A little while ago I visited Arastradero Preserve in Palo Alto, CA in order to get some photos of some of the white-tail kites that live there. And I was certainly not disappointed. I climbed a large hill in order to get above some of the trees on which they perch while they are not hunting. I quickly saw one of the kites and slowly made my way toward its tree.
A white-tailed kite perches on a tree branch, surveying the landscape around it
With my eye glued to the view finder, I had my lens tight in on this bird, capturing shots of it flying up and back to various branches on the tree. Suddenly a dark form darted by just above the kite. Luckily, my photography training was to shoot first and ask questions later, and I capture a single frame of what I later saw to be another kite flying at the first one.
A male white-tail kite flies past a female, which reacts to his close proximity
The male quickly mated with the female, and just as quickly flew away. And before you ask, yes I do have photos, but hey, this is a family friendly blog!
A male white-tail kite approaches a female from behind and mates with it
I’ve never seen this before or since, and I definitely know that I wouldn’t have been able to capture these shots if I hadn’t already had the female framed and in focus. Sometimes you just get lucky….
I stopped at one of my local spots to photograph birds and was rewarded with an abundance of not only one pelican species, but both species that are regularly seen in California – the American White Pelican and the Brown Pelican. Usually I don’t see both in one area, but here they were at Shoreline Park in Mountain View, each doing their own thing.
First, I saw a half dozen white pelicans swimming together, and fishing simply by dunking their heads underwater and scooping up great billfuls of water. In this way, they were able to catch small fish, but on a fairly regular basis.
A fish attempt to flee the confines of an american white pelican’s bill.
Most of the time, at least one pelican would remain above water while the rest would go for fish. They would rotate this way, dunking, scooping and eating. At some points however, I saw all pelicans in the group go under at the same time. I waited to see if I could get them lined up, and finally I saw a moment of symmetry in order to capture this photo.
Four american white pelicans line up, all of them fishing at the same time. There was a nice symmetry to this image, which was calling very strongly to be rendered as a black and white fine art photograph.
Next it was on to the brown pelicans, who were circling above Shoreline Lake, and going through much more effort to fish. A pelican would circle for a while, keeping a close view of the surface of the water.
A brown pelican circles through the air above a lake, looking for fish to dive for
At this point, it would plummet to the water surface in a dive, completely submerging its entire body underwater. The success rate of fishing this way seemed lower than the white pelicans, but perhaps when the diving did work, it rewarded them with bigger fish. It was fine by me, because their activity rewarded me with many flight shots and photographs of the birds on the surface of the water.
A brown pelican flies low and flat over the surface of the water after it takes off from the surface
After a couple of hours of shooting, I was pretty pelican’ed out and I packed up to leave. But it was great to see both species side by side on a single morning.
A few days ago, my friend Jerry Dodrill and I headed out to the Sonoma coast for a little sunset photography. We had mixed targets – we had our landscape gear with us, hopeful for a stunning sunset, but also had our wildlife gear in case that opportunity presented itself. Unfortunately, the weather conditions never materialized for a good sunset – it was clear skies all the way across the Pacific to the western horizon.
However, Jerry knew of a spot that might give us some nesting cormorants along a sea cliff. With that potential in mind, we headed out.
We reached a spot where sheer cliffs dropped into the choppy ocean below. A few cormorants were nesting low on a cliff, and brown pelicans skimmed low and silent over the water in fighter jet formation. As we moved further along the cliff edge, a large flapping of wings caught my attention. “Raptor,” I called out pointing with one hand while the other started preparing my camera and lens for flight photography. As I tracked the object through my lens, I could see a large, flat white face peering at the ground. Barn owl. Soon, more objects took to the sky, and we counted at least five barn owls hunting in the late evening light.
The sun spotlights a barn owl as it hunts in the last few minutes of daylight
With the sun setting behind us, it acted as a sort of spot light, turning the owls bright orange against a darker field, now fully in the sun’s shadow. This was indeed magical light, and it only lasted a few moments. Soon the sun set behind the western horizon, and while the owls became more active, it was becoming difficult to track them in the waning light.
A barn owl flies low over a field, hunting for rodents just after sunset
We continued to shoot until it got too dark to produce any kind of salvageable results. As it was, I was impressed at the performance of the higher ISOs that I normally never use. With a little noise reduction in post processing, the images still retained quite a bit of detail.
As we packed up, I was once again reminded of one of the most important lessons of outdoor photography – get outside! Only if you don’t go out at all will you be guaranteed zero results.
Lately I’ve been going through my backlog of unprocessed photos, and I happened upon a collection I took one day at Shoreline Lake in Mountain View. A theme of “grebes” jumped out at me right away, as I had captured on camera four of the five common grebe species in the SF Bay Area, within just a few hundred yards of each other, and all in their breeding plumage.
First up were the beautiful eared grebe (above) and the horned grebe (below). At the peak of their breeding plumage, they are quite easy to differentiate, but in their winter colors, it takes a sharp eye to tell the species apart.
A horned grebe dries itself off after bathing by rising out of the water and shaking vigorously from side to side.
As usual, the eared grebes greatly outnumbered the horned grebes, but both species were mingling and fishing together quite happily.
Closer to shore in a sheltered corner of the lake were several pied-billed grebes. While the eared and horned grebes usually migrate north to breed and raise young, many pied-billed grebes raise their chicks in the Bay Area. When they enter their breeding colors, they gain a thick black band around their bill. In the winter, the bill is a solid bone white color.
A pied-billed grebe in breeding plumage swims through calm water
Finally, a clark’s grebe made a brief appearance in the lake, most of which seemed to be under water. Clark’s grebes look similar to the region’s last common grebe, the western grebe. Clark’s grebes also migrate north to mate, however a persistent couple has been trying to raise young over the last few years in another location within Shoreline Park. So far, they have been unsuccessful, with either no chick hatching at all, or the newly hatched young dying within days. A successful nesting would be of great interest to the local birding community, as many have kept watch over this pair’s nest over the last couple of years.
A clark’s grebe flaps it wings to reshuffle its feathers as part of its preening routine
I was happy at the variety of grebes that day, and that I caught some of these species at just the right time: after they had molted into breeding colors but before the left for their journey north.
