As a bird photographer I don’t put on my macro lens very often, but I got it out this afternoon to take some macro photos of the batch of Mexican Crazy Lace agates that I got this past week. Before I started tumble polishing them, I wanted to record what they look like in their natural state. When you zoom in extremely close like this, you can really see the beauty. It boggles my mind that these gorgeous patterns are all made by nature…such variety, such cool patterns, such wonderful colors.
After viewing a number of eclipse photos on the web, I’ve decided to likewise “cheat”. When you see the total eclipse live, you’re primarily seeing white light. Most of the photos you see from the event thus similarly show a white solar aura around the dark disc of the moon. However, you also see photos with a very colorful, warm light.
I’m calling it…it’s “cheating”. It’s clearly applying some kind of warming filter. I don’t do much in the way of photoshop manipulation, but I actually do kind of like the look of the “warm” colored eclipse. Here’s my shot at doing the same:
My “cheating” version of the eclipse, with a warming filter applied to give it a more “sunny” look (at least how people tend to perceive the color of the sun).
What an utterly spectacular weekend with my son. We had originally planned to head down to my hometown in Nebraska to view the eclipse Monday. A cloudy forecast for much of Nebraska led to a last-second change of plans, and our extended weekend turned into a weekend of SCIENCE! And may I say, given how the relentless attack on science continues ever since the election of Orange Hitler, a much NEEDED weekend of science.
Our whirlwind sciency tour was planned in haste on Saturday night. At that time, the surest bet for sunny skies for the eclipse were in eastern Wyoming, a good 7-8 hour drive from home. We decided to make a weekend of it, stay in the Black Hills over night Sunday (the nearest hotel we could find to the eclipse path…2 hours away!), and do some agate, fossil, and petrified wood exploring on the way. Sunday we spent some time on Buffalo Gap National Grasslands in the morning, again finding some nice geologic goodies. By Sunday afternoon we’d made it to Hill City, SD, and spent some time in the Black Hills Institute’s Museum. Wonderful place to look at dinosaur fossils, geologic wonders, and other interesting displays.
The highlight of the trip of course was the eclipse on Monday. Anticipating heavy traffic, we left Hill City by 5:30 AM, and made our way to Lusk, Wyoming. Traffic wasn’t as bad as we thought, so we were there by 8:00 AM. We grabbed supplies, found a quiet gravel road 20 miles SW of Lusk, and waited for the show.
That “quiet” gravel road ended up being not so quiet. Despite the isolation, other eclipse watchers from all over North America paraded by us, searching out pullouts on the side of the road from which to set up camp. By the time the moon first started to creep in front of the sun, our quiet gravel road had people camped out about every 30 yards for as far as the eye can see. People continued to stream down the road, all the way up until the point of totality.
I’ve never seen a total eclipse. My son has never seen a total eclipse. After this experience, I GUARANTEE that we will make plans to see another, as soon as is feasible (likely 2024). If there’s a more spine-tingling, goosebump-raising, incredible experience to be had, I’m not sure what it is. As the light got every more dim and eerie, anticipation rose, but the moment of totality kind of sneaks up on you. There was more light than I expected, RIGHT up until totality. The awe of seeing the initial “diamond ring” effect, following by complete totality, is beyond words.
I did want to try to photograph the eclipse. I did take several photos at the start of totality, but after several photos, I HAD to put the camera down, and just revel in the moment. Other than rather incredible traffic trying to get out of Wyoming and back to South Dakota, it was one of the best travel adventures we’ve ever had.
A few shots of the eclipse, before my jaw dropped and the camera was ignored…
Moments before totality, a few seconds of the “diamond ring” effect. I had read about the stages of the eclipse, and knew this was supposed to happen right before totality. Seeing it was still indescribable.
The eclipse during the 2_ minutes of totality. This has a bit longer exposure than the next shot, gathering more light so you can see more of the corona. Shooting in this fashion though hides the detail you can observe around the edge of the moon’s disc (see next photo).
Lower exposure reveals what you can see with your own eyes during totality (at least through my camera, or through our binoculars)…solar prominences flaring off the surface of the sun. This was the moment I dropped the camera and just enjoyed the show. With such a short 2+ minute window to enjoy totality, I didn’t want to miss it with my face behind a camera.
