Mad Dogs and Englishmen...

... said Noel Coward, and with that thought in mind and the torture of Thursdays heat and humidity still a fresh memory I have decided to avoid the searing temperatures and get some practice photographing pets. I thought it a good idea to post some images I have already taken so I can measure my improvement. Here is a selection of pictures of my two gorgeous boys, Alfie and Oscar, who both fill my life with happiness (2nd to my wife of course), but also drive me crazy with their barking, misbehaving, chewing, growling, fighting, shedding etc (not at all like my wife!).

Alfie and Oscar (Click to enlarge)




















Alfie's Wet Nose (Click to enlarge)


Alfie at Window (Click to enlarge)




















Oscar "I See You" (Click to enlarge)




















Alfie the Bone Eater (Click to enlarge)

Riparian Preserve 7.29.10

I woke this morning at 4.30am to the sound of the dogs barking at the thunder and torrential rain. I decided to take advantage of the canine alarm and headed out to the Rio Salado Salt River Restoration Project. This is an area I had not visited before and is south of downtown Phoenix. The rain had stopped, but the humidity was unbearable and by the time I had walked from 7th St to 7th Ave along the river bed I was soaked to the skin and feeling like I was suffocating. I stopped at 7th Ave and watched some Grackles for a while, but really didn't get close to anything else. I walked back to the car with the blazing sun in my eyes and sweat blinding me - I was a very, very unhappy and uncomfortable bunny! I stopped at the car and finished a bottle of water and decided that I would head out to Gilbert (I was already half way there) so that it would not be a complete waste of a morning. It was just as uncomfortable in Gilbert. Walking with a 20lb tripod set up in a loaded photography vest really feels like you are wading through treacle in those weather conditions.

The ponds were pretty empty and I feel like this may be the end of my shooting there until the weather starts to cool. However here is a selection from today:

Female American Goldfinch (click to enlarge)


Snowy Egret (click to enlarge)




















Snowy Egret in Flight (click to enlarge)

It's all gone to the dogs!

This morning I headed out to Tres Rios with the intention of photographing some Turkey vultures. I was armed with some raw meat and liver to bait the vultures to a photographic spot. This is a very controversial aspect of wildlife photography. One argument is that luring birds with food can a) put the birds in danger, b)decrease their ability to find their own food and make them reliant on alternate food sources c) spread disease by encouraging birds to congregate. However, in this situation I established my lure far away from any danger, baited in an area already rich in food sources and baited for birds that already congregate for feeding.

About 30 minutes after I got set up the rain started, so I decided to use my car as a hide ('blind' for my US friends). After another 15 minutes 2 cars from the Phoenix Police Department converged on me after receiving reports of a suspicious car parked in the desert! An hour later I was approached by an officer from the Gila River Indian Reservation Police, Although I was not trespassing, he wanted me to be aware that I was very close to the reservation boundary. All of the officers were very polite, but I think they probably scared all the vultures out of the area by driving out to where I was parked.

The upshot of this is that I saw no vultures until I was driving home! However, there was a surprise event for me when I watched 2 wild dogs leave their pack and trot over to my meat feast! They were very calm and did not seem at all bothered by me.

Wild Dogs (click to enlarge)


Breakfast (click to enlarge)


This one chose the bloodiest piece he could! (click to enlarge)


The only other visitor I had was a lonely Mourning Dove... not quite the carcass eating vulture I was looking for!

Mourning Dove (click to enlarge)


One other shot from today... a couple of Cormorants flying to the south of where I was located I thought it would make a nice landscape shot. When I downloaded it to my computer I practiced a little post-processing - turning a fairly drab, grey landscape into a faux-sunset shot. The process involved changing almost everything in the shot, but I think that the result was successful. Here is the before and after for comparison:

Before (click to enlarge)


After (click to enlarge)


I think that next weeks trip might be to a new place - The Salt River Restoration Project... watch this space for updates.

Riparian Preserve and Tres Rios 7.19.10

I got cancelled from work last night, so I was able to get up nice and early for a drive down to Gilbert. I tried to catch some different subjects so that this blog does not fill up with Egrets and Stilts!

Here are this mornings efforts:

Gila Woodpecker (Click to enlarge)




















Anna's Hummingbird (Click to enlarge)


Afterwards I took a run past Tres Rios on the way home. It looks like the Turkey Vultures are out in force at the moment and the ponds are a danger area as I found out when a Dragonfly squadron started diving at me from the skies!

Turkey Vulture (Click to enlarge)


Dragonfly (Click to enlarge)

Gulf of Mexico Oil Crisis

I am sure that everybody with ears has heard about the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. However, what some people do not know is that this may be the biggest ecological disaster the USA has ever seen. Along the Gulf Coast are several important wildlife areas that are going to be hit very hard by the continuing spill. In the last month a US government panel increased the estimated rate of flow of oil - the revised estimates double the previous figures, suggesting that 25,000-30,000 barrels are being spewed into the Gulf each day - that is 1 barrel every 3 seconds! The impact of this will continue for months as more and more of the coastline becomes toxic to wildlife.

This info is from the National Wildlife Federation:

Impacts on Mammals
Marine mammals, including West Indian manatees, bottlenose dolphins, sperm whales, and blue whales can come into contact with the oil and inhale harmful fumes when surfacing for air.
Terrestrial and semi-aquatic mammals including river otters, mink and swamp rabbits will lose habitat and food sources as oil washes into coastal wetlands.

