The Fam 2023

 The Family at Christmas. 2023.

Fulvous Whistling-duck

 

You never know what you are going to get when you go out shooting. These four Fulvous Whistling-ducks saw me but didn't know where to go. They just knew they had to go somewhere. Cute, eh? 

Reflection on a Ring-billed Gull

 

Quick trip to LA and Pasadena a week ago and got to take a walk near Pasadena after work meetings. I got to say I am not a fan of the gulls as they are so tricky to identify, but this one is a ring-billed gull and gave me a nice shot while flying over a small reservoir. Gulls are extremely variable in their plumage. They vary over the year and over the first few years of their lives. So, identifying them is tricky. Makes it fun but a pain as well. In breeding season the ring-billed have a clean, white head and yellow bills and legs with a black band around their bills. In non-breeding season, they look like the above shot.  

Nina's Christmas Cookie Party

 

A couple of shots from the cookie party last night. Lots of fun and excellent cookies 

Unbelievably Cute

 

Graham at 2.5 years. Such a cutie and so smart. He has it all going on. 

$8 a week!!!

 

Talk about inflation. This is a whole $8 a week. Weird that it is the "Dallas" Hotel but it is located in Corpus Christie. From a trip back in 2019. 

Supersonic Sandhill

 

One Sandhill Crane was in a hurry and went supersonic!!!

Sandhills heading towards the light

 

Most of my shots last week at Jasper-Pulaski State Park in Indiana were of Sandhill Cranes backlight from the sun or from very far away when they landed. These two, and a few others, were the few who flew toward us and therefore front lit by the sun, giving a better view of the birds. At as Cranes gather from a day of eating leftover seed corn on the ground from the harvest, they gather at night in a marshy area to protect themselves from predators. These two must have been going out for one last snack before dark as the sun is quite low and about to set. In any case, I was thankful to get some shots of the Cranes in flight that were well lit by the setting sun. 

More Cranes

 

More Cranes overhead. When there are around 30,000 cranes overhead, you get lots and lots of flying shots. From Jasper-Pulaski State Park in Indiana, a sandhill crane resting area. 

Sandhills overhead

 

It is only 2 hours from home to Jasper-Pulaski State Park in Indiana but what you get for about a week this time of the year is a view of upwards of 30,000 Sandhill Cranes coming in from a day of feeding in farm fields around the area to a roosting area at night. There are only 105,000 Sandhill Cranes east of the Mississippi and about 1/3 of them were at JP the day that Bill and I visited. We saw several thousand come in for a landing but they were quite spread out and still coming in as it was getting dark. While the roosting area is quite far away, the noise starts to get deafening as the Sandhill Cranes are not shy about calling out to each other. Once you hear their call you will recognize and hear it over the course of the year as they fly over the Chicago area to/from Canada and Florida for their annual summer and winter migrations. This area in the state park is one of the few areas left for the Sandhills to rest and rejuvenate prior to the final leg of their trip south. This 1,000 acres of the 8,000 acre park is critical to a massive number of Sandhill Cranes left in the eastern part of the US. It was a thrill to see this display and I was thankful for the invitation of the Audubon Society to come and see the Cranes. 

Sandhill Cranes

 

I think I will hold back the story of this shot until tomorrow, other than telling you these are Sandhill Cranes on their way to roost in Indiana. If you know, you know. 

Tall Man

 

Tall Man on a fall Indiana Dunes Walk

Chesterton, Indiana: a timeless throwback

 

Chesterton, Indiana is a bit of a throwback town, just outside of Indiana Dunes National Park. It has an old-time charm and checks off all of the necessaries for a downtown: a bookstore, a craft beer brewery and restaurants, such as this Peggy Sue Diner, which serves excellent breakfast. Every trip to the Dunes needs a pit stop to the town for libations and supplies and I try to visit every time I go to the park. 

Fox Sparrow makes a visit

 

Always amazes me when I get a new backyard bird. Happens randomly of course and that is what happened yesterday when a Fox Sparrow decided to come by for a visit. That makes 34 backyard bird species for my suburban backyard. That is a far cry from what I would have thought pre-Covid. Of course, I have the bird feeders out, so that helps. But it is always fun to see a new bird. 

Eastern Phoebe

This Eastern Phoebe at the Houston Arboretum in Texas did me a favor and posed beautifully on that tree stump with the camera already all set up to blur out the pond in the background. You have to train these birds well to get shots like this. 

Fun with Filters

 

Here is a way to get more bird shots on the blog. Use a filter to generate a painterly finish to a picture of a Stellar's Jay taken in the visitor center parking lot of Bryce Canyon National Park. At the time, I wasn't a birder so I just took this shot because I saw a pretty blue bird. I think I knew it was a Jay, but I doubt I had ever heard of a Stella's Jay at the time. I enhanced and altered the background through Photoshop AI for fun. However, I left the filter off of the bird and the close in branches of the tree to give a 3D effect. Hope you can see it easy enough. 

