Scratcher of heads, rubber of bellies
This killdeer was chirping to its mate who was a few feet off to its right near the edge of the refuge parking lot. I had never been so close to these lovely birds and had to use some extension tubes to allow my camera to focus that close. Taken from the window of my car.
Although I failed in my quest to find a bittern in the frost on the last day of 2010, the first day of 2011 rewarded me with a bittern on the ice — a hunting bittern on the ice. The day started out promising when I glimpsed a blacktail buck on the drive down through the canyon and onto the refuge at Ridgefield, but after putting on a show the day before the rest of the animals seemed to be sleeping in. While the early hours weren’t crowded, as the morning wore on the visitors picked up rapidly and the big lens attracted a small crowd whenever I stopped.
On the far side of the refuge, I like to drive slowly along Rest Lake to look for bitterns, so I pulled over to let an approaching car past so that I could move at my own pace. Even as I was pulling over I noticed this bittern down below in the frozen channel and settled in to watch. Within moments the bittern struck into the grass and brought out this terrified vole. Bitterns often like to dunk their prey in the water and so it gingerly stepped down the rim of ice, struggling not to slip, and then dunked the vole into the water. Or tried to at least, but failed, since the water in this section was still frozen. It seemed mystified for a moment and stood motionless before eating its meal undunked.
After taking a few environmental portraits of the bittern on the ice, I moved ahead just slightly to another nice location and waited for the bittern to come past. But a Land Rover came up behind me and the couple got out of their car (a no-no on the auto tour during the winter) to set up their scope to view the distant ducks and swans. Not surprisingly I didn’t see the bittern again.
When I got to the end of the auto tour, I was going to go around again but my heart sank when I saw a nearly solid line of cars between Horse and South Quigley Lakes. I learned my lesson from Christmas day, when I should have left when it got over-crowded but didn’t, and headed home. Ellie got an extra walk and playtime in the park, and extra hedgehogging as well, so all-in-all a fantastic start to the year for everyone but the vole.
Despite the pouring rain, this male red-winged blackbird collected a beakful of bugs to take back to the nest. Both redwings and yellowheads, male and female alike, heavily worked this section of Long Lake to feed the relentless hunger of their young.
📷: Canon 7D | Canon 500mm + 1.4X
🗓️: June 6, 2010
Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs 16:18
A while back my teleconverter started overexposing everything by a stop, so I had to remember to deliberately underexpose to prevent from blowing out the image, something I often forgot to do. Being a night owl, I was particularly pleased with myself when I arrived near sunrise at Ridgefield and, when photographing this cottontail beside the auto tour, actually remembered to dial in the underexposure. A few moments later I got my comeuppance. As I watched a muskrat swimming with its child, I realized that while I had remembered to compensate for my faulty teleconverter, I wasn’t actually using it so all I ended up doing was needlessly underexposing my images.
On a later visit I realized the converter was flaring badly under strong backlighting and ruined some images. Strike two.But the coup de grâce was yet to come. While hiking along the auto tour, I watched helplessly as the camera separated from the lens and fell six feet to the muddy ground. On closer inspection it was the converter that had separated from the lens but I didn’t think much of it, I assumed I had accidentally bumped the release latch.
But it happened again a few minutes later, this time the camera clanged off the hard-packed dirt road hard enough that the batteries went flying from the flash. I suspect the teleconverter worked itself free just with the jostling motion of hiking. While the camera appears to have survived both falls with no damage save some scratches, I knew it was time to replace my old friend.
This Tamron teleconverter and my Tamrac bag are my oldest pieces of photography gear, I bought them in the early days so they’re almost 15 years old and have literally been along for every hike I’ve gone on during that time. The bag wears the crown alone from now on.
So long, old friend, and thanks for the memories.
I’ve wanted to photograph the Cactus Tree since I first visited Ridgefield years ago, so I was particularly pleased to see this harrier perched on it in the heavy fog one winter’s morning (the picture from the previous post was taken later that morning when the sun first started to break through). It’s not a cactus of course, and these days not even a tree, just an old stump that reminds me of a cactus. It sits a ways off the road on the auto tour at Ridgefield, parts of the refuge are converted farmland so perhaps this stump is a remnant from when humans last lived here.
It’s a good thing I finally got a picture I liked, as on a visit not much later I noticed the stump was no longer standing, apparently having at long last fallen over into the marsh.
Though I cannot see
what lies before,
still I must take flight.
One of the stories at Ridgefield this winter has been the American bitterns which have been putting on a show at several spots around the auto tour during many of my visits. I’ve always been on the lookout for bitterns so I’m not sure why I’ve had so much success watching them hunt lately, although it may have something to do with the fact that I spent far more time at the refuge over the Christmas break than I usually do. This bittern was mostly snagging small fish as it worked the channel beside Rest Lake, but at one point it stopped and started wiggling its neck side to side and then struck into the middle of the channel, bringing up this bullfrog. Bullfrogs themselves are voracious predators and, since they aren’t native to the Northwest, have combined with habitat loss to cause problems for some of our natives. This little bittern was doing its part to turn the tables and win one for the home team.
There are a handful of true falcons that typically breed in North America, all belonging to the genus Falco, with the smallest being the American kestrel (falco sparverius). The kestrels at Ridgefield are pretty wary and often won’t stay perched if you pass on the auto tour, and probably for good reason, as there are a number of other birds of prey that share these hunting grounds that dwarf the little falcons in size.
This lovely female was a ways off the road and stayed still for a few pictures before she took to the skies again to resume the hunt.
Another view of the marmots from the colony near the Skyline Trail, two juveniles being watched by an adult. With the two youngsters side-by-side, you can better see the variability in their coloring, black coat on the left and white coat on the right.
All hoary marmots have dark fur in their face and feet, in some it extends into the shoulders and legs. But this gang of four, part of a colony near the Skyline Trail in Mount Rainier National Park, had the most dark fur I’ve yet seen, mixing in over much of their bodies. Some of the others in the colony had more typical coloring and they all intermingled between two large rocks, so I was pleased when these four finally got together to pose for their family portrait.
Boolie 