All My Blogs

It takes three years for a male red-winged blackbird to fully develop its characteristic red epaulettes. I used to wonder why the epaulettes on some red-winged blackbird males were less spectacular than on others.  It turns out that it takes a few years for the familiar patches to develop. In first-year males, the shoulder feathers are brownish or somewhat yellowed.  Very little red appears.  In the following year, the males show a transitional phase.  A significant red patch is present, unlike in the first year males, but it is not the fully developed spectacle present in the mature adult.  It takes another year before the epaulettes have blossomed to their full potential. The bird's feathering also changes over time, with there being a brownish hue to them in the first and second year.  By the third year, the somatic feathers are fully black.  You can see the tinge of brown on the first three images above. The strong, fully developed shoulder patches...

Photograph I took of the Bow River in Calgary. What colour is snow?  We know from experience that it is white.  And yet, the above photo would seem to indicate that it may sometimes be blue.  On the same day.  In the same photo.  In fact, snow can be both blue or white and be right beside each other.  And if all that wasn't enough, the shade of blue can also differ depending on the situation. So, what sort of devilry is going on here?  You may already know the answer to that, and it isn't some tweak of Photoshop that has created it.  This is Nature herself and the wonderful world of white balance. Snow reflects all the wavelengths of visible light.  The light falling upon the snow is called incident light, and it is the spectral makeup of that light causing the would-be colour change.  On a cloudy, gray day, you may find that the snow is pretty much the same colour.  Yet, on this day in April of 2017, there was an open blue sky. Dir...

From left to right:  Nora, Josh, Daisy, Chanelle, Emma I am proud of my son.  Without going into detail, he has made his way through his own share of trials to become the proud father he is today.  The road ahead itself won't be without its own share of struggles, but he has a good foundation upon which to build.  And he has a good moral center with lots of support upon which to draw courage and strength from.   I read a quote somewhere that, paraphrased, said, "Any man can be a father, but not every man can be a dad."  The difference between the two being fathering a child versus raising one.  To father a child is to be half of the equation to create life from a single cell to a living, breathing being.  To be a dad to a child is to be physically, emotionally, spiritually, and morally present as the young person grows up into adulthood, and even then, to be there as part of the family in some supportive capacity. My own father had a difficul...

Above:  Common loon pair.  Below:  Red necked grebe pair.  Photographed in Alberta. I have to say, both zooms and primes have their place in your kit.  They both have pros and cons and, as such, have a reason why you would chose one over another.  As nice as it would be to have both and pick the lens that fits the current need, the fact is that many people can only have one or the other, especially when it comes to long focal length lenses. Right away, though, I want to discount all-in-one lenses that give you a range from 28 - 300 mm, or in the case of some ultra zoom compacts, boast a zoom range of 24-3000 mm.  Although their range is legendary, the quality of the resulting images is generally poor, especially if you want to enlarge or crop significantly.  Professionals don't use them for a very good reason. The cameras I use my long lenses on are APS-C bodies with a 1.5x crop factor.  This increases the relative focal length to 750 mm for ...

Cedar waxwings.  Notice red "waxy" tips of secondaries (main & inset).  Insert: no "waxy tips". Waxwings don't actually make wax.  The bright red tips projecting off the secondaries of the wings are actually projections of the feather shafts.  They are actually made of keratin, a structural protein.  The colours come from bright coloured fruits that have deep red pigments (you can see berries in lower left inset image).  The berries contain carotenoids, brightly coloured pigments that are important precursors to certain vitamins and antioxidants.  The particular pigment is called astaxanthin .   These same pigments end up in the projected feather shafts of the waxwings.  If you want to see one on a feather, click here . There's more.  If you look at the waxwing pair in the lower left inset, you will see that the front one has no such red waxy tips, while the back one does ( you have to look closely).  They are born wi...

Song sparrow, Juvenile white-crowned sparrow, and adult white-crowned sparrows at Munson Pond. Many times when photographing birds, I will find more than one in my viewfinder.  A single bird is always relatively easy to shoot - focus on the bird (head if possible) and press the shutter button.  But what do you do when there is more than one bird? You basically have three choices.  You can focus on the closest bird, focus on the farthest bird, or focus on a point somewhere in between.  The best choice will vary a lot depending on the exact situation, but there is, I believe, a good general first choice. The best, general first choice is to focus on the closest individual.  The reasons are as follows.   the front individual will be larger and therefore have more detail than the individual(s) behind it. depth of field is so limited (I used a 500 mm with a 1.4x TC on an APS-C camera to give me a relative focal length of around 1000 mm) when shooting wide o...