Impact on birds.
Egrets, herons, ibises, roseate spoonbills, brown pelicans and Wilson's plovers (to name just a few) lose buoyancy and their ability to keep warm; suffer skin and eye lesions; and ulcers, pneumonia, liver damage, and other life-threatening conditions from ingesting oil when they try to feed or clean oil from their feathers.
Many ground-nesting shorebirds, including plovers and terns, are at risk of losing their eggs and young.
Millions of migratory birds use the Gulf Coast as a critical stopover point after the exhausting flight across the Gulf of Mexico and will face habitat and food shortages as oil washes ashore.

Impact on Fish.
Yellowfin tuna, blue tuna, blue crabs, sharks, oysters, shrimp and other species lose their ability to fight disease and experience a build-up of contaminants in their bodies over time.
Oil exposure is lethal to fish eggs and larvae that are not yet mobile and cannot escape the oil slick.

Impact on Reptiles.
Reptiles depend on the coast for breeding ground, habitat and food sources. Sea turtles, including the loggerhead and the green turtle, are getting ready to begin their nesting season.

Impacts on Habitat
Ninety percent of all the marine species in the Gulf depend on coastal estuaries at some point in their lives, and most of these estuaries are in Louisiana. Louisiana's estuarine habitat includes salt marshes and barrier islands that sit on the edge of Louisiana's coast, and those will be hit first--and hardest--by the oil spill.
Oil is harder to remove from the highly organic soils that occur in coastal wetlands and marshes.
Oil can kill or reduce growth of marsh grasses, which are a key source of food and cover for wildlife. This vegetation loss will also lead to erosion and contribute to the coast’s already rapid rate of land loss.

The latest figures suggest that over 400 species of wildlife that rely on the Gulf Coast are being threatened - with recovery for some species not expected for decades. There is also some concern that the initial body count is wildly inaccurate. The Exxon Valdez disaster enquiry found that only a small portion of carcases were found, researchers believed that only 10% of the dead wildlife was recovered - in the case of the Louisiana Spill that could mean that 13,000 birds have already been lost, 500 mammals and thousands of turtles. There is no way to tell how much of the fish poulation has been affected. One particularly sad fact is that the Brown Pelican, which was only removed from the endangered species list last year, is nesting now in the Gulf area. Chicks, nests and eggs are being disturbed not only by the oil, but also from the rescue effort - cleaning machinery and volunteers are unavoidably decreasing the chance of these birds surviving by interfering (unintentionally) with nesting sites.

The National Wildlife Federation has been involved in the rescue mission since day 1. Their work is invaluable and could mean the difference between recovery or extinction for some species. There is a donation area here, or visit the NWF homepage and click on the link there.

Some of the affected bird habitats being threatened by the spill include:

1) Gulf Coast Least Tern Colony. One of the world’s largest colonies of the threatened least tern.
2) Lower Pascagoula River – including the Pascagoula River Coastal Preserve. The coastal marshes at the mouth of the river support yellow and black rails, snowy plovers and endangered wintering piping plovers.
3) Gulf Islands National Seashore. Hosts thousands of wintering shorebirds, including endangered piping plover, Wilson’s plover and American oystercatcher as well as brown pelican, black-crowned night-heron, white ibis and black skimmer.
4) Breton National Wildlife Refuge – including the Chandeleur Islands. Largest tern colony in North America, predominantly of sandwich, royal, and caspian terns. Also American oystercatcher, brown pelican, reddish egret and endangered piping plover. Also an important wintering area for magnificent frigatebird, and stopover site for redhead and lesser scaup.
5) Dauphin Island. An important stopover site for migrant birds including shorebirds, gulls, terns, herons and rails.
6) Fort Morgan Historical Park. An important stopover site for migratory birds including shorebirds, gulls, terns, herons and rails.
7) Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge. An important stopover site for thousands of trans-Gulf migrants.
8) Eglin Air Force Base. Best known for its inland population of red-cockaded woodpeckers, Elgin also has significant coastal habitat for shorebirds and wading birds.
9) Delta National Wildlife Refuge. Large numbers of wading birds nest here, including white ibis, snowy egrets and herons; thousands of shorebirds use the mudflats in winter and during migration, including dunlin, long-billed dowitcher and western sandpiper as well as endangered piping plover.
10) Baptiste Collette Bird Islands. This artificial barrier island, created from dredge spoil, is one of the many Louisiana coastal islands that could be affected. Birds found here include caspian tern, brown pelican, gull-billed tern and black skimmer.

I got the prime spot today!

After missing the best spot earlier this week I got up at 3.30 am to get to the Riparian Preserve nice and early and managed to get an excellent place to catch the bird-life. The highlight for me was seeing some Snowy Egrets challenging eachother and a Great Blue Heron trying, unsuccessfully, to eat a baby turtle! One of the challenges I faced (with mixed success) was the changing light. As the sun broke above the tree line some very harsh shadows were cast across the pond, meaning that I had to constantly watch my exposure - changing ISO, shutter speed and aperture with almost every shot. I think that I will experiment with one of the automatic settings and see if there is any benefit to letting the camera make some of the decisions! Even though there were plenty of shots lost, I was very happy with the shots I did get, I had to rescue some of them using Adobe Camera Raw (my workflow can be seen in the 'Tutorials and Lessons Learned' page). Here is a small selection:

Snowy Egret (click to enlarge)





















Black-necked Stilt (click to enlarge)





















Great Blue Heron and Baby Pond Slider Turtle (click to enlarge)