And before I even managed to put the car in the preserve parking lot I spotted a juvenile red tailed hawk perched right alongside the road. I pulled over and grabbed my gear while Mrs. Dancer slid into the driver’s seat. We scooted along getting closer and closer... I managed to get with 10 feet of this bird. A first for me.
RED TAILED HAWK
Every time we got pretty close he would hop on a little further down the road and again we would coast slowly closer and I snapped away. I found it funny that twice he picked perches that couldn’t quiet hold his hefty frame, like this delicate shrub.
RED TAILED HAWK
Or these thin bamboo grasses. And then he launched off further into the preserve... Great way to start a day with close-ups of the biggest raptor at the park!
RED TAILED HAWK
Somehow I managed to leave my main camera body, the 7D, at the Fruit’s house. I know GASP!!! I took the camera too take some photos of the new baby and then was so tired I didn’t even take photos OR remember to bring it home. With my main body out of reach I ended up using our second camera body; that was a lesson in ‘hey you should shoot so much with only one of your camera bodies... I was rusty. I spent some time in the parking lot shooting a stationary California Gull to work the kinks out of how I was trying to use the controls.
CALIFORNIA GULL
After I got the kinks worked out Mrs. Dancer and I started into the Bolsa Chica wetlands. Mrs. Dancer knows practically nothing about birds BUT she is a complete NATURAL. She has really great eyesight, can spot birds from far away and is also interested. I gave her my bird book and kept pointing out common birds along our route.
It was so much fun to have an interested sidekick. When I managed to find a bird who was a slow mover, like the great blue heron I had Mrs. Dancer jump up behind the big lens for a peek. You can see so much detail with that lens!
GREAT BLUE HERON
I love this particular area for birding because they have so many different areas to bird. The initial mile and a half walk in is all wetlands with each part of the wetlands geared to different depths of water for different types of birds. The first part of the hike is the shallow pools of wading water and this is where we find all of the sandpipers and herons like the Long Billed Curlew.
LONG BILLED CURLEW
I really loved the rusty color of this bird flying across a channel of water in contrast to the green algae growing along the banks.
LONG BILLED CURLEW
The willet is a pretty dull grey wadding bird until you see it in flight. I love his black and white wing markings which are completely hidden while he walks and gathers food.
WILLET IN FLIGHT
There is always something interesting going on. Most of the time I don’t have the opportunity to catch those fast action shots. This Snowy Egret however caught a fish that was a little too big to swallow. As I photoed the sequence of him ATTEMPTING to eat his catch a hungry gull tried to sweep in and steal dinner. If I hadn’t already had the camera focused and ready I would have missed this shot which I adore!!!
SNOWY EGRET AND SEA GULL
After the shallower wading waters there are deeper ponds for the ducks and pelicans. Many of these birds I already had photos of but I found myself drawn again and again to this one beautiful Green Winged Teal. You might not realize it but bird feathers are much like peoples hair. Some people have beautiful healthy happy hair, others have over dyed, overblown abused hair. Birds are much the same way and this Green Winged Teal was so pretty he was the Jenifer Aniston of Teal’s.
GREEN WINGED TEAL
I noticed another duck and at first I thought it was a new bird. Normally I do not take my bird book into the field with me... I have a policy where I shoot the photo first and I ask questions later. Normally I just wait until I get home to identify any that I wasn’t sure of while I am out however with Mrs. Dancer there carrying my book I grabbed a photo of this little guy before we looked him up. My hopefully new bird ended up being a she not a he, it is a female bufflehead. One of the greatest challenges of birding is not only to memorize one bird but also memorize the bird in the male/female form, the breeding/non breeding plumage and the juvenile/adult plumage. It’s no wonder even us who know a bunch about birds sometimes still mess up.
FEMALE BUFFLEHEAD
Leaving the estuary behind you end up wandering in some fields of light woods and native California grassland. This is where we spent most of our time, it’s in the back of the park and takes a while to hoof it back there but today we struck it lucky with a few good birds.
