Category: video

Proprietor’s wildlife photos and videos

December 14, 2019 • 7:45 am

I have to put up more of my penguin videos because penguins (note yesterday’s language post). We’ll see videos and photos of three species today. Try to see the videos on full screen.

Here are some gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) porpoising in the water and trying, largely unsuccessfully, to mount a small iceberg. Cuverville Island off Antarctica, November 20, 2019

A stately King penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) walks with great dignity at Bluff Cove, East Falkland, November 24, 2019.

A Chinstrap penguin (Pygoscelis antarcticus) scuttles on its belly. Orne Harbor, Antarctica, November 16, 2019.

 

Krillface!

Nobody ever claimed that penguins are great walkers. This chinstrap, also at Orne Harbor, has some trouble getting about:

Proprietor’s wildlife videos

December 8, 2019 • 7:30 am

For Sunday, we have three videos of chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarcticus), all taken at Orne Harbor, Antarctica, on November 16.

The first one shows males calling and displaying in their rookery. The males raise their heads, flap their wings, and emit raucous calls. Presumably they’re displaying their vigor to onlooking females.

The next two show them walking and hopping, and I could watch penguins walk forever. Note that in the first video a bird stops its perambulations to have a bite of snow.

The background noise in these videos is the wind, which was blowing strongly that day (brrrr. . . . ..).

One more:

 

PCCE’s wildlife videos: Chinstrap penguins

December 2, 2019 • 7:45 am

For those of you who submitted wildlife photos before I left, rest easy: I still have them and will post them. But I also have to begin posting my Antarctica videos, as I am putting them on YouTube rather than saving them on my computer. So here are three videos of chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarcticus), perhaps the cutest of the six species I saw beside Adelies (King penguins are stately but not cute).

The first video was from Half Moon Island, taken on November 16. A chinstrap is tobogganing on its belly, tries to stand up, flops over and continues the belly-slide.  Note how it uses its feet to propel itself, aided a bit by the wings. All the background howling is the wind.

I recommend watching all of these on full screen.

This one, taken on November 19, shows two chinstraps at Orne Harbor in the Act of Love, an act that was completed, though not on this video. The female is of course slippery, and males are, I’m told, constantly sliding off in their frenetic amours. The commentary is mine, with some other passengers remarking at the sight.

 

And here’s a chinstrap eating snow from our first visit to Half Moon Island on November 9, which I was told they do not only to get water, but to cool themselves down, though it wasn’t particularly hot that day. After it has its fill, it gets up and walks away. In the background you can hear the raucous calls of this species.

Kick up your heels!

Penguin video!

December 1, 2019 • 2:15 pm

I have a lot of videos from Antarctica, including one I didn’t think I had. I’ll show that one today, even though it’s short.  As I mentioned in a post on November 20, on a day when we couldn’t do a “landing” on the continent or an island, the captain of the Roald Amundsen plowed the ship into thick pack ice and let us get out and walk on it. That was a rare experence. But even rarer, we encountered Adelie penguins on the pack ice. As I wrote then:

We also had a magical moment, but only a few people saw it. When I was standing at the end of our permitted walkway (demarcated by orange cones), I suddenly saw three black specks approaching us from a distance. They were moving fast, and as they came closer I saw that they were three Adelie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) tobogganing towards us on the ice, moving on their bellies and pushing themselves along with their flippers. It was amazing how fast they came towards us: they can toboggan much faster than they can walk.

I tried to remove my gloves to make a video, but they were too fast: as they approached us, they took a gander and then turned around and quickly tobogganed away. I frantically snapped pictures with gloved hands, unable to see the viewfinder in the glare.

It turns out I did make a video but didn’t know it until today: my gloved hands apparently pressed the button at the right time but also pressed the “stop” button. And so here’s a short video of three Adelies coming at us on their bellies, propelling themselves with their wings. So cute! It’s only six seconds long, but it shows what we saw. And now I see they were using their feet as well as their wings; in fact, the wings seem to be used mostly for steering.

Watch it full screen to see their little feet kicking.

 

I got two pictures, too, which I published before but in lower resolution. Here is an Adelie in all its glory. The first one looks as if it’s dancing.

And after it turned tail and moved away with its buddies.

A lot more videos (and a few posts) will be coming in the next weeks.

