Caspian Tern III

This series of a Caspian Tern with a fish is the most amazing instance I have seen. The photos aren't great, but at least you can see what is going on.  I think I counted the tern dropping this fish eleven times in the course of trying to get it into the right position to swallow.

There isn't much need for commentary. I'm just going to post the pictures. I'm going to post 19 pictures, so I may do it over two days. Remember, if you click on any picture with your cursor, the photos will enlarge so you can see them better.

Caspian Tern II

Another day, another Caspian Tern playing with it's food.  Uh-oh, the fish got away from it.

No problem. Just dive down and re-catch it as it falls. Letting the fish fall has everything to do with getting the fish into the right position to swallow it.

Once the head is going the right way, its down the hatch! From the second photo, the fish can be identified as a white perch.

Caspian Tern

I love to watch the terns when they show up on the river, especially the Caspian Terns. They look similar to their cousins the Royal Tern with their reddish-orange bill, but the Caspian's bill is thicker. They also have quite a bit larger wingspan.

This one has caught a small flounder species. This flatfish, which I'm pretty sure is a species called a hog choaker, doesn't get much bigger than this. They could probably be called tern choakers too since you can see it is going to have fun trying to swallow it as wide as it is.

To watch the tern, you would get the impression it is playing with it's food, but the truth is, they swallow the fish on the fly and it is trying to get it in the right position to do that.

They will flip it around in their bill trying to get it in a head-first position so that when they swallow it, none of the spines stick in their gullet and cause them to choke. They are just fun to watch.

It's a Watercolor World

I love taking pictures in the Fall when foliage reflected in water can add an almost painted effect. It won't work if the sun is out in front of your because the water will be too bright and will blow out. Side lighting works pretty good, but I think the best reflections come when the sun is at your back. It also must be a day when it is flat calm, otherwise the reflections - if present at all - will be too broken up.

There is nothing special about this Great Blue Heron. They fly in this posture a vast majority of the time and it looks rather ungainly. Most of the time, I wouldn't even think about taking a picture of it like this. But, in this case, the water color was the reason for the picture and the heron gave me something live to include in what would otherwise have been a rather static photo.

Herons exhibit a little more grace when landing.

And then its back to looking kinda dorky.

Good Backdrops

One nice thing about a telephoto lens is its narrow angle of focus. Wide angle lens will take in everything out in front of you, but if there is something in the background that would cause a distraction, it can be difficult to exclude it. That is where a telephoto lens comes into its own.

You might get the impression these photos were taken in a marsh, but they were not. They were taken at a little puddle by the side of the road. When you see the background, you might infer that there is much more to it when in fact you are looking at all there is.

The narrowness of the field of view can be an advantage as you can wait until the subject is in just the right spot to take the picture. This was actually a very short stretch of trees the geese were passing by.

Something that is a little more difficult to capture is a grouping like this where every head is visible. You have to take off points when a photo has a goose body where the head is hidden behind another goose body. Sometimes that is the only thing that causes you to reject an otherwise nice picture.

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (YBS) is rather inconspicuous as woodpeckers go. Their call is a rather soft mewing sound which is very close to the same sound a squirrel can make and not unlike a cat. The best evidence of their presence may not be an actual sighting of one, but the rows of holes they leave in the trunks of trees. They tap holes through the bark of trees, then come back later after the holes have accumulated sap to drink the sap and eat any bugs that have been attracted to the sweet liquid. I saw one tap holes in a poison ivy vine one time (the vines can become almost as big around as your wrist) and sip sap! They must not have the problems humans do with this plant.

Here you can see the holes in this trunk. They return year after year to the same trees and you can tell this year's holes by the fresh lighter brown around the edges. After years of tapping a tree, it can look like Swiss cheese.

This is a female YBS. You can see the white chin in the first photo which is red in the male. The red crown bordered by a black band and the large white patch on the wings are other identifiers. Sorry for the quality of the pictures. These were taken when I was still using my junk telephoto and they are not real sharp.

About the only time I have seen them around our house is in the winter.  Their summer and winter ranges meet in this area and they are more migratory than most woodpeckers. These photos, taken in early spring, are about the latest I have seen one in the area.

You would think drilling so many holes in a tree would invite disease and weaken the tree, but I have never read of any instance where this was true. I don't know whether they have preferences in regard to what species they tap. This tree is a sweetgum (hardwood), but I have a big pine (softwood) at the top of the drive that has been heavily tapped also.

So, what are we looking at? This is the confluence of Graham Creek and the Patuxent River.  The main river can be seen in the background. The river is tidal for several more miles beyond this point. Sometimes the tide is so low that the mud flat where silt from the creek settles out of the water before it reaches the river emerges. The tracks were made by a snapping turtle, possibly two.

There is nothing to use as a reference, but the tracks are about a foot across. An average male snapping turtle can reach a width of about fifteen inches. They are extremely cold-tolerant and can be active even under an ice-covered body of water! I have seen one of the snappers that calls this stretch of river home and he is a big one.