Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, defying gravity, Downy Woodpecker, Huntley Meadows Park, Picoides pubescens, Tamron 150-600mm, woodpecker on November 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »
This energetic little Downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) seemed to be defying gravity on Monday as it leaned over backwards and pecked away at a small tree growing out of the water at Huntley Meadows Park.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Alfred Hitchcock, birds in flight, Canon 50D, Escher, grackle, Huntley Meadows Park, Rusty Blackbird, Tamron 150-600mm, The Birds on November 29, 2016| 8 Comments »
Yesterday the fields and forests of Huntley Meadows Park were alive with the sound of birds, lot of birds. I didn’t get a close enough look to identify the black birds, but they seem to be Rusty Blackbirds or Grackles. As they foraged, they moved from one spot to another in a great cloud of birds, all flying at the same time.
I tried to capture images of the birds with different backgrounds and especially like the first one below, which reminds me of some pf Escher’s pen-and-ink drawings of birds.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, Canon 50D, Great Blue Heron, heron, Huntley Meadows Park, Tamron 150-600mm on November 28, 2016| 11 Comments »
Generally when I see a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) in a tree, it is roosting in a protected location and napping. Early one morning this past weekend at Huntley Meadows Park, however, I spotted this alert heron perched on an exposed dead tree, looking like it was playing the role of a sentinel.
I initially caught sight of the heron from a distance and followed a path in the treeline that let me get almost underneath the heron for some shots. The sky was overcast and there was not much light, causing the background to appear white and the images to be almost monochromatic.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Art, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, birds in flight, Canon 50D, Great Blue Heron, heron, Huntley Meadows Park, panning, Tamron 150-600mm on November 27, 2016| 3 Comments »
Sometimes I will intentionally use a slow shutter speed when I am panning a moving subject to blur the background and give a sense of motion, but that was not the case with these photos—I was shooting in aperture-priority mode and simply wasn’t paying attention to the shutter speed that the camera was giving me. In all three of these images, the shutter speed was 1/100 of a second, which is really too slow for handholding my 150-600mm zoom lens.
As the old saying goes, though, sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. I really like the way the background was rendered and am not at all bothered by the somewhat soft focus on parts of the moving heron.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Cameron Run, Canon 50D, Hooded Merganser, Hooded Merganser duck, Lophodytes cucullatus, Tamron 150-600mm on November 26, 2016| 3 Comments »
It’s Hoodie season—hooded sweatshirts for me and lots of Hooded Merganser ducks (Lophodytes cucullatus) at Cameron Run in Alexandria, Virginia.
Yesterday I spotted this group of six males swimming around and hanging out together. Most of the time during the year when I see Hooded Mergansers, it is a couple or a mother with ducklings, so it was unusual for me to see such a large grouping. There were a few females too, but they seemed to ignore the males and for the most part kept to themselves.
While the single guys were burning off some energy, a couple found a quiet spot and decided to take a nap. I often see Canada Geese and Mallard ducks sleeping, but I am pretty sure that this is the first time that I have ever seen the little Hooded Mergansers doing so.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, Thanksgiving, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Buteo lineatus, Cameron Run, Canon 50D, hawk, Red-Shouldered Hawk, Tamron 150-600mm on November 25, 2016| 4 Comments »
When I was walking yesterday along Cameron Run, a tributary of the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia, I was shocked to spot a hawk perched nearby in a small tree almost at eye level. I was on a paved bike trail that parallels the stream and there is a relatively steep embankment that slopes down to the water’s edge. The tree was located on that embankment.
When the hawk, which I think is a juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) eventually flew away and landed atop a building, it screamed out repeatedly at some circling crows. It makes me wonder if the hawk had previously been hiding from harassing crows and that is why it permitted me to get relatively close without initially taking off.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in animals, Art, Autumn, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, beaver, busy, Canon 50D, Castor canadensis, gnaw, gnawing, Huntley Meadows Park, North American Beaver, Tamron 150-600mm on November 23, 2016| 8 Comments »
As I wander about in Huntley Meadows Park, I see lots of signs that winter is on its way, including this tree that I encountered in what seemed to be the middle of the woods. Clearly the beavers have been as busy as, well, beavers. I am hoping to be able to capture them in action in the upcoming months.
