Bosque Sunrise

Dawn brings the masses

Tiptoeing through the geese

Awake

Pintails

Hawks and Ravens

Raven

Before the scrim of ice is melted off the ponds by the sun and morning breezes, Bald Eagles look for easy targets among the massed geese, sometimes having to settle for the carcass of a bird that didn’t survive the night, sharing breakfast with Chihuahuan Ravens and Northern Harriers.

There are plenty of opportunities to photograph the wildlife found here with about 15 miles of roads open to the public (depending on weather, heavy snow will shut things down for a bit but is pretty rare) as well as several trails that give access to areas vehicles can not get to. Keep your eyes open for Javelina, Roadrunners and the raptors that some days seem to be everywhere. And this is a wonderful place to watch coyotes hunting mice and gophers on the ditch banks and, the real show, Snow Geese.

Here you can have a front row seat to the ageless contest between predator and prey. A decoy coyote (do they take turns?) will get the attention of the geese feeding near a stand of brown and gold corn stalks while one or more (usually 2 or 3) leap wildly at the birds as they bolt skyward. A collision that disables, or a goose slow to fly will feed the coyotes and possibly a raven or two. Make no mistake, the coyotes will feed but it may take a full morning of running, leaping and hiding before they feast.

Better Luck Next Time

Filling the Sky

Now you need to have a SLR(single lens reflex camera), film or digital because there are a  few lens options you might want to explore.  Having said that, a “normal” (not macro, which just has built in extension to focus close) lens can work for many macro applications.  Starting with the simplest and generally least expensive way to get a closer view is to use screw- on lenses usually called diopters.  They come in increasing magnifications, listed as +1,+2, +3, etc.  These can be stacked for additional magnification, start with the strongest next to the lens, add the next strongest and so on.  Easy to use but with a very real caution, adding another layer of glass to even a good lens can degrade the resulting image.  The best of the diopter add- ons are two-element lenses and are corrected to give better edge to edge sharpness and will give better results than the less expensive single element lenses.  Nikon no longer makes their iteration of these but they are still available on line.  Canon still manufactures a two-element supplementary lens.

Now for the standard way of gaining extension for close focus work.  Extension tubes and or a bellows unit which fit between lens and camera allow a lens (normal or macro) to focus closer than the lens alone but will not allow that lens focus to infinity.  A bellows unit is an adjustable device that, if you work close to home can be a useful addition to your photo tools with a couple of caveats, they are rarely meter coupled and are somewhat fragile.  Novoflex does make meter coupled bellows.  With several extension tubes a wide range of magnifications are possible as they come in a variety of lengths from very thin (small extension) to quite long (more extension) and they can be stacked to gain even more magnification. We have found that tubes of 27.5mm, 14mm, and 8mm seems to offer the variety necessary.  They are usually meter coupled, are easily transported and so are much better for field work than bellows.  Meter coupling is important because it allows you to focus and frame with the lens wide open as additional extension allows less light to reach the viewfinder and a bright viewfinder is a godsend if you are trying to capture images of moving subjects.

What you want to shoot is what will define the equipment you will need.  If you are a dedicated generalist, like me,  you may need to cover all the bases.  Good images are not possible without a SLR, so that different lenses with some form of extension can be used.. A good tripod (inexpensive will suffice for a bit, but they are not stable enough for quality work), and some way to control light are also necessary.  Close up flash is somewhat beyond the scope of this article, but it is very useful to know how to use flash, both for fill or to stop movement.  A very beneficial item for light control is a reflector, to open up shadows, could be anything that directs soft light (not a mirror) but be careful of colored reflectors, you don’t want to overwhelm natural color, unless that is what you intend. Something to shade the subject and surrounding area is also needed for cooling hot spots or giving even light, an umbrella works very well for this, a white one can be excellent.

To reduce camera movement, some way to trigger the shutter without actually touching the shutter release at the moment of exposure is needed.  A self timer or shutter delay works well for static subjects, a remote, either wireless or electronic is far better as either will allow you to view the subject up to the moment of exposure.  To keep things from swaying in the breeze a unique item, called the Plamp, plastic camps joined by a jointed arm, will allow you to safely clamp a plant stem (among other things) to stabilize the subject.  Another item I find very useful when working on static subjects is a focusing rail.  This is a rack and pinion device used for precision focusing when using a tripod.  If you have spent time continually adjusting a tripod to frame the subject perfectly then you will appreciate a focusing rail.

