All My Blogs

This is the best photo of a toucan I managed to get in all of Middle America. This bird is not the same one as Sam, the Fruit Loops toucan.  The colours are all wrong, and the bill's colours are not in concentric circles.  While not the largest toucan, the keel-billed toucan is a good size, reaching up to 22 inches in length; a third of that length is the bill.  It is found in southeastern Mexico, about half of Central America, and parts of Venezuela and Colombia.   As you probably know, the toucan is a prime consumer of fruit.  It is considered frugivorous, meaning it consumes a diet made mostly of fruit.  Figs happen to make up a large part of its diet, but it also eats bananas, papayas, berries, cherries, and some fruits you have never heard of.  However, its diet doesn't end there, as invertebrates and small vertebrates are also included.  The vertebrates include small snakes and lizards, but they will also take eggs, young chicks, and tr...

Top left and bottom:  recent photos.  Top right:  photo taken in 2005. There were two species of iguana I photographed while visiting Middle American countries on our cruise this year.  One was the very large green iguana, and the other was the black spiny-tailed iguana.  I photographed a spiny-tailed iguana 21 years ago while visiting Tulum in eastern Mexico.  I noticed there is quite a difference between the one I shot back then and the one I photographed recently.  I think they are the same species, although they are located over 700 km apart.  The species shows significant variation over its range. I watched both species move about their environments.  In the warm climate, they could move fast.  Although I never saw the black spiny-tailed iguana climb trees, they apparently are good at it.  It was the green iguana, though, that really caught my attention.  I couldn't believe how fast it went up a tree, across multiple branc...

  Top:  white pelican, osprey, curlew Bottom:  flamingo, coot, snowy egret As someone who works on stuff, I know that "The right tool for the right job" is an important adage.  And although I have used lineman's pliers as hammers and screwdrivers as pry bars, I can do a better job with the right equipment.  In a way, birds have the same predicament and philosophy.   There are six main ways that water birds obtain food.  They can: Catch it with long necks and pointy beaks.  Such are the egrets, herons, and cranes.  A long neck allows lightning strikes, while a sharp beak can be used to both impale and thrash prey. Sieve benthic material.  Wide bills with lamellae allow bottom mud and organic material to be strained, pushing out water and tiny solids like sand and silt while keeping small organisms hidden in the debris.  Birds with this ability include flamingos, some ducks like shovelers, and spoonbills. Probe the benthos for li...

El Salvador Maya temple - abandoned around 1200 AD, before the Spanish incursion. El Salvador has a long history of indigenous inhabitation.  Tazumal, the largest of the excavated sites, has 16 identified structures and a main pyramid that rises about 80 feet above the site's base.  I hiked around the site several times, climbed up as high as I was allowed, and photographed the site extensively. The area was only inhabited for 900 years or so by the Maya and later inhabited by Pipils until it was totally abandoned around 1200 AD.   The site was excavated beginning in 1942 and inaugurated in 1952.  The site was originally made with raw stone but was coated with concrete, which prevents it from being recognized by UNESCO.   Around the 5th century AD, the nearby volcano erupted, covering the area with ash and rock.  The site was abandoned for several generations and eventually reinhabited, where work continued.  This is not uncommon in El Salvad...

Click on image to see detail.  A larger image will show you what is going on. I had the pleasure of visiting Columbia's National Aviary yesterday while we were moored in Cartagena.  There I shot about 500 images (so thankful I'm not using film), most of which I have worked on in post, as today we are at sea.  One set of images was of Colombia's endemic masked owl.  It was so dark in the enclosure that I had to up my ISO to 25600 in order to shoot at a reasonable shutter speed. The upside to using such an ISO is that shutter speeds become functional, not producing blur from mild movements of the subject.  Intense motion requires faster speeds, often above 1/1000th of a second.  However, the owl was placid and was relatively calm. The downside is electronic noise, which you can see in the top left image.  Both images used the same degrees of correction, but the image on the left did not have denoising.  The right image used the denoising function of...

