Category: Nisqually NWR

Do You See What I See?

If you can remember how excited I was nearly a month ago when I accidentally took a picture of a bird on a distant post that turned out to be a belted kingfisher, you can probably imagine how excited I was last Friday when I encountered several kingfishers on my walk.

I encountered a pair at the beginning of the walk when I heard a strange ruckus across the Nisqually river and saw a pair of highly irritated kingfishers divebombing a flock of crows. Obviously they didn’t want to share their catch with the crows in the ‘hood.

Though the kingfishers were too far away to get a decent picture even with my 400mm telephoto with 1.4 extender, after nearly a half hour of watching one landed close enough that I could get this picture, far better than the one I took a month ago, though still far worse than the “perfect� picture I’m looking forward to taking soon.

I saw them twice more before the day was out, both times much closer than in this shot. Unfortunately, both times they were zipping back and forth rather than sitting in a tree. If I’d hadn’t had the extender on, the auto focus feature on the lens might have allowed me to catch a shot of the kingfisher in flight, but auto focus is disabled when using the lens extender. Such are the limits of technology. In order to see farther away one must often sacrifice the ability to see what is right in front of us.

Such moments have me thinking more and more about the impossibility of accurately capturing, much less conveying, any moment. My excitement at experiencing a bird up close isn’t really diminished by my failure to get a good photograph, though it obviously makes it more difficult to share that moment with you, dear reader.

Of course, the fact you’re likely sitting at your desk at work while reading my page makes it even more difficult to convey the feelings of walking the five and a half mile loop at Nisqually and observing birds you’ve never seen before.

For all I know, you may even be as indifferent to and unaware of birds as I was a few years ago. If so, how could you possibly know the excitement I felt at seeing a bird I’d never seen or heard in a lifetime of hiking the Pacific Northwest?

For all I know, you’re merely some poetry fanatic come here for a quick poetry fix and can’t imagine why anyone would be interested in photographing birds, or flowers, for that matter. If so, why are you still here reading such nonsense. Get thee to a true poetry weblog; there are several fine ones listed in the link column.

Great Egret, Too

It’s hard to resist the temptation to play around with the egret images, even though they were natural abstractions as taken. This one is presented exactly as it came out of the camera, with added frame and words:

I wonder if words add another dimension to the image, just the way the framing seems to change the context of the picture.

And here’s a more traditional picture of the same great egret, the first ones I captured on a rather drab, grey morning:

Although it’s certainly more “realistic,� it seems to me to convey an entirely different impression of the egret.

A Great Egret

Photographically speaking, today’s visit to Niisqually Refuge was a rather tough day. First, I couldn’t get my camera set up fast enough to get a picture of a little woodpecker that I encountered within a hundred yards of beginning the walk. Even though I saw him later, I never got nearly as close as I did at the beginning of the walk.

As it turned out, I saw fewer birds today than I saw on any of my previous five visits. There just plain didn’t seem to be many birds out today. I suspect that we’re between seasons, where the summer birds have largely disappeared and migrating birds haven’t quite shown up.

The only unusual bird I saw today was a great egret, a bird I’d originally seen three weeks ago but didn’t have much luck shooting because it was so dark and cloudy. It was bright and clear today, but I didn’t have much better luck than before although I wasn’t more than ten feet away from him for nearly a half hour.

The problem was that he was sitting preening himself on the other side of a rather dense tree, and, although he didn’t seem to mind my taking pictures of him, he certainly wasn’t going to make taking them easy. Despite my best efforts, I could never get a clear shot of him and couldn’t get far enough away to fit him into a single shot.

So what I ended up with was two rather interesting shots that have been stitched together from three or fours different shots. Strangely enough, I’m rather fond of both of them, and decided that I really didn’t need to do anything to enhance either picture.

As you can tell, this is clearly not a “realistic� shot, but I haven’t manipulated the images at all in Photoshop, as I often do. The bands of light were produced by varying branches and leaves between me and the egret, not by stitching the pictures together because any flaws of that nature would show up as straight horizontal lines, not band of various shades and colors.

I did get a few close-ups that would probably be considered “realistic,� but I prefer these two shots.

They somehow capture the intimate feeling that I got from watching the egret groom itself the half hour I was there. There’s almost a voyeuristic overtone to the photographs that also somehow seems somehow appropriate.

Of course, perhaps I just appreciate the fact that they appear rather artistic without my having to do a single thing to them in Photoshop.

The Small Things in Life

Judging from how few pictures I took on my last trip to Nisqually National Refuge, it might seem less than a successful trip. I didn’t see the Great Horned Owl or the Great Egret I’d seen the week before; in fact, I didn’t see a single new bird. For that matter, I saw very few birds at all.

I won’t cite one of those infamously tacky bumper stickers that proclaim “The worst day of fishing is still better than the best day at workâ€? even though I suspect my worst day at Nisqually will always be better than any day I spent in the classroom. Birding reminds me a lot of fishing, and I would have to agree with Thoreau who said, “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” Thankfully, I know it’s not bird pictures I’m after.

No matter how peaceful or relaxing the day, though, it’s always nice to have some special moment to remember it by. And for me that moment came rather unexpectedly.

I’d decided that if I were going to see any birds I needed to stand in one place and wait patiently for them. I had barely paused when I heard a rustling. Looking down, I saw this mink, if I’ve correctely identified him,

digging in the grass. He looked up, checked to see if I represented any immediate danger, and went back to digging.

Unfortunately, my 400 mm telephoto lens was at a disadvantage at such close range, and the automatic focus couldn’t decide whether to focus on the grass in front of him or on the mink.

Picture or no picture, I was thrilled by the close encounter with this wild, fearless little guy who had little time for me and soon disappeared into the tall grass, looking for his next meal.

While I’m still anticipating my first encounter with the river otters that others keep telling me about, I was delighted by my first brief encounter with a mink that wasn’t part of someone’s coat.