Just your casual, ordinary, every day hike this past Monday. We were vacationing on the Big Island of Hawai’i, and had booked a guide to take us to the active lava flows of Kilauea. We arose before 3:00 AM, met our guide at 4:00AM, and drove as close as you can get to the active flows. That’s a minimum of 3 to 4 miles away from either the surface flows or the lava’s entry point into the ocean, which meant a early morning hike was in order. It’s not the easiest hike in the world! For the first 2 miles, you’re following a gravel road and it’s easy, but to get to the active surface flows, we had to hike a good 1 1/2 to 2 miles across the rough, older flows from Kilauea.
A tiring hike, particularly on the way back when the sun starts beating down on you, but SO worth it! It was the hike of a lifetime, as we were able to experience active, flowing lava from as close as we could physically tolerate. 10 feet was about the limit for me, as any closer and the heat from the lava was overwhelming. An incredible experience for our little family! Here are some photos from the day…click on each photo for a larger view. When I have time to process video I’ll post out here as well.
The guide who took us to the exact location where lava was flowing on the surface was from EpicLava. Highly recommended, once-in-a-lifetime experience!!
The age old question of what’s at the end of the rainbow has been answered. It’s this family farm in Lincoln County, South Dakota
I went birding last night, on a weird weather day in South Dakota. It was cloudy, then sunny, then cloudy again as a brief thunderstorm would roll through, then sunny again…wash, rinse, repeat. It was actually a bit of a crisp day with temps hanging around 55 degrees, but even so, there were a couple of the little thunderstorms that put out quite a bit of pea-size hail. It was such a strange evening given that it was absolutely pouring rain at times, yet the sun was shining.
Despite the rain, the birding was quite wonderful (as it generally is in South Dakota in May!!) The best birding for the day was when I was hanging out by a large wetland, one that had swollen with the recent rains to cover much of the surrounding farmland in a shallow sheet of water. Shorebirds were certainly loving it, as were a beautiful little group of Black Terns. Forster’s Terns were much more numerous, hanging out on fence posts during the rain spells, dipping and diving over the water whenever the rain would stop. It was actually quite peaceful, watching the intermittent downpours, then seeing the birds jump back to life again when the sun would break out. It’s tough being a bird though when the hail starts! They seemed to do OK with the little pea-size hail that fell at one point. but they weren’t very happy about it! Shorebirds tended to crouch low during the hail, as did the terns on the posts, but otherwise, they just stayed still and endured.
Although the birding was quite good, the best moment of the night occurred after one of the little thunderstorms. With small scattered storms separated by wide bands of open sky, the sun was frequently pushing through, even during some of the rainy moments. A beautiful and extremely long-lasting rainbow lit up the eastern sky and was visible for over half an hour as the little thunderstorm continued slowly pushing on to the south and east. It was a full rainbow, with a partial double rainbow above it, but without my wide-angle lens along (hey, I’m a birder, I rarely use it anyway), I wasn’t able to get a photo of the whole thing. Instead, with my 400mm birding lens on, I decided to shoot what was at the end of the rainbow…this family farm! I’ve certainly never tried shooting a rainbow with a telephone lens, but I think the effect was quite beautiful.
The weather is supposed to be beautiful again this weekend, so hopefully within the next day or two I’ll have some more birding photos and stories to share…
A Forster’s Tern perched on a little metal fence pole. This was just prior to the arrival of a little rain band that produced pea-sized hail. Fortunately, the birds seem to cope with the small hail quite well.
The day started off rather gloomy and wet, but after being on travel far too much lately and not getting a chance to bird, I was determined to head out today no matter what the weather was doing. I birded about 4 hours, staying primarily around Sioux Falls and Minnehaha County, and ended up having a great day. It’s clearly not peak migration yet for shorebirds, but they are starting to show up. Numbers were generally small in most places, but there was a pretty decent variety. Here are some photos from the day, many of which are “first-of-year” sightings for me. Click on the photos for an even higher-resolution version.
White-faced Ibis are a species that I don’t see all that often, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen them in Minnehaha County. There were 19 foraging in a flooded field west of Sioux Falls.
Another first-of-year, a Swainson’s Hawk soaring overhead when the sun came out this afternoon. I ended up seeing several Swainson’s Hawks for the day.