If you read this blog frequently, you probably noticed that this image is quite different from my “normal” wildlife close-ups. When I stumbled upon this tree on which a beaver had been gnawing, I was struck by the interplay of light and shadows. As I framed this shot, which is uncropped here, I was trying to capture the almost monochromatic look of the scene in a very simple composition. I’m pretty pleased by the different textures that I was also able to capture in the shot.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Huntley Meadows Park, Melanerpes erythrocephalus, Red-headed Woodpecker, Tamron 150-600mm, woodpecker on November 22, 2016| 3 Comments »
On a cool and blustery morning at Huntley Meadows Park, it seemed like most of the birds were in sheltered locations yesterday, protected from the biting wind. I did manage, though, to spot a Red-headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) busily at work high in the trees and was able to get shots from a number of different angles as the woodpecker moved about.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Dragonflies, Insects, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, bluet, bluet damselfly, Canon 50D, Enallagma civile, Familiar Bluet, Familiar Bluet damselfly, Huntley Meadows Park, Tamron 150-600mm on November 21, 2016| 3 Comments »
It was a pleasant surprise to see this colorful Familiar Bluet damselfly (Enallagma civile) last Friday at Huntley Meadows Park. With the arrival of frigid weather, with temperatures at near-freezing levels at night, however, I fear that it will be my last damselfly sighting of the season.
When I first spotted this damselfly, I had my Tamron 150-600mm zoom lens on my camera. I didn’t want to take my eyes off of the damselfly, for fear of losing sight of it in the underbrush, so I decided to make do with the long zoom lens. I quickly realized that I had a few obstacles to overcome. The minimum focusing distance of the lens is almost nine feet (2.7 meters), so I had to back up. At that distance the damselfly was so small that my autofocus did not want to lock onto it, so I was forced to focus manually, while handholding the lens at 600mm.
I ended up trying to do environmental portraits, rather then the close-ups that I generally prefer to take. I like the way that the seasonal coloration of the background helps the blue of the damselfly’s body really stand out, almost like it is an alien visitor in a foreign land.
Farewell, sweet damsels of the air, until we meet again in the spring.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Falco columbarius, falcon, Huntley Meadows Park, Merlin, Tamron 150-600mm on November 19, 2016| 12 Comments »
Yesterday I finally saw the merlin (Falco columbarius) that has been hanging out at Huntley Meadows Park the last month or so. Merlins are really cool-looking small falcons that generally are in our area only during periods of migration.
The merlin was perched at the very top of a slender dead tree. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology website notes that merlins spend long periods perched in open areas scanning for prey and I suspect that is what this bird was doing when I spotted it.
I was able to get relatively close to the tree, thanks to an adjacent path in the woods, but shooting upwards at such a steep angle handheld was a bit of a challenge. Fortunately the lighting was pretty good so I was able to get some decent shots, though they did requite quite a bit of cropping. You may also notice that I shot from several different angles as I tried to capture some images of this small, but powerful bird.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in animals, Nature, Photography, wildlife, zoo, tagged American Bison, bison, Bison bison, buffalo, Canon 50D, National Zoo, Tamron 150-600mm, Washington D.C. on November 18, 2016| 2 Comments »
“Don’t mess with me while I am eating.” That seemed to be the message that an American Bison (Bison bison) was sending to me during a recent trip I made to the National Zoo. The bison had lifted its enormous head, twisted it violently in my direction, and looked right at me. It then returned to calmly munching on some hay.
Who knew that bisons had such flexible necks?
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Huntley Meadows Park, sparrow, Tamron 150-600mm, white-throated sparrow, Zonotrichia albicollis on November 16, 2016| 3 Comments »
I used to think that all sparrows were simply nondescript little brown birds. Now I look more closely and can see how beautiful and distinctive they really are, like this White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) that I spotted last week at Huntley Meadows Park.
