ThomasONeil

Webcam

2012-01-28T18:48:00.001-05:00

Suddenly I'm in possession of a spare laptop so I'm experimenting with it for the next few weeks as a webcam. Not the greatest image quality from a built-in camera pointing through a dirty window. I-90 is in the foreground, the L train runs diagonal from lower right. F5 to refresh. Also at this link: www.eaglephoto.net/webcam.html.

Old Picture of the Week

2012-01-21T23:10:00.000-05:00

This week's "Old Picture of the Week" is Nobska Light in Woods Hole, Mass. Back in 2000 I was getting back into photography, and since I was living in New England I did a lighthouse tour. Nobska Light is one of the iconic lighthouses on Cape Cod. For more images from this era, see the New England gallery. Scanned from film.

Stop here

2012-01-20T18:02:00.000-05:00

I made my annual eagle pilgrimage to the Mississippi River last weekend. I arrived at Lock and Dam 18 near Burlington, IA at about 1 p.m. to find the viewing platform and adjacent parking lot closed due to construction. So it was down to the boat launch in the recreation area, where for the first time I can recall, they were actually launching boats. It has been so warm this winter that there were just a few ice cubes floating in the river.

There were a lot of eagles in view, but most of them stayed well out of camera range. I took some distant shots, and a few turned out like the first one shown below. There were a several eagles roosting above the road on the way out of the recreation area. When I bought my car three years ago, I got a sun roof specifically to drive down this road and get the second shot. Click on the images for larger versions and to launch the slide show.

Eagle over the Mississippi

Eagle launch

I continued on south to my other favorite Mississippi River location, the Keokuk waterfront. It was mostly cloudy, but with better light the next morning I "rushed" down to the waterfront. Unfortunately it's very difficult to rush through Keokuk because there is a stop light on just about every corner. Fifteen stop lights later, I finally arrived and got some decent shots. I headed up to Burlington mid-day and got a few more distant shots over the water, and closer but infrequent flight shots as the eagles made their way back to roosting areas.

This was the ninth straight year I've hit Keokuk/Burlington to see the eagles. On a scale of 1-10, this year was about a 6. This works best when the weather is cold enough to freeze the river and concentrate the eagles around the open water below the dams. Just looking back through previous years, I think 2008 was the best recent year.

Photo of the Year 2011

2012-01-01T21:20:00.001-05:00

Once again, snapshot opportunities were limited in 2011 as I was afflicted with employment for the second straight year. Candidates for Photo of the Year included New York City scenics, bighorn sheep large and small, and various other critters. The winner was snapped in April at the Sertoma Butterfly House in Sioux Falls, SD. No, the image is not upside down. I think the orientation is one reason I like this shot.

I've never picked an insect before, so this is a first. This is also the first winner snapped with my 100mm macro lens, which I bought with good intentions many years ago but haven't used very much. The prize, as usual, is an all-expense paid trip to Keokuk, Iowa to hunt for wintering eagles. It's on the schedule for two weeks from today.

Click on the image for a larger view.

Sertoma Butterfly 2011

Here are my POY selections for 2002-2010.

Great Horned Owls 2008

Custer SP Bighorn 2009

Keokuk Eagle 2010

Photo Calendar

2011-12-07T18:12:00.001-05:00

New 2012 calendar for sale at Lulu.

Trickster

2011-12-06T23:19:00.001-05:00

On my way out of the Black Hills today, I finally found one (1) member of the Bighorn species, a lone ewe grazing near the Custer State Park Visitor Center. I hung around for a few minutes to see if more of the flock would appear, but they didn't. So I guess the sighting of the day was a couple of coyotes roaming the fields. (Or was it my first-ever ID of a prairie chicken?) Click on the yote image to start the slide show.

After four months living in downtown Chicago, I was struck by the magnificent desolation of South Dakota, especially this time of year when the bikers and other tourists are long gone. I-90 across the state was devoid of traffic. When I was photographing the eagle, I was parked on the shoulder of a state highway for 25 minutes and zero (0) cars came by in either direction. If you want to get away from it all, South Dakota in winter...or late fall if you want to get technical.

Trickster

As Long As I'm Here

2011-12-05T23:57:00.000-05:00

While checking on my trail camera, I took a few snapshots around Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park. An eagle I'm sure I've seen many times before was one of the main subjects, along with some pronghorns, turkeys, and prairie dogs.

I've been looking for Bighorn sheep in the usual locations in Rapid City and Custer SP, but haven't found them. I've got one more loop through the park Tuesday morning, so this photo group might not be complete yet.

Roosting

Snacking

Elk on the Trail

2011-12-05T23:51:00.001-05:00

Way back in July I planted my new trail camera in Wind Cave National Park. I was finally able to retrieve the images today and was happy to see almost 1,300 images on the card. Upon further review, it turns out that the first 500 images were snapped between 2 and 3 hours after I left the camera on July 2. Good thing I didn't wait until July 3! All of the daylight shots in this slide show were taken on that first day. The nighttime shots were scattered over the following three months.

It was a good location, but it was hard to get to (and hard to find again without my GPS) so I moved it to another promising location a few hundred yards away where I saw elk grazing and resting today. The batteries were still at 78% and the memory card will hold tens of thousands of images, so maybe I will leave it there until June. Click on the images to start the slide show.

Smile!

Sneaking through

Back to New Mexico

2011-11-17T22:12:00.000-05:00

After several months getting situated in Chicago, it was time to take a break and head off to New Mexico. Usually Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge is about the sandhill cranes, but this time it seemed like the cranes were't very accessible and the snow geese were. So most of the images are of snow geese. I also went south to White Sands National Monument. The clouds were very interesting that day.

Click on the images to start a slide show.

Bosque del Apache

White Sands

Hi Bob

2011-09-05T12:23:00.001-04:00

Short stroll along the Chicago River yesterday.

Fellow Traveler

2011-09-03T18:46:00.005-04:00

My move to Chicago is almost completed. Although I have been working here for a month, this was the first weekend I've been in the city. I took a stroll across downtown and through Millennium Park to the Field Museum.

I also happened to have a new camera, a Canon S95. My G6 is still a capable performer after X number of years (6?) but it is not very pocketable. The S95 is not the tiniest camera available, but it is much thinner than a G6. But it appears I have to upgrade my software. I had to jump through some extra hoops to edit the images.

I met a fellow South Dakota transplant at the Field, a Tyrannosaurus Rex named Sue. From ground level she really didn't seem that huge for some reason, but from above you get an idea of her scale. Click on the image for a larger versions.

Here another photo from the stroll, Buckingham Fountain, before it started raining.

Little Bighorns

2011-07-03T23:05:00.005-04:00

I went out to the Black Hills this weekend to plant my new trail camera along a previously successful elk trail in Wind Cave National Park. On the drive through Custer State Park, I caught sight of a flock of bighorn ewes with four lambs among them. It was an unexpected sight because the last I heard, the local flock has not been reproducing since a 2005 pneumonia outbreak. Hopefully this is the start of a recovery. Click on images for larger versions to go to the full slide show (20 images).

Two lambs racing through the woods

All four lambs

Shot in the Dark

2011-05-23T22:26:00.004-04:00

I have a little travel tripod about six inches long that comes in handy for shooting dark indoor spaces or outside at night. Here's the interior of St. Patrick's Cathedral. This is a 15-second exposure, which is why the people in the aisle look like mist. (Click on images for larger versions.)

Here's another attempt at a Grand Central Station blur. I didn't want everyone to be mist, so this is a shorter time exposure of 1.6 seconds.

There are some rose sculptures on Park Avenue. I tried some time exposures but it turned out that just using flash worked best.

DSK's Hideout

2011-05-22T15:25:00.005-04:00

I didn't have a plan for Sunday in New York, so I decided to walk south until I got tired, then take the subway back to the hotel. I didn't expect to cover the 4.5 miles from 50th Street down to Battery Park, but I did.

Along the way I saw a few unusual things, such as a girl with bright pink hair and pink tights, set off with a stylish black cape and long black boots, walking back to her building with breakfast in hand. Quite an ensemble. Most people, even those with pink hair, would just throw on some sweats for a Sunday morning run to the bakery.

There were some other strange and colorful sights along my route. A girl with blue hair (not nearly as stylish). A guy in Battery Park dressed up as Lady Liberty, taking a break from posing with tourists, talking on a cell phone. A guy getting off the subway dressed up as a plastic army man, 100% bright green including his hands and face. (Full body spandex, not paint.) A British police constable riding the Wall Street bull (see below). Then there was the line of TV cameras staked out in front of 71 Broadway. "DSK?" I wondered.

My instincts were correct. The Gothamist reported that residents received the following notice:

"We want to inform you that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF Director who is under indictment in New York, is currently staying at 71 Broadway. Mr. Strauss-Kahn is here as a guest of a leaseholder. We were not consulted before the leaseholder invited him in, but we have been assured that he will only be staying here until early next week."

I didn't see DSK out looking for croissants, unless he was dressed as a girl with pink hair.

DSK's Hideout

London calling

NYC 5/2/11

2011-05-02T17:31:00.005-04:00

I don't know what it was like down here last night, but today around Ground Zero is a hive of activity. In the daylight hours, overcast but not unpleasant, I saw no overt celebrations over the death an evil man. But everyone seems to be in a good mood, particularly the policemen and firemen. A new tower rises to the heavens. Click on the images for larger versions. I'll be updating the New York 2011 album throughout the eight weeks I'm here.

