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Archive for November, 2013

Female (and male) Ring-necked ducks

Posted in Art, Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , on November 11, 2013| 5 Comments »

As I was going through some of my bird photos, I realized that a majority of them feature the male of the species. The males tend to be more loud and flashy, so I guess it’s not surprising that they draw my attention much of the time. The female often has a more delicate beauty and coloration, as is the case with this female Ring-necked duck (Aythya collaris) that I photographed recently.

I added an image of a male Ring-necked duck that I photographed the same day to allow you to make your own comparison and judgments. It may be a cliché, but it is nonetheless true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Ginkgo butterflies

Posted in Art, Butterflies, Landscape, Nature, Photography, tagged , , , , , , , on November 10, 2013| 4 Comments »

Do you still look at the clouds and see shapes as you did when you were a child? Sometimes the shadows and light and my imagination combine and cause me to see new things, like the leaves in this ginkgo tree that remind me of a flock of bright yellow butterflies.

Ginkgo trees are endlessly fascinating for me. Check out my earlier posting to see additional photos of my journey to a ginkgo grove a few weeks ago, including some close-up shots of ginkgo leaves and the fleshy seeds produced by the female ginkgo trees.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Cormorant in the air

Posted in Art, Birds, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , on November 10, 2013| 19 Comments »

Two weeks ago I didn’t even realize that we had Double-crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) in this area and now I can find quite a number of them on the Potomac River. It’s a little difficult to tell from the range maps in my bird guide if the cormorants are migrating through this area of if they may choose to winter here.

The more I observe these birds, the stranger they appear. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology described them this way—”The gangly Double-crested Cormorant is a prehistoric-looking, matte-black fishing bird with yellow-orange facial skin. Though they look like a combination of a goose and a loon, they are relatives of frigatebirds and boobies and are a common sight around fresh and salt water across North America.”

I am still working on getting some shots of the cormorants in the water, but as a start, here are a couple of images of a cormorant in the air. I took the first one before I knew that it was a cormorant—I have a habit of trying to capture anything in flight that is remotely in range. The second one shows a cormorant as he is taking off from the water after some bounding steps across the surface as he gained speed. The location of the light caused much of the cormorant’s body to be in the shadows, but did illuminate the details of some of its feathers.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Riding the waves

Posted in Art, Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged , , , , , on November 9, 2013| 2 Comments »

The wind was kicking up yesterday on the Potomac River, making it difficult for the ducks there, like this Ruddy Duck (Oxyura jamaicensis). I watched as the small ducks got drenched repeatedly as they sought to ride the waves.

At least it wasn’t raining and the temperatures have not yet dropped below the freezing levels, even at night.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Taking off together

Posted in Art, Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 9, 2013| 6 Comments »

I was watching some Great White Egrets (Ardea alba) yesterday at Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, a freshwater tidal wetland on the Potomac River, when something startled the birds.

The egrets and some mallard ducks took off from the water en masse in a great explosion of water. I captured some of that noise and confusion in the second photo. The photo I chose to feature shows the birds a short after the take off as they start to lift off a little and fly over a meadow-like area with tall golden grass. The light was especially beautiful on the wings of the egrets, which happily I managed to capture without blowing out the highlights as sometimes I do with these very white birds.

Click on the photos to see some of the beautiful details of the birds in greater resolution.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Playing in a puddle

Posted in Autumn, Birds, Humor, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 8, 2013| 7 Comments »

Did you enjoy playing in puddles when you were a child? I remember a childhood of rubber boots and yellow slickers and days when my pant legs would be drenched from walking through puddles. Even now, I’ll occasionally kick my feet through a puddle of water and then glance quickly all around, hoping that nobody has seen me give in to my child-like impulses.

When I spotted this White-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) in a shallow puddle, I thought he was merely getting a drink of water. However, he stuck his head in the water, splashed around, and seemed to be having a good time. Perhaps he was taking a bath, or maybe he was simply enjoying himself in the cool waters. (In case you are curious about the background, the puddle had formed in a low area adjacent to a speed bump at the entrance to the parking area of my local marsh park—the yellow you can see is the safety paint of the speed bump itself.)

