Black-capped Chickadee

I set up a bird feeder at a spot in the country, a little outside of Madison with the hopes of being able to photograph interesting birds this winter. I would love a chance to photograph a Northern Shrike or a Red-headed Woodpecker, but since we live in the city and don’t get a lot of birds in our back yard, anything will do. So far it’s mostly chickadees and goldfinches, but I’ve just begun. I was able to spend a few mornings over the Christmas and New Year’s weekends photographing and came away with a few photos I really like. The Black-capped Chickadee photo above is one of my favorite photos I’ve made even though it’s of a common bird that is easy to photograph. I wasn’t even using a blind, just standing near the perch. The American Tree Sparrow below also came in while I was standing there. While they’re quite common in winter here, too, they are a really beautiful bird.

American Tree Sparrow

American Goldfinch

Pewit's Nest

Pewit’s Nest is a small, protected State Natural Area just outside Baraboo, Wisconsin. I learned about it a couple weeks ago at the Madison winter art fair where I saw an intriguing photo at one artist’s booth. I went up the next weekend and made this photo. It’s a challenging area to photograph as the sides of the gorge are nearly vertical and there isn’t much room to stand. I’d like to try it again after a fresh snow, but I’m not sure I’ll survive the experience. I saw a photo of this place a few days later at the UPS store on a calendar made by the USGS. It’s funny how once something gets in my consciousness I run into it time and time again. More info is here.

Regal Fritillary

For two years I’ve been helping with prairie and oak savanna restorations at various places in southern Wisconsin with an organization called The Prairie Enthusiasts. One of our largest contiguous restorations is almost 600 acres in eastern Iowa County, Wisconsin that we’ve dubbed Mounds View due to its proximity to Blue Mound State Park, which can be viewed from the preserve. Currently, Mounds View is comprised of land acquisitions from four different land owners and is surrounded by working farmland.

There are a number of “remnant” prairies here — areas that were never plowed and experienced light to severe grazing over the years. These remnants contain a large diversity of plants and support state endangered insects, birds and mammals. One of those state endangered insects is the Regal Fritillary (Speyeria idalia), a species I’ve written about previously. It’s a spectacular butterfly and the population seems to be doing quite well at Mounds View and other grasslands in the area.

I photographed this individual at the end of July this year but it was quite a fresh butterfly. It was a cold spring so blooms and butterflies were late this year. The area I photographed this particular butterfly in used to be a smooth brome field and probably a corn field before that. It is just below a remnant area that supports a large number of Regal Fritillaries. We started restoring this valley about four years ago, but it’s been a difficult process. Last year it seemed like it was solid Wild Parsnip, but with timely mowing and removal of the parsnip it has become a spectacular prairie and now supports many threatened and endangered plants and bugs.

The photo below is of this area in July, 2011. It’s mostly Yellow Coneflower and Wild Bergamot, showy species that are easy to get started, but it also has Prairie Blazing-Star (Liatris pycnostachya), Wild Quinine (Parthenium integrifolium), Compass Plant (Silphium laciniatum) and other long-lived prairie species.

Schurch-Thomson Prairie

In order to make this photo I had to stand on a tall step ladder, balance my tripod on the top step and use an 85mm Nikon PC-E (perspective control or tilt-shift) lens. The camera was about 10 feet above the ground in order to achieve this perspective above the tall flowering plants.

I photographed this Monarch (Danaus plexippus) caterpillar in the same area just a few days ago. It was busy feeding on Common Milkweed and the light was low, so it took a number of tries to get a sharp image with my 200mm micro lens and a tripod.

Monarch Caterpillar

Bird's-foot Violets

Late April and early May is violet season. The two species I like the most are the prairie species — Bird’s-foot and Prairie Violets. The photo above is a 10-exposure in-camera multiple of Bird’s-foot Violets (Viola pedata) with Yellow Star Grass (Hypoxis hirsuta) and Bastard Toadflax (Comandra umbellata). This may be my favorite “multiple” to date.

Bird's-foot Violet

Prairie Violet (Viola pedatifida) isn’t quite as showy as Bird’s-foot but I like it equally well. It’s probably the number 1 host plant for the endangered Regal Fritillary butterfly. It’s harder to photograph than the Bird’s-foot as it is more three-dimensional making it more difficult to get all the bits in focus, so I have to make compromises.

Prairie Violet

Wild Lupine

I photographed this field of Wild Lupine (Lupinus perennis) and Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea) at an oak savanna in Dane County, Wisconsin this spring. The property, owned by The Prairie Enthusiasts, is only nine acres in size, but has been managed with prescribed burns and weed control for over 30 years and is a spectacular spot.

To make these photographs I used a Nikon 85mm PC-E tilt-shift lens which allows me to set the plane of focus to the field and enables me to get the flowers sharp from front to back. I wouldn’t be able to do this with a standard lens, regardless of how small an aperture I used. I still need a tripod, cable release, mirror lockup, and a windless overcast day to have a successful photograph.

