All My Blogs

  White-crowned sparrow on a favourite perch. The white-crowned sparrow is a common summertime visitor to Western and much of Northern Canada.  I hear its familiar chirping and see its telltale black and white striped crown on many of my travels.  I spotted this one yesterday near the beach in southeast Washington.  They feed on the ground, taking both seeds and insects.  It is amazing to watch them moving leaf litter; with both feet planted on the offending target, they hurl it backward with a synchronized jerk, unlodging any morsels hiding underneath. They are not terribly shy.  I often find them perching atop tall plants or trees surveying their kingdom.  Photographing them in this position is often problematic because of backlighting.  Backlighting happens when the background is brighter than the light coming off the subject.  This causes the camera to underexpose the image, leading to a flat, gray background with a dark foreground. ...

  Great blue heron in the act of catching a fish You have to admire the great blue heron.  It can be found over much of North America; anywhere water is present.  It is well adapted to hunting in wetlands and will eagerly take fish, frogs, snakes, salamanders, and any other creature it can get down its gullet.  They stoically await the arrival of a meal.  Instead of actively hunting for a morsel they remain motionless until the prey comes within striking range.  Then, in a flash, their hunger is temporarily satiated.  I shot these images five days ago while hiking at Rocky Point Park.  There were a number of things working in my favour.  First off, the sun was behind me.  This means the subject being photographed will have very little shadow associated with it.  I try to "point my shadow" in the direction of my subject when shooting in full sun.  This always gives me great light and fast shutter speeds.  This was the secon...

Bald Eagle on the bank of the Columbia River, near Golden, BC.   In previous blogs, I had mentioned that I did a solo kayak trip along the upper reaches of the Columbia River, near Golden, BC.  I had an APS-C sensor camera equipped with an 80-400 mm zoom lens, which was used mostly at the 400 mm focal length.  As I rounded a bend in the river I came across a bald eagle and its recently fledged (and now very large) chick.  I got a number of shots off of both, but none with them together.  Whether a subject is changing its position relative to you, or you are changing your position relative to it, or even both at the same time, there is a problem with focusing.  Most of the time I try to keep still while peering through my viewfinder.  I always prefer my subject to be stationary and compliant, but the truth is there are plenty of exceptions to both situations.  In the case regarding the above photo, I was travelling downstream.  As I moved forw...

  My post from yesterday featured one of the parents of this fledged bird.  Before I left on my small trek, I talked to a canoe instructor who paddled that stretch of river many times.  She mentioned that there was an eagle nest at a certain point along the river and that chick and mom were present the last time she went by.  I always love photographing chicks in a nest, but it was likely that the aerie was not going to be in a favourable position to shoot.  It was with mixed anticipation that I began my journey. It took me about an hour to get to the spot, as described by the young voyageur.  I saw the nest, high atop a dead tree, but no birds were present.  Then, to my left, I saw the pair.  An adult and a newly fledged juvenile.  There was a modest amount of scrub present and I had to wait until they were reasonably visible.  The paddling I had done gave me some speed, that velocity was increased by the flow of the river.  It onl...

European Starling with a nest-hole. I was chatting with some young people a few weeks ago about birds, which happens to be a favourite subject of mine.  I brought up the starling in the conversation, and puzzled looks fell upon their faces.  "What's a starling?", they asked.  To me, it was like asking what a robin was, as they are common throughout much of the world.  Here, in Canada, we have loads of them; sometimes they get together in enormous flocks and fill the branches of large deciduous trees.  The sound such a gathering makes can be deafening. So, here I was, pondering to myself if this was a common occurrence (not the large collection of starlings, but rather the lack of knowledge about them in general).  So, I have taken it on as a mission to inform any readers about this bird. Starlings were originally native to Europe, including England.  The playwright and poet William Shakespeare (you have heard of him, I hope) included many types of bird...

  I photographed quite a few birds this summer, and I could figure out what most of them were either from recognition or using one of my many bird identification books.  This bird, however, had me stumped.  It was definitely a type of woodpecker; its size, habits, and body form all attested to that fact.  But what type?  It did not conform to any of the birds in any of my books. It had a back like a hairy woodpecker, the head of a red-breasted sapsucker, and its underside had a yellowish hue to it.  What really stumped me was the eyering and the yellow cere, which woodpeckers with red-heads don't have.  There are 23 species of woodpecker in North America, ranging from the Acorn Woodpecker to the Yellow-bellied sapsucker.  It was none of them. It wasn't until today that I took the time to hunt down which species it belonged to.  I decided that maybe it wasn't an adult, and started looking at websites with lots of woodpecker shots.  I fina...

