outdoor photography

Fish Crow with Egg Crows are smart, and because of this I'm somewhat fascinated with them.  They're not particularly attractive birds, but they have a lot of ingenuity. I've read stories of crows working together to steal food from gulls. One crow comes up behind the gull and pulls a tail feather, distracting the gull.  When the gull looks away, the other crow steals the food.  That's some smarts.  But this aspect of crow behavior I'm not so fond of--they are exceptional at stealing eggs.  I'm told they're particularly good at stealing eggs from wading birds, since most are colonial nesters.  Crows have learned how to return to the scene of the crime and steal even more eggs. The other day I photographed these fish crows with some egg they had stolen. I have no idea what kind of egg this is. And to me, this egg looks a bit too large for the crow to carry in its bill. But somehow it must have managed.  They know how to crack it open and take the yok...

Osprey The fishermen weren't catching anything, but the Osprey were.  This one was sitting perched on a post near the shore of Lake Monroe mocking the fishermen.  It was a sorry sight, really. The fishermen couldn't come close to the skill of the Osprey. Well, they weren't alone in their Osprey-jealousy, since apparently the Bald Eagles weren't catching anything either. Well, I'm sure they could, but they must have figured it would be easier just to steal fish from the Osprey. One eagle was farther out on lake Monroe chasing another Osprey with its fish. Eventually that Osprey resorted to dropping his fish to end the harassment from the eagle.  But this Osprey was happy and content, facing away from the lake and the gaze of eagles, his catch also likely hidden from view.  I don't know if that was intentional, but I like to think that it was. Osprey  

Caspian Tern Ugh! It's been two full weeks since I've done a blog post! I've been busy at home and work, but I've also had a little bit of a photographic lull. Weather conditions have made for relatively poor lighting, but mostly I'm just behind in editing photos.  Well, this morning I went to the marina on Lake Monroe.  It's a pretty nice marina, for the most part, and a friend of mine found a Royal Tern there yesterday, so I thought I'd see if it was sticking around.  Unfortunately, it wasn't there today when I was.  But there were about 10 Forster's Terns and 12 Caspian Terns around, and several of them were pretty actively flying near the edge of the marina in decent light.  So I took a few Caspian Tern pictures.  For some reason I have a tougher time with Caspian Terns than with others.  I believe it's the eyes.  It seems far more difficult to get catch light in them, and so they often look sunken into the head and less attractive. So th...

Osprey On Saturday I attended the Wekiva River Christmas Bird Count. I'm just now getting around to working on the photographs, though.  My wife was in a car accident that evening, and she's been in the hospital ever since.  It's not as bad as that sounds, though.  Her main injury was a broken foot, and it needs surgery, but she has so much swelling that they're waiting for it to go down before operating.  So life's a little crazy at home.  This evening, though, I have a little time to work on some photos from the CBC.  While at Lake Monroe looking for gulls and terns, we saw this Osprey perched not far away, and it seemed rather curious about me.  As I walked to where I'd get a decent background, it just followed me with its eyes, and then it did this little head-tilt thing.  I've seen them do this many times before and it always cracks me up.  It seems to me to be a look of curiosity, but I don't know for sure. At any rate, it wasn't ph...

Sunrise Over Lake Monroe This past Saturday I had to be at a little park on the southern shore of Lake Monroe before 7 am.  He was running in a 5k race, so I brought my point and shoot to photograph him during the event.  The sunrise over Lake Monroe that morning was pretty spectacular, so I found a couple spots to brace my camera (since I didn't have a tripod) and took a few landscape photos of the sunrise.  The top image is an HDR composite image, and the image below is a single image.  Both of these were taken with the Canon PowerShot S100HS. Oh, and my son came in first in his high school and first in his age group.  So it was a win all around. Sunrise Over Lake Monroe