Perspectives

Juvenile White-crowned Sparrow - Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, Texas

Saturday I spent the day in and  around Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge and Eagle Lake, TX.  It was a cool day, mid 50s the entire time, but the constant 20+ mph wind was pretty brutal.  It made for poor photography as none of the birds would sit up in the tops of the grass and bushes and everything was moving so much landscape work was difficult too.  Despite that, we had a decent day birding with a half dozen sparrow species or so and lots of other birds as well.  

My highlights included a flock of tens of thousands of Red-winged Blackbirds in a field in the evening.  The birds kept erupting in a mass of birds then landing again.  I spent a half hour or so trying to get an image of it and just never came up with anything I really liked.  The wind was out of the wrong direction and they birds always ended up flying away from me instead of towards me like I had hoped.

I did end up with a couple images from the morning of a Juvenile White-crowned Sparrow that will go into my files so it wasn’t a total bust photographically speaking.  It is always nice to simply get out into the field on a beautiful day.  I also really enjoyed meeting some more of the local birders from Rio Brazos Audubon.

Don’t forget, if you are in the Austin or Bastrop area, I will be speaking tomorrow in Bastrop about the impact of Hurricane Ike on the natural areas of the Upper Texas Coast.  Hope to see you then.

Sunday morning I joined two professors from Texas A&M, Wayne Smith and Helen DeWolf, for a morning wandering through Lake Sommerville State Park.  This is an area that Carrie and I have been wanting to visit for quite some time as we are struggling a bit to find some local natural areas when we are itching to get out and away from the computer and library.  It’s a beautiful area and I really enjoyed the time we had there.  

The light was a little harsh as we were there late in the morning so I decided to continue to shoot in black and white.  The oaks in the area were starting to turn yellow and I really enjoyed the way the light was backlighting the leaves.  The bright yellow leaves lit by the late morning sun from behind in combination with the dark branches and trunks caught my eye and I captured a few different scenes.

Later on, Wayne found a couple of plants that were totally covered in butterflies.  By covered, I mean on 3 small bushes we had probably 50+ individuals with at least half a dozen species.  It was quite an amazing sight.  I didn’t have a macro lens with me, only my 24-70mm zoom so I had fun trying to get some wide angle shots including the butterflies and the flowered plants they were feeding on.  This was the first time I have ever tried anything like this and while the lighting isn’t great, it was fun following these beautiful insects around.  If anyone knows the ID of the insects or the flowers, I’d be grateful.