Lights, Camera, Action

The learning curve of capturing video with the Canon 5dmk2, making very basic editing of the video for its duration, and uploading it to the web for viewing was accomplished in the past few weeks.

The Burrowing Owl above was photographed at Cape Coral Library in April 2010.

The subject of the video involves the mating behavior of the Florida Burrowing Owl which has been observed with concerted effort at Cape Coral on Florida's west coast about two hours south of Tampa.

Although only having observed the Burrowing Owls for the first time in the 2010 mating season, I have devoted countless hours to learn about the behavior of these birds that occasionally provide an opportunity to document their behavior visually for a mere few seconds at a time.

The Common Moorhen with juvenile and White Ibis above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

There have been a few instances when the mating event was observed to occur twice with the same pair of birds within 10 minutes.

I haven't devoted an entire day to the observation of the birds uninterrupted, so cannot speculate the average number of times the birds may attempt to copulate in a day.

The Common Moorhen juvenile above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

Mating behavior certainly occurs daily, however, as I have observed the behavior with numerous pairs of Burrowing Owls in the neighborhood of the Cape Coral Library and Skyline Boulevard.

A visit to the area on 6 May 2010 with hopes of observing owlets as anticipated proved to show that the offspring are relatively late in their arrival this year potentially due to unusually cold winter weather and early heavy rains last month that may have flooded burrows.

The White Ibis above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

Mating was also not observed yesterday although both male and female owls were seen at the entrance to many burrows in the area.

Mating will typically last for mere seconds which offers great challenges in photographing the event successfully.

The Anhinga above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

Tim Rucci commented to me this week that there might be disturbance of Burrowing Owl behavior with the use of flash photography.

The owls have not appeared to be affected by the accessory at all.

The Scarlet Ibis above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

My video capture of a typical mating of the owls can be seen here and is also now a permanent link from the sidebar at my blog.

It is interesting that certain owls will apparently only mate after sunset, yet others will do so in late afternoon hours, perhaps distinguishing the maturity of the owls.

The White Ibis above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

I have noted most recently that the male is much more distinguishable from the female as coloration in his feathers is evidently bleached from the sun that has become ever stronger as each spring day passes.

In addition to observing the owls this past week, I also made another trip to Lakes Regional Park to attempt to observe the Scarlet Ibis which I was able to do and photograph the species for the first time.

The Common Moorhen juvenile above was photographed at Lakes Regional Park in May 2010.

I also observed the juvenile Common Moorhen that was surprisingly absent from the exact same location the day before.

Baby geese at Crescent Lake Park

This family was so cute that I had a hard time editing which pictures to post. I think the mom is a white chinese goose. There were nine babies when I saw them recently at Crescent Lake Park in St. Petersburg. There was a man feeding them who said they started with 10 babies. They stayed pretty close together and the parents were very aggressive at keeping people away. I took the above pictures with my 500mm lens. It's so much fun to be out taking pictures of all of the cute babies in the spring. Much more baby pictures to come.

More details on the SW Ohio (Clermont Co.) chuck

On Wednesday, April 28, 2010, I heard a Chuck-will's-widow calling in a field behind my property. It was shortly after dusk and the call was repeated for at least approximately 5 minutes. A Barred Owl called right before the chuck started to call. A lot of times owls will get birds to call that normally wouldn't call.

I heard the call loud and clear for at least 3 minutes, until the noise of the neigborhood made the call harder to hear (dogs barking and kids screaming). Since the dog was closer than the chuck, I was unable to get a recording, as I only have a digital camera to do so.

Chuck-will's-widows by Louis Agassiz Fuertes (from Wikipedia)

The habitat that the chuck was in is an old field with Andropogon spp. and other grasses. It has mixed maples, pin oak, and multifloral rose that I can identify.

