2016 11-13 Staten Island CA
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A week ago, on a birding cruise on the Delta as part of the Lodi Crane Festival, one of the leaders, “Jim,” told me about a reliable place to view great horned owls. The location, said Jim, was a dilapidated water tank on a tower a few miles down an unpaved road. This morning Suellen and I took up the challenge, found the owl(s), and a lot more.
The road is a straight shot running almost north and south. The first portion is paved and the far portion is gravel, dirt and plenty of dust. As things got interesting, Suellen took the driver’s seat of my VW Golf TDI, and I sat in the passenger seat with my long lens and monopod mounted, as has become our modus operandi. Our first sighting was a large red-tailed hawk on top of a telephone pole. Sue stops along the side of the road while I slowly and quietly open the passenger door and start shooting. If the hawk stays put, I continue slowly walking and shooting.
After a couple of red-tails, there was a very small raptor perched on a telephone pole and then the wires. We saw a half-dozen of these during our slow trek up and down the road. They were very wary of the car, the camera and me. Nonetheless a few usable images allowed them to be identified as American Kestrels, the smallest of the falcons. There were lots of harriers all around but none came within camera range or were mostly flying the wrong direction.
A few sandhill cranes were clustered here and there in the open fields, and in one spot a nervous trio of cranes were pretty close to the road where a mini-van full of German tourist birders were shooting them with long lenses. Far more abundant were the thousands of geese. Geese flew in large flocks, in various interesting formations, high overhead. Some landed near us and thousands more were found in the open fields especially where the paved road turned to gravel. A hawk that took flight from its telephone pole and headed across the open field caused all the gees to take flight and they filled the sky near and far.
Ducks and coots swam in the irrigated fields and channels. Many hundreds of red-winged blackbirds perched on the telephone wires, the trees, and shrubs. A couple of blackbird flocks with dozens of birds kept landing en masse in the middle of the unpaved road, and pecked at the ground. In a few spots the blackbirds perched on telephone wires right next to a hawk or a kestrel and did not seem bothered by their presence.
Where the unpaved but public road ended, and warning signs of private property were posted, there was a barn-like structure that housed farm equipment. Nearby was a tall tower with a collapsed, dented and rusty old water tank and the original purpose of our trek. While Suellen glassed the tank and walked around the entire structure, I photographed it and used my long lens like a weak telescope. We both scanned for the great horned owls. As I was using my wide angle lens which was mounted to a second camera body, Sue called me over and exclaimed that she had spotted an owl.
How did she do this? The owl was in a hole in the wooden beams that made up the base on which the metal debris which was once a water tank rested. The location was in deep shade and the hole perfectly framed a big fat owl. Even with good binoculars it was hard to spot as the color of the bird matched the old wood very well. An amazing sighting by Suellen!
I mounted my long lens/camera to a tripod and tilted it upwards, aimed at the owl and its hole. I cranked down the shutter speed to increase the f-stop and depth of field. Even then it was impossible for auto-focus and I had to go to manual. It was a dark and challenging scenario. I kept fantasizing about some kind of pinpoint, high powered flash attachment…sure to bother the bird if such a device existed.
The trip back up the road put the sun behind us and gave better light to the raptors. A couple of great egrets looked good on a dirt berm with a pond in back. A very tame great blue heron stood along the roadside and tolerated some very close portraits. Several black phoebes were perched here and there.
It was a glorious, warm and sunny morning for wildlife.
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Read MoreA week ago, on a birding cruise on the Delta as part of the Lodi Crane Festival, one of the leaders, “Jim,” told me about a reliable place to view great horned owls. The location, said Jim, was a dilapidated water tank on a tower a few miles down an unpaved road. This morning Suellen and I took up the challenge, found the owl(s), and a lot more.
The road is a straight shot running almost north and south. The first portion is paved and the far portion is gravel, dirt and plenty of dust. As things got interesting, Suellen took the driver’s seat of my VW Golf TDI, and I sat in the passenger seat with my long lens and monopod mounted, as has become our modus operandi. Our first sighting was a large red-tailed hawk on top of a telephone pole. Sue stops along the side of the road while I slowly and quietly open the passenger door and start shooting. If the hawk stays put, I continue slowly walking and shooting.
After a couple of red-tails, there was a very small raptor perched on a telephone pole and then the wires. We saw a half-dozen of these during our slow trek up and down the road. They were very wary of the car, the camera and me. Nonetheless a few usable images allowed them to be identified as American Kestrels, the smallest of the falcons. There were lots of harriers all around but none came within camera range or were mostly flying the wrong direction.
A few sandhill cranes were clustered here and there in the open fields, and in one spot a nervous trio of cranes were pretty close to the road where a mini-van full of German tourist birders were shooting them with long lenses. Far more abundant were the thousands of geese. Geese flew in large flocks, in various interesting formations, high overhead. Some landed near us and thousands more were found in the open fields especially where the paved road turned to gravel. A hawk that took flight from its telephone pole and headed across the open field caused all the gees to take flight and they filled the sky near and far.
Ducks and coots swam in the irrigated fields and channels. Many hundreds of red-winged blackbirds perched on the telephone wires, the trees, and shrubs. A couple of blackbird flocks with dozens of birds kept landing en masse in the middle of the unpaved road, and pecked at the ground. In a few spots the blackbirds perched on telephone wires right next to a hawk or a kestrel and did not seem bothered by their presence.
Where the unpaved but public road ended, and warning signs of private property were posted, there was a barn-like structure that housed farm equipment. Nearby was a tall tower with a collapsed, dented and rusty old water tank and the original purpose of our trek. While Suellen glassed the tank and walked around the entire structure, I photographed it and used my long lens like a weak telescope. We both scanned for the great horned owls. As I was using my wide angle lens which was mounted to a second camera body, Sue called me over and exclaimed that she had spotted an owl.
How did she do this? The owl was in a hole in the wooden beams that made up the base on which the metal debris which was once a water tank rested. The location was in deep shade and the hole perfectly framed a big fat owl. Even with good binoculars it was hard to spot as the color of the bird matched the old wood very well. An amazing sighting by Suellen!
I mounted my long lens/camera to a tripod and tilted it upwards, aimed at the owl and its hole. I cranked down the shutter speed to increase the f-stop and depth of field. Even then it was impossible for auto-focus and I had to go to manual. It was a dark and challenging scenario. I kept fantasizing about some kind of pinpoint, high powered flash attachment…sure to bother the bird if such a device existed.
The trip back up the road put the sun behind us and gave better light to the raptors. A couple of great egrets looked good on a dirt berm with a pond in back. A very tame great blue heron stood along the roadside and tolerated some very close portraits. Several black phoebes were perched here and there.
It was a glorious, warm and sunny morning for wildlife.
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