Birds of North America – Page 9 – Circadianreflections Blog

Plan B is for the Birds

September 26, 2016September 26, 2016Posted in Birds, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Birds of Prey, Insects, National Wildlife Refuge, National Wildlife Refuges in California, Nature, Nature Photography, Nikon, Photography, Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, San Jose California Nature Photographer, WildlifeTagged Birds, Birds in the Wild, Deer, Doe, Dragonflies, Ducks, Fawn, Insects, Nature Photography, Night Heron, Nikon, Northern Pintails, Peregrine Falcon, Pied-billed Grebe21 Comments

My original Photography plans for last week-end fell apart mid-week when one of the friends I was going with fell ill. Rather than go anyway which didn’t sit well with me or my friend Theresa we two switched gears and decided to go birding in the Central Valley to see what birds if any had arrived early.

I had read a few reports of early migrants in the area; we hoped to find one or two, and spend some time catching up with each other.

I left for T’s house early (6:30am) so we’d get to the Refuge in the morning when the birds are more active.

We found the first pond completely sans water. Fish and Wildlife have just started filling the ponds we discovered. Many of the ponds we’re used to seeing full of water were bone dry, but it is early in the season!

Just as we were starting the auto-route we spied a Doe and her Fawn in the tall grass. I didn’t get an image of them together. Mom decided her male Fawn was too close to the road and moved to higher grass. Honestly, I think she looks young!

Doe Deer Female

The Fawn has two little adorable antler nubs. Fawn Male

Early arrivals: There were quite a few White-fronted Geese on the little islands in the ponds that had water.

White-fronted Goose

Northern Pintails, and Shovelers are showing up, but I didn’t make any images of the Shovelers they were too far out. You see a Northern Pintail in image above giving me a one wing salute. 🙂

Among the usual suspects here were thousands of Dragonflies,

Dragon Fly

Pied-billed Grebes

Pied-billed Grebe

Night Herons; most were deep in the foliage, but one was on Sentry duty,

Night Heron

We saw a female Harrier flying low in the distance hunting, a few Red-tail Hawks, and as we approached the tree the Bald Eagles hang out in there we saw there was a Peregrine Falcon perched on a snag surveying the land.

Once the Eagles return I doubt we’ll be seeing this Falcon in this tree. 🙂

Plan B turned out to be a great day, and it was lovely hanging out with Theresa. You can find her images on flickr here.

Nikon D700| Nikkor 200-500mm VR| Lexar Professional Digital Film| PS CC 2015.5

More to come…

Clark’s Grebes

August 6, 2016August 6, 2016Posted in Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Clark's Grebes, Nature Photography, Nikon, PhotographyTagged Bird Photography, Birding, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Clark's Grebes, Grebe Behavior, Grebe Chicks, Nature, Nikon, Photography20 Comments

Today I thought I share some images from my Spring Grebe excursion. We met at 5:45am to get out on the water to see the sun rise over the mountains and get that great light.

We were so fortunate to have a lovely morning with a rosy glow, and the Grebes were up and feeding already as well.

The male Grebes impressed me by how hard they work to feed the family. I’ll try to convey that with some images.

The male making a fish transfer to his mate and a hungry chick poking its head out in anticipation;

Clark's Grebe Pair making fish transfer

…but that little fish was a slippery one and she dropped it, fortunately, she was able to retrieve it quickly!

Clark Grebe Pair

Here a Clark’s Grebe male is just about to make the transfer;

Clark's Grebe Male making Fish Transfer to Female

Here’s a Clark’s Grebe male feeding a fish directly to a chick. That fish looks too big for that tiny bill!

Clark's Grebe Male Transferring Fish to Grebe Chick

With several mouths to feed the male does a whole lot of fishing!

He helps with swimming lessons, and even gives the female a break by allowing the chicks to swim from Mom’s back to his. Western Grebes: Yes, it’s a butt shot. 🙂

Western Grebes

Seeing this was so exciting and so darn adorable!!

Nikon D700| Nikkor 200-500mm| Lexar Professional Digital Film| PS CC 2015.5

Have a wonderful week-end Everyone!

