Wildlife Photography

[roverrocks]

No disruption at all, just naturalists talk. This is the same bird, maybe it's better to tell what it is from this picture?

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Definitely a mountain bluebird from that picture.

 

[photo_i]

Definitely a mountain bluebird from that picture.

Ok, it's settled then. I got to change my check mark in bird book.

 

[BAH]

Some owl shots from last spring

 

[roverrocks]

Such vivid owl shots. The eyes are mesmerizing.

 

[LadyHerm]

My favorite from last summer

Shot from the far end of a 400mm lens across a river. I waited there many hours and it was worth it. This is near the south entrance of Yellowstone National Park.

 

[Pathfinder]

A few images from a recent excursion in Iceland

a Great Skua, also called a brown back gull in New Zealand I understand.

An arctic tern

Some Icelandic horses

a puffin

A working farm dog

Another arctic tern

And lots and lots of great super Jeeps, as they call them

3 L turbo diesel Nissan Patrol - nice ride!

They do like their rides there, even with fuel at ~ $8 bucks a gallon...

 

[nwoods]

Amazing shots. Looks like a great trip!

 

[graynomad]

Yeah great photos, BiF (birds in flight) are quite hard to do.

Get the tyres on those rigs, and one of them has a step ladder to get in

 

[Pathfinder]

The vehicles were either small front wheel drive European city cars, or what they call "Super Jeeps" with the very large tires - frequently almost 14-18 inches wide tread. Lots of them did have small stepladders for the gals I think. They were driven by both guys and gals too. Almost every farm had one as well. I think that is a clue to their winters, perhaps.

Beautiful landscape, and very warm welcoming folks, even with their Viking heritage.

Actually I saw few real Jeeps, they were mostly Nissan, Toyota and Land Rover SUVs of various sorts. They do use large American pickups to a certain extent also, despite fuel prices.

 

[wuntenn]

Few shots from Yellowstone a couple of years ago:

Oxbow Bend and a moose at dawn:

Bison in river:

Elk cow in meadow:

Elk cow in Mammoth Hot Springs:

And a few Scottish ones:

Red deer stags running:

Hooded crow dropping whelks on the seashore rocks to smash their shells open (clever birds):

Wild dolphins hunting salmon near my house:

Dolphin playing 'frisbee' with a jellyfish:

How to give a salmon a sore head:

 

[Pathfinder]

Love the bison in the river, and the dolphin shots are outstanding. Shot from a boat??

 

[photo_i]

Few shots

Great photos!!!

 

[wuntenn]

Love the bison in the river, and the dolphin shots are outstanding. Shot from a boat??

Thanks folks!

No, not from a boat, they come in close to shore. There's interesting physical geography in this area and the Firth narrows and then curves as it comes into the Inner Firth, and on the corner is a point that sticks into the loch and the powerful currents caused by the tide squeezing through has carved a deep channel just offshore through which salmon run and the dolphins scoot about in there and hoover stuff up. This will give you an idea of what it's like, and how close to people they come:

And I mostly use a 300mm f2.8 sometimes with a 1.4x, which has taken most of the shots here, but occasionally I use a 500mm f4 with 1.4x and 2x but that can be a bit much - the following shot was taken one afternoon when the dolphins were waaaay too close for my waaaaaaaay too long lens, but the effect is nice!

More snacking:

It can be nice if they appear in evening light:

And after thousands of shots taken at 1/1000 sec I decided to start using nothing faster than 1/2 sec and this is what has resulted:

Just to give you an idea of the size of these animals - these are Northern Bottlenose (Tursiops truncatus) which have evolved to survive in the cold water of the North Sea/North Atlantic. They are more than twice the size of caribbean dolphins and are incredibly powerful. They can be 4m long and up to 350kg for a big male, but typically between 150kg and 300kg.

They love to bowride and will come into the city with the oil tankers, and the tour boats can get in close to see them - note this shot is with a 700mm lens so the tour boat is not as close to the dolphin and bow-wave as it looks - they do responsible tourism up here and are strictly regulated.

There's a couple of articles I've written about this work (it was part of a major documentary project) here and here.

 

[photo_i]

Just to give you an idea of the size of these animals - these are Northern Bottlenose (Tursiops truncatus) which have evolved to survive in the cold water of the North Sea/North Atlantic. They are more than twice the size of caribbean dolphins and are incredibly powerful. They can be 4m long and up to 350kg for a big male, but typically between 150kg and 300kg.

Ah, that explains it, otherwise I was wondering about the size of Scottish salmon.

Then you need to be able to point'n'shoot because if you're looking through the camera you'll never spot an animal breaking the surface. The ideal way is to look over the top of the camera shotgun-style and rattle off frames whenever you see a splash.

That is a great idea!

 

[LadyHerm]

Owl from a bird preserve in South Carolina