Readers’ wildlife photos

Today’s photos come from Doug Hayes of Richmond, VA.  His captions and IDs are indented, and you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

Just a few photos from recent trips to the Chamberlayne Swamp and Henrico County’s Echo Lake with a group of friends I call the “Bird Nerds”. We head out early and wander around the swamps and thickets surrounding Richmond looking for wildlife to photograph. When word gets out about a new sighting, it is not unusual to see over a dozen nerds with their cameras, binoculars and notebooks roaming the woods and riverbanks at the same time.

A Green heron (Butorides virescens) at Chamberlayne Swamp. I was playing around with the “Clearview Digital Zoom” feature on my camera. Everyone says that digital zoom works better in video mode, but I was surprised at how nice still photos turned out using it. I was using the 200-600 zoom lens plus a 1.4X teleconverter and a 1.5X crop sensor mode. Combined with the digital zoom at 2X, this was the equivalent of using a 2,500mm lens! The longest lens Sony makes is a 600mm prime (fixed focus) lens that costs $13,000. Believe it or not, there is a waiting list for the 600mm prime!

The Green heron taking a scratch:

Go Away! Actually, the heron is yawning. It stayed in this spot for quite a while, doing absolutely nothing:

A pair of female Red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus):

A Snowy egret (Egretta thula). Very common sight in the swamps and streams along the river:

A flock of Double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus). There are thousands of these birds living along the James River, probably our most common waterbird:

A young red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) keeping watch for other hawks in the area. A few minutes later, a larger hawk drove this one away.:

A Great blue heron (Ardea herodias) just hanging out on the river:

A Great blue heron, looking like a pterodactyl, drying its feathers in the sun:

A Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) at Echo Lake. My family used to keep Muscovy ducks when I was a kid. We had one named Herman that was a pet. Then one day, “Herman” started to lay eggs…

A mob of American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) driving a red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) out of their territory. There were at least six crows giving chase at one point. They really had it in for that hawk!

The hawk was just able to keep ahead of the pursuing crows. They chased it until all of them were out of sight:

Camera information:  Sony A1 camera body (some shots made using Clearview digital zoom), Sony FE 200-600 zoom lens, 1.4X teleconverter, Manfrotto 290 tripod, Newer gimbal tripod head.