I especially love the bright yellow stripe on its face (in an area technically called its “lore”) that really stands out amid the other, more subdued colors.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in animals, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, zoo, tagged Aonyx cinerea, Asia Trail, Asian Small-clawed Otter, Canon 50D, National Zoo, otter, Tamron 150-600mm, Washington D.C. on November 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Otters are so much fun to watch. They seem to be very inquisitive and playful. One of their favorite pastimes appears to be chasing each other around.
I am familiar with the North American River Otter (Lontra canadensis) and have been lucky enough to see one in the wild at my local marshland park. These images, however, are of Asian Small-clawed Otters (Aonyx cinerea) that I observed at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. last Monday.
There is a large group of these otters in an enclosure on the Asia Trail and I spent quite a while watching their antics. They seem to be in almost constant motion in and out of the water, so it was a fun challenge trying to get some shots of them.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in animals, Nature, Photography, wildlife, zoo, tagged Ailuropoda melanoleuca, Canon 50D, Giant Panda, National Zoo, panda, Tamron 150-600mm, Washington D.C. on November 11, 2016| 2 Comments »
Most of the times that I have visited the National Zoo the Giant Pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) have been indoors, but this past Monday I was thrilled to see that they were outdoors and active. There are two levels for viewing the pandas and I was on the upper level, giving me an unobstructed view and some relief from the large crowds.
Here are a couple of my favorite shots. The first one is of the youngest panda at the zoo, Bei Bei, who is a bit over a year old, and the second image shows him with an adult panda that I assume is his mother.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in animals, Nature, Photography, wildlife, zoo, tagged Canon 24-105mm, Canon 50D, National Zoo, orangutan, Washington D.C. on November 10, 2016| 10 Comments »
It was really cool (and only slightly disconcerting) to look up and see a hairy orangutan crossing almost directly overhead on a pair of ropes while I was visiting the National Zoo on Monday.
A series of ropes and towers connects the Great Ape House with another building called the Think Tank. The orangutans can move freely back and forth between the buildings at certain times of the day. Their overhead transit system crosses one of the major roads in the zoo and there are no nets or any other obstructions between visitors and the orangutans.
As you can see from one of the images, there is some kind of system on the towers that keeps the orangutans from climbing down one of the intermediate towers. I was amazed at how effortlessly the orangutan moved and never really worried that it might lose its grip and fall into my arms.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in animals, Nature, Photography, Portraits, wildlife, zoo, tagged Canon 24-105mm, Canon 50D, Castor canadensis, cheetah, elephant, lion, lioness, National Zoo, North American Beaver, Tamron 150-600mm, Washington D.C. on November 9, 2016| 2 Comments »
The National Zoo in Washington D.C. is a wonderful place to explore and has the added bonus of having no admission fee. On Monday I wandered around the zoo for several hours, visiting some of my favorite animals and taking a lot of photos.
Here are some of my initial favorite images: a lioness, a cheetah, a beaver, and an elephant.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, autumn hawk, Buteo lineatus, Canon 50D, hawk, Huntley Meadows Park, Red-Shouldered Hawk, Tamron 150-600mm telephoto on November 7, 2016| 3 Comments »
I have been hearing the cries of Red-shouldered Hawks (Buteo lineatus) frequently at my local marshland park, but I have had a lot of trouble spotting them. At this time in the autumn there are still lots of leaves on the trees that obscure my view. Gradually some of the leaves are starting to change colors and fall from the trees, but that process takes place a bit later here in Northern Virginia than in more northern areas of the United States.
As I was walking along the boardwalk at Huntley Meadows Park on Saturday morning, I saw a brightly colored object at the top of a tree. Looking through my telephoto lens, I was thrilled to see that it was a juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk that was out on a limb, giving me an almost unobstructed line of sight for a shot. In most of my shots, the hawk was looking away, but I was thrilled to be able to get a few shots in which one of the hawk’s eyes is visible. The bright blue sky and the red leaves surrounding the hawk were a nice bonus.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, birds in flight, Canon 50D, Great Blue Heron, heron, Huntley Meadows Park, qu, Tamron 150-600mm on November 6, 2016| 22 Comments »
Some birds seem to explode out of the water when they are taking off, but Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) often seem to gently lift off with almost no splash at all. The Great Blue Heron at Huntley Meadows Park were really active early yesterday morning, frequently flying from one location to another. They seemed to be more intent on socializing with each other than with finding food. In a future post, I’ll look more closely at that behavior, which might be related to courting, but today I’m focusing on one heron’s gentle liftoff.
