Common Loon, Morro Bay
Loons are one of my favorite birds, and have a strong connection with Canada — look at the back of the dollar coins. Morro Bay is one of the places on the California Coast where it’s trivially easy to get photographs of loons, albeit never in breeding plumage (like most of us, birds rarely carry their fanciest clothes on vacation..)
This loon is exhibiting a common behavior, which is sitting back on its tail in the water and flapping like crazy. It’s more or less like what we do when we stretch after a couple of hours hunched over a computer. Loons, however, tend to look like funky turtles when they do it. Well, they do to me…
Photographing Pelicans
I had a comment posted on this photo a while back, and I’ve been meaning to follow up on it. With the weather outside, it’s a good day to do some catching up.
This photo is incredible! I have a 40D and shoot a lot but don’t think I could have gotten this kind of sharpness and the highlighting on the subject, especially considering that it was moving and you presumably couldn’t get that close to it.
What kind of lens were you using? Tripod? Photoshop techniques?
This photo was shot handheld with my D30 and the 100-400 IS, my standard setup for wandering around.
Down at Morro Bay harbor, there’s a fish cleaning station. As you might imagine, when the fishermen are cleaning, this can attract a number of gulls, but there’s also a group of pelicans that have figured out that this is free-meal city.
The result for photographers is that you have really good, close access to these birds because they are habituated to humans. I was generally no more than 8-10 feet away, and these shots were taken at betweeo 100-150mm at F5.6 in aperture mode.
It’s not really a good situation for the birds, because this level of habituations isn’t healthy. Beyond the problems of becoming dependent on humans for food, this lack of wariness for the birds can lead to everything from dog attacks to being hit by cars, because without some fear of humans, the brids simply don’t think to stay out of harms way. Their aggressiveness — literally coming within a foot or two of the fisherman, sometimes inches — is risky, too. The fishermen we were watching used a hose to discourage the pelicans, but stories of more drastic action (including cleaning knives) appeared when I discussed this with the Morro Bay photogs. There aren’t many good answers here, but perhaps cleaning stations like this need canopies or some other covering to restrict access to these begging birds.
This isn’t necessarily a good situation for the fisherman, either. As you can see from this photo, the Brown Pelican foot is webbed, but still has some pretty significant claws as well. Not something I want landing on my shoulder…
The repeated attempts by the birds to snag lunch and the fisherman to make them leave is what set up this shot. I realized the pelicans were flying away, circling around and coming back in for another try. That gave me the ability to set up anticipating that flight. I had a choice between good light or a clean background, and I decided to shoot for the light and blur out the background as well as I could. Looking at the results, that was the right choice, the texture in the features is very good and the pelican stands out from the background well.
Post-processing? Very little. This shot basically made itself. I might have darkened the background a bit, but that’s pretty much what I started with.
Pelicants are one of the birds that first attracted me to birding — I remember a trip back in the mid-90’s where we were in Arcata near the harbor watching the Pelicans fish and thinking what awesome birds they were. Many years later when I started birding Pelicans were an early interest, and I still photograph them at any opportunity.
That led to this series of photos, which I’ve set up as a slideshow. At Shoreline lake one morning, there were some brown pelicans fishing. When I watch birds, one of the things I enjoy is studying their actions and behavior. With these birds, it was fun to watch their fishing and flying habits. When a pelican takes off from the water, they start by flapping the wings, but they also push off with their webbed feet. Two or three of these “hops” happen before they have enough speed to leave the water, and then the landing gear come up.
When they’re fishing, they’ll take the hops, and if they see a fish or something in the water, suddenly abort the takeoff, pull in the wings and flip foward into the water beak first. If they don’t see anything after a few hops, they’ll stop. This is a lower-energy fishing style than they’ll use other times when they’ll take off and fly across the water about 15 feet up looking for prey, then tuck the wings and dive in beak first after it.
These young brown pelicans were nice enough to give me the ability to take a few sequences of their fishing and takeoffs that show this hop-hop-hop behavior, and when I saw the photos in sequence, it really called out to be made into a slideshow, which I think shows this wonderfully.
A few interesing birding links
An interesting piece on the science behind researching birds and bird strikes on airplanes. They have proven it was a flock of Canada Geese that took down the US Airways jet.
We all suspected that Canada Geese were the unlucky birds struck by the US Airways jet that came down in the Hudson River last month, and yesterday the National Transportation Safety Board confirmed it.
