Juvenile Wood Ducks at Brazos Bend State Park, Texas. Wood Ducks are tough to find at BBSP: They are typically suspicious of humans. These were young enough to retain their naiveté. Canon EOS 7D/600mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Photo taken near Pilant Lake in late June. High-speed synchronized fill-flash.
After a really interesting spring migration, I have settled into summer birding along the Texas Gulf Coast. Although I occasionally run into hearty souls willing to brave the Texas heat to see and photograph their beloved birds, the birding crowds have thinned. On those particularly broiling summer days, it sometimes feels as though I have the whole park to myself.
Common Moorhen Chick at Brazos Bend State Park. Mom will spend much of the summer feeding this little guy aquatic insects. Baby Common Moorhens, with their black fuzzy feathers and propensity to stand in blazing sunlight, are difficult to photograph. Photo taken at Elm Lake. Canon EOS 7D/500mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Although avian diversity is at its nadir at this time of year, certain things can only be seen in summer, and these make going out well worth the effort. These include Purple Gallinules, Common Moorhens, and Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks raising young. The latter are particularly fun to watch as parents coolly and calmly usher their ducklings into the marsh vegetation in the face of perceived threats.
Black-bellied Whistling-Ducklings at Elm Lake, Brazos Bend State Park. What is there to say, MP? Ducklings are cute. Canon EOS 7D/500mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
While the ducks and ducklings skulk off into the weeds when humans turn up, the Moorhens and Gallinules slowly stroll away from threats real and imagined on top of floating vegetation with babies in tow. Very young Moorhens and Purple Gallinules are fuzzy and black, little balls of darkness. Now and then, an alligator steams past and everyone keeps and eye out (including the photographer). A wader spears a frog. A Northern Parula sings, then a Prothonotary Warbler. And time passes slowly.
Young Purple Gallinule at Elm Lake, Brazos Bend State Park, Texas. This young Purple Gallinule has passed its black, “ball of darkness” phase. Canon EOS 7D/500mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
“Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.”–Russell Baker
Dunlin in Breeding Colors on the south shore of Lake Superior, near Ashland, Wisconsin during mid-June. We typically see Dunlin in their winter plumage along the Texas Gulf Coast. Canon EOS 7D/500mm f/4L IS (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
We usually take two to three major birding trips outside the Texas Gulf Coast region each year. We strive to visit many different types of habitats, with the hopes of seeing as many different species of plants and animals as possible.
This week we returned from a trip to northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. We spent most of our time in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest and along the southern shore of Lake Superior, primarily at the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Besides seeking a brief respite from the Texas heat, we were eager to explore the cool temperate broadleaf and mixed forests. We found these forests to be among the most beautiful and botanically diverse woodlands we have ever encountered, rivaling the temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest aesthetically. Many species of songbirds and others that migrate through Texas in the fall and spring nest in these forests. We had hopes of hearing their summer songs and seeing their summer colors.
Having grown up in Minnesota and visited similar habitats in Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin many years ago, I thought I knew what to expect. I remember taking field trips for undergraduate geology courses in Minnesota and Wisconsin in the 1980’s and noticing the great abundance of wildlife. Sadly, a great abundance of wildlife was not what we found on this trip.
Spectacular, but Strangely Sterile: Mixed deciduous broadleaf and coniferous forest of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, northern Wisconsin in mid-June. Here and there we heard a singing male Northern Parula or Chipping Sparrow. Otherwise, it was pretty quiet. Canon EOS 7D/Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 @ 16mm. Hand-held, natural light.
Amphibians are now rare in northern Wisconsin. For someone with childhood memories of woods hopping with toads and alive with frog song, what I found was shocking. Marsh, bog, swamp, and adjacent woodland habitats that should have been noisy with Northern Leopard Frogs (Rana pipiens) were nearly silent. A quick check of on-line references found numerous references to catastrophic declines in Northern Leopard Frog numbers in the past few decades. The rarity of amphibians helps to explain the rarity of waders hunting in the vegetated shallows of lakes and marshes: we saw only a handful of Great Blue Herons and a single Green Heron. The silence of these northern Wisconsin woods is grim testimony to the global amphibian crisis.
Strangely, even Red-winged Blackbirds are not that abundant anymore. In one marsh I noted three birds: and one was banded! What gives? According to the AMNH Birds of North America, Red-winged Blackbirds are one of the most abundant birds in North America, known for moving around in vast flocks. Again, a quick internet search revealed references to major declines in Red-winged Blackbird populations in the northern Midwest and Canada (apparently I’m not going crazy!).
Birds that are abundant include American Crows, European Starlings, and Brown-headed Cowbirds–not surprising since these species thrive around humans and the environmental changes we cause. Brown-headed Cowbirds, of course, are contributing to the decline of songbird numbers (terrifyingly so) through nest parasitism of about 220 species. According to the video Gulf Crossing: An Essay on Bird Migration, we have lost about 40% of our songbirds in the past 25-30 years due to several causes. Based on what I have seen in the north woods, I would not be surprised if losses were significantly higher.
