I spent a while outside yesterday power washing a years worth of grime and tree pollen off the upper deck along with a million Hickory Nut fragments that the squirrels are dropping from the Hickory Tree growing through the deck. There's a couple of Blue Mist Flowers in big half barrels on the deck which the butterflies, bee's and assorted bugs just love. I spent a few minutes with the 70-200 lens taking a few shots,
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| Orange Sulphur |
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| Duskywing, Juvenal's or Horace's |
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| Zebulon Skipper |
Following on from the previous post of the Timber Rattler and watching where you're walking and sitting, it certainly applies doubly so this time of year. I love arachnids ....... from a distance, I scream like a little girl if one of these is crawling on my shoulder.
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| Web |
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| Marbled Orb Weaver |
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| Black and Yellow Garden Spider |
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| Black and Yellow Garden Spider |
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| Timber Rattlesnake |
Over the last week or so the number of Monarch Butterflies has picked up enormously, It seems everywhere I look there's a couple of Monarchs chasing each other. Some of the Milkweeds are already stripped of leaves where the Monarch caterpillars have been chomping away. I had a few minutes outside around lunchtime to take a few shots of the Monarchs.
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| Monarch |
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| Monarch |
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| Monarch |
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| Monarch |
No problem with high ISO's these days.
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| Brown-belted Bumblebee on a Mexican Sunflower |
With not so much rain the last few day the pool/pond/flooded field water has been shrinking a bit. It's currently about half the size of its peak. The shorebird numbers have fluctuated every time I've been past this last week but with overnight rain and even more this morning I popped up to take a look to see if anything new had dropped in. The Least Sandpipers numbers have increased, they seem to be all over and some very close. The Lesser Yellowlegs numbers have gone down to 2 or 3 and the same with the Solitary Sandpipers. The Semipalmated Sandpipers have increased, just how many I didn't look (or care for that matter only being interested in photographs). Anyway each to his or her own I suppose so here's a few from about 10 minutes this morning.
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| Solitary Sandpiper |
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| Least Sandpiper |
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| Lesser Yellowlegs |
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| Lesser Yellowlegs |
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| Least Sandpiper |
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| Semipalmated Sandpiper |
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| Semipalmated Sandpiper |
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| Least Sandpiper |
This afternoon I drove past the flooded field and stopped briefly to see what was about. One of the Pectoral Sandpipers was pretty close and damnit I didn't have my camera. I dropped some stuff off at one of the donation places in town, then to the Pets Mart to get the felines more food, then into the Target to check out pots and pans that will work on our new cooktop. Dont ask. So an hour or more later I drove past again, got some dinner underway and shot back out but this time with the camera. The light was a still a bit harsh at 4pm and fair bit of heat distortion in the 86F (30C) temperature. Luckily the Pectoral was still quite close and many shots later I noticed that some of the Least Sandpipers were just about 5-6 yards away. They were under the 6M reduced focus range of my lens so I had to switch to the full focus range to get them. From the first shot at 4:03 PM to the last at 4:22PM I took 2627 images! I had to give up because sitting in a hot car without the engine running and no A/C the sweat was running down into my eyes. How I suffer for my art!
It reminded me of my first Pectoral Sandpiper, one evening somewhere in Northamptonshire back in the early 70's. I bet Ken would remember where it was, it was also my first sighting of the legendary Big Jake and his sidekick Kerry.
😎
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| Pectoral Sandpiper |
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| Pectoral Sandpiper |
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| Pectoral Sandpiper |
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| Pectoral Sandpiper |
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| Least Sandpiper |
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| Least Sandpiper |
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| Least Sandpiper |
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| Least Sandpiper |
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| Pectoral and Least Sandpiper |
I popped over to Middle Creek in the week to try out a new focus range limiting feature in a new firmware update for my Nikon Z8. Most telephoto lenses have a switch that limits the range of the lens mechanical movement which allows faster focussing, this is typically something like 6M to Infinity. In the latest Z8 firmware Nikon has added a software limit so you can set a lower focus point and a high focus point. I wanted to try for some Hummingbirds at the nectar feeders at the Visitor Center. I focussed on the feeder at around 5M then set the lower limit to 4.8M and the high limit to 5.2M. As the Hummers are lightning fast it's easy to misplace the focus point so rather than have the telephoto snap onto the background which is a lot of mechanical travel for the focussing mechanism to get back to the bird it only has to travel with the set range. It works very well, I will use it a lot at my backyard feeder setup.
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| female Ruby-throated Hummingbird |
After more rain overnight and this morning I thought maybe the birds from yesterday would stick around, apparently not. The Lesser Yellowlegs numbers were down but there were 3 Short-billed Dowitchers and a Pectoral Sandpiper that joined the puddle party. Here's a few from this morning, the light was a bit dismal and I never managed the Dowitchers.
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| Solitary Sandpiper |
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| Least Sandpiper |
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| Pectoral Sandpiper |
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| Solitary Sandpiper |
We've had a lot of rain lately, not as much as some parts of the country but much more than normal for this time of year. Just up the lane in a field with a slight depression a large pool appears which at different times of the year attracts a variety of birds. Right now the Shorebirds are moving through the area and the pool is attracting quite a few of them.
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| Flooded Field |
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| Flooded Field |
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| Lesser Yellowlegs |
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Lesser Yellowlegs |
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| Lesser Yellowlegs |
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| Lesser Yellowlegs |
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| Solitary Sandpiper |
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| Lesser Yellowlegs |
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| Solitary Sandpiper |
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| Lesser Yellowlegs |
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| Least Sandpiper |
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| Solitary Sandpiper |
I'm going to be having a good look for the Black Skimmers next time I'm out on the coast.
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| Black Skimmer |
should be pretty good for Butterflies and Moths based upon previous years.
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| Spicebush Swallowtail |
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| Eastern Tiger Swallowtail |
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| Eastern Tiger Swallowtail |
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| Eastern Tiger Swallowtail |
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| Eastern Tiger Swallowtail |
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| Hummingbird Clearwing |
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| Hummingbird Clearwing |
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| Hummingbird Clearwing |