Now researchers are trying to determine if the birds were migratory geese, which weigh 6-11 pounds, or residents, which are typically fatter. Fat or lean, says an article in the New York Times, Canada Geese are too much for a plane’s engines to ingest.
via Birder’s World Field of View: Birds and airplanes and our April 2009 issue.
This one’s been kicking around birders for a while, but here’s some background on the study about the decline of red knots along the east coast; it’s due to over-harvesting of horseshoe crabs for use as bait.
Declining numbers of a shorebird called the red knot have been linked to bait use of horseshoe crabs.
Long-term surveys of red knots showed that the average weight of red knots when they leave Delaware Bay has declined significantly since their primary food source, eggs of horseshoe crabs, has been reduced. The study also revealed that red knot survivorship is related to departure weight, and that the population size of red knots has declined by more than 75 percent.
“We concluded that the increased harvest of horseshoe crabs led to a reduction in the food supply for red knots at a critical period in their annual cycle, and this led to a dramatic decline in population size,” said USGS scientist, Jon Bart, one of the authors of the study.
via USGS Release: Decline of Shorebird Linked to Bait Use of Horseshoe Crabs (2/12/2009 4:38:47 PM).
Here’s one that shocked scientists: we know that birds migrate long distances, but what they’re just finding out is that some of them are flying much faster than previously expected.What’s really fascinating here is how they’ve miniaturized the tracking tools so that even a small songbird like a Purple Martin can be fitted with them without impacting their ability to survive. It’s known that some species like Bar-tailed Godwit travel literally tens of thousands of miles, but now we’re seeing that even smaller birds are doing astounding things during migration.
Migrating Purple Martins can fly up to 358 miles (577 km) per day, and Wood Thrushes can cover 168 miles (271 km) per day, according to groundbreaking new research published today in the journal Science. Previous studies estimated songbirds could fly at roughly 93 miles (150 km) per day.
via Birder’s World Field of View: New research: Songbirds migrate three times faster than expected.
Finally, while some can argue about global warming or climate change until we’re all blue in the face, we have a 40 year tracking of birdwatching data that shows significant changes to the ranges species live in and the timing of their migrations; spring is arriving days earlier than it used to, and birds are shifting their ranges northward, a clear indication things are getting warmer.
this is one of the things that attracts me to birding as a hobby: it’s one of those disciplines where the “citizen scientist” or even the interested amateur can make a difference and help move a scientific discipline forward — even merely tracking what birds shows up to a feeder over time can help us better understand what’s going on in the larger world around us.
Perhaps you’ve already heard news of a National Audubon Society report about climate change’s effects on North American birds. Audubon announced on Tuesday that some 177 species of North American birds have shifted their range northward over the last 40 years, during the same period that average January temperatures rose by 5 degrees Fahrenheit across the continent.
The Audubon scientists found the pattern in data collected by volunteer birders on yearly Christmas Bird Counts. The consistent northward shift in so many different species – among them forest birds, feeder birds, ducks, and seabirds – points to a single, powerful cause: our warming planet.
Audubon describes their findings as part of the “grim reality” of global climate change, pointing out that more local or species-specific explanations simply wouldn’t be evident in so many species or so much of the continent. But the really frightening part is that this evidence is nowhere near the first of its kind.
via 40-Year Study Shows Birds Feeling Climate Change Effects « Round Robin.
Green Heron fishing
here’s a neat video of a green heron fishing. What makes it unusual is that it’s figured out how to use bait — it grabs pieces of bread and places them out on the water, and then waits for the fish to come up and then snags it.
This kind of action — tool using, effectively — surprises the hell out of people who don’t spend much time around birds. Speaking as someone who’s lived with birds for 20 years now and watches them in the wild often, this kind of adaptation surprises me not at all.
It’s still a lot of fun to watch, but birds are pretty smart animals, smarter than you might think.
One of my favorite cases of this happened in Yosemite, at Tunnel View, where we saw a raven attempt to manipulate the door handle of a car to get inside where it knew there was some food.
It clearly knew that the handle was what opened the door. What you can’t see from the picture is the noises the bird was making. it would go “Boop Boop!” and then rattle the door — it was imitating the sound the car makes when you electronically open the locks. It had figured out that to get in the car, it had to make that noise and then the handle would open the door.
Just be glad Ravens don’t have opposable thumbs, folks.
