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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...

Low tide near Birch Bay, Washington, 2013 It turns out that the moon is important to life.  The obvious assist is with tides.  The moon exerts a pull on the Earth.  This pull, due to gravity, causes the movement of water on the oceans, to such an extent that tides on the Bay of Funday have a range of more than 50 feet.  That's 100 billion tons of water, twice every day, up and down a 150 mile channel.  Regular tides are far less than that of course, but the idea here is that the moon moves a lot of water. High tide brings important nutrients and debris inland.  It also removes shoreline features through erosion which facilitates nutrient distribution and the rock cycle.  Low tide allows a great many organisms to feed on intertidal species.  The whole marine food web is greatly enhanced by tides. Then there is the fact that the moon stabilizes the Earth to some extent.  The moon's gravity holds the Earth's tilt in its current plane of rotation...

I believe this is an adult reed beetle - genus Plateumaris - on a yellow iris flower. Have you ever heard of an insect breathing underwater by using the air inside aquatic plants?  I have heard of it, but never researched it until now. Reed beetles, like the one above, have two distinctive habitats.  As larvae, the insect attaches to underwater plant parts such as the yellow iris in the photo.  They feed on the roots and stems of the host plant, but the peculiar thing is that they get their oxygen from the plant itself.  They tap into the  aerenchyma (air-filled tissue) of the plant using two spine-like hooks located on the abdomen.  This allows gas exchange to occur with the insects' breathing apparatus (malpighian tubules).  You can see the two spine-like hooks in the image below (lower left image).  Taken from  this source . Have a look at lower left image - reed beetle grub showing the breathing hooks. The adults live above water and look...

The Colorado River in the American Southwest The Colorado River is heavily dammed.  There are 7 major dams that produce reservoirs along its 1450 miles.  Along its tributaries, there are another 50 or so.  The largest of these include Parker Dam, Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon Dam, and Grand Valley Diversion Dam.  These store not only vast amounts of water, but they are also important for hydroelectricity and as a source of fresh water. It is the demand for fresh water that is causing the problem.  Irrigation, water for industry and public consumption, and evaporation all contribute to its depletion.  The river system supports some 40 million Americans and irrigates over 5 million acres of farmland.  Much of California, Nevada, and Arizona get their water from the Colorado River. The river basin provides water for about 10 percent of all the United States. Between the dams, water extraction, and reduced rainfall from global warming, the river is running dry i...