Readers’ wildlife photographs

April 17, 2015 • 7:30 am

Reader Ed Kroc from British Columbia sent some diverse photos:

Here are some wildlife photos for your perusal. From early this week, a shot of the very first baby birds of the season! Five baby Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) and their mother on Lost Lagoon.

Mallard ducklings and mom
Next up, a pair of juveniles Hooded Mergansers (Lophodytes cucullatus) resting in the shade on the lagoon. These guys, along with all the other mergansers, just left the lagoon this week. I think they spend summers on lakes and ponds in more densely forested areas.

Hooded Merganser juveniles
A fuzzy Raccoon (Procyon lotor) just off the water, stuffing his/her face with some scraps an unidentified human left along the path. I love his/her little fingers.

Raccoon

Autumn is the best time of year for sunrises in Vancouver, but spring is the best time for sunsets. Here’s a shot of a sunset over Lost Lagoon and some of the Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) that have returned home to it for the spring and summer.

Sunset on Lost Lagoon
A trio of pictures of some resident Glaucous-winged Gulls (Larus glaucescens). First, a couple portraits of a mated adult pair. The female is looking up. She has a well defined pink eye ring and typical hazel iris. Notice how the bill does not extend uniformly beneath the mandible.

GWGull female
Next, a portrait of her strikingly attractive partner. His eye ring is not as pronounced, and his irises are a gorgeous soft grey. Similar to humans, glaucous-winged gulls usually have brownish eye colours, but a noticeable minority possess various shades of grey to blue-grey irises. I wonder how common this type of eye colour distribution is among other animal species?

GWGull male
The last gull picture shows a few first-year GWGulls resting on the rocky cliffs of Whyte Islet in West Vancouver. Notice how their juvenile plumage allows them to blend in with the rocks. Perhaps suggestive of a useful adaptation – they could utilize this camouflage long enough to learn how to look after themselves?

GW Gull juveniles
Finally, as lagniappe, a shot of some tulips (no idea of the species) in full bloom at the First Nations community on Seabird Island just outside Agassiz, BC (pronounced A’-guh-see). I believe the mountain in the background is called Mt. Mercer.

Tulips in Agassiz

And reader Jonathan from the UK sends two backlit photos:

I thought I’d send a couple of pictures shot against the light to you for your bank of reader’s pictures. The mallards were shot at sunset with an iPhone so not 100% sharp but I find the result quite pleasing –  I hope you do too!  The damselfly was shot on a bright summer’s day several years ago and the light was glistening off the water behind giving a very bright back light.

damselfly

I spot only two mallards here; can you see more?

mallards

49 thoughts on “Readers’ wildlife photographs”

          1. Star Trek: The Next Generation. Captain Picard was captured by the Cardassians and his torture was to make him say there was a different number of lights than there really were. Just before he was rescued he began to see the extra light, even though he knew it wasn’t there. Of course, he never broke and admitted that to the Cardassians. His final words to his torturer, “THERE … ARE … FOUR … LIGHTS!”

          3. Yes, sorry. It is a Star Trek TNG reference. It has been referenced here at WEIT several times already by others. At least once by Diane MacPherson I think.

            Picard endures a long period of torture in which he is asked how many lights there are. There are actually 4 lights, but that is not the answer the torturer is looking for. The torturer is trying to break Picard, trying to get Picard to answer whatever the torturer states the number of lights is, even though there are 4 lights.

            At the end, after the Federation has secured his release and he is about to be freed, after he has endured the worst his torturer could dish out, Picard dramatically proclaims, “There . . . Are . . . FOUR LIGHTS!!” Thus completely depriving his torturer of any victory. But, Picard later admits to Dr. Crusher (I think?) that at that point he really was only seeing the number of lights his torturer told him there were, even though in reality there were 4 lights.

          2. If you are not talking about the first picture, with five baby mallards and their mother, as the description says, then which picture are you talking about? And what are the three objects?

          3. The last picture, directly above which Jerry wrote: “I spot only two mallards here; can you see more?”

            But concerning the pic you are referring to, 1 mommy duck plus 5 baby ducks equals six ducks.

          5. The last one – there are three ducks merged with the reeds on the left of the picture.

            And six in the first one.

  2. The sunset photo reminds me of my favorite lake in northern Minnesota. Very nice photos. My wife and I think Vancouver and BC are among the best places. I also see three mallards.