Same image.  A better image was taken when the condensation cleared.  See below. You know what condensation is.  A cold object comes into contact with warm, moist air, and tiny water droplets start to form on it.  You see the result on your iced drinks all the time, and on your eye glasses when you come in from the cold. Unfortunately, cameras and lenses suffer from the same fate.  I was reminded of this while cruising western Middle America.  I would bring my cool camera from my stateroom out on deck to photograph birds or dolphins or something of the sort, and my first images would be foggy.  In fact, the viewscreen could be so fogged up that either the camera's focusing system wouldn't work or I couldn't see what I was trying to photograph. There is a solution, but not one of convenience.   The easiest solution is to bring your equipment into the warm, moist environment before it is time to shoot.  You may think that keeping it in a b...

King vulture as photographed at the National Aviary of Colombia.  The photo above is of a King vulture; I took it while visiting the National Aviary of Colombia yesterday.  The vultures I am familiar with include the turkey vulture, which we have in Canada, and the black vulture, which is found in and south of Texas latitudes.  By comparison, the king vulture is beautiful. That beauty could easily be undermined if you happened to see one with its head deep inside the bowels of some recently dispatched animal.  And it's not like you would have one in your home; its 6 foot wingspan would likely be a nuisance, especially with its hurricane-force winds when beaten.  And it could be very unhappy once you are all out of carrion.  There's nothing more compelling to go shopping than a very large bird looking at you as if you'd be a pleasant snack. I suppose that you could say it is a pretty bird, from the neck up, as long as it wasn't covered in entrails.  I c...

Great frigatebirds, male and female, above our ship in the Panama Canal. Not to be confused with magnificent frigatebirds, great frigatebirds are a touch smaller, although they come in with wingspans surpassing two meters.  The wings of all frigatebirds are amazing structures, giving a surface area to weight ratio greater than any other living bird species. Their silhouette is unmistakable.  They are seen in tropical waters around the world's oceans.  Their narrow, bent wings, short necks, and long tails that are V-shaped identify them immediately.  I have seen them only twice, both times on cruises, once in the Caribbean and once in the Pacific near Middle Male frigatebirds have the large red throat that you may know about, the females do not.  They all eat marine creatures such as fish, squid, and crustaceans.  They pick these morsels from the water's surface but aren't above harrassing other birds to give up their bounty.  Their aggressive behaviour...

Orange-chinned parakeet photographed in Colombia, South America. You, of course, have seen parrots, and probably parakeets.  Although exotic, they are popular creatures that people seek out, some for company, others because they have a passion for birds, and a few for eye-candy.   Many New World parrots, which include both the parrots and parakeets (Psittacidae) of the Americas, are green in colour.  But there aren't just a few species.  There are dozens.   The orange-chinned parakeet is just an example.  Parakeets are smaller than parrots, about half their size as a general rule.  Both groups are brightly coloured, green being a common theme.  They all eat nuts, seeds, and fruit. A great problem with all parrot-related birds is that they are often captured for the pet trade.  Population decline is a serious issue for all species.  Larger birds are especially attractive for poachers as they ave more valuable. While visiting the...

Kathryn and Eric in El Salvador using handmade indigo dyes. Our time in El Salvador was spent between two destinations and the bus upon which we got there.  I did a blog previously on the ruins of the Maya temple and mentioned I would discuss indigo dye another time.  That's this blog. Making natural indigo dye is relatively easy, but can only be done through a particular process.  The first part is to obtain the leaves of an indigo plant.  The odd thing about the indigo plant is that the leaves are green, regular green, with nothing seemingly special about them.  That is, until you take the next step. Here you need water and time.  You place the leaves in water and let them sit for a few days.  It ferments while stewing, naturally, without the addition of any heat, chemicals, or action. Then the leaves are removed and dried in the sun.  The fact that the tropical sun is hot and intense may make a difference; I will have to look that up.  Whe...

