Let’s ask the Cuckoo bird!

During one of my last kayak outings, I had another Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus) fly in and land in an overhead branch. These birds, although not often seen, are really an interesting bird to be able to watch. In fact, when this cuckoo flew in, he was flying very erratically. I then noticed he was chasing a dragonfly; as they both flew through the tree branches, the dragon eluded the cuckoo and kept flying, while the cuckoo decided to stop for a rest, giving me the opportunity to grab a few images:

One of the unusual things about this bird is the underneath tail markings, as you can see in the above image. The tail is very long with a series of white spots>

To hear their unique call, a staccato clatter that slows down after an initial quick burst, is one of the thrills of being with this bird. But never heard it “Cuckoo”, or give me the time!  :o)

During one of my recent trips to the Prairie Meadow, I had an unusual encounter. To get to the meadow, I must first follow an uphill trail from the parking lot and through an open area, then through a wooded area that leads to the entrance to the meadow. While walking on the trail in the woods, there is an old, dead tree that stands at the edge of the trail. This tree has a rather large cavity in the tree, about 5 feet above the ground. Many times, when walking this trail, I’ve thought “that would be a perfect place for a critter to be hiding” but until this day, I never saw any there.

However, as I walked the trail this morning, I noticed some movement from the cavity as I got near the tree. Looking into the cavity, I saw this young Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana), who was settling into the cavity for a nap:

Moving in a bit closer, here is another shot:

The little guy stirred a bit, looked up at me, and when I passed by him he just laid his head down and took a snooze. And after my meadow work, on my way back to the truck, he was still in the cavity … guess he sensed I was not going to harm him. This has been the one and only time I’ve seen any critter using this space as place to settle in, whenever Mr. Sandman comes knocking!

The other morning, when I first entered the Prairie Meadow, I came upon this lovely Black Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio polyxenes) hanging on to a prairie grass stem. He seemed to be “frozen” to the grass. And my stumbling around in the low light (this image was taken just before sunrise) didn’t seem to distract him, even when I hit the grass with the leg of my tripod! The morning temperature was in the upper 50′s, so the low temperatures and dew were likely not conducive for him to fly off. So I snapped a few images of him, then proceeded through the meadow to where I was going to photograph some prairie birds. Here is an image of him in the early morning:

After shooting wildflowers and birds for a couple of hours, I walked the perimeter of the meadow until I reached my starting point. Curious if the Black Swallowtail was still there, I walked a bit further and sure enough, he was still on the grass stem, but this time was fully “awake”:

As you can see, he now had his wings out and was content to sit quietly on the stem, soaking up the warm rays of sunshine. I took a few images, then moved in closer. But as I moved in, he quickly fluttered off … guess he had “defrosted”  :o)

As I meandered around the Prairie Meadow the other day, I came across this Monarch Butterfly caterpillar (Danaus plexippus) feeding on a Common Milkweed plant. As I moved in close and watched it, it was literally having a feeding frenzy on a milkweed leaf. As I watched it, I was reminded of the great transformation that was about to occur with this little beauty, a “recycling” process, if you will. The Monarch caterpillar typically is in the caterpillar stage for 2-3 weeks. At that time, it looks for a place to pupate.

When the caterpillar finds a suitable place, it first attaches itself to a plant or other object by weaving a patch of silk there and then grabs hold of the silk with it’s rear prolegs. It then begins the process of turning into a pupa, or chrysalis and hardening. Upon completion, the pupal case remains for 5-15 days. During this time, the caterpillar is transforming into an adult Monarch butterfly. Once the butterfly is ready to emerge, the pupal skin splits open near the head and the adult butterfly crawls out, with it’s wings all folded up. It moves to where it has room to hang upside down by it’s legs, holding still until it’s wings dry and harden. The butterfly can now fly, and the life cycle begins all over.

Here are a few images I made of the caterpillar as I sat and watched it in the early morning light:

Today I’m featuring another visitor I found at the Prairie Meadow the other day. As I was leaving the meadow, This large Tiger Swallowtail (Pterourus glaucus) flew in and fluttered about the thistles that are currently blooming. I just love seeing/photographing these beauties … so large and so colorful!

While photographing birds in the prairie meadow the other day, I was joined by a large, beautiful Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus). He landed on a nearby thistle and grazed the flower for nectar for several minutes. When he was done, he lifted off and fluttered above the meadow, likely searching for another flower to feed on. Here are a few of my favorite images:

In my quest to get some images of the birds in the prairie meadow, the most common one I’ve found is the American Goldfinch (Carduelis tristis). The Goldfinches can be found all over the meadow, but most can be found near a large area of sunflowers, which is the major wildflower in bloom at this time. They will often fly into the sunflower field either singly or in small groups.  They then fly from plant to plant, pulling seeds out of spent wildflower seedheads. Here are a few of my favorite images I’ve captured this past week:

If you missed the first “Birds of the Prairie” post, you can click on this link to access it:

“A Kentuckian Meets a Missourian”

While in the prairie meadow the last couple of mornings, while waiting for the prairie birds to become active, I played around with some sunrise and early morning landscape shots by using my 500mm, f/4 telephoto lens. Not your common setup for this type of work, but I just love how this large lens compresses the various items in the frame.