Wild Lupine

The photo below is a 10-exposure in-camera multiple. A few of these goes a long way, but they’re easy to make so why not?

Wild Lupine, multiple exposure

American Toad

It’s been a cold, cold spring here in southern Wisconsin, but this past week we had three days in a row with daytime temperatures in the 80s and nighttime temps in the 60s which means it’s time to look for frogs and toads.

The Nature Conservancy with the help of other groups restored a stream in an area in Iowa County, Wisconsin that was historically a grassland ecosystem. The restoration included removing trees, planting native prairie plants, and removing tons of dirt to return the stream banks to their pre-settlement levels. Post-settlement agricultural practices resulted in a lot of erosion and the buildup of stream banks in the low-lying areas. Restoring the stream should improve the water quality and the habitat for stream-dwelling invertebrates and fish. This restoration also included creating a number of shallow depressions that fill with water in the spring and last long enough for frogs and toads and probably salamanders to breed successfully.

On Thursday night I drove out there with the hope of photographing some of the critters using this habitat. I arrived before sunset and heard toads and treefrogs calling. When I approached the edge of one of the ponds I could see some toads, but they stopped calling and moved away from the shore. I set up my camera equipment by the pond’s edge and waited until dark. Once it got dark the cacophony began. Not only were many American Toads calling, but I heard or saw Green, Pickerel and Leopard frogs, Spring Peepers, Western Chorus Frogs and Eastern Gray Treefrogs. It was loud and delightful.

I was able to get quite close to a couple of toads and one treefrog. When it’s warm and dark and springtime the frogs are quite focused on breeding. I used a 300mm f/4 lens with a 1.4x teleconverter on a Nikon D700 camera. I also used a Nikon SB-900 flash on a bracket. Photographing anything in the dark is difficult, and to photograph these frogs I had to lie on my belly on the muddy shore of the pond, but it was fun. It’s challenging to get artistic photos of anything in the dark as the backgrounds are too dark or too busy with water spot reflections, but the animals are interesting and I learned that the air sack of these toads is blue.

American Toad

Gray Treefrog

Red-winged Blackbird

I photographed this first-year male Red-winged Blackbird from a blind at a prairie in Dane County, Wisconsin the other day. I was hoping to photograph Upland Sandpipers but none landed on the post I was waiting on. Male Red-wings in their first year are highly variable, and the ones around here seem to look more like females than adult males, but they have significant amounts of red on their epaulets. This guy landed on a stalk to my right, and started calling and displaying. I don’t know if these first year males breed but you have to give him credit for trying.

As a photograph there are a couple things I don’t like. I had to crop this image significantly as the bird just wasn’t as close as I would have liked, and once in the blind I couldn’t move. He would have flown anyhow. I generally resist cropping images very much, as I try to compose in the field, rather than at the computer. I can pretend I was using a 10MP camera instead of a 12MP camera, and justify the crop. In a perfect world the blurry but distracting horizontal line near the bottom made by a bent stalk would not be there either. In a truly perfect world the blackbird wouldn’t be perched on last year’s wild parsnip stalk, but rather on some nice native species of plant.

Red-winged Blackbird

I live less than a mile from Wingra Lake in Madison. Along the west side, behind Edgewood College there is a cattail marsh with a boardwalk through it. We finally had a sunny day yesterday, though I did have to scrape frost off my windshield, so I decided to give bird photography in the marsh a try. The birds are still wary, but  I managed to get a few photos of ubiquitous Red-winged Blackbirds and skulking Marsh Wrens. I look forward to doing this more and getting better photographs.

Marsh Wren

I really like Marsh Wrens. They’re cute and have a lot of personality. They are skulkers, but they’re not super shy, and the ones in this marsh at Wingra Lake seem to be used to people enough to show an interest. At this time of year the males are mostly interested in singing and attracting females. This photograph doesn’t “pop” for me, but it does depict the bird in his habitat. I’ll keep working on it.

Female Red-winged Blackbird

Pine Grosbeak

Pine Grosbeaks are one of my favorite birds. I don’t see them very often. They seem very gentle. No two seem to look the same. While I was photographing birds this January in northern Michigan we had a few Pine Grosbeaks come to the feeders, but there weren’t many and they didn’t show up often. I hope to go back next year and try again. Maybe there will be more. I could photograph Pine Grosbeaks for the rest of my life and not get tired of it. I feel the same way about King Penguins.

Pine Grosbeak

Pine Grosbeak

Red-breasted Nuthatch

Getting a sharp photo of the subject is usually a primary goal in wildlife photography, especially making sure the eye is sharp. Sometimes, however, a blurry image works. I think this blurry image of a flying Red-breasted Nuthatch works. I can clearly tell what kind of bird it is and I think it’s a good composition with interesting color. This image was an accident. I was trying to photograph the perched nuthatch, but they don’t stay perched in one place for very long. I couldn’t make this photograph again if I tried.

Below is a photo of a perched nuthatch. What a cutie.

Red-breasted Nuthatch