Two Cuckoo's in one weekend...or was it three?

 

Lots of birds have black bills but only a few have weird red circles around their eyes. I would have named the bird in the shot above, the red-eyed cuckoo instead of its given name, Black-billed Cuckoo. This is usually a tough bird to find but got a great view of it after following it around for a while and it gave me a few seconds to get in a good shot. Maybe they were trying to contrast this bird with a close cousin, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, which I also got a shot of on the same weekend. All-in-all, got in an excellent weekend of shooting out in Cape May during the peak of the migration season, last week. The Yellow-billed was also doing it best to stay hidden, which is apparently a cuckoo trait. In any case, I got two cuckoos in one weekend on the same hike. That's a good get as these birds are pretty secretive. Well, three cuckoos, if you count me.....

Double-crested Rookery

 

These Double-crested Cormorants created this rookery out in Heislerville, New Jersey on their own. How did they do that? Their guano is acidic and changed the soil chemistry around the trees, killing them and all the ground vegetation nearby. Hard for snakes and other predators to slip in unseen. It kills the trees but allows the Cormorants a safe place to raise their young. In nature, as in other places in life, tradeoffs are everywhere.  

Where's Waldo?

 

Stepping away a bit from the national park pictures in and around Utah, how about trying to find Waldo (a semi-palmated plover) in this field of semi-palmated sandpipers? What the heck is he doing there? (Ok, there are a few more in the picture. (I count 4 in total.) And what does semi-palmated mean anyway? (I had to look it up, it refers to the partially webbed toes that you find on some shorebirds. 

Three Gossips

 

A well-named distinct feature in Arches National Park the near Park Avenue area is the Three Gossips. You can see that this is an interesting grouping of rocks and looks like three individuals in long robes walking in a line. Interesting natural sculpting.  

Capitol Dome at Capitol Reef National Park

 

This is where part of the name for Capitol Reef National Park comes from as you see this distinct dome looking feature as you come in to the park from the north. It takes about 7 hours to get here from Denver so it is quite a ride but we were happy that we got to see the park. Very remote and not as crowded as many of the national parks. Bill and I are getting pretty good at the national park sign picture thing. You take a picture with one person in his spot and then quickly switch while trying not to move the camera much. Photoshop helps align the shots and you get a two shot composition as if someone else is taking the photo. 

Park Avenue: Arches

Another tough shot to show as this is a 5 or 6 shot composite of the wonderful Park Avenue hike in Arches. This is one of the first hikes you see driving in from Moab and what a beauty. The real Park Avenue in New York has nothing on this view. It is an easy hike as well with a modest hike up and down at the start of the hike and very modest for the rest of the hike. There is actually a second parking lot at the distant end of this hike, but it is only a mile or so downhill from this point. However, someone has to move the car down to that end, so we just hiked there and back. Just as beautiful either way. 

Green River Overlook in Canyonlands

 

Hard to get panos to show well without clicking in to it but this is the Green River Overlook in Canyonlands. Amazing view. You are taking a picture from a high plateau towards a lower plateau and then into the canyon. 

Mesa Arch

 

The beautiful Mesa Arch from Canyonlands National Park. There are actually all kinds of other tourists around and I bided my time and altered my angle off to the side and was able to get a shot without other people around. Got a straight through shot as well, but I like this off-angle shot. 

So beautiful, doesn't look real

 

This shot is taken as a tight crop from one of my wider shots in Canyonlands National Park, but I cropped in and took out some of the fog that shows up in the more wide angle view. If you are shooting at 45 megapixels, you can get pictures within pictures, without having to carry another heavy lens, like a telephoto lens. The result is a shot that doesn't look real, but it is. This is a breath-taking, amazingly beautiful area, which we were able to see after a mile long hike to the top of a ridge in the center of the park. Takes your breath away. 

Here is the original shot, which is amazing as well:

Canyonlands National Park

 

Another great western national park is Canyonlands, outside of Moab, Utah. You basically are on a high, flat mesa plateau looking at various views of these huge canyons carved out by the Green and Colorado Rivers. You know you aren't in Kansas anymore with this view. The roads were cut in a hundred years ago when the area was attempted to be mined for various minerals. This section of the park is called, Island in the Sky, which is quite appropriate as you can drive around or hike to various view points of the various canyons in the area. The whole place is just an amazing landscape. Go right up to the edge, like I am here, to scare yourself and those you are traveling with, but always stay off the edge, as demonstrated by my buddy, Bill. 

Arches National Park

 

Arches National Park has these kind of views everywhere you look. Those are the La Sal Mountains in the background. This is a park that I would love to visit again.