On-camera flash is a marvellous tool that can be used to shoot in dark areas and fill shadows.  Its ability to light up areas close to the photographer is limited due to its power and inability to alter dispersion patterns.   Since it is so close to the lens two additional issues pop up.  The first is the occurrence of the notorious "red-eye."  The second is what this blog is about, vignetting. Vignetting, in photography, refers to the darkening of an area.  Most lenses suffer from some degree of vignetting where the image becomes darker as it progresses to the outside edges.  It tends to be most noticeable in corners as they are the farthest away from the center.  Fortunately, this problem is often mitigated with onboard software inside the camera or with a pixel-editing program such as Photoshop. The second type of vignetting occurs with flash and can be seen in the above photo.  Since the lens sticks out in front of the camera, just undern...

  I can remember seeing my first yellow-headed blackbird, now some 40 years ago.  The setting was very much like the scene above with it perched on a cattail on the outside of a pond on the edge of a city.  I haven't seen any since then, and this one was a welcome sight.  In my experience, red-winged blackbirds are much more common than their yellow-headed cousins.  Yellow-headed blackbirds prefer to nest in fresh standing water areas thick with bull rushes.  They stick to the center areas which offer more protection and easier access to insects, their main food source. I was kayaking in a small pond and saw a flash of yellow.  Although there are many birds in Canada that display significant amounts of yellow, few of them are associated with pond edges and commonly perch on the associated vegetation.  Yellow and Wilson's warblers are often found in forested areas.  American goldfinches are often found in fields, especially if thistles are pre...

Wide-open apertures cause out-of-focus backgrounds with long lenses. If you look at a thumbnail (small image) of this picture, it will look like everything is in focus.  Enlarge it so that it fills a good portion of your screen, however, and you can see that the background is blurry.  This was done for a number of reasons, but the main purpose is to help draw your eye to the subject, which is the duck, and not the surroundings.  The fact that they are present though gives you a sense of the environment the photo was shot in and what the habitat is like. It is relatively easy to make the background blurry with a sharp foreground.  It is well worth your while to understand the various factors that create depth of field.  Manipulating the camera's controls to obtain the precise shot you want is an important part of creating successful photographs.  It turns out there are five different ways you can alter depth of field. 1.  Aperture changes depth of field...

A male surf scooter floating on Dutch Lake a long way from home. I saw a dark coloured bird on the lake's surface two days ago and wondered exactly what it was I was looking at.  I can generally place a bird within reason and usually have some idea of what I am looking at.  This totally stumped me; I have never seen anything like it. Today I was out on my kayak and there it was again, this time in a bed of lily pads resting.  I had my long lens (150-600 Tamron) handy and got a few good shots of it.  Very unusual bill and an odd white spot on the back of its head.  Then there were the white eyes with the dark center that really stood out.  I had photographed something unusual to be sure. When I got back to the RV and referenced my bird books (I bring 4 or 5 of them with me when I travel), I discovered I had seen a Surf Scooter.  OK, that's a new one to me.  I had another look at the texts and they breed far north of here, not too far from the Yukon...

Robin feeding young.  Taken in July 2013 at UBC research forest. Of course, you know of the idiom, "The early bird gets the worm."  It has nothing to do with birds or worms but is a means of expressing the idea that getting an early start on something produces success.  The funny thing about this old proverb (its origin dates back to the 1600s) though is that it is only ever looked at from the bird's perspective.  What about the perspective of the worm? Could one not conclude that the statement is really all about safety?  Imagine an employee trying to "keep his head down" to prevent being singled out.  Or the soldier on a battlefield wanting to not venture out for fear of becoming a target.  The idiom, in this case, would refer to keeping safe by not exposing oneself to a threat.   Certainly, the early bird gets the worm, but the late worm is much more likely to see tomorrow in whatever capacity you care to express.  Of course, it could...

OK - so this is a little sillier than normal for me, but I struck upon inspiration and went with it.  The spelling/grammar program Grammarly  I use frequently wants me to add hyphens to word combinations.  For example, red winged blackbird right away tells me I need to use red-winged.  The same goes for other pairings such as fun loving person (fun-loving), state of the art design (state-of-the-art), and friendly looking dog (friendly-looking).    I have never been a fan of grammar; the subject in school would usually be my undoing, and mastering the hyphen has been more difficult than other aspects of English syntax.  However, it occurred to me that it could be fun to play with, and so I have made an effort to put together some expressions that would be interesting. I came up with some and some are from the grammarbcheck website and the medium.com website  red handed thief               ...

Adult, winter plumage, photographed in Kelowna, BC. How's that song go?  ♫"California gull, California gull, ..."♫   My guess is that I have seen these guys before but this is the first time I have ever actually identified one.  The main key was the beak; it has both red and black blotches near its end.  Once that was done I noticed that the rest of the plumage fit right in.  Gray wings and back with mottled gray feathering on the head confirmed it.  The photograph below shows these aspects better than the above one. California gull viewed from the side.  Notice the red and black tip of the bill. The state bird of Utah is the California gull.  It has to do with an event that took place in 1848 in the yet-to-be state.  Mormon pioneers had settled in an area and were growing crops.  The plants came under attack by hordes of insects, crickets to be exact.  It could be called a plague of biblical proportions.  With the cr...

Adult ring-billed gull, winter plumage, on Okanagan Lake, near Kelowna. I hiked Maude-Roxby Sanctuary yesterday to photograph whatever birds I could find.  It being early February there wasn't much to see; dark-eyed juncos, a song sparrow, a starling, and a host of flickers.  There was, however, quite a flotilla of gulls in the bay (would that make them bay-gulls - bagels?  Pardon the pun) that drew my attention. I am somewhat hesitant to photograph gulls as I find identifying them difficult.  They take two to four years to mature, have different plumages for each year, have winter plumages that are equally perplexing, and they all mostly look the same to me.  Add to that the fact they sometimes interbreed with each other and produce hybrids with their own unique characteristics and you have what amounts to a game of pick-up sticks with an entire case of toothpicks.  There were easily 100 gulls in front of me as I strolled along the shoreline.  Some we...

Click on the above image to get access to the full-size version. I have been in Kelowna now for just under two years.  I was familiar with the areas where I lived in Maple Ridge and could go easily to them when the urge to photograph wildlife hit me.  Out here, though, everything is new and it has taken me a while to even learn about where to go, little own actually getting there.  I decided it was time for me to map out some local hotspots. I have been to Munson Pond (1), Thomson Brook Pond (10), and Rotary Marsh (13) but nowhere else listed.  All the bird photos were taken at those three spots, except the quail, which was shot in my yard.  The green bars beside the listed names indicate the number of bird species seen there.  If you want to go to the website where I copied that from, click here .  It is a great resource. I hope to go out today and take a few more photos.  I think I will visit Maude-Roxby Sanctuary.  I will let you know how ...

Familiar bluet damselfly mating wheel. Males of Odonata, the family of insects that includes dragonflies and damselflies, have a pair of claspers at the end of their tail.  These appendages (see below) have one sole purpose; they allow the male to attach himself to a female for the purpose of mating.  In the above photo, the male (top damselfly with spotted abdomen) has attached himself to the back of the female's head.  In response, the female bends her abdomen around to bond with the male in a mating wheel.   male clasper ( https://bugguide.net/node/view/264557 ) This position is maintained both for the fertilization of the eggs and afterwards for laying.  The male maintains his grasp as a means of preventing other males from clasping on.  The female extends her abdomen and the two fly off together with the female touching the water and depositing an egg with each maneuver.   I find the heart-shaped mating wheel an interesting metaphor for ...

Kestrels, also called sparrow hawks, are found throughout most of North America except for the very far north.  They are also the smallest bird of prey throughout the Americas, although smaller species exist elsewhere in the world. As a falcon, the kestrel is strictly carnivorous and hunts for its meals.  Although they take small vertebrates such as small birds, rodents, and lizards, it seems the bulk of their diet is made up of invertebrates.  They are somewhat opportunistic in their habits as they will take what is available.  There is a seasonal variation in diet; in cooler months kestrels will consume fewer invertebrates due to their availability.  There is an interesting account of the diet on this  website. I have seen kestrels in Nevada, Alberta, and British Columbia.  The kestrel above was photographed on February 11, 2023 (2 days ago) in Kelowna, BC.  The lone female seemed to be comfortable in a local park high atop a small tree.  T...