1 World Trade Center

Tulips at nearby Liberty Plaza

Butterfly

2011-04-12T07:30:00.001-04:00

Here's a snapshot I took at the Sertoma Butterfly House in Sioux Falls over the weekend. Will this be the first insect to win "Photo of the Year?" I have posted bunch more on my web site. Click on the image for a larger version.

End of experiment

2011-04-09T16:31:00.005-04:00

I placed my new trail cam at a pond near my house about a month ago. In the first few days I got a few daytime shots of raccoons. I let it sit for the past month and retrieved it today. I was happy to see 140 shots fired off and hoped there would be a few deer in there.

What it turned out to be was a whole bunch of shots of Canada geese roaming through the semi-flooded area, and a few ghostly nighttime shots of the raccoons. I've proven what I wanted to prove, that the camera works pretty well, and I'll deploy it in the Black Hills ASAP. Unfortunately that probably won't be until July. Once again, you'll have to use your imagination and pretend that these geese are elk or mountain lions. Click on the image for a larger version.

Another book

2011-03-12T18:35:00.005-05:00

I really don't remember sending in a photo for this one, but another one of my puffin photos made it into another book about Maine. It's a paperback book with images of all the critters that can be found in Maine, including the New Brunswick puffins shown below. (Disclaimer: Although the Canadians claim Machias Seal Island and have operated a lighthouse there for 175 years, the official U.S. position is it is part of the Maine.) I only got one copy, so y'all have to buy your own this time! (Apologies to Southerners for any misuse of "y'all.") I have just the one photo in the book (below) although it appears on the dedication page and again inside. It's the same photo that's on page 28 of the other book.

Click for web site photo

Camera Trap

2011-03-06T19:06:00.003-05:00

I bought a Bushnell trail camera a few years ago and deployed it with limited success until an elk chewed the power cord on the solar panel. The image quality wasn't that great and it was prone to malfunction, so I decided to get a new camera.

Research indicated Reconyx is among the industry leaders, so that's what I went with. Eventually I want to deploy it out in the Black Hills to catch elk and maybe even mountain lions, but for now I stashed it in the woods near my house next to a pond. I was hoping to get some deer. All I've gotten so far is two raccoons, both at night and during the day. The great thing is this is in a sequence of five shots, and I chose the best one. On my old camera, at best I would have gotten one shot and it probably would have been way off center. Also, the image quality on this camera is much better. Just imagine what this would look like if the raccoons were the size of elk. Click for a full-sized version.

A few eagles

2011-02-10T09:39:00.000-05:00

I didn't get a lot of eagle images along the Mississippi this winter, but I got a couple. All the eagles at Lock and Dam 18 were clustered on the far side of the river, so I had no luck there. I got a few shots at the eagle tree on the Keokuk waterfront. Click on the image for the slide show.

South Dakota

2011-01-14T11:50:00.006-05:00

I got a few shots of bighorns and other critters on a drive across South Dakota last week. See thomasoneil.com for details and photos.

Bighorn

Photo of the Year 2010

2010-12-24T11:08:00.008-05:00

I was afflicted with employment in 2010, so pickings for Photo of the Year are thin. I actually considered whether to renominate "Little Brothers" from way back in 2004, but I'll settle for this plug: Buy "Nothin' but Puffins (and other silly observations" now available on Amazon.com. I also considered whether to pick a flower photo from New York gardens or the California desert.

But I've never selected anything except a wildlife image, so ultimately I decided to turn to a Mississippi River eagle photo for the third time (also 2005 and 2007). This one is from a very reliable roosting tree on the Keokuk, IA waterfront. If eagles are widely spread, as they were last February, there are always at least a few that can be found in or near this tree. I'm planning to head back to Keokuk in a few weeks, and I'm hoping to cured of the affliction I mentioned earlier sometime between March and September.

Keokuk Eagle

Here are my POY selections for 2002-2009.

Great Horned Owls
2008

Custer SP Bighorn
2009

Squaw Creek again

2010-12-12T15:02:00.000-05:00

I didn't make it down to see the eagles and geese and Squaw Creek NWR in northwest Missouri last year, so I wanted to make sure to get there this year. The refuge web site said there were more than 100 eagles watching the geese, but when I made it there on Friday there seemed to be more people than eagles. Maybe they (the eagles) have already started to move on. I snapped a few images Friday and Saturday morning before trying to beat a blizzard back to South Dakota. Instead I got stranded in Onawa, IA overnight before making it home.

If "10" is the best I've ever seen at Squaw Creek (see 2005 and 2006), I would rate this trip maybe a "4".

Missouri eagle

Little Brothers revisited

2010-09-04T12:36:00.012-04:00

In 2004 I visited several fabulous photo locations, including the Galapagos and British Columbia. But the only image I have ever gotten around to naming came from an August 2004 boat ride to Machias Seal Island off the coast of Maine. The scientific name for the Atlantic Puffin is Fratercula Arctica, which translates as "Little Brother of the North."

Little Brothers

"Little Brothers" is the cover image for a new book from Down East Enterprises, "Nothin' but Puffins, and Other Silly Observations." Author John McDonald is a noted Maine storyteller and humorist. There are 64 photos in the book and 22 of them are mine.

Washington

2010-08-01T22:40:00.006-04:00

When I was spending a lot of time in Washington, DC about six years ago, they hadn't yet completed the World War II Memorial. Now they have. Click on images for larger versions.

I've never seen these before this year. If my notes from New York are correct, this is from Peru and is called Pachystachys lutea.

I strolled up the National Mall and made it to the gardens behind the Smithsonian Castle before it started to rain.

I'm here for another few months so I'm sure I will revisit many places such as the Air and Space museums and the National Zoo.

Little Yellow Birds

2010-07-05T14:11:00.003-04:00

I wanted to cap off last week with images of burrowing owls in central South Dakota, but I didn't see any in the prairie dog towns where I saw them in May 2009. Maybe the hot, dry wind pushed them under ground and I went home with an empty memory card. At home over the long weekend I decided to finally get some shots of the goldfinches that frequent my bird feeder. When I lived in Massachusetts I got a lot of goldfinch images in my back yard, and after a slow start I've finally built up a goldfinch clientele at my South Dakota residence. Click on the images for larger versions.

Stand on Manhattan

2010-06-19T14:16:00.004-04:00

In the 1968 novel "Stand on Zanzibar," author John Brunner projected that if the 7 billion people alive in the year 2010 were to stand shoulder to shoulder, they would cover the island of Zanzibar. According to Wikipedia, "Throughout the book, the image of the entire human race standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a small island is a metaphor for a crowded world where each person feels hemmed in by a prison made not of metal bars, but of other human beings."

This book I read 30 years ago came to mind as I was in the middle of eight weeks working in Manhattan. The island is only 1/20th the size of Zanzibar, so apparently it would be physically impossible for the entire population of Earth to be milling around in Times Square at all hours of the day and night. It just seemed that way.

Actually, the daytime population density of Manhattan (including commuters) is about 125,000 people per square mile. Each Manhattan resident and worker gets 220 square feet of land, in theory a luxurious 100 times more than the space required for standing and not being able to move an inch in any direction. (My hotel's elevators on Saturday mornings seemed to be an evil experiment to measure exactly how tightly humans can be packed.) On a cheery note, this land density doesn't take into account all floor space provided by skyscrapers that allow people to be stacked to the sky.

My next work assignment is to go stand on Dewey County, South Dakota, which is 100 miles from nowhere and has fewer than three people per square mile. Magnificent desolation, no packing or stacking required.

I have posted a bunch of images from my time in New York City and vicinity.

My Old House

2010-06-19T14:01:00.004-04:00

During my trip east I drove by my old house in Massachusetts. New siding and a new roof. The 15 statues of bunnies, cherubs and saints are also new. Click on the image for a bigger version.

Keokuk

2010-02-07T14:40:00.005-05:00

It has been a cursed season for eagling. I never made it to Missouri's Squaw Creek NWR in December due to weather/work conflicts, and there were low numbers reported in January from my other favorite places along the Mississippi in eastern Iowa. I finally made it to the Mississippi over the weekend, a few weeks later than in previous years.

The reports were true that eagle numbers along the river are down substantially this year. Although the winter has been snowy and miserable, it hasn't been cold enough to freeze the river and concentrate the eagles around the dams. Friday it was overcast and snowing, and I saw zero eagles at Lock and Dam 18 near Burlington where there usually are 400 at this time of year. I moved on to Keokuk. I saw perhaps 10 eagles on sunny Saturday morning. I got this shot of an eagle landing in the dependable tree next to the Geo. M. Verity steamboat. For more, click here, or click on the images for larger versions.

On my way home Saturday I stopped at another usual haunt, Neal Smith NWR just east of Des Moines. I've driven through there maybe four times and never saw the supposed elk herd in residence. This time I saw about 17 elk scattered in three places. The larger bulls were laying down and hard to see, so here are a couple of the smaller bulls.