One More Blue Sky New York City View

 

Here is one more NYC view from Central Park on an impossibly beautiful and blue sky fall day. 

Still Fall in NYC

 

I think my cell phone shots are too blue but it was a wonderful fall week in NYC. I was surprised by how much the fall colors were still on the trees, vs Chicago, which is well past peak. This is the shot of the pond in Central Park with Gapstow Bridge in the distance.  

Still Early Fall in NYC

 

Beautiful fall weather could still be found in NYC this past week with fall leaves still in mostly full bloom on the trees. A break in the action got me time to walk around a bit in Central Park, always a treat inside the hustle and bustle of New York City. This is a jpeg shot from my cell phone. The New York skyline in this direction has certainly changed over the years. 

Bulking up for the Winter

 

Yea, I know how that feels. 

Chestnut-backed Chickadee

 

On my EBird app, I saw that there were a number of birds from the Pacific Northwest that I have never seen before, located not far from me in an area called Discovery Park in Seattle. I headed there after work and quickly found several Chestnut-backed Chickadee, flying around from one branch to another hunting for small insects. Beautiful little bird, very similar, of course, to our Black-capped Chickadee, which comes to the backyard feeder everyday. Cute little bird and very common in the Northwest. The technology is amazing in assisting birders nowadays. You record what you see in EBird. Other birders see what you record and approximately where you were and then you go there to see if you can find the same bird. Then I use another app to listen to bird song and it helps pick out the birds that you are looking for. Mostly, I use the Merlin app for that. Then, when you take a picture of a bird and if you are not sure what bird you have, you can go to Picture Bird app to either confirm or show you what species you snapped. The combination of these three apps can take a person from just seeing or hearing a bird to an intermediate birder in a very short period of time. Just amazing. 

Seattle from Bellevue

 

I posted another version of this shot a few days ago but this one is zoomed in and I quite like the mountains in the background. It was from a different office building than the first shot and later in the day when the sky was clear from the morning fog. The Pacific Northwest is my favorite part of the country. 

Reflections of a Scrub Jay

 

My cousin Mark challenged me with a reflection shot yesterday with a shot of a squirrel grabbing at his reflection over water, so I decided to do the some thing similar with reflections. However, I don't have any reflection shots that I can recall so I created one from a recent fly by of a Scrub Jay in a clean white sky. So, my reflection isn't real (no AI on this one, but I did try) but it was fun to play with this shot to turn it into a reflection over water or something shinny.  It is a great shot of the Scrub Jay picking up some dinner that I took while in Portland. Scrub Jay's are western birds that fill the same niche as our Blue Jays do here. 

Seattle from Bellevue

 

Here is a view of Seattle in the distance from Bellevue, Washington, across the bay. You can see the Space Needle in the distance and even Mount McKinley behind the city. 

Six of Eight

 

Got to see all the g-kids this weekend and 6 of the 8 were willing to pose for pictures. You take wins whenever you can get them. 

Seattle bridge lift

 

A bit nippy out to be taking the boat out but maybe it is work and not play. Seattle looking blue on an overcast day. 

Crater Lake National Park

 

Had a wonderful visit to Crater Lake National Park prior to my business trip to Portland and Seattle. It was a lot of driving, but worth it. Crater Lake is my 30th national park and I have another 18 to go on my official park list. (Technically, there are 63 national parks but I am concentrating on those in the lower 48 that don't need a boat to visit.) Crater Lake is one of our smallest national parks as the rim road is just 23 miles long. However, it has some distinctions. First off at 1,963 feet it is the deepest lake in the United States and holds some of the cleanest, clearest water anywhere in the world. Since the crater was formed by an eruption, no water runs in or out of the crater, except via rain water or evaporation. So, those facts make it a cool place to visit. I was able to get in and out last weekend, which was quite lucky as a snowstorm rolled in a few days later and it looks like park roads will soon be closed for the rest of the season. Roads may not open until late June as the park has a very short visiting season. At almost 9,000 feet, you could feel the difficulty in breathing as even a modest walk gets you out of breathe. Besides the success of visiting the park, I was also able to record two western bird species that I hadn't seen before so it was a nice win all around. More pictures to come during the week.  

Anyway, 30 down and 18 to go. 

Kankakee River Bathtub waterfalls

 

Not sure how this waterfall got its name but I see online that it is called The Bathtub. Maybe because of the shallow steady water flow? It would be a nice river to walk in during the spring and summer. Water is probably knee high at best. Might be deeper after a rain, of course. Anyway, no new birds, although a ton of Robins were around. In the lake behind we lots and lots of Canada Geese as well. That was all I was able to see in my brief stop at this park. 