Reader’s wildlife videos

September 16, 2019 • 7:45 am

Reader Rick Longworth sent in three videos and an illustrative photo (not his). Rick’s notes are indented:

At the end of August, I was involved as a volunteer with some research being done on the western grebe (Aechmophorus occidentalis) on Lowell Lake in Idaho. The project involved keeping a running count of the number of grebes in the lake.  These birds are declining over the continent.  We drove an outboard motorboat around the perimeter of the lake with one volunteer counting toward shore and the other toward the center of the lake.  The entire circuit took about 4 hours. I was limited in how much filming I could do since the count is a busy one. We recorded 1,500 adults and juvenile birds – doing very well, thank you. The young juveniles sometimes ride on the back of a parent and sometimes are free-swimming nearby. The grebe cannot fly during breeding. Feathers molt and muscles atrophy.  They are a distinct order, Podicipediformes, and are not closely related to ducks and geese, or loons. Strangely, grebes share much morphology in common with flamingos.
Grebes have lobed feet which allow diving for fish, as seen here on a pied-billed grebe (Podilymbus podiceps). Photo credit – Macaulay Library.
Look at those feet!

The film includes shots of the closely related Clark’s grebe (Aechmophorus clarkia), once thought to be the same species as the western, also included in our count. The Clark’s grebe can be distinguished by white just above as well as below the eye and by a grayish back.

There are many California Quail (Callipepla californica) in the area (southeastern Idaho) and they visit our yard frequently. We were lucky to have chicks on the lawn recently. The adults have a tassel made of six feathers that droops forward. The male has well-defined black and white markings while the female has less definition, colored mostly in brown.

Canada geese (Branta canadensis) take off from the Snake River. 9 AM, September 2.

 

Readers’ wildlife photos (and video)

September 9, 2019 • 7:45 am

Today’s photos come from a trip to the Tetons by reader Charlie Jones, whose notes are indented (photos are by his daughter Hannah):

The following are from the Tetons area this past July 8 and 9.  I’ll do my best with the identifications. This was one of several American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) hanging out on Heron Lake near Coulter Bay:

An American red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus ) on the same hike.  It is great fun watching them eat [JAC: I’m told this one, in the photo and video below, is eating a pine cone].

And here, in fact, is a 30-second video of the hungry little fellow:
The always-photogenic Great Blue Heron, sitting in Swan Lake instead of Heron Pond.  Nature is very disorganized.

We have better photos of mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus, still in velvet), but this one is curiously poking at something.  It remind me of the young deer that come into our backyard in Pennsylvania.  They are often very curious about our cats.  It makes sense to me why cats are curious:  They never know when they might scare up some prey.  But what about deer?  What do they hope to find?

And finally, my favorite creature of the Rockies is the American Pika (Ochotona princeps).  I love these little furry lagomorphs, and this guy was very obliging when it came to posing for the camera.

All photos were taken by my daughter, Hannah Jones, on a cheap little Canon PowerShot SX720 with a nice zoom lens.

 

Readers’ wildlife videos

August 17, 2019 • 7:45 am

We have a real treat for you today: four great animal videos taken by reader Rick Longworth. His captions are indented.

About 30 young Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) crossed the Snake River accompanied by adults. They are not able to fly yet (early June), but they are approaching adult size. One young one panics when a motorboat passes, and becomes separated from the group.  Unable to fly, he kicks for all he’s worth. All ends well as the boat moves away and the juvie rejoins his troop.

A rabbit’s day is full of activity.  I’m not certain of the species, but it could be a desert cottontail (Sylvilagus audubonii), also known as Audubon’s cottontail. It is a New World cottontail rabbit, and a member of the family Leporidae .(Scene 1, testing the taste of beet greens – not so great.  Scene 2, Magpies are the local pests.  Scene 3, helping to maintain the lawn.

In March I filmed a pair of Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) performing a duet near the house.  The female is larger than the male which presumably allows the two to target different sized pray for more efficient utilization of the local food supply.  The female has a higher pitched hoot than the male.  They’ve stayed in the areas all summer, but I have not found their nest nor have I seen any young. Mallard ducks can be heard in the background voicing their alarm call.

The black chinned hummingbirds (Archilochus alexandri) at my feeder are determined to feed no matter what the weather, including winds at 15 mph gusting to 20.  One male seemed not to solve the riddle of which feeder to approach.  It chose the upwind end which required it to fly backward or sideways.  In the video, the wind is from the left.  Another male and a female had no such difficulty.  Those two were filmed in slo-mo.