2009 Photo of the Year

2010-01-16T21:38:00.006-05:00

It's time for the Photo of the Year. As usual, I'm the only one allowed to enter and the prize is an all-expense paid trip to Keokuk, Iowa to chase eagles, which I hope to do sometime in the next few weeks.

Previous POY have something in common; with the exception of one unfortunate fish in a supporting role, birds are the subjects. Although I was tempted to award the POY this year to the mountain bluebird from May, I decided to go mammal this year with a Rocky Mountain Bighorn from December. There are some leaping bighorns from this same sequence, but I decided to go with the portrait.

Bighorn in the snow

Here are my POY selections for 2002-2008.

Great Horned Owls
2008

Custer Bighorns

2009-12-07T21:27:00.003-05:00

I've been stricken with employment since July and haven't had a chance for much (fun) travel, but I headed to the Black Hills this weekend to see if I could find the bighorn sheep I imaged last year at this time.

It took a while, but Saturday afternoon I eventually found a flock of 16 ewes and four rams in the Game Lodge Campground, Custer State Park. It was starting to snow and the light was fading, but I took snapshots for more than an hour as they grazed. Here's one of a ewe casually steeplechasing (is that a word?) over a four-foot fence that borders the campground.

See thomasoneil.com for two dozen more images.

It kept getting snowier and darker, so I decided to pack up. At that moment one of the rams which had wandered off earlier came charging back in and head-butted one of his counterparts with great vigor. I quickly set up my camera again, but of course nothing further developed.

Curious Elk

2009-09-14T21:40:00.008-04:00

I left my trail camera in Wind Cave National Park in the Black Hills May 27 hoping to get a few shots of elk wandering past. I did get a few during the next few weeks, but on June 12 an elk became very curious and somehow managed not only to knock the camera askew, but rip the end off the cable that attaches the solar panel. For some reason the camera fired off 200 shots of nothing in the next couple days and filled up the memory card. So it's been sitting out there dead for three months but I didn't have a chance to retrieve it until this weekend.

The first image is the best full-frame color shot of the bunch. The second was taken just after midnight with the flash shining off the elk's retinas. You can also see another shining eye below and to the right.

I reset the camera and installed new batteries, but because the solar panel connection is useless for now, the batteries will run out within 10 days. On the way out of the park I saw a batch of nine elk with huge antlers on a distant hillside. Hopefully they'll wander past the trail camera soon. If all else fails I'll go down to Omaha and shoot some zoo elk. (Update: Zilch from battery power.)

Click on the images for larger versions.

Angels

2009-07-26T17:59:00.006-04:00

I got my camera back from the Canon hospital just in time for the Blue Angels at the Sioux Falls Air Show. Saturday I went to the airport and tried to fight through the throng to find a decent place to shoot with the 100-400mm zoom. I got a few shots worth posting but I never really did find a good spot.

Sunday I tried something different and went to a hill a couple miles southwest of the airport. No crowds, and no danger of bonking someone in the head while swinging around the big 500mm on a tripod. My positioning was vindicated by this shot as the main formation passed directly overhead; in fact the planes were too close and I barely got their wingtips into this 4:3 crop of the image. Click on the image for larger version, or click here for the gallery.

Blue Angels

The gallery also includes several shots of a P-38 Lightning, including in Heritage Flight formation with an F-22 Raptor. Compared to the P-51 Mustang, the Lightning is fairly rare, and in fact this was my first view of one in flight.

Heritage Flight

Final result

2009-07-11T18:09:00.004-04:00

The robin raising process is almost over. This little one was resting in the shade of my parsley plant. It sat quietly as I got a few close snapshots. Then I went to pick a tomato for dinner and it decided then to panic and fly off. One of the parents witnessed this, decided I was a threat, and made a few strafing runs. I was able to get a tomato without injury. Click on the image for a larger version.

The Birds

2009-07-05T17:24:00.003-04:00

I didn't photo the robins for a few days, but I do have to go into the back yard to water my tomatoes. The robins always chirped at me when I appeared, but the past few days one of them (I presume the father) has taken a more aggressive attitude and has buzzed me a few times. I set up the camera today, but partly to avoid confrontation and partly for a change of pace, I set it on the other side, further under the deck.

The little ones are growing and changing color, and now look more like robins than dinosaurs. Click on the image for a larger version.

Robins

2009-07-01T16:09:00.005-04:00

I found a robin's nest under my deck a couple weeks ago. Every few days since I have set up my G6 to take images from about a foot away every few minutes. I didn't have any headroom to look down into the nest, so it took a while for the little ones to get big enough to be seen. Today I got a few shots of feeding time, and there appear to be three chicks. Click for larger versions.

Achtunddreißig Luftballoon

2009-06-14T20:04:00.002-04:00

The last time I was at a hot-air balloon event was five years ago in Albuquerque, and I still have nightmares about that one. (Click here to see why.) I figured Saturday's balloon launch in Sioux Falls, officially known as the Great Plains Balloon Race, would be a less traumatic affair.

I didn't make it up for the 5:45 a.m. launch, but I did bicycle the four miles to take in the evening attempt. Because I was pedaling, I took my smaller G6 camera, including the wide angle attachment. Thirty-eight (achtunddreißig) balloons were launched at about 7:30 p.m. The light wasn't great but I got a few shots. Click on the images for larger versions.

I used the wide angle attachment to get this shot inside a balloon. The G6 is my "Ireland camera," and I got the wide angle after I got back from there because sometimes I had wanted something wider than the 35mm equivalent. It is fairly easy to attach and gives a 24.5mm view, wider than any non-SLR camera I know of. But I haven't been back to Ireland since and haven't used it much at all.

Random birds

2009-06-05T15:47:00.004-04:00

When I was in Massachusetts, the goldfinches would sit at my thistle feeder all day and waddle away at dusk. I had to fill it every three or four days. There also are goldfinches in South Dakota, but I don't think I filled the feeder more than twice last summer. I finally got around to getting a snapshot of a South Dakota goldfinch this morning.

Later in the day I had to go down to Canton, so I also went to Newton Hills State Park to scout for woodpeckers. I saw a few and probably will return in the next week or so at a better time of day to get some digiscoping shots. I also saw some orioles lurking around.

Eagle revisited

2009-05-28T00:04:00.008-04:00

I toured the Badlands today, proving once again that landscapes are not my favorite photography subjects. Fortunately it was only a slight detour north to visit my favorite golden eagle's nest.

When I stopped two weeks ago, the little one was all white and the parents were hovering around. Today, the baby's body was brown and the parents were nowhere in evidence. I set up my 500mm with 2x extender and got a few images. There are leaves on the tree now which probably block the light for much of the day, but it was late afternoon so the light was coming in low. I think the eagle was panting to cool down, thus the tongue sticking out. Click for larger version.

South Dakota Golden Eagle

And now for something completely different. As I was driving down the Wildlife Loop near the airport in Custer State Park, I realized there were Mountain Bluebirds all over the place. So I stopped and snapped for a while. Unlike Eastern Bluebirds, these guys are blue all over.

Mountain Bluebird

Elk

2009-05-26T23:49:00.007-04:00

One of the misconceptions about big telephoto lenses is they can "zoom in" on dot-sized elk a half mile away and make them big as life. The reality is even with a 500mm lens you have to get fairly close to get a decent image.

Perhaps I could be satisfied with images of semi-tame elk at Simmons Wildlife Safari in Omaha, or perhaps there is something to the thrill of the hunt. I've finally pinned down a location in Wind Cave National Park where I can usually see the dot-sized elk running wild. Unlike the pronghorn which pay no mind to cars passing within a few feet, the elk carefully avoid people.

Since they are so difficult to approach, I tried setting up a trail camera in several locations in the park, and finally found the right area with the most recent deployment. From May 13-21, it snapped about 25 elk images of varying quality at all hours of the day and night. Unfortunately all of the night images taken with the infrared flash were overexposed, and I wasn't real pleased with the daytime images either.

I raised the camera up higher and switched the flash from infrared to white. I hope these changes will result in something a bit better, but an underlying problem is the camera image quality is not very good. I equate the quality to the Kodak digital I had back around the turn of the millenium. Memo to Bushnell: Image sensors have improved greatly in the past seven years. Toss that lifetime supply you bought on closeout back in 2002 and invest in some new ones.

Click on the images for larger versions.

Elk taken with trail camera
Elk taken with long lens

Chuck Wood

2009-05-19T11:11:00.003-04:00

On my way to the nursery in Brandon, SD to pick up plants yesterday, I stopped at the Big Sioux Recreation Area for a hike. I decided not to carry the heavy DSLR/400mm lens, but did take my Canon G6 just in case I saw something. This woodchuck spotted me from a distance and decided to climb this tree, which I didn't think woodchucks did. After I got this shot he decided to bail out and make a run for it. Click for a larger version.

Burrowing Owl

2009-05-14T23:34:00.005-04:00

My month of employment ended Monday, so Tuesday I slipped back into retirement and drove west to the Black Hills and to see how spring was progressing. In Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park, I saw the usual bison, pronghorns and prairie dogs, but also managed to spot some marmots (related to woodchucks) and the elusive elk. I found what I hope is a good elk location for my trail camera and will check it in a few weeks.