San Antonio Eclipse Shot #2

 

Got so many dramatic shots of the sky during this annular eclipse that I had to show one or two more. Those deeper clouds were why I was trying to get north of town as the sky behind me but quite a way further north was clear. I just had to cross my fingers and hope that the sun stayed mostly in the clear, which is somehow what happened. I heard some around the area did get clouded out. This was about the worst of it as the skies cleared a bit more as the full eclipse approached. Lucky once again. 

San Antonio Annular Eclipse

 

I was driving north of San Antonio like crazy trying to get away from the clouds (the sky behind me is clear) but the clouds added drama to a beautiful eclipse. Without the clouds to darken the sun, I would not be able to shoot without a filter, so in that sense, I was very lucky. It was a crazy eclipse because it did not get totally dark but you did feel the light change at mid-eclipse and the temps cooled. Far more of that in a full solar eclipse, when the moon is closer to the earth and can block out the whole sun. Had a great time and now really pumped for the full show in April, when another solar eclipse hits the United States, the last easy to get to eclipse in my lifetime. 

My Spark Bird

 

My "spark bird" was the American Goldfinch. During the spring and summer of 2020 while working outside in my backyard, I would occasionally see glimpses of this bright (in the summer) yellow bird. It got me interested in seeing if I could get that bird to a backyard feeder. From there--off to the races. While I get dozens of American Goldfinches a day visiting the feeder, I realized that I had all kinds of bird pictures from around the country in my photo catalog and after gathering them up, I started to try to identify what they were. That lead me to bird id books and apps, better long distances lenses and with that help, beginning to take more bird pictures locally and from my trips around the country. I am now up to 274 species, 33 of which I have seen or heard from the backyard. With that behind me, it is getting harder to find new species. While there are still a few "easier" local birds which I do not have yet, most of the 700 or so species left in the US, I have to see while traveling or during Spring and Fall migration. So, lots of species to go. On to the next.... 

Birding with the Minniti's

 

Didn't get too many birds but I did get a Peregrine and a Clio, Effie and Echo, along with mom, Stephanie.

Clio also got a shot of me and Echo and a selfie that I crashed. 

And we got one yellow-rumped warbler. So, it was a nice fun walk. 

Grey Catbird

 

This is the first bird that I heard and recognized by sound, before I saw one. That's because it does sound like a cat. Easiest bird to hear and quickly identify if you pay attention. I wasn't even going to shoot this shot as Catbird's are pretty boring--all shades of gray. However, when I saw how it turned out from the camera, I am glad I did. Wonderful background. 

That's not right

 

If you are the white car in the middle, it is not going to be a good day. Especially at 180 mph. Amazingly, no one was hurt but a number of cars from this point didn't get to finish the race. 

NASCAR Commute?

 

How fast do you run in a NASCAR truck series race at a track like Talledega? About 180 mph. And be prepared to have another truck right on your tail the whole time. By the way, it is hard to show speed in a still picture. One way is to blur the shot. But not blur it too much. Tried that here. Maybe a bit too blurry but I like the colors, especially of the Tide car. 

Reflections of a Great Egret

 

A lone long necked Great Egret doing some fishing at the Indiana Dunes State Park this past Spring. 

Lone Tree

 

Lake Michigan Lakeshore, from the Cowles Bog hike in Indiana Dunes National Park. 

Class of 2027 and Class of 2039

 

Drew's brother, Matt was in visiting from NYC and we got to see William's (Neuqua Valley HS Class of 2027) marching band at the homecoming football game. The twins and Graham (all future Neuqua Valley HS Class of 2039) were in attendance. 

Stand Still Please

 

Sometime when you have to move you have to move. Especially when it is windy out. 

Spooky Path (not so much) and Spooky Path (AI)

 

The shot below is my real shot. I came upon this path and it felt a little bit spooky. I was walking by myself in Midewin Tallgrass Prairie looking for birds and I thought this would make a nice spooky sort of shot....but it really wasn't all that spooky. The trees overhang only half the path (from the right side) and there are sign posts that point the way. Those posts are easy to remove but making trees on the other side of the path would normally be a chore and mostly beyond my photoshop skills. I could try to clone the one side over to the other side but it would be a pain. Not worth it for a throw-away shot. However, with Phothoshop AI, all I had to do was select the left side of the image and type in spooky trees and...done. Did a little clean up. Took out the poles and now I have the shot above, indicating a spooky walk through this forest. Photoshop AI is quite scary. If you have an idea, you can just type it in and the software creates it (or attempts to create it) for you. And this is only version one. Nothing you see in photos is real but this will really, really be the case with Photoshop AI.