This first image was taken as the sun was beginning to filter through the woods that borders this meadow: a lone sunflower bloom towers over the meadow:

This next image clearly illustrates the compression of the 500mm lens on the landscape, making the image look more like a painting. A very slow shutter speed and a dash of wind helped create a “magical” look to the surrounding sunflower stalks. This image was taken shortly after the sun had risen above the treeline and when it was casting it’s golden rays of light onto the sunflower patch:

Well, I finally did it … been thinking about hauling my 500mm lens and equipment up the hill to the upper prairie meadow for some time now, but the thought of lugging the stuff up the hill was always a “no vote” for the idea. Not that I don’t enjoy photographing with it, it’s just that I’m still a bit tentative hauling it around for any distance or under any harsh conditions. This all started in 2007, when preparing for one of two Alaska trips I took that summer.

The first trip went uneventful, as we saw/photographed the great brown bears of the coast of Katmai. The second trip was also in this area and I was planning on making a strenuous, side trip up to the alpine region to find/photograph a brown bear den (while the bears were still down in the valleys). So, after returning home from the first trip I stepped up my conditioning program. Up until now, I regularly walked ~2.5 miles every morning, up and down the hills of our rural Missouri home. Wanting to be prepared for the alpine trek, I stepped up the conditioning so that I was walking 5 miles every morning. Things were going well for the first couple of weeks of the program. But by the third week, I was starting to have some pain in my left heel/ankle area. Thinking I was just “out of condition”, I forged on with the program. After another week, the pain became excruciating and I could hardly walk. A trip to my family doctor, followed by a trip to an orthoepedic surgeon, found that I had developed Tendenosis, a tearing of my Achilles tendon.

To make a long story short, I’ve been on several doctor-supervised programs to repair the damage, most often wearing a “walking boot” for 6-8 weeks at a time, followed by plenty of stretching and again getting into a walking program. But most of the time, I have ended up with pain coming back and developing Tendonitis (inflammation of the Achilles tendon). And everytime, the doctors seem to act like everything’s ok. So, I’m real reluctant to do much strenuous exercise on my left leg! But I finally decided to bite the bullet and give it a go … glad I did!

This post is the first of several that will highlight some of the birds I’m encountering at the prairie meadow. This first bird happens to be a “life bird” for me … tickled to find it! It is a Kentucky Warbler (Oporornis formosus) and we are located right on the edge of it’s western distrubution range. From my reference books, the Kentucky Warbler normally is a shy bird and mostly seen on the ground, or at least in low, dense brush. I was fortunate to see it in a small tree. Here are some of my favorite images I made:

The Kentucky Warbler was only one of many birds I saw today. Stay tuned for more! And by the way, I made the trip up the hill and back with no issues and no pain. So, guess where I’m heading right now? See ya later!  :o)

Today’s post is all about a new little friend I made in the prairie meadow the other day. We’ll call him “Hairy”. As I was finishing my leisurely walk around the perimeter of the meadow, I saw a little movement out of the corner of my eye. Fortunately, there was not much in this area except for a lone sunflower plant that was standing above the short prairie grasses. The sunflower plant was not yet in bloom, but had several noteable buds. As I looked the plant over, I quickly saw the source of the “movement” I had seen. Hiding deep within one of the pockets (where a couple of leaf stems meet the main plant stalk) was a very small spider. I’ve not a clue as to it’s identity. For one thing, it is so small. And for another, it is tucked in so much in the pocket, that I can’t get a good look at it’s back to view and patterns or colors on him.

I sat up my tripod and got as close to him as possible, and began making some images (Note: none of the images in this post were cropped during the editing process). Here is what he looked like (this image was made at f/3.5, using my 180mm macro lens mounted on my Canon 1DMarkIII body):

The most distinguishing attribute I could see were his beautiful green eyes! I shot for a while, then decided to play around. I removed my Extension Tubes from my fanny pack and placed 68mm of extension (the entire set of 36mm, 20mm and 12mm tubes) between the body and the macro lens. Extension Tubes allow the camera/lens setup to focus closer to the subject. This resulted in a much larger image of Hairy. I also began playing with the depth of field (DOF), varying the aperture between f/3.5 (the largest opening of the lens) and f/16 (I didn’t want to go smaller than f/16 since I wanted to keep the background out of focus). Here are some images taken with the Extension Tubes in place:

f/3.5 :

f/11 :

f/16 :

Which one do you like the best? Most macro photography recommendations tend to suggest that you keep only the subject, or only the eyes/head of the subject, in sharp focus and allow the remainder to drop off into a blur, which forces the eye to the sharp (important) area of the image. But for educational purposes, more DOF is usually better since one can see more of the subject, more clearly.

So, have you decided which one of the last 3 images above that you like the best? Given all factors, I tend to like the f/3.5 image the best. The main reason is that there was an annoying prairie grass tip that was very close to Hairy, and very close to being in the same plane as Hairy. Being located so close to Hairy, I dared not move it as Hairy would have likely scampered off. This grass is very distracting to me, and at f/3.5 it is the least annoying of all the images. I may play with one of my f/11 images (which would be my favorite if the grass was not present) and use a technique called “Quick Mask” to remove it from the image.

If you’d like to give me your vote for “Best of Show” (which aperture setting you like best), you can send me a tweet or an e-mail. I’d like to know how you about the DOF of this image.