While I  enjoy photographing stationary objects, the real fun of macro is to use camera and lens to stalk and capture moving critters, outside, in the “wild”.  This is where working distance is very important.  Working distance is simply the distance from lens to subject.  For some subjects that distance is not too important, other than possibly affecting your ability to control the light if the lens to subject distance is quite small.  Try getting close enough to, say a butterfly moving from flower to flower with a 40 or 50mm lens.  So, the shorter the lens, the shorter the working distance.  Macro lenses are roughly in the 50-60mm, 90-105mm, 180-200mm range, and while a 105mm lens can be adequate for camera hunting, a lens in the 180-200mm gives you a lot more breathing room.  If you aren’t using a full frame camera you also reap the benefit of the additional punch from a smaller sensor.  For example, the Nikons we use have a “crop” factor of .5 so that 200mm lens becomes in effect a 300mm lens with no loss of lens speed.

There is little difference in photographing an insect moving through its world and trying to get an image of any other wild animal.  Knowing something of the behavior of your subject, your ability to approach and capture an image that tells of a life far different than ours are the same, no matter how large or small.

I love the sense of freedom hand holding my camera following a subject without the hassle of a tripod gives me.  For a still life image capture autofocus isn’t very useful.  It may not focus on what you feel is the strongest element of that image.  AF is a life saver when chasing down that butterfly.  The real game changers in all of this are the high ISO, low noise cameras and optically stabilized lenses giving us  fast, stable, very portable tools to chase down our vision.

An old photography saying has been “get close and then get closer”, now you can get closer still.

Sleepy Cat

We live in Lion country, most people in the west do but our neighborhood has a lot of remote, rough country with a good population of deer, and not a lot of people, so a few times a year when traveling after dark, we may spot a lion dashing through our headlights.  Ravens calling and, in the warmer months, vultures circling low and landing in and out of the trees show us where a lion kill may be present, we always approach quietly, looking for signs of the kill, back tracking the trail, putting together the story.  We are sometimes surprised at how far a cat will drag a deer to feed in peace, I’ve followed the drag trail for literally several hundred yards, uphill, through trees and brush to luckily find the well camouflaged remains, carefully covered to be consumed later.  But that is all we see, tracks, and if the signs are fresh enough our senses become hyper alert, not out of fear but of the possibilities.

The cat continued to watch us as we milled about getting to a good spot to photograph from and then put its head down on its paws and took a brief nap.  This is the holy grail of wildlife observation, an animal so relaxed and unconcerned that it pays no heed to the observer.  As the sun warmed, the lion  rose and dropped down between the boulders and disappeared from sight.  We had no idea if it would simply stay down in the shade or, yes there it is, jumping up onto the rocks and in a few strides crossed the top of the waterfall and once again disappeared.  This time, it moved into the shadows of the forest and was lost to view.   We sat quietly for a few moments considering what had just taken place, and realized that this amazing, mid-day sighting of the ghost of the forest had come to an end.

Watching

After a very hot, dry and windy spring, a summer with almost no moisture, we are greening.  The rains  may have been rare but makes them all the sweeter after a summer of smoke from multiple wildfires, one of them, not too many miles from home burned over 4,000 acres.  With the advent of rain has come cooler temps, a one day lurch from summer to fall and you can hear the collective sigh of relief from everything that lives here.  The bears know and are trying to gorge on anything and everything that will help add calories, but then they have been doing that all summer.  It’s not easy trying to find the volume of food a bear needs when there is no rain and so no appreciable growth of anything.  That is not to say they weren’t trying, a sow with two cubs of the year had broken into neighbors houses looking , one assumes, for anything edible.  I can certainly imagine the intense need of a black bear sow with 2 cubs to find sustenance.  Of course, a few people in the area were upset that a wild animal would invade their space, never thinking that those of us that live here are in THEIR space.