GRASSLANDS, ESTUARIES AND SOME LIGHT WOODED AREAS CREATE A HAVEN FOR WILDLIFE
Once you know a park pretty well you can start predicting where you will see certain birds. There is one pocket of shrubs submerged into the water where I always find Black Crowned Night Herons. Today Mrs. Dancer and I spotted eight, this one only sitting a few feet away. Although I always see them here I can never usually get a decent shot, they like to really hide where the branches are thick. Although this isn’t an amazing shot technically I still like the mood of it and the light shining through the feathers ruffled by the wind on his back.
BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON
Going slowly through the woods and scrub grass you can find a ton of little guys not suited to the open wetlands like the Bushtits, tiny little guys bouncing from branch to branch in a pack. This guy was partially usual because of his black little face mask. I am pretty sure it’s a bushtit because of his size and behaviour but that black mark is throwing me for a loop. Any ideas?
BUSHTIT
I really got a kick out of this shot of a hummingbird taking off of its perch, sometimes the photos of something a little more unexpected make more interesting shots.
ANNA’S HUMMINGBIRD
And then there are those birds you see a million times. There are so many Savannah sparrows at Bolsa Chica that I almost never photo them, that is until a few days ago when I noticed that the best shot I have of these guys isn’t quite up to my new standards. I got this photo of a bold little guy sititng pretty close to me and was happy with the composition and the background. Now I can replace this new Sparrow with the older not so great one.
SAVANAH SPARROW
At the far back of the park just as we were about to turn around I spotted a Coopers Hawk. Of course his back was to us but he was very cooperative and waited while we slowly circled to the front of him for a better photo.
COOPER’S HAWK
He took off and I let go of the breath I was holding. Cooper’s Hawks are pretty skittish and I was surprised he had stayed so long. While Mrs. Dancer and I were looking him up in the book I heard a noise. I looked up to see the Cooper Hawk not only returned but landed on a lower branch closer to where we were standing. Why thank you very much for the kick butt photo, didn’t know he wanted to be a model right!
COOPER’S HAWK
With only a little light left we started back. Within a few moments I spotted an American Kestrel perched high in a tree. He was soaking up the last rays of warmth for the night and the color of the sunset on his breast was simply gorgeous! Four raptors (Red Tailed Hawk, Cooper’s Hawk, American Kestrel and Harrier Hawk which I didn’t get a great photo of) in one day is pretty rare, even in an amazing park like this one.
AMERICAN KESTRREL
The light after the Kestrel went away and it wasn’t worth it for me to photo the wildlife anymore. Because we were still in the back of the park we had about a two mile walk to get back to the car. With the sun rapidly sinking and the temperature dropping quickly we had to hustle.
THE SUN IS RAPIDLY RUNNING AWAY
You know I loved having Mrs. Dancer come with me. Not only was it good company in the car and in the feild, it was fun to spot birds with someone, to have an extra pair of eyes out there to see what I may have missed and best of all she offered to carry my big ass lens for a while on the way back to the car. That thing is about 25 pounds... she is AMAZING!!!
IT WAS A LITTLE HEAVIER THAN SHE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE
Sometimes if I am lucky on the way back to the car, as you walk into the last rays of light, you are able to see incredible sunsets. Rainbow like sunsets that make my heart do a little pitter patter in ecstasy. I didn’t bring my landscape lens out with me, I only had my small little point and shoot, but oh tonight’s sunset I think was my favourite ever and the little point and shoot... it didn’t do half bad.
Once we reached the bridge, just outside of the parking area at Bolsa Chica we sat to watch the last of the light fade away. Mrs. Dancer even snapped a shot for Facebook, because this is a digital world and because we can! That little cell phone even took some kick butt photos.
We got into the car for the hour and a half drive home exhausted but oh so happy. It was a fantastic day and we chatted happily the whole way home. I walked into the door, crawled into my comfy clothes and sat down for a night of anticipated relaxing and photo editing and that is when I got the emergency call that changed all my evening plans...
To be continued
2 comments:
Amazing. Stunning as always. I live for these photography posts from you. Thank you for sharing your talent with us! The sunset is breathtaking!
Absolutely beautiful woman!
Post a Comment