Here is a photo of the habitat from the area of where I heard the chuck:



Here is an attempt to provide a map of the approximate area of where the chuck was calling from:


View Larger Map

This would make a second record for Clermont Co. for Chuck-will's-widow. The first is of an injured bird found by Raptor Inc. in Milford on or around Dec. 12th, 2004. Details on this bird can be found on the Ohio Ornithological Society's website HERE.

*Addendum: Thanks goes to Bob Foppe for supplying me with info of a chuck specimen found in Clermont Co. on 5/20/1945 from the Owensville area, possibly from the St. Rt. 222 and US 50 area.

Looking at different online sources, one gets a very cloudy idea of the range of Chuck-will's-widow in Ohio.

The source that I put the most faith in is Cornell's All About Birds site. It shows the chuck ranging only in the Adams County/Shawnee - Portsmouth area (southernmost tip of OH) for Ohio.

This site, whatBird.com, shows chucks ranging from Cincinnati eastward to the Ohio-West Virginia border. This is not what I am familiar with, as a chuck in SW Ohio is a rare find.

Here is an article that I found on the Ohio Ornithological Society website that discusses chucks in Ohio in more detail.

I thought that I might have heard it again on Monday night, May 3rd, but it was far off sounding. I have not definitely heard it since that first night.

Reddish egret at Fort Desoto

Reddish egrets are the Fred Astaire of birds. When fishing for food, they dance around in shallow water using the shadow of it's wings to reduce the glare on the water. They are very active and graceful when feeding. It's fun to watch them dancing around and then stabbing the fish. The above pictures are of a single egret that hangs out at the north beach marsh at Fort Desoto. I saw him there last summer and recently he has been back again. These were taken last weekend there. They are not very common to see in Florida so this guy has been photographed quite a bit.

A beautiful, shorebirdy day!

Being such a beautiful day, Ashley and I stopped by East Fork State Park's south beach in Bantam today for some birding. We got a later than I wanted to start, ending up getting there at 2pm. The water was up from the recent rains, so no beach was exposed, just grass. There were quite a few people sunbathing and swimming, so I wasn't expecting much.
Getting out of the car, all I could see were a couple of Ring-billed Gulls and a crow. Some movement caught my eye, and right in front of us a Spotted Sandpiper flew up and out over the water. It started calling, and quickly returned to take perch on a log right in front of us. It posed and gave a look like "look at me, I'm looking at you".

This Spotted Sandpiper is not nearly as intimidating as the mean lookin' Brown Thrasher.

I scanned the shoreline and approximately 50 foot in front of a couple sunbathing, were 12 Willets! They were right in front of us practically and I didn't even notice them. I went back to the car and got the camera. The sunbathing couple gave us an odd look, but didn't say anything when they found out what we were looking at.


We were able to get good looks at them fairly close up. They did not seem at all concerned with us or the closer sunbathers. Then a guy with a dog came up and let the dog off the leash (arrrgghh!!). The birds got antsy and flew out over the lake, calling and circling.

Love those Willet wings!

Long billed curlew

He's back! The long billed curlew that was seen all last summer at Fort Desoto is back. No one knows where he went for the winter. He's a rare sight around central Florida. They are usually in the western and central part of the country. A few have been sighted spending winters in Florida but this guy stays here in the summer. Candlestick Park in San Fransisco was named after this little bird which is also commonly know as a Candlestick bird. They were found in abundance in the 50's at the point where the park was built but are now a rare sight there as well.

Baby owl at Fort Desoto

Baby great horned owl.


Big baby yellow eyes!


Baby in the nest with Mom sitting above hiding behind the pine needles.

Mom sitting close by.

The above baby is probably one of the most photographed babies in the Tampa Bay area. The great horned owl baby is sitting on a tiny nest near the North Beach at Fort Desoto Park. Just look for the tree with all of the photographers standing underneath looking up. The baby was very animated and closely watching a handful of white ibis feeding on the ground underneath the nest. He's almost the size of the parent so he'll be flying soon. I don't know if I'll make it back down to the park again before he is gone.