We have always brought in bird feeders, both seed and hummingbird, in the evening and put them out early in the morning and had no problems with bears.  Until this year.  Coming home from a bike ride, my wife found 2 cubs wrestling on the deck, with a hummingbird feeder between them.  The sow was hanging off a seed feeder still attached to a Pinon tree behind the house.  As much as we would rather watch wild animals doing whatever they are doing,  it was necessary to run these bears off.  The less they hang around people and our homes the safer they will be.  Black Bears pose little threat to people, if we don’t mess with them they won’t mess with us.   These critters were hungry and knew they had found an easy lunch and so returned several times, we were obliged to run them off several times.  This really is about the bears as the Colorado Division of Wildlife has a 2 strikes and you are out policy, this means  a bear, tagged for distressing a human will be relocated or killed.  Very much to the DOW personnel’s credit  they do not want to do either.  Relocating pretty much any wild animal is a crap shoot for that animal, habitat is usually full and so causes a lot of stress for those in their home range and a HUGE amount of stress for the relocatee.   So, we have an obligation to keep pet food, trash, bird feeders and stuff that will smell good to a bear (they will eat or drink almost anything, including Tung oil and chainsaw bar oil, as a neighbor can attest) and that way the bears can do what they do and we don’t have to be concerned about what might be thumping around on the deck.

Surveying the neighborhood

Adult Pinyon Jay

Forty, fifty, seventy birds form a long undulating dragon of life moving through the sky silently and arriving, they fall through the air with the sound of wind over rock or through tall pines. Sometimes even while feeding they will remain quiet but more commonly they will call to one another with the raucous yelling that even at a distance you would know there were jays about. Pinyon Jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) or the piñoneros have a fairly small repertoire of sounds, not all are uncomfortable to hear and they have a trill that is almost magic. These are western birds unique to the drier evergreen forests of the Pinyon-Juniper zone, known as the PJ and are found from southern Montana to New Mexico, west to California and Oregon. Here in Colorado they are not found out on the eastern plains or in the big mountain parks like South Park and the San Luis Valley nor much above 8,000 ft but they do occur in the west of the state wherever there are pinyons or junipers and from about Chaffee County south to New Mexico and east almost to Kansas.

Pinyon Jay adult feeding fledgling

If you live in the PJ and feed birds during the winter as we do, then you probably know these jays and their amazing ability to eat or at least carry off a lot of seed. We affectionately call them “little blue pigs.”  While like most jays they are omnivores and forage for many different seeds, insects, fruits and anything else that they can subdue, including the eggs from other bird’s nests and even snatch the occasional lizard. They depend on the Pinyon Pine and as cones mature, on sometimes widely separate trees these jays move in communal flocks from one Pinyon nut banquet to the next. In some areas with few pinyons, the Juniper becomes a primary food source. Pinyon Jays cache huge numbers of pine nuts, a good-sized flock will cache literally several million. Like all Corvids (the Family to which all Jays, Crows, Ravens and Magpies belong) they have amazing memories and along with the Clark’s Nutcracker, Pinyon Jays are considered among the best. Although, not all of those caches are retrieved for a variety of reasons, those few missed nuts or seeds help re-seed Pinyon and Juniper forests.

Pinyon Jay adult male

They nest communally as well, among junipers, gambel oak, pinyons and even taller ponderosa pines with individual nest sites, one to rarely three per tree.  Courtship starts in winter with nesting starting as early as February and continuing into May.  Communal living has many benefits, help with feeding young, and certainly more eyes to detect predators. Pinyon Jays will have “look outs” whose sole job is to watch for predators and they do not join in foraging, allowing the feeding birds more time to feed. Should a hawk or owl be discovered, Pinyon Jays like other jays will mob the unfortunate predator and drive it away. Of course if you are one of fifty individuals you are less likely to end up as a hawk dinner than if you were a solitary bird or in a much smaller group.

Adult Jay with anxious fledglings

Communal feeding includes fledglings, these soft gray birds with a touch of blue are easy to tell from the adults as they are rarely quiet. With vibrating wings and open pink-lined mouths the constantly begging birds hound the nearest adult until they are fed.  That doesn’t end the very noisy begging as these seemingly insatiable kids move to the next adult and continue the process.  Pinyon Jay adults take care of the young regardless of who the actual parents are.  As the young jays mature they eventually stop the begging and become members of the community.

Juvenile Pinyon Jay

The females continue the soft gray and blue coloration of the younger birds. The males are slightly darker with a brighter blue face and a soft smoky gray throat shot through with blue. They can be quite striking especially during breeding season. The blue coloration of birds is interesting in that it is a structural color, not the same as a pigment color or iridescence that can change depending on the angle light strikes it. Blue is blue no matter the angle it is viewed from.

