Don’t forget to keep those photos coming in. While I have a decent backlog, I can always use more good ones. And please, when you send them in, include descriptions of the species (and its Latin binomial) as well as a bit of information about the beast (or plant or landscape), where you photographed it, and so on.
We have some more photos of bird rescue, this time from Karen Bartelt:
Red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) that smacked into the window.
Ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) that flew into the garage and couldn’t find its way out. It was near exhaustion when my husband snagged it with his butterfly net – one of the upsides of being married to an entomologist.
First, from Stephen Barnard:
Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus), Idaho. The robins were angry with this owl perching near their nest.
I shot this early in the morning right outside my house. The light was dim so I had to take full advantage of my camera’s excellent high ISO performance and image stabilization.
And I guess Stephen’s off fishing again, judging from this photo:
Sunrise on the Florida Gulf coast. Yesterday morning.
There are indeed advantages to having an entomologist in your life. They are especially useful for rescuing spiders and wasps that get in the house. Of course you have to listen to their mini lecture about the critter in the meanwhile, and on other occasions they will not listen to you because their attention is momentarily locked onto a butterfly 50 yards away….
Those are amazing pictures of the owl, Stephen. From the Exif data I see the aperture was wide open, and although the pictures are against a sky with contrasting tree branches, their CA is very low. No way I could do that.
I agree that they are fabulous pictures of a stunning bird (how I’d love to have one them in the tree outside my house!).
A quick question: how do you see the exif data? I’m probably being dumb but I can’t find it!
Right click on the picture, and select to view it. If you do not see it, then download a free Exif viewer to your computer, and then you should see the option to view it for web pictures.
Thank you, Mark.
Thanks. What made that exposure work was in-lens image stabilization. A 1/350sec shutter at 700mm hand-held is bleeding edge.
I was in Florida on a fishing trip, but I’m back now. The weather didn’t cooperate.
Wonderful stuff! Thanks!
The comment about the robins being upset by the owl reminded me of a fascinating excerpt from “The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing” concerning robins’ territoriality: the researcher was observing the attacks (in a large cage) of a particularly fierce hen robin on a stuffed robin. The dinner gong rang at the institution he was at and he removed the stuffed bird from the cage. As he walked off, he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that the hen was continuing to attack the EMPTY AIR where the stuffed “interloper” had BEEN. He observed the hen making several more “air” attacks, each of which got progressively farther “off-target”. Later, after the stuffed bird was finally dismembered by assaults, he experimented to find out just how much of a “robin” was necessary to trigger an attack. He eventually found that only a small tuft of red feathers would trigger the response!
My sister had direct experience of this, “I hate red” behavior: she does a lot of container-planting on her large deck and had put a red geranium in a big pot. The next day she found it pulled out and lying on the deck. Thinking perhaps a squirrel or chipmunk had been digging in the pot, she re-planted it, only to again find it uprooted. She eventually caught a robin, whose nest was nearby, in the act of attacking the plant. She moved the pot five feet farther away from the nest, and the attacks stopped!
Most interesting, jeffery!
Nice shots, Karen!
I’ve had birds get “stuck” in my garage, too, despite the wide open door. Once had to catch a Downy Woodpecker with a butterfly net; it had gotten dark outside and the bird was exhausted from our previous efforts to encourage it out.
We put it in a cage with some sunflower seed and water; released it the next a.m.
For those who are thinking, just leave the bird alone and it’ll find it’s own way out–some just don’t. They can spend hours fluttering around the ceiling exhausting themselves without ever figuring out to just duck beneath the small wall atop the opened door.
Striking owl and gorgeous sunrise, Stephen!