On the way home I stopped at a golden eagle nest 10 miles east of Wall. Last year I was there in June and saw a large brown chick about to fledge, and no adults. This year, nearly a month earlier in the season, the chick was small and still white, and the two parents were lurking nearby. I got this image when one of the adults flew in with some nesting material. (Click on the images for larger versions.)

South Dakota Golden Eagles

Further down the road on the Lower Brule Indian Reservation, I stopped at a prairie dog town in an attempt to find burrowing owls. When one of the prairie dog-sized creatures started flying around, I deduced it was one of the owls. I saw quite a few through binoculars, and one posed on a post long enough to get a few images.

South Dakota Burrowing Owl

Born to Fly

2009-04-27T12:40:00.005-04:00

Every once in a while I get an unusual request for the use of my photos. A few months ago I got an email from someone in the Netherlands asking to use some of my eagle photos in a book. I granted permission and forgot about it. Today I got a copy of the book in the mail, "Geboren Om Te Vliegen" by Henk Stoorbogel and Eugene Poppe. They used five of my images in black and white.

I don't read Dutch so went to Babelfish to get a translation. The title translates as "Born to Fly," and from some of the other text it seems they are using the eagle as a metaphor for ... something. If you were in the Dutch equivalent of Barnes and Noble you would probably find this title in the Self Help or Religious aisle.

Here's one of the images they used, although they flipped it right to left to fit in with the page layout. Click to view larger version.

South Dakota Eagle

Owls revisited

2009-03-23T16:21:00.006-04:00

As I was snapping the two Great Horned Owls in Florida last year, I knew I had a winner. I selected an image from that sequence as my personal Photo of the Year for 2008. When I found out there was a $200 prize for a nature photo contest at a local lawn and garden show, the owls were an obvious choice.

Great Horned Owls

Eagle-eyed observers may note that this image is not the same one that I picked for my Photo of the Year. What can I say – I happened to have an 8x10 print of the alternate version, and I was too cheap to spend $1 to get the other one printed.

Face Time

2009-03-09T17:47:00.005-04:00

The NCAA Division 1 Summit League men's and women's basketball tournaments were in Sioux Falls this week. I've been pondering my new role as a graduate of what is now a Division 1 school, South Dakota State.

Jackrabbit women at the Summit

SDSU embarked on the long transition process to Division 1 in 2003-04. At the time I thought the brain trust in the Jackrabbit athletic department was suffering from delusions of grandeur and I foresaw permanent irrelevance as a Division 1 competitor in basketball and football.

Teams in the transition process have to endure a Twilight Zone existence for five years, no longer Division 2 but not yet Division 1. The Zone is populated by the likes of New Jersey Tech and Utah Valley State, schools that have to schedule anyone anywhere in the country to get the opportunity to call themselves "Division 1."

Despite my earlier misgivings, I have to say the transition worked out as well as could be expected for SDSU. The primary reason for this is the Jackrabbits were able to join decent conferences, the Missouri Valley in football and the Summit League in everything else.

Now that I'm a Division 1 guy, I'm starting to get what being Division 1 is all about -- appearing on national television. Since that is the primary goal of all Division 1 basketball programs, I'm learning to resent all the butt-smooching ESPN and CBS bestow on the major conferences in the Eastern time zone while neglecting the Summit Leagues of the world. The predictions of the four men's #1 seeds have been changing from hour to hour as the favorites lose in their meaningless conference tournaments. Meanwhile, I set my DVR to 6:00 CDT Monday to catch the women's bracket announcement and see where my Jackrabbits, Summit League champions and ranked #14 nationally, are seeded. A #5 seed and a first-round game in Iowa City would be good; any lower or further away and as a Division 1 fan I would be obliged to come up with a conspiracy theory regarding the prejudices of the selection committee.

Update: A #7 seed and playing against Texas teams in Lubbock represents a snub. The ladies took it out on TCU with a tournament record-tying three-point barrage and coasted 90-55 in the first round. Fear the rabbit.

Eagle Window

2009-01-28T19:32:00.004-05:00

I bought a new car a month ago and one of my "must-have" features was a moonroof. Not to soak up the sun or to get a breeze rolling through the car, but so I can get shots like this when I'm rolling through a wooded area looking for eagles.

This image and the one that follows were taken last week at the oft-visited site of Lock and Dam 18 near Burlington, Iowa. The following day the light was better and I was set up on a tripod waiting for eagles to pass overhead with their fish. The thing I like about this image is the detail visible in the feathers.

Click on the images for larger versions. A short report has been posted at eaglephoto.net, and photos are on thomasoneil.com.

2008 Photo of the Year

2008-12-31T20:47:00.002-05:00

It's the time of year for charity, which I suppose is why nine college football teams with 6-6 records got invited to bowl games. It's also time for the Photo of the Year. As usual, I'm the only one allowed to enter and the prize is an all-expense paid trip to Keokuk, Iowa to chase eagles, which I will be doing next month.

Previous POY have something in common; they are all of birds. If the circumstances were somewhat different I might have broken that tendency with a good bighorn sheep image, but I don't have one that tops the Great Horned Owl fledgling and mother that I snapped at Honeymoon Island State Park in Florida back in March.

Great Horned Owls

Here are my POY selections for 2002-2007.

Junior I 2002	Gentoo Penguins 2003	Little Brothers 2004
Bald Eagle 2005	Blue Jay 2006	Eagle with fish 2007

Cleghorn

2008-12-11T22:04:00.010-05:00

When I was a youth in Rapid City, SD, one of our family's favorite stops was Cleghorn State Fish Hatchery to see the huge trout in the ponds there. But I don't recall a herd of bighorn sheep wandering the grounds.

There was a blurb in the Sioux Falls Sunday paper warning motorists to watch out for bighorns along the highway near the fish hatchery. I left Tuesday and drove the 350 miles west to see what there was to see. The bighorns weren't hard to find as six rams and two ewes were grazing on the grounds and across the highway on a steep hill.

I stopped again Wednesday morning and the count was up to eight rams and four ewes. Then I drove on to Custer State Park and found nine bighorns (two rams and seven ewes) grazing on the visitor center lawn.

In the first image, the curling lips behaviour these two Cleghorn rams are showing is indicative of the rutting season. The second image shows the two Custer rams in the snow. Click on images for larger version. I added several dozen photos from November and December to my Autumn 2008 gallery.

Mo Birds

2008-11-26T12:32:00.007-05:00

I did a quick trip to see the snow geese at Squaw Creek NWR in northwest Missouri Monday and Tuesday. The official guesstimated eagle number for Monday was 61, which seems high to me, but there were multiple viewing opportunities. The official snow goose number was 110,000, which is as good a guess as any. Click on images for larger versions.

Lots o' snow geese

Eagle on muskrat hut

Watchable Bighorns

2008-10-21T23:06:00.003-04:00

Today I drove through Bighorn Canyon in southern Colorado looking for, what else, Rocky Mountain bighorns. I didn't see any. (Plus I'm having electrical problems with my car and my Sirius radio is currently unavailable, which is not fun on a long drive.)

However, a couple days ago in Custer State Park, South Dakota, I saw nineteen (19!) bighorns, including a herd of 12 ewes and lambs on the lawn of the Norbeck Visitor Center, and a group of seven rams grazing four miles to the west. Here's one of the rams. Click on the image for a larger version.

Zoolander

2008-09-27T21:42:00.003-04:00

My photo goal for the month was to get some elk. The supposed several thousand elk in the Black Hills were uncooperative, so I did a day trip Friday down to Lee G. Simmons Wildlife Safari near Omaha. I was there a month ago, and the elk were losing their antler velvet then. This time the antlers were polished and the elk were bugling.

The park is part of the Henry Dorly Zoo, so I've been pondering whether doing photography in a zoo is really "wildlife" photography. I suppose it isn't. I have 178 bald eagle images on my web site. One of them is a captive eagle. I included it because it is a closeup that I shouldn't even try to get in the wild. So I'm not a purist.

As long as I was there and the elk were there, I fired off a couple hundred shots and will be posting some of them.

52

2008-09-18T20:52:00.003-04:00

Sometime in the 1960's our grade school class toured Ellsworth Air Force Base in western South Dakota. I remember they let us look inside the KC-135 tankers, but not the B-52s. Until the mid-80's, you could see the giant tails of parked B-52s as you drove past the base on I-90, and occasionally you would see one the behemoths lumbering through the sky.

The base switched over to the B-1B in 1987. There is only one B-52 remaining at Ellsworth, at the South Dakota Air and Space Museum just outside the main gate. Unlike the Strategic Air and Space Museum near Omaha where the gigantic aircraft are crammed into two hangers, the 20 aircraft on display at Ellsworth are mostly outside. Much better for taking photos, but I wonder what effect the weather will have on them.

In addition to the B-52, other significant aircraft are a B-1B, a B-29, and a B-25 that was Gen. Eisenhower's personal transport during WWII. The museum is free. There also is a tour of the base featuring a Minuteman missle training silo for $7, but the last tour for the season is tomorrow and they don't resume until June.

Ram On

2008-09-17T16:25:00.005-04:00

I don't know if it's accurate to say I'm on vacation since I've been unemployed/retired for just over a year, but it really feels like a vacation this week in Custer. I've alternated between floating around the hotel pool and hiking through the Black Hills for the past few days.

