Wildlife Photos

SpaceTiger

As explained here, I recently started dating another graduate student. As you can probably tell, we both share an interest in nature, particularly in animals. Since I'm an avid birdwatcher and she's an avid photographer, we decided to team up and create a photographic collection of our wildlife sightings (with a focus on birds). You can find it here:

Old Sam Peabody

Let me know what you think. The vast majority of those photos are taken by her, but I took one particularly interesting one:

Greater White-Fronted Geese

The interesting part is that those birds are extremely rare in New Jersey, only occasionally stopping by in their voyage from northern Europe. After taking the photo, I filed a report with the New Jersey Audubon society.

At the end of January, we're planning a trip to Florida (including the everglades) and hopefully we'll have a ton of cool photos to add to the gallery then.

Any birdwatchers/nature-lovers here?

turbo

Nice pictures. I went out on the back deck yesterday (temperature in the 20's) and heard a cricket. It took me by surprise for a second until I realized that I should be looking for a brown creeper, and sure enough, he spiraled up the the trunk of the spruce in front of me. I've got to start keeping my camera handy - we get a lot of interesting birds, though the common ones are fun, too. There are a couple of flocks of chickadees and some red-breasted nuthatches that are so used to me that they will land on me and take sunflower seeds out of my hand. When I showed that to my father, he ran out and bought a bird feeder, so I gave him one of my copies of Peterson's and bought him an Orion 8x32 monocular like mine for father's day. 80 years old and he takes up bird-watching!

dontdisturbmycircles

http://www.pbase.com/peabody/image/70113302

That shot is amazing!

Very nice photos, I am still looking.

I really like this one too, http://www.pbase.com/peabody/image/71104322

SpaceTiger

Brown creepers are among my favorites. We got a decent shot of one down in Cape May:

Brown Creeper

Don't get many by my apartment, though.

SpaceTiger

My gf loves that one too. These are my favorites:

Tufted Titmouse

Song Sparrow

American Robin

turbo

They are cute little guys. It's fun to watch them climbing up a tree passing a nuthatch going down the tree. Between the two of them, they scour the bark for bugs pretty effectively.

The tufted titmouse is the cutest bird we get around here, but they are very shy, and won't come to hand like their cousins the chickadees, nor have I managed to get a really good picture of them. What equipment are you and you GF using?

SpaceTiger

Most of these are taken with a Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel with a Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM telephoto zoom. My camera is a PowerShot A530.

GeoMike

Great pictures!
I really like the color on this one:
http://www.pbase.com/peabody/image/71104338
The tones of the reflections in the water really add to the picture.

I mostly photograph the scenery when I'm out hiking, but once in a while I'll get a photo of a bird:

Some Canadian Jays from various hikes:
http://www.mcschell.com/gallery/pierce2/img_0168?full=1
http://www.mcschell.com/gallery/Webs...mg_1727?full=1
http://www.mcschell.com/gallery/Web2...MG_3002?full=1

A Spruce Grouse from another hike:
http://www.mcschell.com/gallery/WebJack/img_8330?full=1
http://www.mcschell.com/gallery/WebJack/img_8329?full=1
http://www.mcschell.com/gallery/WebJack/img_8325?full=1

-GeoMike-

Evo

Love these pictures, I often go hiking at the wilderness preserve near my house .

Astronuc

We watch birds around our area. I think turbo and I have posted about the subject in the Gardening thread. I've posted some of my pictures under an Ornithology thread.

We have several bird feeders outside. Most of the year we have Tufted Titmice, Chickadees, various Finches, Mourning Doves, Sparrows, Nuthatches, four kinds of Woodpecker (Downy, Hairy, Red-Bellied and Pileated), and lots more. We see Eastern Bluebirds on occassion.

We also have a variety of owls, falcons and hawks. We've had Peregrine Falcons in our backyard.

Although I haven't seen one in person, we have bald eagles in our area.

Interestingly, I hear a program this morning about the Cerulean Warbler. It's habitat is endangered by the application of mountain top mining in which coal companies demolish whole mountains and the forests that cover them.

turbo

We see them regularly here - the river valleys are teeming with them and with ospreys. We have lots of owls and hawks. We very rarely see golden eagles. One snooty young lady from MD (my boss' secretary) told me in a very officious tone that there are no golden eagles in Maine. Funny, one of my best friends was the (now-retired) chief of the Maine Warden Service and he pointed out a long-used nesting site for golden eagles north of Moosehead Lake when we were on a week-long canoeing trip on the St John river. The state biologists kept its location pretty hush-hush to avoid human pressure on the birds. They are magnificent birds.

SpaceTiger

Big Update

We managed to make our way to Charles Rogers Wildlife Refuge on a particularly sunny day.



Enjoy and happy holidays! I'm heading home to Tennessee until the New Year.

turbo

More nice shots! I'm going to have to get a DSLR instead of this little compact digital. The CM3040 was a pretty hot camera when it came out and it weaned me off film (expensive!!!!), but the quality of the DSLRs is steadily improving while the price is holding level or even coming down.

SpaceTiger

For the bird photography, there's just no cheap solution. They're too skittish and too fast for small cameras with short focal lengths. For most other purposes, however, I find the Powershot A530 to be quite good.

SpaceTiger

So Melissa and I have finally uploaded most of the photos from our trip to Florida.

For the highlights from each spot we visited, check out this gallery:

Places

All places are from the trip except Cape May and the Institute. To see all photos uploaded so far, go through this list back to Jan. 28:

Recent

Here are some highlights:

Anhinga on her nest (with babies)
A friendly crocodile
A very friendly hawk
A frog failing to hide from us

Has anyone here been to the Everglades before? Do you have any photos of your own to share?

Moonbear

I just looked at the 4 photos you highlighted. Wow! My absolute favorite is the hawk. What a beautiful, perfectly posed bird...and you caught all the detail. That's the sort of photo I usually can only get by buying postcards.

Astronuc

WOW!!! Outstanding pictures!!!! That photo of the hawk is great! They're all great!

I was standing in the driveway a few days ago, when I heard a screech overhead. Two hawks were flying around each other in circles, and one periodically screeched. They slowly drifted over the trees on the hill behind us - and unfortunately I could not get to my camera fast enough. But it was a beautiful sight to see.