For the last few springs we’ve seen solitary screech owls in the reserve we visit. We’ll spot one in a tree hollow or on a nearby branch. As much as we checked this year none were about on our walks so I’m featuring an owl from 2016. The owls seem to favour the deep woods, and the leaves create quite a colour cast which I corrected in Lightroom using White Balance.
This was one of those quiet days at the reserve, a pleasant walk but nothing much about. As we headed back to the car we saw some people nearby and someone pointed out a green heron at the water’s edge. The path was narrow, the light poor and trying to maneuver around branches and people was a challenge. The bird was backlit and there was a colour cast. I corrected the lighting in Lightroom and used Photoshop to correct the colour cast.
This black-crowned night heron is in mating plumage, sporting two long white plumes. Both sexes look alike (at least to me) but I believe this is a male given its larger size.
He was surveying the water when I spotted him but I moved on before I saw him catch anything.
I took this photograph last August. We haven’t had as many opportunities to visit our favourite reserve this summer and the birds are keeping themselves scarce when we do go. Last year was a good year so old friends are putting in an appearance.
At the reserve we go to most often, mallards are well represented. They are very sociable, and always available for a photograph. I find them the most amusing of ducks, in this case the duck looks like its been up to something, or maybe it’s just me.
The first Egret shot was taken last summer, the bird was on the lookout for lunch. I took the second photo last fall, it appears the egret found the vine a tasty snack. I usually like to have a variety of subjects on my blog. This year my schedule and the birds putting in an appearance haven’t always coincided. Luckily as I have a good number of bird photographs that have yet to appear on my blog I’ll be featuring some from time to time.
I came across this wood duck chick as it was about to slip into the water. It reminded me of a child building up it’s courage to jump into the deep end of a pool. The duckling seemed to wear a triumphant expression when he finally did.
This bird is one of my favourites. A frequent visitor to my blog, the nuthatch’s alert and friendly manner makes for a great subject. I thought the background colour did a nice job of framing the bird.
Like many herons, the Black-crowned night heron can stalk its prey for longer than I have the patience to watch. With a catch or not they make for excellent subjects, as they stand so still allowing me to take many photographs. This spot on the lake is always a popular fishing spot, and the lighting always adds interest to the scene.
All the familiar favourites are returning to the reserve. We’ve had a few sightings of Black-crowned Night Herons; never two at once, so I’m no sure if there’s one individual or more. We came across this one in a quiet cove. We watched as he starred at the water never shifting his gaze. He caught a fish so quickly that I missed the shot and only caught him with his back to me as he flew off with a large catfish dangling from his mouth.
The female Red-winged Blackbird has more subtle colouring than her male counterpart but is an attractive bird by any standard. I’ve only seen the female once before, the males seem to be less shy and their song fills the woods beginning mid-March, one of the first spring migrants to our area. This bird and her mate were in the open as I walked along and I took this shot.
The photo has an unusual composition that I like. The chickadee to the right of the photo and the leaves to the left provide balance. No Rule of Thirds here or the usual negative space in front of the bird. Some rules are meant to be broken!
I came across the first image when I was looking for some Canada Geese photographs for a recent post. I haven’t taken many birds in flight and hadn’t remembered taking this one. The geese were beginning their fall migration so if you pointed your camera towards the sky there were a lot of opportunities to try and capture them. My 300mm lens at F 5.6 worked in my favour and I was pretty pleased with the result.
The Great Blue Heron was on a fishing expedition and landed shortly after I took this photo. Always a favourite subject of mine on land or in the air.
Canada Geese can be unwelcome visitors, noisy, messy and overstaying their welcome. But they can make for wonderful subjects too. I came upon this bird last fall as the leaves were changing and the light was soft. These photos were taken at our favourite reserve, a place I’ve only visited a few times this spring. With the below average temperatures and the flooding this month many of the paths are under water. The nearby river is slowly beginning to recede but it will be a several weeks before we’ll be able to walk the park in its entirety.
This downy woodpecker had been busy excavating some bark but paused briefly in his work, taking a break. Perched on the branch facing a wide open sky gave the bird a rather contemplative look that I liked.