The wildlife species I've been looking for this week has been elk. Supposedly there are hundreds of elk roaming around Wind Cave National Park and Custer State Park. All I have to prove that is a very dark and noisy image I snapped after dusk last spring, but I have never driven arond a curve and seen a herd grazing in a sunlit meadow. This is the time of year when the bulls are bugling, so I heard six or more bellowing at each other this morning. I think I caught a half-second glimpse of one 200 yards away. Fortunately on the way back to the hotel for my noon hot tub break, I came across a couple of Rocky Mountain Bighorns in Custer State Park.

I guess to see elk I need to head down to Simmons Wildlife Safari near Omaha again. There the elk graze next to the road and I can shoot with my wide-angle lens.

Infrared

2008-09-11T18:18:00.004-04:00

For months (off and on) I've been trying to find a decent location for my trail camera. I think I finally found it. It's less than a mile from my house, but it's a low-traffic area for humans and I've seen deer in the area. If this were a daytime shot you would see a pond in the background.

This is the best of three deer shots I've gotten since I found this location two days ago. It was taken by infrared at 3 a.m. But my hope is to get a shot of a fox, which I have seen in the area.

Sept. 27 update: Besides the deer I've also gotten some motion-blurred images of something. I don't think it's a racoon, although it seems to be about that size. My best guess is it's a muskrat.

Elk

2008-08-26T20:40:00.005-04:00

I've made stops at various places that claimed to have elk, and usually all I saw was scattered shy animals a few hundred yards away in the trees. So I was skeptical of the brochure photos for Simmons Wildlife Safari near Omaha which showed cars surrounded by elk.

I took along my usual brace of telephoto lenses, the 500mm and the 100-400. I had the wide-angle zoom that I used at the SAC museum, but I didn't expect to need it to shoot elk.

I was wrong about that. The 500mm was almost useless. This was taken with the wide angle from 10 feet away. The elk are oblivious to cars, and there are quite a few of them. And most of them have huge antlers.

Most of the bulls had either shed their velvet or were in the final stages of doing so. The tattered velvet hanging down made them look like Dodger fans wearing Manny dreads. I might stop back again in a few weeks to see if they are in the rut and bashing away at each other.

Strategic Air Command

2008-08-25T20:17:00.000-04:00

The first day of a short trip to the Omaha area found me at the Strategic Air and Space Museum a few miles to the west. I've been in the major air and space museums in Washington and elsewhere, but this facility commemorating the Strategic Air Command has a unique problem -- many of its mementos are gigantic. It's not hard to put a bunch of space capsules in a room. Finding space for a B-52 is more of a challenge.

The museum has two huge hangers, yet there isn't enough space between the planes to get good photos. There is a B-52 of course, but I was a big surprised to see that it looks like a toy next to a B-36. The B-36 had 10 engines (6 piston and 4 jet), and had intercontinental range without refueling. Eventually it was replaced by the all-jet B-52.

Unlike WWII piston-driven warbirds which are kept flying by enthusiasts, you aren't going to see any B-36s or B-52s (eventually) outside of a few museums. Below is a left wing full of B-36 engines. (The propellers face backward.)

Woody Followup

2008-07-15T13:17:00.002-04:00

I made it back to Newton Hills State Park today fully equipped to blast away at any red-headed woodpeckers that came within view. The nest hole I spotted last week was in a tree at the bottom of a creek bed, and due to the steep banks it was pretty much impossible to get closer than about 50 yards. I was able to get this shot as the bird roosted in a closer tree, perhaps 30 yards. DSLR, 500mm lens, 1.4x converter. Click on images for larger versions.

I pointed my telescope at the nest hole and saw this little woodpecker peering back at me. This image was digiscoped through the telescope.

The last few times I have used my digiscoping setup (Televue 85 telescope, 20mm eyepiece, Canon G6 camera) have been chasing eagles at Squaw Creek NWR in Missouri, and they were miserable experiences for the most part. The two primary problems were moving subjects and wind. Since it takes so long to locate and focus on a subject, digiscoping is difficult unless you can predict exactly where the subject will be. And wind causes the scope to vibrate so much that the camera can't take a sharp image at the high magnification. Fortunately this morning at Newton Hills, there was very little wind and it was easy just to focus on the nest hole.

Woody

2008-07-09T23:12:00.004-04:00

I was hiking through Newton Hills State Park (SD) today looking for whatever there was to find. I saw this red-headed woodpecker that was using this hole as a nest and got a few shots with a 400mm lens. It's difficult to get any closer because the tree is in a creekbed with high banks on each side. Maybe next week I'll try to get some digiscoping shots, which should provide more magnification.

Bombers

2008-07-08T20:22:00.007-04:00

If I was a K-State basketball player, I would be listed at 6-foot-3, but in reality I'm about 6-0. I was pondering that today as I was attempting to stand upright in the belly of the B-17 bomber "Nine O Nine," which was parked on the tarmac at Joe Foss Field in Sioux Falls, SD. My guess is the ideal waist gunner would be at least three inches shorter than me. At the foot of the waist gunners is the tiny little hatch leading into the ball turret, and all I can say about that is, "No effing way!"

B-17's with their crews of 10 were bombing Germany 65 years ago, which means anyone still alive who crewed these flights is in their 80's or beyond. As someone who is from a generation or so later (and with no military service) it boggles the mind that men had the courage to do such things.

The B-17 and three other warbirds are on the Collings Foundation "Wings of Freedom" tour. The other planes are the B-24 "Witchcraft," B-25 "Tondelayo," and P-51 "Betty Jane." Although I've seen examples of these planes before at various air shows, this was the first opportunity I've had to climb inside the bombers. And if I had been willing to cough up $400 or so, I could have flown in one of the bombers. ($2,200 for the P-51.) The tour continues through the summer in the Midwest and East.

Golden

2008-06-12T22:41:00.005-04:00

My only planned stop on the way home from the Black Hills was a return to the raptor nest near Quinn. Once again the young one in the nest wasn't very cooperative, standing to stretch for just brief moments. And still there was no adult in sight. But based on size, coloration and habitat, I'm fairly certain in identifying it as a golden eagle.

I took a shortcut on the way back to I-90 and saw this cooperative subject on a post near the road. After scouring my Sibley bird book, I'll say it's an Upland Sandpiper.

Close Encounter

2008-06-11T19:56:00.005-04:00

Way back in 1977 when Spielberg did Close Encounters of the Third Kind, there really were coastal dimwits who thought Devils Tower was a special effects creation. I set out today to prove that is not true.

From Custer I drove up the west side of the Black Hills, in other words the Wyoming side. Keep going long enough and eventually you run into this ancient volcano plug.

It's a national monument, and the admission price to the grounds is $10. Unless you are planning to do some hiking/climbing, or you need a ranger to tell you all the factoids that you could read in the brochure, I don't think it's worth $10 to get a slightly closer view than you can get from the highway.

It didn't take long to get my snapshots and drive on to Spearfish, so before checking into my hotel I took a ride through Spearfish Canyon. It might be heresy to say so, but I think this drive is overrated. I think there are many more lovely canyons and valleys in the Black Hills, but they don't have paved roads running through them and they don't get the publicity. I drove back to Spearfish via gravel county roads. There were a few potholes to avoid, but I thought it was just as scenic as the canyon. Don't tell anyone.

Custer Day 2

2008-06-10T23:45:00.007-04:00

Another day of roaming around Custer State Park produced some family images of prairie dogs and bison. The adult bison are still shedding their winter coats. See below.

But the day's goal was to find some of the alleged 1,000 elk that roam the park. The lady at the wildlife center pointed me to the appropriate location, but warned that they usually didn't come out until dusk. Sure enough, I didn't find any during the day.

Although it was getting dark, I decided to make one last attempt and drive east toward the Game Lodge before heading back to my hotel. I spotted a car a few hundred yards ahead stopped and looking at something, so I slowed down. It turned out to be six elk a few yards back in the trees. Since it was almost dark, I set my camera's ISO to 3200 and fired. The images aren't worth posting, but they do prove there are elk in the park.

Back to Custer

2008-06-09T23:50:00.008-04:00

I figured I had better get to the Black Hills before they are completely overrun by tourists for the rest of the summer, so I embarked today. On the way I took a short detour north of I-90 near Quinn to check out a raptor nest near the road that I spotted a few months ago. There is a young raptor in the nest, but it didn't sit up to provide a good view and there were no adults in the area. My guess is it's a golden eagle, but I could be wrong.

I arrived at Custer State Park at 4:00, which left plenty of time to drive some of the back roads before dark. The park and South Dakota National Guard are hosting 4,000 soldiers from various units for two weeks, and some of the usually deserted back country spots are occupied. Most of the gravel roads have a good surface but are very narrow. I came across a military truck sitting at about a 30 degree angle with the two right wheels dangling over the ditch. And two despondent-looking soldiers trying to figure out how to get it back on the road.

The sarge (I'm guessing) said they had to swerve to avoid deer crossing the road, and asked if I would take the private (I'm guessing) back to the nearby camp to get help. The front seat of my car was jammed with camera gear and a cooler, so the private had to ride in the back. As we approached the crest of a hill, he said, "Here is fine." I was confused as to why he wanted to get out there so I continued on over the hill, then saw the camp about a quarter mile further on. Apparently the GI didn't want his buddies to see him rolling into camp in the back of an old Camry, so he hopped out there and started jogging toward camp as if he had run the three miles. Remember Rosie Ruiz?