Franklin’s Gulls are one of my favorite spring migrants…they’re so beautiful when they have the blush of pink on their undersides. This wasn’t a first-of-year sighting, as I saw a few in the last couple of weeks. However, they’re really starting to come through in big numbers right now. This was right on the edge of Sioux Falls, at Harmodan Park on the southeast side of town.
By far the most common shorebird today were Lesser Yellowlegs, with a few Greater Yellowlegs mixed in. Here’s a nice comparison shot of the two. It’s pretty evident when they’re side-by-side, but not always so easy when a lone bird is spotted.
I have a billion Great Egret photos. But whenever I come across this beautiful bird, I can’t help but take yet another…
This isn’t one of my best photos from a technical or artistic standpoint, but it definitely is one of my favorites! It’s an Elegant Trogon, a find from a November 2015 trip south of Tucson. One of my most memorable experiences as a birder, so it’s high-time I update my “favorite photos” section to include photos a little newer than just those from 2000 to 2010!!
I’ve been working on my main website a lot lately (sdakotabirds.com), trying to fix some technical issues, as well as address content issues. On the technical side, note my site is now completely “secure”. When you try to access the site, no matter what you type in (“sdakotabirds.com”, “http://sdakotabirds.com”, “www.sdakotabirds.com”, etc), you should be rerouted to the safe, SSL “secured” pages with the https:// prefix. Given that Google search rankings are now said to be affected by whether a site uses https or not, I figured it was about time to make the switch. It should also help people feel more comfortable on my blog should they want to register on my blog or comment on a post.
I’ve also been working on streamlining my website. When I first started making my website 15 years ago, I had a “species photo” page that showed all the photos I had for that species. You’d then click on a little image chip that would take you to a separate web page for each individual photo. My photo collection on my website is now around 5,000 individual photos. That means I actually have (or had) 5,000 individual pages. It DOES help me to provide more information about an individual photo, such as details about when and where it was taken, or other anecdotal information that I may want to convey with a photo. It’s not very efficient though! It’s made my website massive and unwieldy, and given so many similar pages (for example, ~40 different individual pages for each of the ~40 or so Ruby-throated Hummingbird photos I have), it’s also resulted in “penalties” for how Google ranks my website. I’m greatly simplifying the structure of my website for displaying photos. I’m working on having each species have only one web page for the display of photos. All photos of that species are provided on the one page, as smaller image “chips”. Clicking on the image chip brings up the photo itself, instead of directing you to another web page that contains the photo. In progress, but it should cut down the number of individual web pages on my website by ~75%, and will make it much easier to navigate around my photo collection.
I’m also working on updating material in other parts of my website. One focus right now is my “Favorite Photos” section. It’s been a long time since I’ve updated that page, so most of my “favorites” were photos from 2000 to around 2010. I’m updating that page right, making it 1) more “selective” in what I deem to be a “favorite”, and 2) more current, with favorite photos from 2000 all the way through the present day. Clicking on each “favorite” will bring you to a new webpage with a large version of the photo, and a story about what makes the photo special to me. Given how out-of-date my old favorite photo section was, I hope this provides a better impression of my photography, my favorites, and what makes me “tick” as a birder and a photographer!
More website updates are coming this spring as well, including 1) new Bird Quizzes to go with the ones I already have, and completion of the individual species pages for all ~980 or so species that have been seen in North America. If there are any other things you’d like to see on my main website, let me know and I’ll see what I can do!
The August representative on the free 2017 bird calendar. This is a Horned Puffin, taken off the coast of Seward Alaska at a place called “Fox Island”. He was obviously nesting and feeding young, diving down for fish, coming to the surface periodically, and repeating until it had a beak full of food. Here I captured him just after he surfaced from a dive.
As I do every year, I completed a free, downloadable and printable bird calendar for the upcoming year. The calendar pages can be downloaded by month, and are set up for standard letter-sized paper, so they can easily be printed at home. The calendar pages are available from here:
I changed things up a bit this year. Given that I always offer the calendar through my South Dakota Birds and Birding website, in the past, I’ve always restricted myself to photos from South Dakota itself. Not this year. Any time I go on travel outside the state, be it for work, family vacation, or other reason, I bring my camera. I have so, so many bird and wildlife photos from outside of South Dakota, none of which have been on my calendars before, so this year decided to use images from across the United States. California, Alaska, Oregon, Minnesota, Florida, Maine, Arizona, Utah…several states are represented, with many birds that you’re just not going to ever see in South Dakota (or are there Horned Puffins in South Dakota?). Below are the months, the bird that’s represented for each month, and where that photo was taken. You can also click on the links below for direct access to the printable PDFs for each month.