More to come…

Insects of Point Reyes National Seashore

July 15, 2016Posted in Beetles, Birds, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Butterflies, Insects, Photography, USA National ParksTagged Banded Birds, Beetles, Butterflies, Insects, Nature, Nikon, Photography, Point Reyes National Seashore, Skippers, US National Parks, White-crowned Sparrow29 Comments

I had pretty good luck spotting insects while hiking in Point Reyes National Seashore last week-end. I saw Butterflies, Beetles, and Grubs. Here’s a sampler. 🙂

I’m pretty sure this is a Skipper, but I can’t find anything that looks exactly like it in my books, or online so, don’t know what it is. I found it in Point Reyes National Seashore last week-end; July 9,2016. Anyone know what it is and what it is called?

Unknown Skipper or Butterfly?

Other insects I found while exploring different areas of the park were:

A ladybug, one of several I saw…

a green and black beetle called a Spotted Cucumber Beetle,

Spotted Cucumber Beetle

who was pretty hungry,

Spotted Cumcumber Bettle

…a Common Buckeye Butterfly

Common Buckeye Butterfly

…and a grub or grasshopper served a la carte to a White Crown Sparrow that is banded. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a banded sparrow.

Banded White Crown Sparrow

Nikon Df w/28-105mm lens and Delkin Digital Film, and Lumix FZ200 w/ Lexar Digital Film- Hand-held

More to come…

Lazuli Bunting Watercolor

July 8, 2016July 7, 2016Posted in #WaterColorMonth, Art, Birds, Birds of North America, Draw a Bird Day, Nature, Photography, Watercolor, Watercolor PaintingTagged #WaterColorMonth, Art, Birds, Create Art Everyday, Doodlewash.com, Draw a Bird Day, Learning to paint, Nature, Nikon, painting, Panasonic Lumix FZ200, Watercolor26 Comments

Here we are already on July 8th! Which means it’s Draw-a-Bird Day over on CreateArtEveryday, and it’s also #WorldWatercolorMonth created by Charlie O’Shields over at doodlewash.com.

Yesterday afternoon I felt inspired to paint a Lazuli Bunting I photographed back in May 2014. I used a Pentel Graphic Gear 0.7 to lightly sketch the beak, and snag it’s perched on, but kept the rest the painting loose. I’m pleasantly surprised how well it came out for not trying to sketch the whole bird.

The Lazuli Bunting is a Spring/Breeding visitor in my region of Northern California. I was very excited to see it him and add him to my “life list” back in the Spring of 2014.

Lazuli Bunting in Watercolor

The image I used as my reference is here. P52 18 of 52 Lazuli Bunting-1st yr Male

Paint, Paper, Brush:

Sennelier L’Aquarelle in Cinereous Blue, French Vermillion, Bright Red, Burnt Umber, Ivory Black, Naples Yellow Deep, Warm Sepia, Hooker’s green, Phthalo Green Light.

I painted this in my Strathmore Watercolor Art Journal 400 Series 8.5″ X 5.5″ 140lb paper.

Brush: Di Vinci Artissimo Rd #1

I’m posting this on both Creatarteveryday’s Draw a Bird Day, and #WorldWatercolormonth. If you have a moment please head over and check out the amazing work being done by artists all over the world.

More to come…

Killdeer v3.0

June 10, 2016June 10, 2016Posted in Bird Art, Birds, Birds of North America, Pen & Wash Watercolor, Photography, Watercolor, Watercolor PaintingTagged #NatureDoodlewash, Bird Art, Di Vinci Escoda Brush, Killdeer, Mimik Kolinsky Brush, Panasonic Lumix FZ200, Sennelier, Simmons Brush, Strathmore papers, Watercolor13 Comments

So, the other day when I posted my Draw-a-Bird Killdeer I meant to post it with my second painting, but had one glass of vin too many me thinks because, I actually posted the first Killdeer line and wash I tried. I’m so blond!

I wasn’t totally happy with version 2 though it was better than the first drawing and painting, so I quickly got started on a version 3 which I finished yesterday afternoon.

Killdeer in Watercolor

My notes in the right corner are about the tools I used to make this line and wash.