Anyway, when I wasn't on military transport duty I managed to get this shot of pronghorn twins and mom. And I saw a rainbow. Click on the images for larger versions.

Trail camera

2008-05-31T18:20:00.003-04:00

One of my recent acquisitions is a 5MP Bushnell trail camera. Hunters use them to scout the best location for blasting critters, but I'm interested in the actual images. I think that difference in motivation is why I haven't been very impressed with the camera so far. The motion detector works well enough, but the images, I must say, suck.

I saw a fox sprinting across a nearby field a few weeks ago, so I set up the camera in a stand of trees nearby. After a week, I got about 140 images of vegetation waving in the wind, two of me approaching to check it, and one of the deer below. I can tell this is an antlerless deer, but other than that I don't have much use for a noisy 5MP JPG.

Nonetheless, I'll probably try a new location in the next few days in the hope of getting a shot of that fox. At my next location I'll avoid shooting into the sun and also avoid having vegetation in the background that sets off the motion detector when the wind comes up.

Eagle's Nest

2008-05-20T23:14:00.004-04:00

During my recent trip to Kansas, I cut through the northwest corner of Missouri and Squaw Creek NWR to see the bald eagle nest. I saw a youngster in the nest, but the light and the weather were unfavorable for making images. I drove down to Squaw Creek yesterday so I could spend this morning getting some better images of the eagles.

Throughout the morning I saw an adult eagle roosting near the nest and flying around, but got only the slightest view of the little one. In early afternoon just as the sun was moving toward an unfavorable angle, I finally got a few shots of an adult at the nest and the youngster shaded but visible.

Since this was just a brief trip and I had plenty of trunk space, I also brought along my telescope and digiscoping attachments. For comparison purposes, the above image taken with a DSLR and 1000mm lens (500mm + 2x teleconverter) is cropped, and the digiscoped image below is uncropped, so the digiscoping setup does provide more magnification. It's also less sharp and very difficult to focus.

Neither version is real successful but still they are the best "adult and young eagle in a nest" images that I've gotten. So there's plenty of room for improvement.

Goldfinch

2008-05-16T13:25:00.004-04:00

When I was in Massachusetts the goldfinches were around all year, but here in the frozen heartland I didn't see any all winter at the thistle seed feeder. Finally yesterday a group of three or so finally made their presence known, but it was too late in the day to get any images. And today a big shovel is digging a basement in the empty lot next door, so I think the little birds are staying away from the commotion.

So here's a Massachusetts goldfinch from '06, and at least now I know they frequent South Dakota as well.

Yellowhead

2008-05-02T01:05:00.004-04:00

Here is my best yellow-headed blackbird shot from my trip to Kansas. Click here for a wrapup and a link to more photos.

Cheyenne Bottoms

2008-04-30T22:54:00.006-04:00

I drove north of Great Bend, Kansas today to check out the Cheyenne Bottoms area, which includes a state wildlife management area and some Nature Conservancy land. I can see why birdwatchers flock here; there's lots to see through binoculars and spotting scopes.

But my conclusion after two days of touring is the best photo ops are in Quivira NWR to the south. Most of the images I got were on the Wildlife Loop next to the Big Salt Marsh in the northern part of the refuge. And proving once again that I'm not a birder, I had to consult my bird books to see that this is a Wilson's Phalarope.

It was tremendously windy today. I would guess it was a steady 35 mph. There was a high overcast in the morning, but it blew away in the late afternoon, so at least the lighting was good for a few hours. The owls I saw yesterday were both huddled inside the barrel nest. The adult seemed to be seeking some protection from the wind.

Salt of the Earth

2008-04-29T22:24:00.000-04:00

I'm doing a week in Kansas, hoping to see the shorebirds as they migrate through Cheyenne Bottoms in the central part of the state. On the way I drove through one of my usual spots, Squaw Creek NWR in northwest Missouri, and saw a few little shorebirds flitting around there. The active eagle's nest is now in a location nearer the road than a few years ago, so I will stop again on my return and try to get some images in morning light.

Another stop was the Kansas Underground Salt Museum in Hutchinson. I suppose Kansas might suffer from an image problem as a boring place to visit, but two of the "8 Wonders of Kansas" are in Hutchinson. I've been to the Kansas Cosmosphere a couple of times, but not the salt mine until today. It's 650 feet deep, which is the second-deepest mine I've been in. (During my journalism days 25 years ago, I went 8,000 feet down into the Homestake Gold Mine.) I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but if you are ever stuck in Hutch for a day, visit the Cosmosphere first, the salt mine second, then go have BBQ dinner at Danny Boy's on Main Street.

I didn't get to Cheyenne Bottoms State Wildlife Area or the Nature Conservancy's Preserve today, but I did go through the nearby Quivira NWR. I saw a large owl, probably a Great Horned, in a tree on the opposite side of a pond. It was too far and dim for good images, but I might try again tomorrow. I know it will be roosted in the same area because there was a young owl peeking out of one of the barrel nests constructed in the pond a few yards from shore.

And there were pockets of shorebirds. This is an American Avocet.

Lighten Up

2008-03-29T15:47:00.007-04:00

If you have been looking at this blog for the past three weeks and thought the images looked quite dark, you are not alone. I've had my new laptop for just a short time, and it's obvious that images that look fine on its very bright screen are quite dark on my desktop monitor, which I'm guessing is closer to what most people have. So I've edited the images. Here's a new one of the fledgling owl.

Something New

2008-03-25T18:54:00.005-04:00

Now that I'm unemployed and don't have to fly to get to places quickly, I can take my time and see the sights along the way. I spent much of the day in Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area in western Kentucky and Tennessee. I took a drive through the Bison and Elk Range, where I saw about 40 bison and two elk. There's also another few dozen bison in a pasture a few miles south.

It's still too blustery to say spring has sprung, but there are many, many wild yellow daffodils throughout the area. It looks like a charming area, but I can envision it being overrun with people during the summer.

49

2008-03-23T21:00:00.005-04:00

It was my last full day in Florida. I snapped a few more butterflies before leaving the Lower Suwannee area. I didn't notice until I looked at this image on my computer that the butterfly's head and body are caked with pollen. Click on the image to see the closeup.

Tomorrow I'll be driving through Alabama on my way northward. It will be my 49th state, leaving only Oregon. Maybe I'll get Oregon later this year.

Of course I'm claiming credit for Michigan and Washington even though my presence there was limited to the Detroit and Seattle airports. I've had pointless debates about whether such states should count. Absent official notification to the contrary, I'm claiming them.

What I think is even more pointlessly impressive is my '94 Camry has been in 34 states. Think about it.

Flutterby

2008-03-22T19:18:00.005-04:00

My northward return journey has begun, and my modest goal for today was to find a little patch of ghost crabs in Lower Suwannee NWR. I found them under the boardwalk on the Dennis Creek Trail in the southern part of the refuge, although there weren't as thick as they were when I saw them several years ago. I got a few snapshots, but to see what I was trying to get it probably would be best to wait for the video to come out.

But when I got there, I discovered my videocam battery was dead. Fortunately I have a 12 volt inverter, so I was able to go back to the car get enough of a charge in 10 minutes to get the video. Now I know why I bought that inverter thing.

As I was leaving that part of the refuge, I saw something along the road a hundred yards away. I stopped to get my DSLR out of the trunk and carefully drove up to catch a few shots of this fox.

I headed northward from there and turned onto the Nature Drive, which turned out to be swarming with butterfies. I stopped at a couple of locations and snapped away. I'll post more images when I get home, but here's one example. Click on the images for larger versions.

Back Scratcher

2008-03-21T20:30:00.005-04:00

I went back to Honeymoon Island to get some more osprey shots today, and saw something I've seen there before. One osprey took off, circled, and landed on the back of another osprey. I know what the obvious explanation is, but I don't think that's what they were doing. Click on the images for larger versions.

I saw the two owls again today, but their posing wasn't nearly as good as yesterday. If you look down instead of up, you are likely to see tortoises and armadillos crawling through the underbrush, although I didn't see last year's nonchalant racoon.

Best Owls Ever

2008-03-20T21:13:00.011-04:00

There's no place like Honeymoon Island State Park near Tampa. Not only is it the best place I've found to see nesting osprey, but for the past few years there has been a Great Horned Owl nest on the island. The best image I got a couple years ago was distant and murky, but today I was lucky enough to get this shot of the fledgling and the mother.

I got lots of osprey shots and no doubt will get more tomorrow. In addition to fish, some of the ospreys were hauling vegetation, perhaps to fix up their nests after recent windy days. Click on images for larger versions.

Venice

2008-03-19T19:17:00.006-04:00

On my way from Ft. Myers to Palm Harbor, I stopped at the Venice rookery. Blue herons, egrets and anhinga were busy building nests. This blue heron made several trips to get sticks. Click on the images for larger versions.

