Tag: jpeg
Rock Squirrels
Today’s post is a change of pace for me involving Rock Squirrels, my own ignorance and my evolution as a nature photographer.
Surprise Harrier
Usually when I photograph Northern Harriers they are my intended goal. Yesterday morning this bird was an exception as it caught me completely unprepared.
A Northern Flicker And The Kindness Of A Stranger
In early 2008 I was a frustrated novice photographer. I had recently invested heavily in an expensive “bird lens” and switched over from shooting in JPEG to RAW all in an effort to get high quality shots but it just wasn’t happening. My images were not as sharp as they should be and I couldn’t figure out why.
A Pied-billed Grebe Attempts To Dismember A Frog
Pied-billed Grebes are opportunistic feeders, taking large crustaceans (especially crayfish), fish, insects and other invertebrates. They also consume a lot of frogs when they’re available. When the prey is too large to swallow whole (frogs and crayfish especially) they grasp the appendages with their beak and shake it vigorously until the limbs break off. I’ve also seen adults tear off bits of the body trunk of frogs to feed to their chicks. This bird is a juvenile, still learning the finer points of consuming prey. This stage of plumage development is referred to as the “stripe-head stage”, for obvious reasons. Adults lose those stripes. The frog it has captured is probably one of the first amphibians the bird has had to deal with without assistance from a parent and that inexperience seemed obvious as the young bird dealt with the frog. I’ve presented all the photos in this series in the order they were taken. As you can see, the young frog hasn’t yet fully metamorphosed into an adult and retains the tadpole tail. The grebe would repeatedly grasp a limb (it tried all 5 of them several times)… and then shake the frog violently in an apparent attempt to tear the appendage off like it has seen its parents do so many times before. Here it’s working on the left front leg. Other times the bird would grasp the body and shake. Hard! At times the grebe would appear to rest and “think” about its…
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Rock Squirrels
Today’s post is a change of pace for me involving Rock Squirrels, my own ignorance and my evolution as a nature photographer.
Surprise Harrier
Usually when I photograph Northern Harriers they are my intended goal. Yesterday morning this bird was an exception as it caught me completely unprepared.
A Northern Flicker And The Kindness Of A Stranger
In early 2008 I was a frustrated novice photographer. I had recently invested heavily in an expensive “bird lens” and switched over from shooting in JPEG to RAW all in an effort to get high quality shots but it just wasn’t happening. My images were not as sharp as they should be and I couldn’t figure out why.
A Pied-billed Grebe Attempts To Dismember A Frog
Pied-billed Grebes are opportunistic feeders, taking large crustaceans (especially crayfish), fish, insects and other invertebrates. They also consume a lot of frogs when they’re available. When the prey is too large to swallow whole (frogs and crayfish especially) they grasp the appendages with their beak and shake it vigorously until the limbs break off. I’ve also seen adults tear off bits of the body trunk of frogs to feed to their chicks. This bird is a juvenile, still learning the finer points of consuming prey. This stage of plumage development is referred to as the “stripe-head stage”, for obvious reasons. Adults lose those stripes. The frog it has captured is probably one of the first amphibians the bird has had to deal with without assistance from a parent and that inexperience seemed obvious as the young bird dealt with the frog. I’ve presented all the photos in this series in the order they were taken. As you can see, the young frog hasn’t yet fully metamorphosed into an adult and retains the tadpole tail. The grebe would repeatedly grasp a limb (it tried all 5 of them several times)… and then shake the frog violently in an apparent attempt to tear the appendage off like it has seen its parents do so many times before. Here it’s working on the left front leg. Other times the bird would grasp the body and shake. Hard! At times the grebe would appear to rest and “think” about its…