A Morning on the Refuge

I left early to be at Squaw Creek NWR at sunrise this morning. The forecast is for colder and wetter weather over the next few weeks, and I wanted to get the chance to shoot the birds before they migrated further south.

The morning stayed overcast, so the light wasn't great. Also, the geese are not roosting at the refuge. The water levels are low, with some of the marshes dry. The reports are that the geese are staying nearby as some deeper lakes.

But that didn't mean that there weren't lots of opportunities to see and photograph wildlife. There are over 100 swans on the refuge, tens, of not hundreds, of thousands of ducks, pelicans, coots and the local songbirds and deer as well. The slideshow below will show you the best images from the morning.




All images were taken with the Nikon D7000 / Nikkor 300mm f/4 / TC1.4 combination. Processing was done with PhotoMechanic / ACR / CS6 Photoshop.

Enjoy the birds !

At the Refuge

Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge is north of Kansas City. It is a primary stop over in the fall for migrating waterfowl. This is the prime season to visit in order to observe and photograph the migratory birds. Right now there are over 200,000 snow geese, over 100,000 ducks and various other coming through such as swans, hawks, bald eagles and pelicans. You can see the latest count survey here. And along with the visitors there are many native wild residents.

It was a beautiful day in the 60's. The skies were clear and the breeze was gentle.

I hope you enjoy the images!

Late Sun

On Alert

Swans

Waxing Moon

The details: Nikon D7000 & Nikkor 300mm f/4 + TC1.4 (effective focal length 420mm). Post in PhotoMechanic, ACR 7.3 and CS6.

YES.... 'Waxing Moon' is a composite. But both images were shot with the same rig from the same location. I was not able to catch the geese crossing the moon, but I had several good images of geese and the moon and it was natural to combine the two. It was very easy as the scale was the same and sky colors matched almost exactly.

Photo of the Week - Lorikeets

Debbie and I made a weekend trip to San Antonio, TX to spend time with our son Alan. One of our stops was the San Antonio Zoo. While many of the enclosures are not of modern design, the animals looked healthy and active. Their bird collection was very good.


This Rainbow Lorikeet was in a free-fly area which was populated with parrots and lorikeets from Australia. They were very friendly, landing on your head or shoulder looking for handouts