Ding

2008-03-18T22:19:00.004-04:00

I think Sanibel Island near Ft. Myers demonstrates what is right and wrong with Florida. It's beautiful, but way too crowded. I headed out to "Ding" Darling NWR on Sanibel today, and endured horrendous traffic getting on and off the island. While I was there I did get a few decent snapshots, including this pelican splashing around in pursuit of fish.

Twinkies

2008-03-17T19:56:00.005-04:00

The last MLB game I attended was last August at Fenway Park. I was on my way out of town, and the Boston Red Sox were on their way to winning the World Series.

Now that I've moved from Red Sox Nation to Twinkie Territory, I thought it was appropriate that this visit to Ft. Myers included not a visit to City of Palms Park to see the Red Sox, but instead a stop a few miles away at Hammond Stadium, the spring home of the Minnesota Twins.

The Twins were unable to keep some of their stars from last year, so will be depending heavily on first baseman Justin Morneau and pitcher Francisco Liriano. During today's St. Paddy's Day game with Florida, Morneau had one single and a hard out, but Liriano looked like he's still not 100% from his surgery more than a year ago. I don't know that the Twins have the firepower to stay competitive with other teams in their division.

Regarding the Florida Marlins, even though they won this game 5-3 it would be safe to say no one in the stadium had ever heard of anyone in their lineup. The most surprising thing was when the Marlins put up a few runs, I saw a few guys raising a cheer. Apparently all four of their season ticket holders decided to carpool and make the drive from Miami.

If I'm counting correctly, I've been to all nine current spring training facilities in Arizona, but only two (the two in Ft. Myers) in Florida. Hammond Stadium is a fairly standard 7,500-seat spring training facility with decent parking. One thing I didn't like is the berm/lawn seating is a fairly small area down the right field line rather than in the outfield.

Warbirds

2008-03-15T18:26:00.009-04:00

I was at the TICO Warbirds Air Show in Titusville, Florida today. Here's a few samples. Click on the images for larger versions.

F-16 Falcon smashing moisture out of the air

P-51 Mustang

Heritage Flight with F-15 Eagle, P-51 Mustang, and F-16 Falcon

Alligator Farm

2008-03-13T20:43:00.006-04:00

Today my route took me through St. Augustine, so of course I had to stop at the Alligator Farm and shoot egrets and storks for a while. When you have a 500mm f4 lens the temptation is to use it for everything, but the rookery at the Alligator Farm is so close that it's best to back off to 250mm for flight shots.

But sometimes only the 500mm will do, and that's what the second shot is. Click on the images for larger versions.

Ft. Sumter

2008-03-11T19:15:00.007-04:00

Today was my last full day in Charleston before moving on to St. Augustine. In the morning I took the Ft. Sumter tour to see where the first shots of the Civil War were fired.

I'm sure in the 19th Century a harbor fort made sense for coastal defense when you also had control of the nearby mainland. But if all the land around you is hostile, you are just a target for enemy artillery practice. It's best to give up and sail back to New York, which is what the undermanned Yankees did when the Rebs started lobbing shells at them.

Much of the original fort was blasted into rubble when the Yankees came back, 1863-65, so the structures on the island actually were built after the Civil War. Still, it's a fascinating old fort, and it was my one chance to get out on the water here.

In the afternoon I headed up to Cape Romain NWR to see the Red Wolves. The enclosure is on a trail behind the Sewee Visitor Center, which is shared by the Fish & Wildlife Service, Forest Service and others. The Red Wolf used to cover much of the Southeast but is now endangered.

There was one wolf in view, and I got the below image through plexiglass. Click on the images for larger versions. I also hiked the mile-long trail to some small ponds, but no images resulted from that.

Washo Reserve

2008-03-10T22:27:00.005-04:00

I went to the Nature Conservancy's Washo Reserve north of Charleston today looking for osprey. After all their web site says the reserve is "one of the largest concentrations of this bird on the east coast." I saw a few flying around but I didn't see any that appeared to be nesting. Perhaps it's slightly early.

I also got rather lost. Usually I can follow a map, but I looked at the trail map before, during and after my hike and was never precisely sure where I was. Trail markings are sporadic and I considered myself lucky to find my car as quickly as I did. Of course I forgot my handheld GPS.

Without any osprey coming close, about the only photo op was this gator lurking in one of the ponds. Click for a larger version.

Charleston

2008-03-09T19:33:00.006-04:00

I arrived in South Carolina yesterday after getting sideswiped by a winter storm in Kentucky. Today was "Warship Day" as I went over to see the Hunley submarine at noon and the Patriot Point fleet in the afternoon.

The Hunley was a Confederate privateer that was the first submarine to sink an enemy warship in 1864, but was lost on that same mission. It was recovered from the ocean floor in 2000, and has been undergoing conservation in Charleston ever since. No photography is allowed in the conservation area, so I don't have any shots of that.

But the USS Yorktown is outside for all to see. It's moored at Patriot Point along with a destroyer, submarine, and Coast Guard cutter. I've been on the USS Intrepid which is from the same era as the Yorktown, so the experience is similar. It's been a few years, but I think the Intrepid has more exhibits and more pristine aircraft displays. But I'm sure its location in New York brings in more revenue and makes that possible. But anyway...

I was sitting on a bench on the destroyer, the USS Laffey. I could not believe how narrow it was. It's only 41 feet wide! On this ship, 336 men lived in cramped quarters for months at a time, and from time to time went into battle. As I get older, and particularly today after I banged my head going up one of the low stairways, I find it harder and harder to believe that humans do such things.

Click on this image of the Yorktown to see a larger version.

Southeastward

2008-03-06T20:58:00.009-05:00

Today was the first day of a three-week journey, and there will postings as I proceed. I drove across Iowa today, stopping at a couple of familiar sites to see how they have changed since January.

When I stopped at Neal Smith NWR southeast of Des Moines a couple months ago, the roads were snow covered but very passable. Today they were a muddy mess and I turned around without completing the full loop. I saw only one elk (antlerless) off in the distance, but the bison herd was closer to the road and I got a few "environment" shots of them and the big cottonwoods. Click on the image for a larger version.

After that it was off to Lock and Dam 18 to see if any eagles remained. As I drove across southeast Iowa, I actually saw 3-4 eagles near Radar O'Reilly's home town (Ottumwa) and saw quite a few hawks along the way. As I approached the dam about an hour before sunset I thought at first all the birds flying around were seagulls, but closer examination revealed about 20 eagles mixed in, both flying and roosting.

Rather than trying to add to the batch I posted in January, I got out my new video camera and tried it out. My Canon ZR60 gave up the ghost after three years, so I replaced it with a cheap Panasonic PV GS90. I stuck with a standard definition videocam rather than HD not only because it's a lot cheaper but the HD cameras seem to top out at 10-12x optical zoom, which is sort of useless for distant wildlife. The Panasonic has a 42x optical zoom. The image stabilization and the zoom seem smoother than my old Canon, although it seems as though the plastic case couldn't be much thinner. So, another new toy. When I get home I might try to put together a couple minutes of video for the web.

The Final Frontier

2008-02-26T15:16:00.002-05:00

Back in 2004 I toured the Southwest, part of which included a TravelQuest International bus tour of sites related to outer space (astronomy, space exploration, UFO's). If there's a solar eclipse coming up, no doubt TQ has tours to areas where it can be seen. For the Aug. 1 eclipse they have four different tours: Russia, China, North Pole by icebreaker, and North Pole by aircraft.

If icebreaking to the North Pole is not daring enough for you, I just got an email from TQ announcing flights into outer space starting in 2010 for a mere $200,000. Considering the Russians have been offering flights to the space stations for about $20 million, this seems like a bargain. But they are only suborbital flights. Alan Shepard's first Mercury flight lasted only 15 minutes, enough time to experience weightlessness for a few minutes.

Of course TQ is just the travel agency. The spaceline is called Virgin Galactic run by, of course, Richard Branson. Rather than plunk down the $200K, I'll wait and see if discount tickets become available.

Bighorn

2008-02-22T21:38:00.004-05:00

The Custer State Park literature says there are bighorn sheep in the park, so I went looking for them today. I figured they would be in the high country up by Sylvan Lake. That turned out not to be a productive idea.

As I was headed back south to see some more bison and pronghorns, which have been a sure thing around the Wildlife Loop the last couple days, I was muttering, "If there are bighorns in the Black Hills I'm never going to find them." A few minutes later I rounded a corner and had to brake for a flock of 11 sheep, including one ram with the big horns.

I think they were licking salt off the road. They hung around for quite a while, eventually crossing the road. The ram was trailing, so I had time to set up and get a good image of his jump over the rail. Click on the images for larger versions. Click here for more photos.

I Am Curious (Brown)

2008-02-21T22:22:00.003-05:00

I decided to drive the 400 miles to Custer State Park in South Dakota this week to snap a few bison and pronghorns. Besides the photo ops I was also motivated by the fact it's 20 degrees warmer in the western part of the state this week than in the east.

Almost everything in the park and many of the businesses in the town of Custer are closed for the season, so there's almost no touristas. That's a good thing. But after the first half hour of driving around I was wondering if all the wildlife also had gone elsewhere for the winter.

I finally found a herd of about 50 bison at the southern end of the Wildlife Loop, and also came across several more similar-sized groups of bison and more pronghorn than I've ever seen, perhaps a hundred, many of them right next to the road. So the first day of shooting turned out to be productive.