I’ve watched herons take off hundreds of times, but this is one of the first times that I have been able to capture the moment of liftoff from the water. In this little sequence of three images, you can see the heron rising up, leaving the water, and gradually gaining altitude. The stillness of the early morning helped create some wonderful reflections, a nice bonus that adds some additional visual interest to the images.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Canon 24-105mm, Canon 50D, clams, Great Black-backed Gull, gull, Larus marinus, Maine, Old Orchard Beach on November 2, 2016| 5 Comments »
Do you like clams? I don’t care for them much, but this Great Black-backed Gull (Larus marinus) really seemed to be enjoying the one it found when I spotted it this past weekend on the shore at Old Orchard Beach in Maine. As the tide was going out there seemed to be quite a few partially opened clams on which the gulls were feasting.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Humor, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, Canon 50D, Great Blue Heron, heron, Huntley Meadows Park, Tamron 150-600mm on October 26, 2016| 5 Comments »
I never get tired of watching the Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) at Huntley Meadows Park. Quite often they ignore me and focus intently on catching a fish. I marvel at their patience and persistence.
During one recent encounter, though, I had eye-to-eye contact with a heron. The heron looked right at me and seemed to be sending a distinct warning message that it was not going to share the small fish that it had just caught.
I backed off and let the heron enjoy his fish appetizer in peace. It was gone in a quick gulp and the heron went back to work and I moved on in search of more subjects.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, Mimus polyglottos, mockingbird, Northern Mockingbird, Tamron 150-600mm on October 23, 2016| 10 Comments »
Common subjects like this Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) have a special appeal and challenge for me. Can I photograph them in an unusual way?
The foreground and background in this image almost blend together and highlight the beauty and personality of the mockingbird. The background makes it look a bit like it was taken in a studio setting. Only the chipped paint gives away the fact that the curious bird was perched on the man-made railing of a boardwalk. I also really like the way that the color and pattern of the weathered wood almost perfectly match the bird’s feathers.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Macro Photography, Nature, Photography, Reptiles, wildlife on October 22, 2016| 7 Comments »
As I was exploring yesterday at Huntley Meadows Park, I came upon this Rough Green Snake (Opheodrys aestivus) stretched out in the thorns at the edge of one of the fields. My first instinct was to move in close, but I actually remembered to take a shot of the entire snake before doing so. The “wide-angle” shot was taken with my 150-600mm telephoto zoom lens, which gave me a slightly wider view than the 180mm macro lens that I used for the close-up shot.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, birds in flight, Canon 50D, cormorant, Double-crested Cormorant, Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, Phalacrocorax auritus, Tamron 150-600mm on October 21, 2016| 3 Comments »
Generally it’s best to have the sun behind you when taking photos, but sometimes you are forced to shoot almost directly into the sun. When the conditions are right you can sometimes get wonderful silhouettes, like these images of Double-crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) that I spotted on the Potomac River near Dyke Marsh in Alexandria, Virginia this past Monday.
The shot of the perched cormorant was a conscious composition—I assessed the light and knew that I was shooting a silhouette. In the case of the flying cormorant, however, I was reacting to the movement of a bird taking off from the water and trying so hard to hard to capture focus and keep the bird in focus that I was not paying much conscious attention to the lighting.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Huntley Meadows Park, Setophaga coronata, Tamron 150-600mm, warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler on October 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Periodically I’d catch a glimpse of a warbler in the trees of Huntley Meadows Park last Friday, but they mostly remained hidden deep within the branches. This Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata), however, ventured out of the shadows just enough that I was able to get this long-distance shot of it.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, cormorant, Double-crested Cormorant, Dyke Marsh, Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, Phalacrocorax auritus, Potomac River, Tamron 150-600mm on October 18, 2016| 9 Comments »
Yesterday I spotted this beautiful Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) in the vegetation along the shore of the Potomac River as I explored Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve in Alexandria, Virginia. Although “heavy-boned” is a euphemism sometimes used for large people, it is literally true for cormorants and is one of the reasons why they ride so low in the water. Additionally, their feathers don’t shed water like those of ducks and can get waterlogged, which makes it easier to dive deeper, but requires them to dry them out periodically.
