A few springs ago I was photographing fox at a den underneath an old deer-hunting cabin in Central Iowa. I had my back against another building to hide my silhouette, and 1 was covered with a camouflaged netting. I had been photographing the pups, when they suddenly scampered under the cabin. I saw motion in nearby trees and assumed one of the adult foxes had returned to the den with food for the pups. In zooming in on the motion, I was startled to sees a coyote looking for its own meal. It wasn’t until I got home and I enlarged and viewed the images on a monitor, that I noticed the intense look of the coyote’s eyes. Coyote is a key figure in Navajo mythology, and of all the figures in Navajo mythology, Coyote (Maii’) is the most contradictory. He is a shadowy figure that can be funny or fearsome. Coyote is greedy, vain, foolish, cunning and also occasionally displays a degree of power. From looking at this coyote’s eyes, I can see why the mystical references came to be. If you look closely, you can see the teats on this coyote. She was probably looking for a fox to feed to her young pups. 1/160 sec., f/8, 600mm, ISO 720, Nikon D7200, Manfrotto tripod with a Gimbal-style head.
Month: April 2020
Tip #7. Location, location, location
As an aspiring wildlife photographer, I would often drive country roads looking for the occasional pheasant, turkey, duck, deer, or coyote. Most days I came home with few or no good images. Then I started doing more research and followed numerous online image-posting sites to see what, and more importantly where, other wildlife photographers were shooting. Last fall I learned that Longfellow Gardens in Minneapolis is a frequently visited area for hummingbirds on their fall migration south. The groundskeepers do an incredible job of having numerous flowers in bloom for hummingbirds to feed at. On a good day, there are dozens of birds feeding in a small area, making it easy for even a novice photographer to grab some great images. To freeze the wings of a hummingbird in flight, I shoot at least 1/1000 of a second. Longer exposures can be used to freeze the body, but create a blur of the wings. Both acceptable methods. 1/1250 sec., f/6, 400 mm, ISO 400, Nikon D7200, Manfrotto tripod with a Gimbal-style head.
Tip #6. Know what to look for
In researching birding behaviors, I learned that great blue herons create their nests in rookeries. Here in Central Iowa herons prefer sycamore trees for their communal nesting sites. This particular rookery consists of about 50 nests in four sycamore trees in close proximity to each other. At two herons per nest, there are approximately 100 herons that populate this rookery. This time of year herons are working on their nests. To do this, the male heron flies to a nearby area and either finds a stick on the ground or breaks one off a tree. He then flies the twig back to the nest and gives it to the female who uses it on the nest. Ornithologists believe that the main reason for communal nesting is due to a scarcity of nesting areas that are isolated, near an abundant food supply, and contains tall trees. By living in large groups there is cooperative protection of their young from predators. If a hawk or raccoon is seen stalking a baby heron several adults in the colony will physically attack the predator. This is called “mobbing”. With their long, dagger-like bills, a heron can easily kill most predators. Herons are mostly monogamous during a breeding season, but choose new mates every year. In watching the herons for 90 minutes this morning, there was seldom a 15-second period where there wasn’t at least one heron in the air returning to a nest with a stick.