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  4. I see three, though the one on the far left could conceivably be a very fortuitously shaped cattail head.

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  5. But for the small detail of the snow-peaked mountain in the background the tulip field looks just like Holland!

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  7. Ah, wonderful, interesting photos!

    Ed, I’m not quite sure what you mean about the bill in the first gull shot–are you referring to the gonydeal angle on the lower mandible?

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    1. Yeah, I was wondering about that too. The bills looked aligned to me. Perhaps it is that the mandible begins before the top (maxilla?) bill does.

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      1. Not sure I’m seeing what you’re describing either. 😀 That probably means it’s just me.

        Perhaps he’s referring to the way the lower mandible is bifurcated in the “chin” area?

        FWIW, in birding it’s common to refer to the upper and lower mandibles, though I suppose in proper anatomy the former is indeed the maxilla. (Forgive me if I just insulted your intelligence.)

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        1. Yes, you’re right, I was trying to draw attention to the bifurcation of the bill in the chin area. My apologies for the vagueness!

          I don’t know if that type of bifurcation is typical in birds, but I find it interesting. It certainly doesn’t seem to be that way in songbirds. But maybe it’s more common than I think.

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          1. Yes, it is an interesting observation! Funny how you can look at birds or bird pictures all the time and still never really register such a detail. (And by “you” I mean “me.” 😀 )

            I got to wondering if it had something to do with the gape extending back so far, to about the corner of the eye, something that is also true of many raptors. (Maybe their gapes don’t usually go back quite that far, but they don’t stop at the edge of the face like songbirds’ bills either.)

            I wonder if it has anything to do with balancing out the upper, hooked mandible? Gulls as well as raptors are good at tearing meat off of prey items…

            (A quick glance of a few raptor pictures doesn’t seem to show such a bifurcation, though, but it could be it’s the outer edges of the lower bill that are important, say for muscle attachment, with or without the intra-edge space.)

          2. That’s interesting. Crows and ravens seem to have a fairly pronounced bifurcation too. From the pictures I have, the “chin” extends about half the length of their lower bill. As you said with the raptors, the length seem to be even a bit less.

            With GWGulls, the chin extends all the way to the gonydeal angle, about 2/3 the length of the lower bill. A similar proportion holds for California Gulls. Not sure about other species though.

            It seems like a totally reasonable idea that this would have something to do with the mechanics of eating their typical fare. I am no anatomist though!

          3. That make two of us, but we can play anatomists on the web. 😉

            Interesting–both crows & gulls are considerable generalists when it comes to eating. Maybe it’s just about having a big strong, all purpose bill. Just possibly the chin gap has something to do with bird birds “trying” (evolutionarily) to be as light as possible; maybe only the outer edges are needed for strength and/or muscle attachment, and the center part would be just excess weight.

            Or it might allow the lower mandible to deform slightly from one side to the other, if that would ever be helpful…I know crows can cram a lot of peanuts into their bills.

  8. I must say, as a Dutch person … that ‘tulip picture’ triggers some severe cognitive dissonance … 😉

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  11. Yay, Rocket Racoon!

    Thanks for the wide variety of photos. Tulips are blooming early this year in Washington; did they bloom early in B.C.? There is a famous tulip farm in Skagit Valley and the blooms were 3-weeks early, which had a negative commercial impact.

    I found it interesting that the background of the damsel fly has blobs of not-circular white glares. If it was sun bouncing off water, I would expect perfect spheres, not soft octagons. (Nice photo regardless.)

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    1. I assure you it is sunlight bouncing off water. I presume the octagon shapes are produced as a result of the leaves of the camera’s iris.

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      1. Yes, this is correct. Highlights in bokeh will show the shape of the diaphragm of the lens. One can even put a shaped opening in front of the lens to get this effect:

        http://www.flickr.com/photos/plasticcandy/6704296563/

        Or even this:

        http://www.flickr.com/photos/plasticcandy/6704307105/

        The “real” scene:

        https://www.flickr.com/photos/plasticcandy/6704287221/in/photostream/

        http://thespohrsaremultiplying.com/photos/photography-shaped-bokeh/#axzz3Xb3bD1ra

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        2. As a bokeh purist, I have to insist on using only the natural lens effect. Nothing out front. That’s almost as bad as backward toilet paper.

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