Initially, I was unsure that this sparrow was a White-throated, because the white patch was not really obvious and the eye stripes were not as well defined as in previous photos that I have posted of this species. The yellow coloration above the lore (the area between the eye and the bill) makes it pretty likely that this is a White-throated sparrow, though it may be the brown and tan striped variant, rather than the black and white one that I featured in a posting earlier this week.

I don’t know about you, but I feel inspired to find a puddle to play in today. Have a wonderful Friday.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Heron out of water

Posted in Art, Birds, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , on November 7, 2013| 12 Comments »

I felt like this Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) was modeling for me when it climbed out of the water onto a narrow slab of concrete and struck a pose. It was unusual for me to see a stationary heron out of the water—usually when I see them out of the water, they are flying. The blue waters make it look like I shot this in some exotic, tropical location, but I took this photo only a mile or so from where I live, at a small suburban pond surrounded by townhouses on one side and a well-travelled road on the other side.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Fuzzy brown caterpillar

Posted in Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , on November 7, 2013| 6 Comments »

We’re starting to get down to the last insects of the season, and fuzzy brown caterpillars are among the few insects that I still see. Some of these are Banded Wooly Bear caterpillars (Pyrrharctia isabella) that supposedly help tell how severe the winter will be, though I confess that I can never remember how you are supposed to judge, i.e. does a wide middle section mean a short winter or a long one?

When I first took this shot, I thought the subject was a wooly bear caterpillar, but the more I look at it the less certain I feel. There seems to be a black tip on only one end of the caterpillar rather than at both ends. Despite the uncertainty about identification, I really like the shot and the way that I was able to isolate the caterpillar from the background.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Wren in November

Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , on November 6, 2013| 5 Comments »

Why was this wren perching on the nesting box just prior to entering it? It’s not nesting season, is it? Was it seeking shelter on a cool, windy day? Were there insects inside to eat?

As I noted yesterday, bird activity was low on Monday—we didn’t even have any Canada geese or ducks passing through. I initially noticed this small bird, which I think is a Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus), when it was checking out the underside of this nesting box. The box itself is pretty big and was placed there, I believe, for ducks to use. Eventually the wren perched on the edge of the entrance and peered inside and then looked all around before going inside.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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White-throated sparrow

Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , on November 5, 2013| 13 Comments »

It was cold and overcast yesterday and there were not many birds visible, with the notable exception of sparrows. Sparrows were as active as ever, though most of the time I could only hear them and not see them. They seem to like to rot about in the underbrush most of the time.

I was really happy when this White-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) popped up for a moment and I was able to get this image. I love the facial pattern and colors of this bird, which seems to have a goatee much like my own. (My goatee started out with salt-and-pepper color, but increasingly has become mostly salt).

When researching this bird, I learned that there is another version (morph) of this bird that has brown and tan head stripes, instead of black and white. I will have to look even more closely at my photos of the White-throated sparrow, which has become more common the past few weeks, and see if I have managed to capture any images of the tan-striped variant.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Fine feathered friends

Posted in Art, Birds, Humor, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 4, 2013| 8 Comments »

Who knew that the man-made pond in a nearby suburban neighborhood would be a favorite spot for juvenile birds to hang out together?  That’s what it looked like when I spotted an immature Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) and an immature Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) together, both with their heads turned in profile, probably checking out some cute little female goose.

Actually, I couldn’t immediately identify the cormorant, though it was obvious that it was neither a duck or a goose. The way that it swam with its long neck extended and its bill pointed in the air, however, was distinctive enough to make it easy to find in my identification guide.

I like the way that these two birds posed for me, with the cormorant perched on a narrow concrete slab to compensate for the heron’s greater height and the synchronized head positions. I have seen this young heron hanging around the pond before (it’s the same heron that I featured in the Crouching heron posting this morning), but I don’t think that I have seen a cormorant there before. Usually there are only geese and occasionally some ducks, like the small flock of Ring-necked ducks that are there right now.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Crouching heron

Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 4, 2013| 6 Comments »

Saturday, I went out with fellow photographer Cindy Dyer to take photographs of the fall foliage and we stopped at a little suburban pond, where I managed to get this close-up shot of a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) crouching at the edge of the water. If you want to see some awesome shots of the fall colors in Northern Virginia, check out Cindy’s blog—she was quicker than I was in posting her shots.

