Sometimes the sun is kind and puts itself right where you’d put a flash.
Category Archives: Bird
Peru 2015 – Egret
This is the most common bird on the amazon. So common, in fact, that you kinda stop shooting them. Then you notice a perfect pose in the perfect light and remember that they’re actually kinda neat.
Micronesian Kingfisher (Todiramphus cinnamominus)
Thankful that bird jocks don’t taunt bird nerds for having underbites.
Spangled Cotinga (Cotinga cayana)
Thankful for the feast.
Green Araçari (Pteroglossus viridis)
Thankful that the carbon-12 nucleic resonance is 7.6 million electron-volts, but somewhat bothered at the anthropocentric bias of the theory.
Red-fan Parrot (Deroptyus accipitrinus)
Thankful that time exists, so that artificial narratives may be imposed upon a chaotic and capricious world.
White-eared Catbird (Ailuroedus buccoides)
Thankful not to be a turkey.
Cormorant
It’s interesting how cormorants queue up and then fly off in order when scared. I’m sure it’s nice from a social perspective, but it seems maladaptive from an evolutionary perspective.
Blue-breasted Kingfisher (Halcyon malimbica)
Two different materials comprise the bill. This is why it curves up in the summer and down in the winter.
Peru 2015 – Bird
In a zoo scenario, this photo would not be acceptable because of the branch that cuts across the beak. However, in the wild, you have to make due with what you get.
Hawk Banding – Kestrel
Hawk banders also band kestrels.
Peru 2015 – Stork
And then Evolution took a step back and thought “Yep. This is exactly what I was going for.”
Eagle Owl
The good news is that vampiric owls don’t have fangs to bite you with. The bad news is that they do have talons.
Hawk Banding
Goodbye hawk. See you next year.
Hawk Banding
When you’re done banding them, of course, you have to let them go.
Peru 2015 – Kingfisher
One of the guides mentioned that most kingfishers go blind because they hit the water with such force, over and over again, that they damage their eyes over time.
I have not yet found a ornithoptimologist to verify this fact.
Hawk Banding
You really should go hawk banding. Holding birds is fun.
Hawk Banding
Once a year, the Minnesota Zoo offers a hawk banding excursion up by Duluth. It’s a bit pricey but when you consider that it’s an all-day activity and you get to hold hawks, it’s well worth it.
Peru 2015 – Bird
I think this might be a caracara. One of the difficult things with doing this kind of photography is that, because of the movement of the boat, you have to shoot at a high shutter speed. Since the animals are moving, you need a small aperture to increase the depth of field. This helps keep it in focus if it moves too quickly as you focus. However, to shoot at high speed and small aperture, you have to boost the ISO level to where it’s unacceptably sharp … or deliberately underexpose. Underexposing works well, but when you bring it back up to being bright enough to see things, the colours are off.
So you switch to black and white.
Infrared River Zoo – Inky Depths
Because the infrared camera is only sensitive to frequencies that we can’t see, the fact that water absorbs longer wavelength light makes it nearly black. I am surprised, however, that feathers reflect infrared very similarly to visual wavelengths. I expected more of a difference there.