One of the larger Mountain Goats, moving through the heavily flowered alpine meadows above Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. Click on this or any other photo for a closer view.
I’m still catching up on processing photos from the summer, including some from our vacation time in Glacier National Park in August. Glacier was busy, so busy that frankly it lessened my enjoyment of the Park. The Going-to-the-Sun Road is certainly a huge attraction in Glacier, and deservedly so, given the spectacular views along its winding path. However, there’s so much traffic on a busy summer day that it’s very difficult to find a place to pull over and park. Most of the roadside stops were full, limiting opportunities to get out and hike. When we reached Logan Pass, a high point in the middle of the route with a visitor’s center and hikes, the entire lot was full, and cars were parked along the side of the road for at least half a mile in either direction from the parking lot. We were admittedly a bit dejected trying to find a place to park, when we decided we were going to ‘reboot’ the day, drive down to the east end of the Going-to-the-Sun Road, and take one of the shuttle buses back to the Logan Pass area.
It was a very good decision. The shuttles can be a bit unreliable (as we found when trying to go back down to our car, having to wait for almost an hour for a shuttle), but they freed us from any worries about having to park. At Logan Pass there are a few hiking options, and one we decided to do went up through a beautiful alpine meadow. There’s a boardwalk that goes up for much of the length of the trail, and given the madhouse at the visitor’s center itself, we were expecting a trail that was elbow-to-elbow in tourists. However, one thing we’ve learned in all our visits to National Parks…people are lazy! A short stroll off the beaten path can often give you some solitude. This wasn’t solitude, but it was manageable in terms of jostling with other tourists.
A view of one of the alpine meadows at Logan Pass. The flowers were truly incredible, although in some spots the dark burgundy flowers were being thinned out by the grazing goats!
The walk itself was incredibly beautiful. The high alpine meadows were packed with blooming flowers of several different kinds. Combined with the lush greenery and spectacular mountain views, and it was truly one of our favorite hikes on the vacation. The trail was somewhat open-ended, with no “must see” destination that marked the end of the trail, so we just kept walking until we started to get tired.
After quite some time heading up the trail, we looked up the path and in the distance, saw some hikers seemingly moving off the path to make way for…something. At first it was hard to tell because of the distance, but soon the small, distant white blobs on the path became recognizable…Mountain Goats! There was a small group of about 8 Mountain Goats that were headed down the mountain towards the flowered fields, and they were bound and determined to take the path of least resistance…literally! The goats seemingly put their heads down and kept coming down the path, hikers-be-damned. They were still quite a ways up the path from us when the moved into the flowery fields and began to feed.
The youngest of the small herd of Mountain Goats, pausing to sniff the flowers. Well, actually, right after this he ate all the flowers off this plant.
We continued up the path until we were in very close proximity. They weren’t shy, obviously being quite used to hikers on the path. They were feeding heavily in the gorgeous alpine meadows, and seemed to especially have an affinity for a plant with deep red flowers (that’s about as far as my flower identification skills take me!). The small group included a couple of young goats that were obviously just born that year, as well as a pair of larger adults that appeared to be dominant. The goats peacefully fed while the handful of hikers that were at that height stood or sat on the path, thrilled to see them at such close range.
As with the previous post about the Grizzly Bears of Banff, it was the Mountain Goats of Glacier that were another true highlight of the trip!
A big Grizzly near the Bow Valley Parkway in Banff National Park. This was actually a rarity, where one of the bears we saw would look towards us on the road. For the most part, they were too busy feeding on berries to worry about observers. Click on this photo or any other photo on this post to see a larger photo version.
In continuing the theme of “summer vacation pics”…the end point of our driving vacation this summer was Banff and the surrounding area in Alberta. My wife and I had been there once before, but we’d never been there as a family. We spent several days stationed in Banff itself, with day trips to several spots in Banff National Park, and a trip up towards Jasper on the Icefields Parkway. The highlight of the the trip, however?