I was able to get this downward-looking angle for the image because I was on a small bridge that is part of a walking path around the pond. The heron was focused on trying to catch prey, though he didn’t seem to be having too much success. Judging from its relatively small size and inexperience fishing, I suspect that this might be a juvenile heron.

I took a number of other shots of the heron that I will probably post, including an encounter with what I think is a juvenile cormorant. Stay tuned.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Autumn geese landing

Posted in Art, Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2013| 11 Comments »

Standing at the end of a small pond, I heard the sounds of an approaching flock of Canada Geese (Branta canadensis). I looked all around as I prepared to track them and couldn’t help noticing areas of beautiful autumn foliage.

Wouldn’t it be cool  if I could capture the geese landing with the colorful leaves as a background? I put that idea in the back of my mind, remembering that it was going to be tough enough to capture decent shots of the geese without worrying about the background.

It’s a noisy crazy couple of moments when the geese come in for a landing—they come in waves and there is so much activity that it’s hard to figure out what to focus on. Usually, as I did here, I will try to concentrate on a single bird as it approaches and to keep it in focus.

I captured this image at the moment when the geese were slowing down just prior to entry into the water. My main subject is in a pretty good focus and the other geese are in interesting positions. I was surprised that I was able to get the orange background—it had been a hope, but certainly not an expectation. The result is an image that I really like, an image that combines two of the iconic elements of the autumn.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Journey to a ginkgo grove

Posted in Landscape, Nature, Photography, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 2, 2013| 21 Comments »

If you germinated 600 seeds from a single ginkgo tree, how many would grow up to be male trees and how many female? Some of you may have come up with an answer already, but I am still struggling with the question. Can trees really have a gender? Apparently ginkgo trees, like holly, persimmon, and some others have a gender. Who knew?

In 1929, Dr. Orlando White at the Blandy Experimental Grove of the State Arboretum of Virginia in Boyce, Virginia decided to do an experiment and hypothesized that the sex ratio would be 1:1. Dr. White’s intellectual curiosity resulted in the Blandy Ginkgo Grove that I visited last weekend, one of the largest collections of gingkos outside of the tree’s native China. You can learn more fascinating information about ginkgos and about this grove by downloading this brochure, my source for the historical information about the grove.

I was struck by the beauty of the ginkgo leaves. Fossils of these leaves date back to 270 million years ago, meaning this plant was around with the dinosaurs. A ginkgo, which means “silver apricot” in Chinese, doesn’t form fruits, but has fleshy seeds about the size and appearance of a small apricot, seeds that you can see in some of my photos. I should warn you, though, that ginkgo seeds do not smell as nice as apricots—they smell like a cross between vomit and dog excrement.

I am including a variety of shots to give you an idea of the beauty of the ginkgo, ranging from a view of part of the entire grove down to an image of a single leaf.  I have never used the gallery feature with WordPress, but decided to put the photos I selected for this posting into a gallery and see how it works out. Let me know if you have any thoughts about whether you like this approach, vice using single photos.

Blandy Ginkgo Grove
Ginkgo grove vertical
Golden ginkgo leaves with seeds
Ginkgo leaves and sky
Ginkgo leaves with seeds
Single gingko leaf (yin and yang)

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Duck straggler

Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged , , , , , , , on November 1, 2013| 6 Comments »

Most of the time when I try to photograph ducks in flight, I end up with shadows and muted colors. Last weekend, though, the light was right and I was able to capture a small group of mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) in full color. They were pretty far away, but I like the formation that I was able to capture. There are four males and one female, and one of the males is a straggler who seems to have trouble keeping up with the group.

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Click on the photo to see it in higher resolution.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Autumn woodpecker

Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, tagged , , , , , on November 1, 2013| 11 Comments »

Last year it seemed like I saw Downy Woodpeckers everywhere, but this year I have sighted only a few of them. I took this shot of a female Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) in mid-October during a visit to Theodore Roosevelt Island, a nature preserve in the Potomac River opposite the District of Columbia.

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© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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