Krider's red-tailed hawk (left) and "typical" form (right). Yesterday I was out at Johnson's Park in Kelowna and saw a large white-chested raptor; "Something new," I thought to myself.  I was half right.  It turns out it was a red-tailed hawk, which I have seen hundreds (if not thousands) of, but it was an unfamiliar morph.  It was a white form of that bird, called Krider's red-tailed hawk, and I was somewhat taken aback. According to a number of sites on the internet, Krider's version is actually the more plentiful variety.  They are quite common throughout most of North America.  I am familiar with the darker form, shown on the right in the above photo.  I photographed that in Maple Ridge (Lower Mainland, BC) some years ago.  This revelation has shattered my idea of what a red-tailed hawk is and I find myself having to reformulate what one is. It turns out there is a striking variety of red-tailed hawks.  It is worth your time to look at this we...

Bald eagle with seagull as prey. I have seen and photographed eagles with captured fish, ducks, and seagulls.  They will also take small terrestrial animals such as rabbits, rats, and even domestic pets given the chance.  Essentially, if they can get it off the ground, it is fair game. The method of attack is always the same; feet first, claws out, and in flight.  They will take prey on land, in water, and in the air.  A bald eagle's grip is between 300 and 400 psi, enough to drive the talons deep into the tissues of their victims.  If that doesn't dispatch the prey, the sharp beak is more than enough to do the job. A bald eagle can lift about 5 to 6 pounds from a static position but more if taken while in flight (up to 10 from what I read).  They can store a few pounds of food in their crops and so they don't need to eat every day.  Given the fact that bald eagles will feed at previous kills (you can often see them eating the remains of dead salmon af...

Left:  photograph taken from original file with no post processing;  notice that the extreme values causes blowout highlights and dark shadows with no details.] Center:  the same image from a raw file with no processing other than four different exposures were made:  -5, -2.5, 0, +2.5  The four images were combined using Photomatix software into a single HDR image and show details in both dark and light areas. Right: the raw image was processed using Photoshop's Camera Raw (v.15) software and attention was given to both shadows and highlights.  A rigorous treatment of the image resulted in a modestly contrasty final photo with softer extremes.   Although photography is the art of capturing light, there is something to be said about the art of processing the image into its final form.  Ansel Adams was a renowned black and white photographer that pioneered a system of exposure and development to extract the absolute maximum amount of definitio...

Male mallard duck and its varying head colour. Structural colouration is the delightful phenomenon of certain bird feathers where light-play and colour change occur based upon illumination and viewing angle.  I find it in the throat feathers of male hummingbirds and noticed it in the heads of male mallard ducks yesterday as I was out with my camera. If you look closely at the birds in the above photo, you will notice that the brown chest feathers and gray back feathers have no such colour-play.  The structure of those feathers differs from the iridescent ones.  So, what is it about the iridescent feathers that make them behave the way they do? It turns out there are five different ways in which feathers can produce this iridescent sheen (see image and link below).  In all cases the colour-play comes down to feather structure at the microscopic level, a form of nano-technology if you will.  These structures called melanosomes, " interact with light to amplify cer...

Male (left) and female (right) dark-eyed juncos.  Female on nest (inset). Dark-eyed juncos exist as various subspecies; four are recognized.  The above photos represent the Oregon variety.  Even within subspecies, I find a range of subtle colour variations.  I have photographed them along the Pacific coast in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia and, as of yesterday, taken shots of them in the central Okanagan too.  There are different shades of black on the male, the buff colour on their sides beneath the wings, and on their backs. The two main photos were taken in Kelowna while the female inset was shot in Washington.  If you want to see a photographic display of the different subspecies, click here  ( Thespruce.com ).   Their range is from central Mexico into northern Canada; they will overwinter on both west and east coasts and on much of the prairies.  They are primarily seed eaters, although they will take insects during breedi...