Grizzly Bears! We’ve been in Yellowstone several times. We’ve been to Glacier National Park two times now (after this trip). As a family we have vacationed in Alaska, and I myself have been in Alaska several other times. In all these trips, we’ve on occasion seen bears. One on this trip, maybe one or even two on another trip, etc. Coming across a bear, be it a Black Bear or Grizzly Bear, is a treat even in these areas that are known for bears. They’re just not very common to begin with, and seeing one during the day in visible range is a special treat. That’s what made our trip to Banff so special. We saw SO many bears that on one day in particular, we almost were expecting to see bears around every bend!
On our last trip to Banff many years ago, we saw wildlife (Bighorn Sheep, Mountain Goats, Elk, etc.), but no bears. However, we knew this year might be different, as before leaving on vacation, we had read many stories about the banner year around Banff for buffalo berries. Buffalo berries are a favorite for bears, and tend to grow at forest edges and clearings…including along roadways in Banff National Park. We had read that the bears in the area were all down in the lowlands, gorging on berries, and that we might have a good chance of seeing one.
Berry time! A good view of another Grizzly, and the berries that had them so far down in the lowlands of the park.
We saw one! Then two…then three…then four…until we had seen seven bears in one day!! Seven bears on August 2nd, all along the Bow Valley Parkway near Banff. The Bow Valley Parkway itself is a really pretty drive, going through dense forest and also occasionally giving you a good view of the mountains. The day before, we had been in the Lake Louise area, and had a wonderful time on a long, 6- mile hike up from the lake to a rustic teahouse. A beautiful day on August 1st, but WOW, the people! In the heart of summer, it’s very difficult to even find a parking spot near Lake Louise, and the area around the lake and hotel itself are incredibly busy. Thus, when starting out on the Bow Valley Parkway on August 2nd, we expected quite a few people. We were wrong. The parkway was relatively quiet, so we drove very slow, scanning the forest edges for wildlife. The edge of the forest next to the road had many fruiting buffalo berry bushes, and it certainly SEEMED like the perfect place to find browsing bears.
It was. It didn’t take long before we saw a mini “bear jam” up ahead. Given the quiet traffic that day, the “bear jams” typically only consisted of a car or two, and much of the time we also were by ourselves as we watched a bear. As we slowly approached the first two cars we had seen pulled over on the edge of the road, we wondered…is it a Grizzly? A Black Bear? Or something else?
The first bear we saw was a beautiful, large grizzly. At first, he was perhaps 10 yards back in the forest, making it difficult to see him well, even with binoculars that we had. It didn’t take long before the binoculars were relegated to the back seat for most of the rest of the day though, as soon the first Grizzly strolled out of the forest and started gorging on buffalo berries, just 15 yards away or so. With all our previous vacations in “bear country”, this was by far our closest, best look at a Grizzly, so we pulled over and enjoyed watching him feed for a while. Finally we reluctantly pulled back onto the road to continue our journey up Bow Valley Parkway.
Slurp! Often we’d just see a bear plopped down on his back haunches while he/she gorged on berries.
It wasn’t a long journey! After a mere 200 yards or so, we saw movement in the brush on the side of the road. Another Grizzly! For the most part the Grizzlies we saw were totally oblivious to activity on the road. They would walk up to a loaded buffalo berry bush, strip the berries with their snouts in big bunches, and pretty much strip the entire bush before moving to the next one. On occasion they would glance over towards the road, but they had one thing on their minds…berries! Their close proximity and casual attitude towards observers led to some great photo opportunities.
In one stretch of less than a mile, we ended up seeing 4 different Grizzly Bears. As we continued up Bow Valley Parkway, we found two more Grizzlies, and one Black Bear who had a couple of cubs. We also found a couple of Grizzly Bears the next day, with at least one of the two being a “repeat” from the day before. Some of the Grizzlies had ear tags, and Bear 134 is one that we came across multiple times during our stay in Banff. It was enjoyable not only seeing and photographing the bears from close range, but also looking them up on the internet! A search of terms like “Bear 134 Banff” would often lead to stories of an individual bear’s exploits, either during the 2016 season, or in previous seasons.
It was a special trip. We were definitely spoiled in terms of seeing bears, and I truly doubt that we’ll ever experience so many wild bears in one day again.