Birds may be suffering, but nasty arthropods are proliferating. North woods habitats are typically quite buggy in late spring and early summer, but what we found was really quite mind-boggling, and rivaling the most bug-infested salt marsh environments we’ve ever encountered (our Original Bug Shirts kept us alive!). Local after local (including some old-timers) described the bug situation as the worst they had ever seen with respect to mosquitos, wood ticks, and deer ticks (And don’t forget gnats!). One local remarked how at one point he simultaneously had three Lyme disease bull’s-eyes on his body. A quick internet search revealed articles (not surprisingly) blaming climate change for the bug infestation (Hmmmm.)
White-tailed Deer, too, are everywhere in huge numbers. I saw more White-tailed Deer than squirrels! Estimates are that White-tailed Deer populations in Wisconsin have increased 600% since 1950. This is probably due to humans feeding them and killing off predators such as wolves and mountain lions. Silly humans. White-tailed Deer abundance correlates negatively with songbird abundance because of the way deer graze away the understory vegetation. I was shocked to learn recently that White-tailed Deer are known to eat bird nests, including eggs and nestlings, of ground- and understory-nesting birds. Habitats can only sustain a limited number of large ungulates. Cross a numerical threshold and ecosystems collapse. Northern Wisconsin has apparently crossed that threshold.
Bull Elk at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Overpopulation of Elk at Yellowstone led to overgrazing of willow and aspen saplings and decimation of songbird populations. When Elk-munching wolves were re-introduced into the park in 1995 songbird populations expanded. Canon EOS 7D/100mm f/2.8L IS macro. Hand-held, natural light.Eight Points, Four Western: White-tailed buck at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, Texas. White-tailed Deer are wreaking the sort of havoc on ecosystems across eastern North America that excess Elk brought to Yellowstone. These fuzzy villains have got to be brought back into balance! Canon EOS 7D/100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS. Hand-held, natural light.
Until recently I have been in the doubting camp as far as anthropogenic climate change has been concerned. My general sense of the climate has been that it is consistent with heading deeper into an interglacial regime, with warmer average temperatures and decreased equability. These periods are associated with loss of biodiversity and stormy frontal weather patterns in the higher latitudes. I thought current climatic changes could probably be explained by Milankovitch cycles, perhaps in conjunction with variation over time in solar subatomic particle production and the amount of cloud cover produced as reported by CERN. An excellent recent summary article has led me to re-evaluate my position. On the other hand, I am not at all skeptical that humans are destroying the environment globally in other ways. That we are in the midst of an anthropogenic mass extinction event is beyond question. One need look no further than Wisconsin, Texas, or wherever you live.
Baby Alligators on their Mother’s Back at Brazos Bend State Park, Texas. Photo taken near Pilant Lake. Canon EOS 7D/600mm f/4L IS USM with high-speed synchronized fill-flash at 1/640, ISO 640; f/13.
I feel incredibly lucky to have a wife who shares my passion for nature and bird photography: not only for companionship in the field, but for constructive criticism, technical help, and tolerance for acquisition of expensive pieces of equipment. One frustration of having a photographer partner, however, has been having to share the “big” lens.
Buying the 500mm f/4L IS two years ago was a life-altering experience for us. Before that, we had to share the 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS: a nice lens, but nowhere in the same league as the 500mm in terms of autofocus speed, sharpness, image quality, and reach. With a 1.4x teleconverter (not to mention the 1.6x crop sensor EOS 7D) our new 500mm set-up really expanded our capabilities and started to land us some really nice results. No wonder this is such a popular combination of equipment among serious amateurs and professionals.
That said, the 500mm rig is heavy and awkward, especially with tripod, Wimberley gimbal, flash and “Better Beamer” flash extender attached. Lugging it through the brush can be exhausting, especially if there are low-hanging branches or tangled ground cover. It also attracts attention from the public who feel compelled to comment about the size of your “camera.”
To remedy the problem of having to share the 500mm, we recently acquired a used 600mm f/4 IS from B&H in New York. My first impression is that the 600mm is heavy, heavy, heavy. In fairness, it is only about 3 pounds heavier than the 500mm, 11.8 versus 8.5 pounds–but heavy enough to cause the tripod legs (Gitzo GT3541XLS) to slip when only tightened to minimum non-slip tightness for the 500mm. The 600mm is also physically larger–I would say chunkier and more ungainly. The carbon-fiber hood is much larger (I worry how it will behave in a significant wind). If you are not in good shape, these differences are significant–especially after about a four-plus mile hike, which is our typical outing. Furthermore, because the 600mm calls for the P-50 Wimberley lens plate for the gimbal, rather than the smaller P-40, the 600mm is much harder to carry the way I carry the 500mm set-up, namely with the top of the tripod resting on my shoulder. The P-50 digs into my shoulder. If I slide the lens backwards, it feels quite off-balance. I soon discovered that a folded handkerchief under the shoulder of my shirt makes a world of difference. On the second trip I figured out a way to position the 600mm set-up on my shoulder (with handkerchief) without causing pain–at least for about three hours.