Although honestly, even that’s not always necessary. Birds tongues and beaks are surprisingly flexible. Our first cockatoo, Morgan, was an acomplished escape artist who took locks (and cages) as challenges. She quickly mastered opening her cage from the inside, and that led to a continuing arms race between us trying to keep her in her cage when we weren’t home, and her proving that we were idiots for trying. that included using various snaps and hooks to keep her from moving the lock handle (the best lasted two weeks) followed by D links (those chain links with a threaded side that opens to connect two chains) — whist lasted three days, and we came home to her standing on top of her cage, opening and closing the link with her tongue and chuckling. We finally moved to a padlock, and she simply disassembled part of her cage one day, which we stopped by simply torquing the bolts beyond her ability to loosen them. then one day she was out of the cage with us and we realized she’d grabbed the combination lock and was turning the knob and watching what happend.
we switched to a key lock, which finally stopped her. But we came home one day and she had a little stick, and was trying to stuff it into the keyhole — she was trying to invent lockpicks.
So nothing birds do surprise me any more. Fortunately, our current cockatoo (Tatiana) isn’t a budding engineer, her preference is to just destroy it instead — and we just bought a heavy-duty cage with nothing she can demolish. At least, not yet.
Slow down, enjoy the show…
Sometimes I think here in Silicon Valley we forget just how wonderful and beautiful this place we live in is.
With the weather having returned to winter weather and some much needed rain, I spent Saturday indoors, working on stuff, like cleaning up the photo library (lots of half-finished imports, etc) and tweaking the blog, and writing.
Today, the weather cleared up a bit, so I headed out to run a couple of errands, and while out, I decided I had to get out and go birding, just a bit. So I ended up at Calero Reservoir down in Coyote Valley, hoping maybe to find the bald eagle that’s been hanging out there (nope), or maybe the loon (nope). It’s interesting to track this area season to season — last winter we had good numbers of loons around the area, this winter, we have had close to zero, but large numbers of mergansers. Birds are so unreliable — sort of. While these kinds of variations happen every year, we also have birds that return, year after year, to the same location and many times the same tree.
I missed out on the main birds I was looking for, but heading back into Coyote Valley, I ran into an osprey with a fish.
It wasn’t exactly pleased at being watched, so it gave me two steps away from the car and flew up, grumping at me as it left. It ended up circling around me a bit, then coming down in the middle of a pasture out beyond the geese and staring at me while it ate until I left.
About that point it started raining, of course. But I saw a beautiful cloud formation across the pasture, so I grabbed my wide angle camera and started shooting. About that time I realized the rain was bouncing — it wasn’t raining, it was hailing. The things I do for you people to get interesting pictures…
By the way — geese do not like hail. Just saying.
But looking at that vista, taking those pictures, made me stop and remember, just for a minute, how beautiful this area is and how many things we have going for us here when we stop being too busy to look and explore. Those of you living in sleeping bags under your desks don’t know what you’re missing. Hopefully you’ll figure it out before it’s too late…
Of course, after a minute, I realized it was still hailing, and decided warm and dry would win out over more photography for now, and got in the car, cranked up the heater, and came home to what the NHL All-Star game…
Winter birdwatching…
I’ve been doing a bunch of early year winter birding, trying to get the winter birds on my list before the wander off. It’s been a lot of fun (my first winter “rush”) and I’ve had some pretty good luck; so far, my year list is at 120 species, about six weeks ahead of last year, and I’ve added a couple of new life birds to the list as well (Red-breasted merganser and ring-necked duck). It almost feels like the birds are parading for me now; I went up to Redwood Shores where I knew a spotted sandpiper had hung out in the past, and in it flew and wandered around a bit (and for good measure, I’ve since seen them twice more, at Vasona and Alviso).
I went off to Sunnyvale Water Polution Control Plant on Monday since the weather was good. I haven’t been there in over a year since I whacked the knee, but now that I’m starting to build in some mileage again, I figured I’d try out to the radar dish and back.
As I got there, a couple of hunters were putting a boat into the channel right where the parking lot is. I figured they would probably scare up anything in the channel as they paddled out (which they did… more in a sec). Down where the pump station is and the channel heads north past the old landfill I had a nice red-tail on the power pole and a california towhee scratching in the leaf mould. Much to my amusement, just as I was thinking “I’ve seen green heron here before”, one flew in and landed. It flex back out towards the water plant when I tried to get a better angle on it, kvetching the whole way. That, of course, didn’t help, because the hunters flushed it twice more before it got really annoyed and flew north up that channel and away from all of us, loudly protesting.
