditorium in a biology lab building at Harvard.  The principal speaker was someone I wanted to meet, because she orchestrates a lot of the research on Red Knots (please go to the “Crusade” page above) that happens out at Monomoy, just south of the elbow of Cape Cod.  Her crew actually censuses the knots feeding in certain measured plots, checks them for identifying leg bands, tests what their proximity tolerance is for human activity; and they even take core samples of the top few inches of the sand/mud to ID and count what prey items lie within.

 Since I was headed off-Island anyway, it made perfectly good sense to make a run up to P’town to find the Black-tailed Gull.  A no-brainer, if I could find the time.

 This is becoming a shaggy-dog story, because I did not see the sacred bird, even though I know it was in the ‘hood that day.  I also went back the morning of the following day en route – if you can call it that - from Cambridge to Woods Hole and the Vineyard.  That’s how it goes in birding.  I gave it my best shot under the circumstances.  But my blogging is an excuse to put up bird photos anyway, so, as I waited for the rare one to cruise by or land at my feet, I took some shots of Ring-billeds at the parking lot and of the overall gulls-on-the-beach scene.

 From the reports of others on site and from my own observations the following seabirds were logged from shore:

 Pomarine and Parasitic Jaegers

Greater, Cory’s and Manx Shearwaters

Common Terns

Gulls – Black-legged Kittiwake, GBBG, HEGU, Lesser BBG, Ring-billed, Laughing, Black-headed, Bonaparte’s, Little and, somewhere, a single Black-tailed to round out the numbers.  Ten species at one spot!  Actually, I think it’s eleven, because someone mentioned a Kumlien’s/Iceland Gull in the mix as well.  (Subsequent reports of the profusion of gulls on and off the Provincetown beaches include a Glaucous Gull - so it’s a dozen gull species - and both Forster’s and late Roseate Terns.)

 There were also small numbers of White-rumped Sandpipers mixed in with the Sanderlings, as well as two flocks of Snow Buntings and a few pipits and siskins overhead.

Variations on a first-year Ring-billed theme.  Great plumage combos:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Bashful adult:

Blownaparte’s w/ probable Parasitic Jaeger:

 

Underwing study as gray chart: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The scene at Race Point:

Closer in, a Lesser Black-backed in the middle of things:

 

Birds are cool!  Lanny

These images and more are available for purchase. Contact me or View store.

 

It started Friday.  We ran the beach from Katama to the Norton Point cut.  Nothing so exciting after two GBHs and two BC Night Herons put up as we were letting air out of the tires.  Lots of Ringers and Laughers working Katama Bay.  Plenty of fishing RB Mergs and just a few Buffleheads.  Five Brant.  In with the many Black-bellieds and a few Dunlin were a pair of very gray Red Knots.

We took the On Time to Chappy, waving to Nancy & Skip who were getting on the ferry to go the other way.  Out at Wasque a single Merlin.  Siskins heard, but not seen.  One Hermit Thrush clucking, then sitting out on a pine branch to check us out.  Out to sea, well, that’s another story.  The scoters flying west over the contrary flooding current create a spectacle that must rival almost any natural phenomenon, avian or otherwise, that can be observed on the East Coast.  Swarms of shorebirds and terns and geese have their own draw, but the parade of eiders and scoters streaming through the scope field in unending skeins is really quite remarkable.  I highly recommend putting yourself in position to witness this event.  Just find the southeast corner of Martha’s Vineyard and look out to sea.  There are gannets for bonus points.

We backtracked to the Dike Bridge and headed south along East Beach to get a better angle on the seaduck show.  When we reached a fenceline barrier limiting further beach travel, we swung the truck in a tight circle and fetched up on a seaweed and sand hillock that mired us.  After a lengthy extrication effort we stopped trying.  The first vehicle we saw coming down the beach veered off before it got to us; the second one pulled us out.  Back in the saddle again, but out of time as far as birding the remainder of Cape Pogue, we limped back to the ferry off Chappy.  En route our spirits lifted when about fifteen snow buntungs flew across the sandy track right in front of us.

 Day one, Friday:

 

 

 

The beach run is done, but nothing says you can’t bird while you’re waiting to be rescued:

The next day, headed back to Wasque:

The scoter show; thousands, but almost no skunk heads:

Sometimes birding on Martha’s Vineyard looks like this.  It’s Pete, but, alas, not Pete’s house:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gannets:

Inside the long arm of Cape Pogue:

 Besides the seaduck extravaganza, the best birds today were two flocks of about 40 Pine Siskins.  Over and out!

Birds are cool!  Lanny

These images and more are available for purchase. Contact me or View store.

 

 

 

 

 A short saga began today with a call from an up-island birding friend:  “Do you wanna take some pictures of two Cattle Egrets?  They’re in with the horses.” 

“Sure, I’ll be up soon.”