I hoped to catch a cormorant with its wings extended for drying, but none of the cormorants I saw were accommodating in that regard yesterday. I’m no psychic, but I foresee a return trip to that area in the near future.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, Canon 50D, Great Blue Heron, Huntley Meadows Park, Tamron 150-600mm on October 17, 2016| 8 Comments »
At first glance I thought that this Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) was getting ready to swallow a flying bird, but then I realized it was “only” a small, freshly caught fish that the heron had tossed into the air last week at Huntley Meadows Park.
A split-second later, the fish had disappeared.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, Huntley Meadows Park, Melanerpes carolinus, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Tamron 150-600mm on October 16, 2016| 9 Comments »
I am not sure if it is the cooler autumn weather or the impending winter, but all of the sudden the trees are alive with the sounds of woodpeckers. I can hear them pecking away and calling out to each other high in the trees. Unfortunately there are still a lot of leaves on the trees, making it hard to spot these busy birds.
On Friday at Huntley Meadows Park, I did manage to get a clear view of a beautiful little Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) feverishly foraging in a tree. Suddenly the woodpecker turned its head in my direction as though it wanted to proudly show me the bright red fruit that it had discovered. With the fruit firmly in its bill and a slight smile on its face, the woodpecker flew away, perhaps to cache its find for another day.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, bluebird, Canon 50D, Eastern Bluebird, happiness, Huntley Meadows Park, Sialia sialis, Tamron 150-600mm on October 15, 2016| 2 Comments »
Bluebirds are often considered to be a symbol of happiness and I was definitely happy to spot this beautiful Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) yesterday at Huntley Meadows Park. I saw bluebirds a number of times during my walk around the park on a sunny autumn day, but this was one of the only ones that was within range of my camera.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Birds, Humor, Nature, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Branta canadensis, Canada Geese, Canon 50D, Kingstowne, Tamron 150-600mm on October 13, 2016| 3 Comments »
Have you ever tried to shoot a group portrait? You get everyone lined up and facing the camera, but there is always one uncooperative subject. That was certainly the case with these Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) at a little suburban pond on Monday. The gaggle of geese was preening and cleaning themselves all in a row on a on a concrete bar sticking out of the water.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Posted in Autumn, Birds, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Aythya collaris, Canon 50D, diving ducks, Kingstowne, Ring-necked duck, Tamron 150-600mm on October 11, 2016| 4 Comments »
As we move deeper into fall we will be seeing more and more migrating birds in Northern Virginia, where I live . Some will just be passing through the area, but others will probably overwinter here, like these Ring-necked ducks (Aythya collaris) that I spotted yesterday at a small suburban pond less than a mile from my townhouse.
Unlike most of the ducks that I see, Ring-necked ducks are diving ducks, not dabbling ducks. As a consequence, they spend most of the time in the middle of the pond, making them a bit tough to photograph. Fortunately the sun was shining brightly yesterday, so that I was able to capture the ducks’ golden eyes even when shooting at a distance.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Expressing our differences
Posted in Birds, commentary, Nature, Photography, wildlife, tagged Alexandria VA, Ardea herodias, Canon 50D, Great Blue Heron, herons, Huntley Meadows Park, Tamron 150-600mm on November 8, 2016| 5 Comments »
Why were the Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) prancing about on Saturday with their heads tilted upward and their wings displayed? Surely this was some kind of elaborate courting ritual.
As Tina Turner famously sang, “What’s love got to do with it?” Apparently this is how these herons defend their feeding territories. Really? According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, one of my favorite sources of information on birds, “Great Blue Herons defend feeding territories from other herons with dramatic displays in which the birds approach intruders with their head thrown back, wings outstretched, and bill pointing skyward.”
If only we could be so dignified in expressing our differences instead of squawking loudly and aggressively at each other.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Share this:
Read Full Post »