The Maya temple of Tazumal in El Salvador This is the fourth set of pre-Columbian ruins I have ever seen; it is the second best of the four.  On its own right, it is fairly impressive.  The structures were all built by hand over thousands of years.  The local authorities took it upon themselves to pour concrete over many of the vertical and horizontal surfaces to help preserve the structure and make it safer.  Unfortunately, when they did that, they made the site no longer a candidate for UNESCO's list.  Even without that, it is still worth visiting. The great issue for us was the time it took to get there.  We left the port where the cruise ship was moored at in a bus that drove for over 90 minutes, approaching 2 hours.  The roads varied from a four lane highway to narrow roads with buildings less than two feet away from the bus, at speed, no less.  How people don't die there regularly is unknown to me. Excavations of the site began in 1940....

  Kathryn on our cruise through the Panama Canal I discovered long ago, before I was married, that love is a choice. The problem with the word love is that it is used to denote perhaps the most cherished aspect of our existence. Without spending time discussing all the various meanings of the word, let me address the ones I am referring to today.   You'll notice the plural of the term.  Love of a friend.  Love of a family member.  Love of an intimate partner.  Promised love.  The love of life when together. If you base love on emotion, the feeling ebbs and flows like the tides flowing into the Bay of Funday.  "I only love you when you look pretty."  "I only love you when I get my way."  "I only love you when my needs are met."  This is not love.  It is selfishness.  It is love of self, not of another. Rather, love should be a continuous beacon, like a lighthouse that throws its beam into its surroundings whether it be...

  Three species of boobies found in the waters off Middle America. I have seen boobies before, the bird kind, I will defer my answer on any other variety.  Some, the masked booby, are pelagic in nature, meaning that they spend a great deal of time out at sea and are rarely seen from the shore.  Others, like the brown and blue-footed boobies, show up closer to land. I have photographed all three species in the last few days aboard our ship (Nieuw Amsterdam - Holland America).  The brown booby is far more common, while there has been a moderate showing by the blue footed kind.  I have only seen one masked booby.  As they are highly pelagic in nature, I suspect this is normal while travelling close to shore. All booby species and their closely related cousins, the gannets, are marine fish eaters and are not found associated with fresh water.  They often accompany ships and fast-moving boats as fish are seen to move away from the hull; the birds dive for t...

Golden-fronted woodpecker as photographed in El Salvador. It's rare to see a woodpecker taking such a keen interest in flowers.  And yet, here I was, in El Salvador, visiting an ancient Mayan temple, when an unfamiliar bird made its appearance. The first thing I noticed was its striped back - distinctly black with thin broken white stripes on the background.  The next thing that hit me was the shape of the beak and head.  You get familiar with bird types, and this one definitely was a woodpecker.  The wierd thing was that it seemed to be feeding on flowers. Not the actual blooms themselves, but perhaps nectar, or associated insects.  Some birds, like sapsuckers, will drill small holes in trees to take the leaking sap and any insects that get caught up in it.  I suspect it was similar with this bird; the nectar would help with dehydration, the sugars with energy, and the bugs with protein. It flitted from bloom to bloom, always arriving on top and disappeari...

Hippopotamus photographed at drive through zoo in Guatamala You can imagine my frustration when faced with the perils of shooting with a long lens inside a bus with tinted windows.  Add to that the fact that my literally cool lens was just brought out into a damp, warm environment causing elements to fog up.  On top of all that, now imagine the bus is moving along a pothole-strewn dirt road.  And getting out of the bus wasn't recommended.  The lions have been known to cause problems. The only solution was to shoot with a high ISO, a fast shutter speed, and hope the reflection, dirt, and other impairments didn't render my images useless.  Such was my predicament yesterday when shooting at the drive-through zoo in Guatemala. Pressing "play" on my camera allowed me to witness the resulting carnage.  Foggy, low-contrast, highly noisy images were the result.  The good news was that the fogged lens situation was gradually improving while the rest of the issu...