Both of these photos were taken in April on a rare day when it wasn’t raining. The rain and cold is breaking records this spring and flooding is affecting a large number of people in several provinces. I love taking photos of ducks when they appear to be steaming towards me, the first duck looks like he means business while the second one just a bit curious.
I’ve done several posts on Nuthatches, they remain in our area all year long. Even in winter when there’s nothing much about you can usually count on this little bird to put in an appearance. Their striking looks and tell tale call make them agreeable subjects.
It was our first time back to this particular nature reserve since last fall. It has a wonderful wildlife garden and the rest of the property consists of trails and woodlots. As we walked along one of the paths we came across this solitary waxwing out in the open. He sat on the branch in no hurry to leave. He made my morning.
I usually see downy woodpeckers excavating tree trunks, so it’s nice to photograph one perched on a branch for a change. This male stuck around for a few minutes, so I had more opportunity than usual to take some shots. The light was excellent and the weather was fine (sunny days are returning). All and all a wonderful return to spring and picture taking!
This is the very first sandpiper I have photographed. I have seen a few shorebirds along the river but they were never close enough to get a decent shot. This bird flew into a quiet inlet and was at the limit of my lens. I thought the rocky ledge he was perched on made for an interesting background and compensated for the fact that the bird could have been just a bit closer.
It’s too early to see goslings in my part of the country. It’s cold and grey outside so I went through my catalogues from last year for a bit of a spring lift and came upon these two. The goslings were taken within a day of each other last May. The first little goose looks just a bit younger and more tentative than the second who seems to be fixing me with a curious stare. I’m so looking forward to taking photographs like these again!
I was very pleased to come across this nuthatch earlier in the month. I’ve only been to the reserve a few times over the winter, so seeing this colourful character after such a long absence was a welcome sight.
I saw these ducks a little removed from a large group of noisy mallards. Throughout the summer I noticed a few pairs of these ducks at the lake. This particular afternoon they were enjoying a solitary swim. Less boisterous than the mallards, the calm water and the muted colours of the late fall seemed made for them. Although the same size and shape as mallards, their colouring makes me think they might be a mix of mallard and American Black Duck.
American Wigeons visit our region in the late summer and remain until the first frost. These photos were taken in November. I thought the reflections in the water were as central to the first photograph as the wigeon, so I chose to do a modest crop. In the second photo the swirls in the water framed the male duck nicely though he was definitely the star in this shot.
The first green heron arrived at the reserve last June and was joined by several others during the course of the summer, so we had many opportunities to photograph these beautiful birds. They seem to be solitary birds and we never saw them paired up at the lake. We’ve yet to see a nest. I enjoy watching the movements of the green and all the other herons as they transform their appearance when they strut, stalk and fish.
These are two of only a few photographs I took all winter. It was just (still is) too cold for my taste. Chickadees are extremely hardy though and were very obliging that day last December. I adjusted the white balance in Lightroom to remove the blue cast to the snow. It also brought out the brilliant white in the birds.
Late last fall we saw a northern shoveler for the first time. It is such a spectacular looking duck, from its bill to its colouring. I couldn’t have asked for more until…on our third sighting of the shoveler, this wigeon joined him for a swim around the lake. The day was cloudy but there were nice reflections in the water and then there were these ducks, they would dress up any occasion.
These photographs were taken at this time last year when the temperature was milder and the days sunnier than they are right now. I wonder if the pileated woodpeckers are preparing their nests regardless of the cold weather or have postponed this activity until it warms up a bit. This male woodpecker was excavating the same tree that we’ve seen them nest in in past years. We’re supposed to get some milder weather later in the week in which case I’ll stop by the tree to check on any activity.
I was using a long lens with a teleconverter the day I took these shots. During last year’s fall migration I had wanted to take some hooded mergansers that my regular telephoto lens just couldn’t capture. Walking on a path that borders the lake I caught sight of this Great Blue Heron close to shore. I don’t think I’ve ever been this near to one before and given where he stood and where I found myself, I couldn’t back up to get more of him in the shot. Pretty pleased with the way things turned out though.