Pinyon Jay adult & juvenile

When watching Pinyon Jays searching for food two things are obvious, the long straight bill which is perfect for fishing pinyon nuts out of the cone,  caching seeds or probing the ground. The other is that they walk.  They don’t hop about like other jays, they stride like a crow. The social Pinyon-Juniper natives, whether walking or flying, quiet or clamorous, are endlessly fascinating and add another welcome connection to our hills and valleys.

Pinyon Jay adult harvesting pine nuts

© Larry Kimball     photos by Larry Kimball & Barbara Magnuson

Morning light; Colorado National Monument, Colorado

Colorado National Monument is positioned  in the north-east part of the Colorado Plateau, that big chunk of canyon country that Ed Abbey so eloquently wrote the praises of.  It sits west of Grand Junction, Colorado and north-east of Moab, Utah, its dry country, bisected by some great gulch topography, vertical sandstone walls, hot in summer and cold in winter.  Spring is pretty close to perfect, especially if you come from country not yet released from winters drab cold.  We arrived in late afternoon with warm light on the rock walls, red, buff, salmon and all gradations between.   A few electric blue Penstemons were blooming under the ridge of a rocky hogback, along with radiant carmine Paintbrush, next to a beautiful purple Milk Vetch.

Indian Paintbrush

Summerville Formation

This terrain cries out for the grand landscape shot, and it is all here, big canyons, big walls and remarkable formations full of color with those impossibly blue skies overhead.  It is all of this but I think of it as closeup country, walk the trails and the substance of the land crowds in, detail is the landscape , it is full of  “nichos” and alcoves, a hidden corner with a seep or spring, green as Ireland.

Entrada sandstone formation

We were hopeful that it would be warm enough to bring the lizards out to sun and by midday we got lucky. With lots of small lizards running underfoot, probably Side-blotched Lizards, our search ( a lot of slow walking among the Ephedra, Prickly Pear, and boulders fallen from the vertical walls around us) turned up what we hoped to find.  The Collared Lizard, not just one, which would have made me quite happy, but three, two males and one female.  Now we usually move very carefully around whatever critter we are trying to photograph and we were quiet and slow-moving around these guys but I found that when setting up my tripod to get a few “record” shots, you know, a little more distance than you really want,  the males would rush from whatever rock they were on to a position too close for the lens being used.   Don’t you hate that?

Collared Lizard male pursuing female

Collared Lizard male

Filed under: Travel Tagged: Collared Lizard, Colorado, Colorado National Monument, Colorado Plateau, high desert, landscape, nature, photography, spring, wildflowers, wildlife ]]> http://pronghornwildlifephotography.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/spring-in-the-canyon-country/feed/ 0 pronghornwildlife2 Morning light, red rock country Indian Paintbrush [Castilleja chromosa] Summerville Formation Entrada sandstone formation, erosian pattern Collared Lizard [Crotaphytus collaris] Collard Lizard [Crotaphytus collaris] http://pronghornwildlifephotography.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/how-to-catch-a-hummingbird/ http://pronghornwildlifephotography.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/how-to-catch-a-hummingbird/#comments Sat, 16 Apr 2011 01:44:56 +0000 Pronghorn Wildlife Photography http://pronghornwildlifephotography.wordpress.com/?p=31 ]]> When spring and summer give us a mind-boggling number of potential photo subjects it’s sometimes difficult to narrow down the field and concentrate on a particular thing.  If one of your interests is in capturing images of wild birds and would like to concentrate on hummingbirds either to add to your files or just figure out how to capture images you can be proud of, stay with me.

Digital cameras allow us a lot of flexibility when trying to capture fast-moving subjects. High speed flash has been the standard solution and still is for many subjects but with adjustable ISO settings it is now quite easy to get a shot that in the past required an elaborate set up. Finding an open shady place with room for multiple flashes, some on light stands; floral arrangements with a hummingbird feeder,  a suitable background and possibly a commercial or at least homemade backdrop; as well as a spot for you and your camera with long lens on a tripod and perhaps in a blind can be difficult not to mention a little intimidating.  Expensive comes to mind as well.  Such a set up can yield excellent images. It’s hard to argue with the consistent lighting and framing that can result from all of this attention to detail.  Let’s make this a little easier.