Blue-footed boobies photographed near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Once you've done snickering, there is something amazing to learn about this stately bird.  The blue colour of their feet actually has an evolutionary basis.  The feet aren't always the same colour.  There is a correlation between the shade of blue and breeding success.  The darker blue the feet are, the higher the probability that the chicks will be healthy.   The excursion we were on took us by boat along the coast south of Puerto Vallarta.  While we were cruising at a fairly quick pace, fish-eating birds started to show up around us.  There may have been a dozen or so at one point.  Fish would zip out of the way of the swiftly moving boat, only to be caught by a diving booby.  There were actually two species: the blue-footed variety and another called the brown booby (more snickering).  Both were eager to catch all the fish they could get. I photographed the one on the...

Could this be a stewing pot for this bird? While on an excursion in Puerto Vallarta, we had lunch on a private beach south of the city.  There were numerous gangly birds running around the area, completely at home near people.  They would hop up on plates with bits of food and take whatever was there, or fight amongst themselves for anything larger than a good-sized crumb.  You could think of them as chicken-like pigeons.  I looked them up; they are west Mexican chachalacas.  My bird book didn't do a very good job of imaging them; I had to use Google Lens to figure it out.   The bird is endemic to the southern area of West Mexico.  To my knowledge, they are not found anywhere else.  They do not appear to be great flyers and spend most of their time on the ground or close to the forest floor.  They eat a variety of food, including fruits, seeds, insects, and vegetation.  The fact that they were eating cooked chicken was not surprisin...

Adult Jacana and juvenile (right) at the San Diego Zoo. Some birds share parenting.  Often though, it's the female that has the duty of incubating, protecting, and feeding the offspring.  But in the case of the Jacana, the male does the lion's share of the work. The Jacana is a rail-like bird with an interesting adaptation - it has really L O N G toes.  So long, in fact, that it is sometimes called the "Jesus bird" because of its seeming ability to walk on the water.  In truth, it can walk on floating vegetation because of how spread out its toes are, reducing presure/area measures to very low values.   The chicks are even more impressive, as their long toes are disproportionately larger than their bodies.  The juvenile on the right in the above image gives a hint to this.  I didn't actually see any chicks; they must be a comical sight.  You can see a video here . They often get their inhabitants as injured or abandoned and raise them in well...

  Kathryn enjoying Yelapa Falls. We had perhaps the best excursion ever yesterday.  We arrived in Peurto Vallarta in the morning and soo after left on our excursion with Peurto Vallarta Adventures, a tour company with a very nice catameran boat and crew. Our tour included three different destinations, one of which was the little town of Yelpa located about half an hour away by boat.  That was the only way to access the community; there are no cars and any mode of transportation involves either an ATV, motorcycle, or mule.  The rough cobblestone roads reflected this as most of them were only wide enough for an ATV to pass through. The focus of the tour was the waterfalls, perhaps a 15 minute walk from the beach.  They were somewhat impressive, not on the order of anything spectacular, but had a good height with a decent flow of water. There was no way I was going in with my camera gear and boots, but Kathryn was already with her bathing suit and watershoes. ...

Me at the Asian Elephant display at the San Diego Zoo.  Notice anything? He's not too hard to see, if you look.  The boy is hiding behind the baby Asian elephant.  At first, I thought he was playing with a toy truck, but closer inspection shows that it's a water bottle he is holding.  I am not sure what he was doing, but his parents were several feet away and distracted by whatever was in the adjacent paddock. Photo bombing, also known as the art of showing up in a photo you have no business being in, is often an unrecognized skill held by those of us who have no or little social awareness.  You know the type, walking about without a clue regarding the environment, stumbling into situations they just shouldn't be in.  Often, those situations involve a photo being taken. I, in my socially awkward stage, have unintentionally popped into gatherings and disrupted the proceedings a few times.  Although I would say that I am beyond such things now, my wife w...