Toward sunset I was back with the original bison herd getting shots of them settling down for the evening. I've seen the videos of touristas getting thrown 20 feet in the air by bison, so even though I was 50 yards away I was shooting from the car. I noticed one of the bison was heading directly toward me. It wasn't charging, but it was "striding purposefully." From the size of the horns I think it was a young bull.

I rolled up my window to keep him from poking his head through. But he was headed for my front fender. He pressed his nose up against it for 15 seconds, as if he expected something to happen. Perhaps his mother had resembled a tannish '94 Camry and he was hoping for milk. Anyway, he eventually backed off, looking a bit confused, and wandered back to the herd.

The second photo is a pronghorn scratching its head on some dried weeds. Click on the images for larger versions.

I'll post more photos when I have time.

Dazed and confused Itchy

Quick Eagles

2008-02-06T21:17:00.001-05:00

I haven't found an eagle-viewing spot comparable to the dam near Burlington, Iowa, but it's a 450-mile drive for me from eastern South Dakota. I decided to look at somewhere much closer this week, Fort Randall dam in south-central South Dakota, just 135 miles away.

The eagle count was 11 versus 500 for Burlington, but there were a couple of cooperative juveniles roosting in trees on the eastern shore. The adults were more skittish, but I did get a decent flight shot of one. It was worth the drive. For more see Eaglephoto.net.

Click on the photos for larger versions.

Annual Eagles

2008-01-27T00:39:00.000-05:00

Although I see eagles whenever and wherever I can, the most reliable place for me to see and photograph eagles is Lock and Dam 18 near Burlington, Iowa in January and February. So that's what I did this week. I made it to #19 in Keokuk also and there are a few eagles there, but for hundreds and hundreds, #18 is the place to go. See the report and photos.

2007 Photo of the Year

2008-01-13T13:07:00.000-05:00

It's time again for Photo fo the Year. As usual, I'm the only one allowed to enter and the prize is an all-expense paid trip to Keokuk, Iowa to chase eagles, which I will be doing next week.

So it's probably not much of a stretch to select an image from last year's eagle trip as the 2007 POY.

Eagle with a fish

Here are my POY selections for 2002-2006.

Catch All

2008-01-13T12:47:00.000-05:00

Up until August of last year my expeditions could be neatly defined. Every few months I would fly somewhere, rent a car, shoot some photos, and do a little writeup. But now I can get in the car and drive around a large area for several weeks, snapping along the way. I wasn't sure how to present the results in a logical form.

With that in mind I finally decided just to call it Autumn 2007, which includes images from old favorites Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico and Squaw Creek NWR in Missouri, as well as a few from a park a few miles from my house.

If the weather holds, next week I'll drive east to the Mississippi River to see how thick the eagles are around Lock and Dam 17.

Drive

2007-11-10T12:59:00.000-05:00

The reason I took early retirement in August was so I could drive around the American West aimlessly, snapping photos of whatever caught my eye. Recently I completed my first such drive, crossing 11 states and seeing such varied things as mammoth bones, Chinese baseball players, migrating birds, and derelict spaceships. It will take me a few days to go through all my photos, but here is a sample, a roadrunner at Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico.

The sequence between Oct. 24 and Nov. 7 goes something like this. I drove through the Black Hills of South Dakota, stopping at the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs to see the excavation of skeletons of animals that fell into a sinkhole 11,000 years ago, primarily mammoths. After a visit in Colorado, I continued on to Scottsdale, Arizona where I took in four Arizona Fall League baseball games. In addition to games between the usual six teams of minor league prospects, this year the Olympic teams from USA and China also were playing in the league for a week. Then it was on to Bosque del Apache for a couple of days to see the cranes and waterfowl.

Arizona Fall League

My route home took me through Hutchinson, Kansas where I made a second visit to the Kansas Cosmosphere. The first time a few years ago I saw the Apollo 13 command module Odyssey, but the Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule was on a national tour. This time Liberty Bell 7, which was restored at the Kansas Cosmosphere after spending 38 years on the ocean floor, was in its permanent home. My final stop before heading home was Squaw Creek NWR in Missouri to see the waterfowl and a few eagles.

Liberty Bell 7

I've been asked where my next drive will be. My guess is I'll take some short eagling trips to Squaw Creek in December and the Mississippi River in January before embarking on another long one, and I haven't chosen the direction yet.

Victory Tour

2007-09-18T12:32:00.000-04:00

There are those who are lucky enough to be paid to do what they love to do, and there are the rest of us who look forward to the day when they can afford to do something else. As a kid or even as a 28-year-old grad student I never dreamed of becoming an FDIC bank examiner, but that's how I spent the 21 years and four months up until Aug. 17. On that day I accepted an early retirement opportunity and embarked on the rest of my life.

Maybe in six months or a year I might decide that I need to return to the work force in some manner, but for now I plan to travel the West snapping shots of critters. Last weekend was the first chance for me to get out of my house, which is still in chaos after moving from Massachusetts to South Dakota. I headed out to the Black Hills.

The best place in the Black Hills for wildlife is Custer State Park, and I went in search of bison and pronghorn. (Supposedly there also are elk and mountain goats, but I think you have to be a bit lucky to see them.) The biggest group of bison I saw was far away and only single bulls came close. The pronghorns were more cooperative.

Pronghorn

I grew up in the Black Hills so I know about prairie dogs, but still I was surprised at the vast numbers in Custer State Park and Wind Cave National Park where this shot was taken.

Prairie Dog

I had some time to kill in Hill City one afternoon so I toured the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research. These are the folks who were involved in the legal battle over Sue the T-Rex. To make a long story short, they lost and Sue is now in the Chicago's Field Museum. So they went out and got another T-Rex which they named Stan.

In addition to Stan they also have replicas of two other T-Rex skeletons, casts of several T-Rex heads, and lots of other fossils and casts. It's an incredible collection for what basically is a storefront in a tourist town. I think it's a must-see when visiting the Mount Rushmore area. Admission was only $5.

Stan the T-Rex

I might try Custer again before a longer excursion to the Southwest in late October/early November.

Fulton Eagles

2007-07-09T12:12:00.000-04:00

During a recent cross-country drive I wanted to make sure I swung past Lock & Dam 13 near Fulton, IL to see if the eagle's nest was active. It was, sort of. This year's hatchlings were fledglings by the time I got there July 1.

The nest is closer to the road and more visible than the few other eagle's nests I've seen, but it's still not that close. This shot taken with 500mm lens and 1.4x extender shows one of the adults. Barely visible behind is one of the youngsters, and if I had posted a wider shot you would be able to see the second youngster roosting a few feet above the nest. It's not a great photo op but with a good binoculars or scope it is a great observing op. Click for larger version.

Too Many of Something

2007-06-18T07:58:00.000-04:00

Tom Stienstra, Outdoors columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote on the SF Gate blog about a mountain lion eating a pet cat near Eureka, CA, "This is another loud, clear warning that there are too many mountain lions out there."

His conclusion: Time to manage (kill) mountain lions. My conclusion: The ramblings of a deranged mind.

How many humans are there in California? About 37 million. The state Department of Fish and Game estimates there are about 5,000 mountain lions.

House cats are an invasive species. They kill millions of wild birds each year. Maybe it's time to manage house cats. Maybe it's time for humans to manage their own population. Instead we have "sportsmen" who want to kill everything that interferes with their pathetic existence.

Photo of the Year

2007-06-07T08:26:00.000-04:00

I just realized I forgot to select a Photo of the Year for 2006. I was saving up all my vacation time so didn't take any exotic trips last year, and it just slipped my mind. I did put some effort into snapping the birds in my back yard because I knew I would be selling the house this year, and this blue jay photo is from that effort.

Even though I forgot to have the contest (which only I am allowed to enter), I did remember to award myself the prize, which as usual was an all-expense paid trip to Keokuk, Iowa in the dead of winter.

Blue Jay

Here are my POY selections for 2002-2005.

Get Off My Back

2007-05-19T10:50:00.000-04:00

I've posted the photos from my Florida trip. Here are a couple of the highlights, or lowlights depending on your point of view. There are so many osprey in Honeymoon Island State Park that they have to perch on top of each other. Or something.

Next, have you ever done something for someone only to have them dump on you? Literally? Consider this gator at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. The egrets nest there because the gators keep away the raccoons and other predators. As a reward for standing guard, this gator caught one right on the snout, and a few other places as well.

Wildfires have been raging in various parts of Florida. Last Friday I had to drive through a cloud of smoke to get out of the Tampa area. And after a winter in the northeast, I was not accustomed to the warmth and humidity. Maybe I'm rationalizing because I'm moving soon from one cold locale to an even colder one, but I felt a longing for fresh-fallen snow and a crisp, clear winter day.

2007-05-10T15:12:00.001-04:00

Honeymoon Island again, osprey, great horned owl, same raccoon. Hot, windy.

2007-05-09T20:07:00.001-04:00

Honeymoon Island near Tampa. Osprey, armadillo, and a very blase raccoon. More tomorrow.

2007-05-09T09:01:00.001-04:00

Arrived Florida yesterday. Smoky, windy. Few birds at Venice rookery. Honeymoon Island osprey next two days.