outdoor photography

Prothonotary Warbler This morning I walked the Osprey Trail at Spring Hammock Preserve in search of the Prothonotary Warblers I'd seen there a couple times in May.  With all the rain we've been having, there is a lot of water under the board walk, and it seemed to me a great place to look for breeding Prothonoary Warblers..  There were more mosquitoes along the trail than birds, but I was rewarded at the end of the boardwalk with the sight of a beautiful male Prothonotary Warbler.  He perched in the sunlight for me; unfortunately, it was so dark under the canopy of trees that I had my ISO set to 2000, but the photo above doesn't show the noise very much.  I walked to the very end of the board walk and heard a couple Purple Gallinules there before deciding to head back.  On the way back I found a male and a female, and the female was foraging for food; at one point she took off with a tasty morsel for the nest (that photo had to be shot at ISO 4000). Once get...

Wood Duck Yesterday my father and I went to Mead Gardens hoping to find migrants.  It was strangely and eerily quiet, though.  Resident and breeding birds were there in abundance--Wood Ducks were there, which is always nice; Carolina Wrens were seemingly everywhere, and in a couple places you could see fledglings.  Northern Parulas and Common Yellowthroats were frequently heard and seen.  But it was a while before we actually saw birds that were just passing through.  We saw one Northern Waterthrush, one Black-throated Blue Warbler and one American Redstart.  So we turned out attention to some other fine friends.   A Box Turtle was out in beautiful colors and a Crab-like Spiny Orbweaver spun a web where we could frustrate ourselves trying to get a picture in a slight breeze.  As we were leaving a friend told me that a White-winged Dove was over by the feeders, so we marched back to get photos of this interesting species.  White-winged Dov...