What’s Up?
I headed to Nickerson early to work with the northeast wind while the clouds from Friday morning’s storm were still around. It worked, Jake Levin, who lives in Montreal, drove down from New Hampshire and arrived at about 2pm just when the sun came out. With the east wind, that spelled death for bird photography. But by 3:30 the wind had swung to the south, southwest and we had a great rest of the day with the skimmers, terns, and oystercatchers.
The Streak
Today’s blog post marks a totally insane, absurd, completely ridiculous, unfathomable, silly, incomprehensible, what’s wrong with this guy?, makes-no-sense, 262 days in a row with a new educational blog post. And I still have dozens of new topics to cover; there should be no end in sight until my big South America trip next fall. As always-–and folks have been doing a really great job recently–-please remember to use our B&H links for your major gear purchases. For best results use one of our many product-specific links; after clicking on one of those you can continue shopping with all subsequent purchases invisibly tracked to BAA. Your doing so is always greatly appreciated. Please remember: web orders only. AND Please remember also that if you are shopping for items that we carry in the new BAA Online Store (as noted in red at the close of this post below) we would appreciate your business.
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This image was created on the third morning of the of the recently concluded Nickerson Beach IPT with the Induro GIT 304L/Mongoose M3.6-mounted Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens, the Canon Extender EF 1.4X III, and the mega mega-pixel Canon EOS 5DS R.. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 stop as framed: 1/320 sec. at f/16. Daylight WB. Center AF point/AI Servo/ExpandRear Focus AF on the dead fledgling’s eye re-compose. Click here to see the latest version of the Rear Focus Tutorial. Click on the image to see a larger version. LensAlign/FocusTune micro-adjustment: +5. Common Tern fledgling run over by large beach vehicle |
Death By Large Beach Truck…
Every day, all manner of beach vehicles make their way east and west along Lido Beach. Garbage trucks, beach raking vehicles, lifeguard and patrol vehicles, and lots more. Sometimes there are casualties. Tiny Piping Plover chicks are often killed by beach vehicles (including all of the above plus the the beach trucks of fisherman) when they are unable to climb out of a deep tire track; they are so well camouflaged as to be practically invisible.
This Just In…
Texting While Driving
My understanding is that the drivers of all beach vehicles are educated as to the danger of running over helpless chicks and fledglings. On Saturday morning, Jake Levin and Chris Billman were stunned when we saw a fairly young guy driving a big yellow bulldozer. Why were we stunned. As he drove by us–fairly slowly–he was texting while driving!!! Many, you gotta love it.
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This image was created on the last morning of the of the recently concluded Nickerson Beach IPT with the Induro GIT 304L/Mongoose M3.6-mounted Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens and the mega mega-pixel Canon EOS 5DS R.. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 1/3 stops as framed: 1/200 sec. at f/10. Daylight WB. A single AF point (Manual selection) that was three rows down and one to the left of the center AF point/AI Servo/Expand Rear Focus AF as framed was active at the moment of exposure; the selected AF point fell on the dying chick’s eye. Click here to see the latest version of the Rear Focus Tutorial. Click on the image to see a larger version. LensAlign/FocusTune micro-adjustment: -2. Common Tern chick dying, probably of exposure |
Death by Sandstorm Exposure
The afternoon before our eyes had been scoured by the sand with south winds gusting to 30mph. We know that one adult lost two small chicks. We found this larger chick in the same area near death. By the time we left, it was a goner. As noted here previously, beach nesting birds have it tough…
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Typos
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These images are sad.
Having been on the IPT at Nickerson, I was deeply affected by the hard life these birds have. As Artie mentioned, we spent one morning photographing a tern with two precious tiny chicks. He estimated them to be 1-2 days old. It was amazing watching the mother (?) with her chicks because she was so attentive, always touching them with her bill and making sure they were cuddled under her and safe.
Going back the next day and learning that they were gone – poof! – just gone, was a devastating experience. I couldn’t bring myself to go back to that area until later in the day. But in the morning I looked in the direction of where the nest-scrape had been and the mother (I assume it was the same bird and i assume it was the mother bird) was sitting there. At least this is my belief.
Artie didn’t mention (yet) the gull that nabbed a larger tern chick and we watched the gull struggle with it then swallow it whole. Really hard to watch. My instinct was to run and stop the gull, but I did not.
I prefer to see and take photos of birds sunning, flying, playing and having rainbows over them!!! 🙂
Hi, Artie. Interesting that you have had no comments on this post until now. Those images are finely composed, exposed, and are otherwise technically excellent, but they make this viewer at least somewhat uncomfortable. They certainly aren’t pleasant to think about. I have taken photos of dead and dying birds and fish as well, and except for salmon carcasses–salmon are expected to die after spawning and everyone knows that and nobody seems to mind–people don’t seem to like my photos of dead birds. I think these images are worthy of conversation and I hope I’ve started one. Thanks for posting them.