Spotted tanager at the San Diego Zoo. I have, until two days ago, ever only seen one species of tanager.  The western tanager, the male, a stunning orange and yellow bird, even came to visit me at home once.  But I was unaware of other tanager species.  And then I went to the San Diego Zoo. The field guide of the Birds of Mexico and Central America shows 22 different species of tanager.  The aviary held four different species of tanager; I managed to photograph two of them.  I included the plate below.  None of the four listed are found in North or Central America. Plaque at one of the aviaries showing different species present.  Notice the 4 tanager species. Honeycreepers used to belong to a different taxonomic group, but have recently been added to the tanagers.  There are two on the info plaque above, three listed in the book I referenced.  I don't currently have access to the internet, but there must be dozens of related species, perhaps ...

San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge - A fun photo project. When visiting San Francisco, especially by boat, you have to see the Golden Gate Bridge.  I mean that in both the literal sense, in that you pass directly under it on your way into the harbour, and in the figurative sense, in that it is such an icon that it's just one of the things that has to be done. I decided to do a series on the famous architecture; I made a point of photographing it from many points of view.  The time and transportation limited us to exploring it visually from only a few angles, but it was still enough to come away with satisfying results.  We walked for 4 or 5 kilometers, maybe more, from the south entrance of the bridge to the marina to the east.  I originally wanted to explore the southwestern section, but it was fenced off and inaccessible. The area was busy, with plenty of cars, pedestrians, and people on all types of personal transportation devices.  Along the way, we crossed ...

California sea lion having a good scratch, Pier 39, San Francisco. While visiting Pier 39 yesterday (September 30), we saw the sea lion basking area that is so famous.  Sure enough, there were California sea lions, although not the horde that there is room for.  And their larger kin, the Steller's sea lions, weren't in attendance. I got off a few good shots, but I especially liked this one giving itself a good scratch with its front flipper.  I decided to crop it both vertically and horizontally, making two different files, to compare which one was more appealing and why. I prefer the vertical format, but why?  What makes it better than the horizontal format? After all, they are both the same image.  It turns out it has to do with composition. The two main points, the face and the flipper, are relatively close together.  The narrow vertical format allows them to be near to the thirds positioning.  Horizontally, they are similar, except that there is li...

Snowy egret photographed in San Francisco Yesterday (September 30), Kathryn and I went to the south side of the Golden Gate Bridge.  We walked from there for a couple of hours and ended up at a freshwater estuary called Crissy Marsh. While there, we saw quite a few birds, a great egret, a couple of snowy egrets, and a pair of remarkable curlews.  I will talk about those another day.  I watched the snowy egrets for quite a while and photographed them in various poses. Snowy egrets are "common and widespread."  I have seen them in Texas, in the Caribbean, and of course in San Francisco.  They are easy to identify in that they are mostly white with a distinctive yellow patch around the eyes leading to the beak and black and yellow legs.  Cattle egrets look similar but have a yellow bill and black legs. I have included a photo below of a cattle egret.  You can see the yellow bill and black legs that clearly distinguish it from the snowy egret's.  Catt...

White sided dolphins I photographed while travelling on our cruise. We are on a cruise through the Panama Canal.  Today, off the coast of Oregon, I saw a pair of dorsal fins that were poking out of the water.  "Dolphins!" I thought. I grabbed my gear and headed to the Promenade deck where I could see the ocean without glass being in the way.  No sign of the dolphins.  I talked to a few people and asked them if they saw them.  Vague reports about seeing some playing off the bow in the waves emanating from the ship.  However, I did see them. I made my way around the promenade a few times and then, to my joy, I saw the tell-tale sign of a dorsal fin in the water.  Then a jump, there it was, a dolphin.  As I brought my camera to bear, I noticed another, then another. In fact, there were dozens of them, swimming and jumping in large arcs, heading right for the ship.  Sixty or seventy to be sure, maybe more.  I started shooting. The challenge ...