White-faced Ibis in Non-breeding Colors at Brazos Bend State Park, Texas. Canon EOS 7D/600mm f/4L IS USM (+1.4x TC) with high-speed synchronized fill-flash.
My first impression optically of the 600mm is that the extra 140mm of reach (with 1.4x TC) really tests your technique, especially when exhausted, a bit shaky, sweat is burning your eyes, and deer flies are chewing on your face. My sense is that the 600mm focuses slightly faster than our 500mm (which is odd given that the 600mm has bigger elements to move), but I don’t have actual measurements, it just feels like it is faster. The depth of field for the 600mm is noticeably less than the 500mm, which is expected as depth of field is a function of object distance, f-stop, and focal length. This generally means shooting at higher f-stops and slower shutter speeds. I am already automatically nudging up the f-stop on the 600mm above what I would shoot on the 500mm: f/7.1 versus f/6.3 for small, relatively close birds, for example.
In some places we shoot some birds that are quite tolerant of humans, Brazos Bend State Park, for example. Juvenile little Blue Herons and Ibises, when they are focused on tasty frogs and crawfish will essentially ignore humans. They rarely will approach closer than the minimum focus distance (MFD) for the 500mm (14.8 ft.), though. Not so the 600mm (18.0 ft.). On several occasions I found myself having to back up to keep these birds in focus. After shooting with the 500mm for about two years, I more or less automatically and subconsciously adjust the object distance to be outside the MFD. I’m sure with practice my brain will adjust to the 600mm.
As of this writing (after four one-half days in the field), I have not encountered a situation where the 600mm is superior to what the 500mm would have produced. That being said, I also haven’t yet encountered a situation where the 600mm would really be expected to shine: where the subject is about 5-15 feet beyond the ideal distance for the 500mm. The 600mm reminds that photography is all about trade-offs and compromises and diminishing returns. For an extra 100mm of reach there is a large financial cost as well as a physical one. My favorite summer subjects are hunting waders, and I really expect that throughout the next few months many opportunities will arise (such as hunting waders on the other side of a bayou) that will convince me of the correctness of acquiring a 600mm rather than another 500mm lens. Time will tell.
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron with Red Swamp Crawfish at Brazos Bend Sate Park, Texas. Photo taken at Elm Lake. Canon EOS 7D/500mm f/4L IS USM (+1.4x TC). Natural light.
Sometimes I find myself able to get close enough to birds to fill the frame without being able to fit the whole bird in the shot. Rather than fight it, I go with the flow and shoot portraits! I’ll be adding new portraits of captive and wild birds to this collection as I encounter co-operative subjects.
Portrait: Peregrine Falcon. Captive bird, natural light. Canon 7D/100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS. Thanks to Mary Anne Weber of the Houston Audubon Society for access to her collection of beautiful rehabilitated raptors. Photo taken at the Sims Bayou Urban Nature Center, Houston.
Male Wood Duck at Brazos Bend State Park. This Wood Duck and his mate were extremely wary of humans. Smart ducks! Photo taken in March with high-speed synchronized fill-flash.
“Hey, there’s a pair of Wood Ducks hanging out by Nest Box 24,” Chris says with a knowing smile as we meet on the path encircling Elm Lake. “Excellent!” I reply. It’s my turn with the 500mm, and a good opportunity to practice my sit-and-wait technique. Patience has paid off in the past – especially with flycatchers returning to perches. So, with images of Wood Ducks in my head, I hurry on down the trail–politely refusing several offers to trade cameras with my point-and-shoot counterparts.
Slowing my approach as I get closer, I collapse the tripod to sitting height, identify the best angle given the light, then slip in among the brush. I am confident that my camouflaged ninja birding skills will produce a pair of Wood Ducks.
A mated pair of Blue-winged Teal feed on duck weed at Pilant Lake, Brazos Bend State Park, TX. Canon EOS 7D/500 mm f/4L IS (+1.4 TC): f/7.1, ISO 500, 1/3200, -0.3 EV, high-speed synchronized fill-flash.
At least there’s a handsome mated pair of Blue-winged Teal to keep me company. I wait. No Wood Ducks. The teal come in closer. Well, I might as well shoot them while I’m here. Done. I wait. No Wood Ducks. Hmm, maybe the Wood Ducks are IN the box! I train the camera on the nest box hole. I guess some images of a nest box would be nice. Snap. Snap. OK. I wait. No Wood Ducks. Hey! A head popped out of the hole!
A Fox Squirrel peeks out from Nest Box 24 in Pilant Lake, Brazos Bend State Park, TX. Canon EOC 7D/500 mm f/4L IS (+1.4 TC): f/11, ISO 500, 1/320, -0.7 EV, high-speed synchronized fill-flash.
Really? A squirrel. Hmph!
Wait a minute. What’s a squirrel doing in there? Is it hunting for eggs? Hunting for chicks? (That little #*%@!) Could it be tending a nest of its own? A little bit of internet research indicates it could be any of the above. I will need to keep an eye out for this in the future. I love it when I learn something new. Don’t you?