Not much in the reeds — lots of crowned sparrows and some yellow-rumps (mostly heard). On the pond were coots, pied-billed grebes, a few ducks, two snowy egrets, and the occasional d-c cormorant flying by, as well as a single great blue near the landfill channel. Up the hill on the landfill area was a flock of about 25 canada geese.
After making the turn out towards the radar disk, I noticed a black-crowned night heron in the reeds in the channe between the two paths (looking out towards the salt pond to the south). Realizing the hunters were headed out into that area, I decided to stop and watch the show. Ever wonder how many herons hang out in that area? The answer is 35-40 (two were visible to me before the hunters showed up). They also flushed a 2nd green heron and annoyed the blackbirds and two marsh wrens.
After that, I headed back in because I had to deal with some email. I had two probable common yellowthroats, but not enough of a look at either to make them definitive to my tastes.
Oh, out in the field at disk drive trying to convince me they were burrowing owls were a small flock of marbled godwits. Out at state and spreckles I saw a spotted sandpiper, a few western sandpipers a couple of killdeer and the usual suspects (at least one mew gull, no glaucous among the gulls). Out at shoreline I mostly saw people fighting over parking places because it’s a holiday, so I didn’t stick around..
On Sunday, Laurie and I went out for our January trip to O’Neill Forebay and Merced National Wildlife Refuge, before the cranes and geese leave for the northern trip. It was a fun trip, the the drought we’re seeing in California was horribly obvious; the reservoir very empty, the hills already browning into the spring golden colors. Bird numbers at the forebay were light, and numbers at Merced were much lighter than normal. We saw few sandhill cranes at all until the sunset fly-in, and geese were in the thousands vs. the tens of thousands. Talked to a couple of other birders there who felt the same way.
As I write this, it’s actually raining. we really need it; here’s hoping it makes a dent.
My 2008 goals for birding were fairly straightforward; 220 species to the life list for the year, 200 species for the year list, and my long-term goal, which was to find a bird that was a notable addition to the birding group — it’s one thing to chase birds other people find and add them to the list, for me, the real goal is to start finding birds that other birders can then also find.
I missed the 200 for the year by three, partly because of weather and partyl because of holiday time issues; I could have made it but it seemed an artificial thing to do, so I focussed on other things. I’ve since covered the life list with birds that were available in 2008 where I found them, so I don’t feel bad about it.
And I finally found that “special” bird; a red-breasted sapsucker showed up in Redwood Shores and was first seen by me and later refound by others. Even nicer, the photos I got of the bird indicate it’s actually a likely hybrid — red-breasted sapsucker x red-naped sapsucker is the most likely candidate. That made my day, and turned into a really nice find. I’ve got photos on flickr for those interested.
When I went down to Vasona, I ran into a couple from the East Coast birding the lake, and we had a nice chat. One thing I like to do when I run into non-local birders is share what I know and help them better see the area — it’s a real joy to see birds we see here as common in fresh eyes. In Vasona, that was talking about snowy and great egrets, as well as showing off black phoebes, one of those birds you basically have to shoo off around here — but to someone from back east, they’re true joys to sit and watch as they chase bugs and flit around. It’s a fun way to step back and see the hobby from a different viewpoint.
My birding goals for 2009?
I’m not settting any hard goals right now. I want to continue improving my ID capabilities and see what I can accomplish. My current hope is to explore more of Santa Clara County (where I do about 60% of my birding) and San Mateo County (where I do about 30%) and visit a wider variety of habitats. Now that the knee and ankle are to the point I can start doing more walking (and I need to start building my mileage and conditioning again) it’ll open up more places to go walk and bird. I still want to do this mostly for enjoyment and the challenge, and not turn it into a chore.
One of the things I’m experimenting with is using Google Maps do document birding areas and sighting locations. Once I get that under control I’ll start posting those maps here; when I get enough content to make sense, I plan on relaunching siliconvalleybirders.org sometime this year (why the first one failed is a story I’ll write about one of these days, but the domain is currently parked waiting for V2). I think there are some nice capabilities for helping people bird the area, and we’ll see how it goes.
So 2009 has started out really well; the ability to show up and have species like Green Heron just pop up and say hello won’t continue — but I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.
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