I entered the farm looking for the horses and found a single egret with them.  No sign of the second.  I stalked the egret from behind a screen of colts.  It did not seem to be in any hurry to go anywhere.  When I quit firing off the camera the owner of the property showed up, squeezed through the split rails around the paddock and emerged back out holding the second egret.  We thought at first that it was starving, then realized one leg was dangling limp, never anywhere near a good sign.

My not-to-be-proven theory is that one of the horses, maybe a skittish colt, stepped on or kicked the hapless egret, interrupting what was already surely a challenging flight to warmer climes.

 

Tame bird?  Not really.  This is the second bird.  Had a badly broken leg, I am sorry to report.  Bad enough that Gus Ben David at the Vineyard’s World of Reptiles and Birds, an accomplished bird rehabilitator, said there there was nothing he could do.

Lan 

Birds are cool!  Lanny

These images and more are available for purchase. Contact me or View store.

 

From the town of Aquinnah, at the west end of the lovely isle of Martha and her Vineyard, we offer you a couple of avian treats, found on one of the more majestic days of the season.

 Morning Vespers:

Mr. Bluebird says, Enuff, aweddy, I am outa heah!

 

Allan and I had an Orange-crowned and a BT Green, one Sharpie and a few thousand eiders and scoters mixed, but mostly skunk heads.  A great morning.  Big leftover surf.  Otherwise real quiet, except for flocks overhead and the moaning of the scoters way out. 

 Birds are cool!  Lanny

These images and more are available for purchase. Contact me or View store.

 

 

 I went back to the South Shore at Quansoo today, accompanied by Stella, to West Tisbury Great Pond.  Right at the east end of the Crab Creek which empties Black Point Pond, along the sandbar, I happened upon an avian critter I have been awaiting for quite some time, a Stilt Sandpiper!  I have seen them (more like one at a time) on the Vineyard only once or twice before, and that was down at Katama at the east end of Herring Creek, exactly the same flowing brackish water and tidal flats habitat as today and just a few miles away as the crow flies.  After the flock flew, I walked through the dunes to the Atlantic side and east along the surf line to where the opening is when it is (open).  Lots of Sanderlings there and a few Dunlin, but I did not resight this way neat sandpiper.

 The waves:

The beach & Stella:

First glimps, long greenish legs:

Second:

Taking notice of me, with White-rumped:

Alert:

Away:

Below is a pretty good quiz photo, assuming you are able to enlarge it a couple of times by clicking on it.  I would venture to say our bird is the top left bird, one without extended wings.  Your eyes go to the Dunlin in right center, but the bird with the pink con trail has the better bill, white underwing stripe; and the feet stick out well beyond the tail.  Left of center are three White-rumpeds.  In the lower left corner there is a peep which I am going to assume is a Semi-palmated Sandpiper or a juv. Western.  Can’t tell.

 

Birds are cool!  Lanny

These images and more are available for purchase. Contact me or View store.

 

 

 

 

No way!  Here’s a selection from Saturday afternoon out at Quansoo, walking with Stella from the parking lot to the cut.  From a distance, at first take, it looked like only scattered Sanderlings feeding, plus a small bunch of Herring Gulls resting, with RB Mergs and White-winged Scoters out on West Tisbury Great Pond.

Three Horned Larks went up; and consider Sanderling, Dunlin, Semi-palmated Plover, White-rumped Sandpiper (19) and a probable Western (not shown):

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stella directing the photo shoot:

 

 The Impostor:

 

 

 

I am not quite sure what to say about this situation:  it happens that shallow tidal flats where shorebirds like to feed and rest are places that are also attractive to kite boarders.  Needless to say, this competition for space, peace & quiet does not favor the shorebirds.

If you boost up the photo below, you will notice a line of Sanderlings trying to get the hell away from the aerial beast that just lauched.  What to do?

 

Birds are cool!  Lanny

These images and more are available for purchase. Contact me or View store.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo safari, that is, and by boat.  I got the call from my cousin Sam, who claimed that the seas were flat and the wind would stand at next to nothing for most of the afternoon.  Let’s go around to Menemsha, fuel up and do the Elizabeth Islands, he said; and just shoot a lot of pictures.  We left out of Harthaven noonish; the winds were more than predicted; our first stop was right in the middle of Woods Hole Harbor; the ferry Katama was heading in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Woods Hole Harbor produced this reflected color hotspot right by the ferry dock:

Cropping gives us these:

 The freight boat Katama provided these raku compositions:

 

 This one I think is a total winner, titled Katama Landscape.  Click it larger and look for detail, imagining you are approaching a wooded shore with surf about to take you there, octagonal moon rising.

 And, finally, something to do with birds.  The scoters are coming in for the winter like gang-busters, including these skunk heads:

 Like the scoters, this late young snowy egret was seen along the north side of Naushon, in particular, at the approach to Hadley’s Harbor:

 

Birds are cool!  Lanny

These images and more are available for purchase. Contact me or View store.