Broad-tailed Hummingbird by Larry Kimball. Nikon D2X, focal length 500mm, f8 at 1/8000, ISO 1600

We have used both the Nikon 200-400 f4 (what a sweet lens this is, sometimes Barb lets me use it) and the Nikon 500 f4 lenses on either the Nikon D2x or D300 cameras. Both cameras work quite well with the nod going to the D300 for virtually noise free images at 1000 or even 1200 ISO. The D2x can’t match that but does pretty good up to ISO 640 and with noise reduction software we get great results up to ISO 1600. I like the 500 f4 for it’s great working distance (I usually set up about 16 to 18 feet from target), speed and magnification. Coupled with a 1.4 teleconverter, although not always necessary will give you tighter framing on the subject. A gimbal head or Wimberly Sidekick will make catching a bird in a good spot far easier.  Using a large lens on a ball head is doable but is a lot harder to control.  If you are serious about any kind of wildlife photography upgrading to a more usable lens mounting system is a must.  The Sidekick is nice in that it’s light, portable and allows your tripod to be used for other lenses.  Don’t despair if you don’t have a long lens, a reasonably fast 300mm will work but some kind of blind will be necessary because you will have to be closer to the birds.

Broad-tailed Hummingbird, by Larry Kimball. Nikon D2X, focal length 500mm, f8 at 1/2500, ISO 640

A garden area which contains many plants hummers use will greatly improve chances of good bird photos. We have a xeriscape garden of necessity (it’s dry here!) and we use container plants to add interesting blossoms that otherwise could not be grown in this area.  Don’t forget the feeders that will keep them around the garden.  This is the “studio”, it gives us a defined space in which to work and then it’s up to us to use the opportunities as they are presented.  With the morning sun (afternoon light is good as well) at our back and a suitable flash mounted off camera we are now ready to go.  In strong light a flash will be diminished so a flash extender is useful and is good to have in any case as it will give 2 to 3  additional stops of light. We have used the Better Beamer for a number of years.  Using a flash that has a high-speed sync setting will allow the use of shutter speeds of at least 1/2000 of a second which will in many cases be sufficient to stop bird and wing motion, the faster the better.  Faster will give you more opportunity to stop down and get more depth of field.  A slightly blurred wing is sometimes even more pleasing to the eye because we see the birds that way in flight.  If you live in a place with more cloud cover than sun you may not get the results we do, although some newer digital cameras have useful ISO settings that are much higher than those we now use. With camera capabilities improving at almost light speed, good noise reduction software is still a very good idea, Noiseware, Topaz DeNoise, Dfine are examples and there are many more.   Experiment!  I go from high ISO to low depending on what a given bird is doing, a perched hummer doesn’t need a lot of speed to get a good image and it certainly won’t require a high ISO.

Broad-tailed Hummingbird by Larry Kimball. Nikon D2X, focal length 500mm, f4 at 1/8000, ISO 640

Be prepared to spend some time refining your own methods as well as waiting for THE  moment not to mention that you may get addicted to just watching these aerial acrobats go about their daily lives.  That in my book makes it all worth while.

Broad-tailed Hummingbird by Larry Kimball. Nikon D300, focal length 500mm, f5.6 at 1/2000, ISO 1000

We will share some of our insights on image capture , the equipment used, as well as environmental and natural history tidbits. We pretend to no expertise in all things photographic but we manage to have some success at capturing interesting and beautiful creatures (they are all beautiful) as well as the land that they and we share. Please check out our web site Pronghorn Wildlife Photography  for more images.

When Nikon released the D2x we snapped up a couple of them and our transformation from using film (remember?) to digital began.  Suddenly we needed more computing power, Photoshop and Lightroom, external hard drives, copying to dvd, and on and on.  Sometimes shooting with film seems like a really fine idea, and then I look at my camera histogram or increase or decrease the ISO and I think this digital thing is good, it might even catch on.  In truth I really wish we had todays digital cameras back when we were working on our book The Common Plants of Costa Rica. Slow film in the rain forest?  Oh yeah, but it all worked out, and we learned a lot, not just about photographing in difficult situations but about one of the most beautiful and environmentally diverse places on Earth.

So let’s see where this ends up.  We look forward to you sharing your comments and or questions and we will endeavor to reply to all.