Tuesday, August 12, 2008

An af-tern-noon at Radio Rd

Nesting birds are interesting to watch and they are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. To see, how much a parent cares for their young, how hard they had to work to keep their young ones fed constantly, how wonderful they are in sharing their love and braver in protecting their young ones from other predators, how intelligent they are in luring their young ones to make their first flight out of their nest by tempting them with food, how skillful they are in teaching the young ones to catch a prey on their own and survive in the wild and above everything how to cope up with humans and the destruction of their habitat caused by them, its just mind blowing to me that an animal of such small size could manage all of this succesfully year after an year on every breeding season.The nesting birds shows that even within an animal kingdom, there can be lots of surprises.

May be that's the secret of all species alive today that have stood the test of time and have survived and evolved, its also how our own species must have survived, but its disheartening to see that sometimes many humans with bigger brains than these birds, are often much worse at doing the same.

This year at radio road in redwood city, the terns feeding their fledglings is a sight not to be missed. I would visit this place on my drive back from work and spend a couple of hours until the sun goes down. During the few hours I spent here, I only witnessed one or two young terns calling (that were close enough to photograph), the parents were not seen anywhere in the vicinity. I continued to go there again hoping this day would be the day, but relentlessly I was proven wrong and the same thing happened for five days in a row. As a bird photographer I knew if there is one thing that I learned from this, its patience. On the sixth day I was able to watch and capture this wonderful moment. As they say, perseverance pays off.

Here is the rest of the story..


A forster's tern fledgling begs for food as one of its parent flies over. The young ones can be very demanding. This little one would stand on the bark waiting patiently for hours for its parent to return. When he sees the parent, he would start calling to them, which is a signal that he is hungry..




Hearing the child cry for food, the parent responds by bringing in a fish caught at a nearby lagoon and heads home.




A home delivery arrives for the fledgling. What a relief!




As the fledgling tries to keep a hold on to that fish that its parent just fed, it lost its balance and fell into the water. But it never lost grip of that fish. It knows, how valuable that food is and how hard it is to get one.




The fledgling swallows the fish, head first. Another good day for the tern! This feeding sequence got passed in less than 4-5 seconds. My fingers had to work as fast as these terns, behind the camera to capture these moments!.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Here comes the 40D!

Finally, upgraded to Canon 40D now.. and happy as a puppy!!!

Some test shots of Marbled Godwit in flight..





And this image of willet vs whimbrel pretty much sums it about how I feel comparing a canon rebel xt with a canon 40D. Both might look similar, but they each belong to very different specie!

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Oh the faithful rebel!


Wilson's Warbler
Originally uploaded by metaphors
It sucks to be stuck without a camera!! until now my faithful rebel XT has served me very well for past two years... and honestly i have been very happy with it.. its considered an entry level slr camera, but with patience and good technique you can do quite well (atleast until its limitations become more apparent).. Image quality is great, my only gripe was its high ISO performance beyond 400 suffers badly, has only 3 fps, and focusing speed could have been better. What is considered as the entry level workhorse,I even managed to get few decent bird in flight shots with it, which are usually in the domain of ID Mk III's that costs 10 times more.

Unfortunately my XT died last week and wouldn't even power on, its now out of warranty period too.. i've sent it to canon repair center in Virginia but looks like its going to take another couple of weeks with no camera for me!! :( me thinks, now that its limitations are quite visible to me, may be its time to upgrade!

Sunday, July 6, 2008

El Polin Spring

Let say if you could talk to the hummingbirds and you asked them what was their favorite hangout spot in the bay area, I'm sure many would unanimously say that its El Polin Spring.

Thanks to my Flickr friend Kitundu through whom I came to know about this place. This place is like magic! You will find several bird species from tiny shaped hummingbirds to medium sized Robins that come here every day to take bath and drink from the natural spring water that arise from a rock wall at the head of the riparian valley in Presidio, San Francisco.



What was so special for me about this place was that, this was the only place where I have seen the hummingbirds take a bath. When I was there a few days ago, the Allen's were seen more often than the Anna's hummingbird. The latter is actually a permanent resident in the bay area. In the pic above, you can see that the Anna's hummingbird is trying to chase away the Allen's that had just landed to take a bath. Both hummingbirds are very territorial and they often chase each other and other birds that uses its water.

Among other regular visitors like Goldfinches, Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Pine Siskin, few surprise visits were made by Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Wilson's warbler (see right), Pygmy nuthatch and there was one recent report of Clark's nutcracker as well.

The bathing sequence of hummingbirds are so beautiful to watch, I thought photographs just don't do enough justice. Fortunately, I also had my video camera with me. So I captured some hi-definition footage of these beautiful birds. As you watch it, you'll notice the music is synchronized to birds action. I also kept the original sounds in the background. There is no editing magic here, as I continued to edit the video, everything started to fit together nicely. I think that was just a bit of luck and nothing else :). And thanks to WhiteEyes for making the wonderful music available under creative commons license.

Video:


Brandt's Cormorant Nesting Colony

Brandt's Cormorant are endemic to North America and they breed along the west coast of North America ranging from Alaska in the north to Mexico in the south. The pictures below are from a nesting colony where I saw them in large numbers at the Monterey's Breakwater cove.

The young cormorant feeding behavior is quite dramatic and interesting to watch.

Here a young Brandt's Cormorant requests his parent to feed him.


Mom opens her mouth to let the young one in..


Young one dives deep into mom's throat to get nourished.


A Brandt's Cormorant takes flight.


Nesting Colony