We didn’t see many of these herons last summer. This striking bird made up for that though by giving us a lot of opportunities for photographs. He preened and napped and didn’t fly off while we were photographing him. The changing light due to the clouds passing overhead made the shoot challenging. The reflections from the lake also effected the lighting on the bird. In Photoshop I corrected the yellowish/green colour cast on the heron using a Hue/Saturation layer. This adjustment effected the surrounding greenery, making it less vibrant. I created a mask on the Hue/Saturation layer to correct this. Wonderful bird, wonderful day!
A nice thing about photographing chickadees is that if you don’t capture the one you’re aiming for there will be others around in no time at all. They dart by so quickly that you often end up with a well focused branch! They do slow down a bit in winter though when they’re more dependant on handouts. The chickadee in the first photograph was taken in August; it was molting and looked a little bedraggled. The second, taken in early December was sporting a sleeker look.
The reflections in the water are beautiful in their own right. I didn’t have to wait for long until this handsome pair swam by, improving an almost perfect scene. The wigeons show up every fall just as the leaves start to turn, and remain until the first frost. A regular feature of the season that I look forward to every year.
I don’t often see nuthatches on the ground searching for food, as in the first photo. More frequently I see them moving along branches and trunks of trees at challenging angles. The first two nuthatches are white-breasted, the third is red-breasted, not nearly as common in this part of the country and especially nice to see.
These photographs are the second in my duck-on-ice series. I am amazed at the resilience of mallards and the fact that this female can move along the ice, keep her balance and tolerate the cold. In this post I wanted to talk a bit about bringing out the detail in the frozen lake. The duck was a pretty impressive subject but I wanted to enhance the background to give the photos more interest. I did this by adjusting the Highlights and Shadows in Lightroom. I then used the detail extractor in Macphun Intensify CK. For the B&W I used Tonality Pro; by adjusting the Highlights, Shadows and Mid Tones and using colour filters which effect the tonality, even more detail was brought out.
This male Bay-breasted warbler, in fine breeding plumage, was migrating through our area last spring. Given the amount of red in his cap, I believe he is a mature bird. Their population is very dependant on the caterpillars of the spruce budworm and other insect infestations and their numbers rise and fall accordingly. They are a little easier to photograph than other warblers as they move about the branches and show themselves a bit more readily.
The lake had just frozen over and this female mallard was taking her first tentative steps on its surface. She was pretty surefooted and didn’t slip once as I watched her. There are at least thirty mallard pairs that remain at the reserve all winter and we normally see them on the river side of the reserve where some of the water remains ice free. This is the the first of two sets of photographs I took of this mallard which I’ll be featuring in the next week or so.
February 2 was Groundhog Day in Canada and the U.S. and it was reported that the “official” Canadian groundhogs did not see their shadows (yes we have two). The story goes that when this happens we’re in for an early spring. If this holds true, I’ll be featuring ducks in open water before too long!
Nuthatches are tiny aerial wizards and acrobats hanging onto trees at impossible angles. They obligingly remain all year, these first two shots were taken in early January. I like their distinctive nasal call, which is often heard before they make an appearance. Normally quite shy, nuthatches are more assertive during the winter hoping for some seed as I pass them along the trail.
I featured this eastern screech owl earlier in the month. In that series he was inside a tree cavity, on this day he was perched on a broken tree branch nearby. As this owl blends in so well with his surroundings, if I hadn’t been looking for him where I’d seen him before I would have missed him. All three photos had a tremendous colour cast caused by the leaves. In the first two, I used the Color Balance and Hue/Saturation in Photoshop to correct it. The colour cast was too pronounced in the third photo to fix, so I turned it into a black and white using Tonality Pro in Photoshop. As someone said, any day you spot an owl is a good day, this was an excellent day!
When I set up my gear that morning I was hoping to take some photographs of hooded mergansers I had seen the day before. They usually remain just out of range of my favoured lens, so I had my 300mm lens with me instead. There were no mergansers that day but I did come across these wood ducks along the lakefront. I couldn’t move back far enough to capture the entire bird so I took portrait shots instead. No two days in photography are the same. There are disappointments sometimes, but I know before too long something else will strike me and I’m off…
In the spring with their goslings and in the fall when the leaves change colour, these are my favourite times to photograph Canada Geese. The goose here appears to be doing the two-step, the vegetation serving as the backdrop. The reflections in the water and the soft fall light enhancing the scene.
BELINDA GROVER PHOTOGRAPHY 