Micron 0.3 pen, Sennelier watercolor paints, Brushes: 0/0 rigger by Simmons, #6 rd Escoda Reserva, and #12 rd Mimik Kolinsky. Painted in a Strathmore 400 series 8.5″X 5.5″ Watercolor Journal.

It’s been fun and exciting seeing my progress with each drawing and wash. I am happy with the way version 3 came out.

version 2

Killdeer V2

and the first attempt.

Killdeer in Watercolor

With each drawing I got the shape, and markings a bit better, and the placement on the page better as well. My next step is to draw and paint it on a bigger sheet of Arches watercolor paper. I’m going to begin that today or tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Images taken with a Panasonic Lumix FZ200| Lexar Professional Digital Film| PS CC 2015

More to come…

Clark’s Grebes

June 6, 2016June 6, 2016Posted in Bird Photography, birding, Birds of North America, California, Clark's Grebes, Clear Lake CA, Grebes, Nature Photography, Northern California, Northern California Birds, PhotographyTagged Birding, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Clark's Grebes, Clear Lake CA, Eyes of the Wild Boat Tours, Grebe Chicks, Nature Photography, Nikkor 200-500mm, Nikon26 Comments

I spent the week-end with old friends Theresa, Dali, and Alex birding up in Clear Lake. We went to see Grebes, we hoped dancing on the water.

We booked a boat with the same tour group we used last year Eyes of the Wild with Faith as our Captain. You can read that post here.

We booked early and Faith kept us abreast of the Grebe situation on the lake on and off up until our booking day. Last week she sent me a text message saying that courting had really slowed down, but she had a surprise. Babies were early and she’d found several pair of Grebes with babies! Did we still want to come up?

Did we still want to come up? OF COURSE WE DID! We’d go to see the chicks alone! We had hoped to get up there again last summer to see Grebe chicks, but there was a huge fire, the drought, add to that predators, well, it all added up to a low number of Grebes and not too many babies so, we didn’t go back up last year. We went this time!

Here’s my favorite image today of the babies and their parents.

Grebe Family

Dad had brought the fish, made a perfect transfer of it to Mom, and the chicks were out and exposed from their Mom’s wings peeping their heads off to get that fish! The morning light was lovely, and I managed to keep the shot in focus and made before the boat moved up or down with a swell!

This was such an exciting, wonderful, beautiful sight to see!

We also saw a few dances. We saw Osprey pairs with chicks, and a really pretty sunset among the most notable things we saw this past week-end.

I came home with 1700 images to cull. I’ve made my first pass and deleted about 400 already. I’ll try to break up the posts so I don’t bore you to death with images of Grebes all the time. 🙂

Nikon D700| Nikkor 200-500mm| SunDisk Digital Film|

More to come…

California Thrasher II

May 17, 2016May 17, 2016Posted in Bird Photography, Birds in the Wild, Birds of North America, Nature, Nature Photography, Photography, Santa Clara CountyTagged Bird Photography, Birding, Birds of California, Bushtits, California Thrasher, Nikon, Santa Clara County30 Comments

Back in March while birding and photographing flowers in Santa Cruz, CA I was thrilled to hear and see a California Thrasher for a minute…long enough to get a few images, before I spooked it trying to get a little bit closer to it. You can see that post here.

I’ve been wishing to see one again, and be closer to it. Well, on Sunday I got my wish while birding down in the southern end of Santa Clara Valley.

California Thrasher

He was singing his little heart out!

California Thrasher

He sang for 10 minutes. Then he stopped, gave himself a real good shake…

California Thrasher

…took a breath, and began singing again!

California Thrasher

Two little Bushtits flew into the bush beside him and began talking to him,

Bushtits

so he turned around to sing to them.

California Thrasher

There were a few more notes sung by the Bushtits to the Thrasher then they flew off. It happened so fast I was only able to get 3 shots of the Bushtits. The image isn’t great. My lens kept wanting to focus on the branches in front of the bird rather than the little bird.

Then the Thrasher flew north. What a treat that was to hear him singing for so long. It was the highlight of my morning.

The California Thrasher is found in California and Baja California.

I found some California Thrasher Song sound files over on allaboutbirds.com that you can listen to here.

Nikon D700| Nikkor 200-500mm| Lexar Professional Digital Film| PS CC 2015

More to come…

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