June Bugs — Jon's Photoblog

Welcome back!

I ended my last blog expressing a hope to get back to Shoal Lakes and capture parental birds and their little followers. I tried several times, but as with most plans, reality rarely conforms to the vision. After several visits across different weekends, the only little troop I managed to find were some geese crossing the road:

The parents were extremely protective, and one even charged the car and pecked the bumper! But I sat quietly for a bit and they moved off, leading their parade. Unfortunately I started to move the car too soon, and a couple of youngsters panicked and went in the wrong direction. I snapped a couple of quick shots, but as they were clearly distressed I left the scene:

That particular day was very productive for other shots however. A black-crowned night heron let me get quite close and posed prettily for several shots:

The night heron seemed pretty confident. In contrast, this great egret was extremely shy and never let me get closer than 50 meters:

Meanwhile, neither confident nor shy, a male blue-winged teal seemed confused for just long enough to sit still and settle long enough for a clear shot:

Later, I pulled over on the road to stretch, and noticed a killdeer flapping oddly on the road making a distressed noise. I’d heard of this: they will pretend to be injured to lure predators away from their nest. Well this one was fluttering like an addict going through withdrawal:

I kept creeping forwards to get a cleaner shot, until it finally gave an almost mocking trill and flew off, only to repeat the process as I made my way back to the car.

Watching this whole drama unfold was a yellow-headed blackbird. I’m particularly pleased with the composition of this shot, the symmetry of the reeds, posts, and lines of the wires. I’m grateful to have seen it before the bird landed on the reed, and I had about a minute to shift around and line things up, and then thankfully at the last second he looked in the right direction:

The last shot of that day was a total fluke. As I was driving down the road I saw a vulture lift from the ditch and then saw another still perched on a post. I had the camera on the seat next to me all prepped for birds and had to bring the car to a stuttering halt, holding the window button down to open it, while vaguely pointing the camera out the window in the direction of the bird and hoping…I never even put my eye to the viewfinder, but the Olympus didn’t fail me, it snap focussed on the bird and the result is pretty clean given the circumstances:

It flew off immediately, and all the rest of the shots are just a blurry tail.

Shifting briefly to the mammalian world…a few weekends I managed to drag my carcass out of bed by 5am and try to take advantage of the cooler mornings. One morning was particularly rewarding: I noticed a young doe grazing in a field before she saw me, and managed to change my lenses. In the still morning air she heard the clicking…quite a remarkable feat I thought. By the time I peeked around the bushes to see if she was still there, she’d moved behind a bush of her own, studying me. But in contrast to the usual skittish behaviour she decided to investigate. I’ve tried to internalize those lessons from one of my first blog posts, a Fawn Story, and decided to relax and do a lot of scratching, and she became quite fearless:

She actually got too close for my lens! I’ve never had that problem before, and I wasn’t sure what to do, but eventually she moved off and decided to do some scratching of her own:

After that she pretty much ignored me and nibbled her way across the field.

That morning was also a good morning for bugs and flowers. There was hardly any wind, which of course the mosquitoes loved, so my shoulders look like I have the measles. But it was worth it. I have been exploring better ways to do macro photography. Each attempt emphasizes how much more practice I need to do, but still, there were a few I liked. One of the difficulties (as ever) is isolating the subject. I lucked out here:

Lots of bugs want to dig through those sun-coloured pollen-filled globules. I tried and failed to get fuzzy red-backed bees, bright metallic bees, little wasp-like creatures, butterflies, moths, and innumerable others. But only one move slowly enough that I could take my time and eventually get close enough for a clean shot. I have no idea what it is, it looks kind of cricket-like, but it spent a lot of time sucking on each of those globules like a lollipop:

Towards the end of that day I returned and was rewarded by finding a field with prairie lillies. This particular one was nicely backlit by the evening sun. It seems almost sacrilegious given its glorious colour, but I had a feeling out in the field that it might make a good black-and-white, as it seemed to be almost lit from within. I’m curious which people prefer (though it’s probably best not to look at them side by side):

Of course I didn’t spend my time just on flora and fauna…that seems to be my curse, I want to capture everything and I don’t have enough eyes and hands, and likely I have the attention span of a squirrel.

But when I’m not too distracted with the buzzing life around me, I seem to have this fascination with disintegrating man-made objects. Maybe I get sucked in by the sudden order in the chaos as nature reclaims its space. I won’t inundate you with all the different ways I studied these fence posts (there are a LOT 😄 ), but:

I’m kind of fascinated too by how these nails have all worked loose to about the same height. The bird is a cautious visitor:

A more standard shot of what seems to be my favourite building these days, on a moody morning:

A more watery path to the same location, on an afternoon with the sun playing hide and seek:

Finally, I spent an evening chasing the edge of a massive storm. Unfortunately for a while I kept picking the wrong direction and the sun evaded me, but I still ended up with this classic Manitoba view: