Monday in Nature March 22, 2016

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<p><strong>Basic Guidelines</strong>: Nature based subject matter. Please, declare captive subjects. Keep your image at/under 700 pixels on the long axis for in-line viewing and try to keep file size under 300kb. Note that this includes photos hosted off-site at Flicker, Photobucket, your own site, etc. Feel free to link your image to a larger version. <strong><em>In the strictest sense, nature photography should not include hand of man elements. Please refrain from images with obvious buildings or large man made structures like roads, fences, walls. Minimize man made features and keep the focus on nature. </em></strong><br>

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<strong><em>Are you new to this thread? We post one image per week. For more <a href="/nature-photography-forum/00cgtY">details on guidelines</a> please read this helpful information. </em></strong></p>

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<p>Greetings,<br>

Nature is full of soothing experiences that fill the senses and bring us to our calm center. We all have our favorite places where we feel complete. We're drawn there and don't even consider resisting the call. Those places feel as if they are part of our very being. They are home and when we are in those places we are one with nature. Sound a bit spiritual? Perhaps. We all feel our world in our own way. We photograph it from that perspective.</p>

<p>The beach calls to many. It's amazing how many form it can take, yet all have things in common. It greets the sunrise. Surprises wash up with each tide. Shore birds race the edges of waves and take to the air. Gulls are everywhere. Sand gets in everything. Waves lap the sand, or course through worn cobblestone. Then they rage and crash, reshaping everything they touch. the sun sets into the horizon and brings the day to a close. Then those creatures who wait for a certain night come onto the sand, answering their own call.</p>

<p>Shells, seaweed, driftwood, wash up on the beach. Pieces of just about anything, natural and some quite unnatural, churn together with the rising tide. Glimpses of life in the ocean make their way onshore, carrying clues about nature under and beyond the breakers. No bottle needed for these messages. Whelks are common, carnivorous gastropods on the Atlantic coast. The shells of Knobbed whelks ( <em>Busycon carica</em>) are often found during winter months along the beaches, as well as their egg cases. Baby whelks grow in the long twisting chains of cases, leaving a hole when they emerge. These were found while beach combing with some feathered friends, in the calm center.</p>

<p>Happy beginning of Spring (Autumn for you folks on the other side)! It's the first Monday in Nature of a new season to be at home, in nature.</p><div></div>

<p>Spring! Catkins!</p><div></div>

<p>Saw some of those egg cases this Saturday at a salt marsh in Connecticut. Always wondered what they were - well now I know. :-) Wile collecting a sediment core from the marsh I ran across this pink stuff, found in a small puddle about 100 yards out from dry land. Happy Spring everyone! After a few nice days in the fifties it's back to snow for me. I love it!</p><div></div>

<p><strong>Turkey Vulture</strong> soaring over Austin, Texas.</p><div></div>

<p>Allen's hummingbird (<em >Selasphorus sasin</em>) at the University of California, Santa Cruz Arboretum.<br>

Nikon D7200 with 600mm lens @ f5.6, 1/1000 sec and ISO 200.<br /></p><div></div>

<p>Laura,</p>

<p>As a life-long hobbyist interested in Conchology myself I appreciate the Busycon eggs. Along the Texas Gulf coast we had different species than on the east coast, but the effect was the same always, always a pleasure to see those cast-aways.<br>

Here in Indiana we had a mini spring last week and a few surprises showed up. This is up in the northwest part of Indiana, better known for the huge Sandhill Crane masses. This little guy, a Northern Watersnake, typical of the species, was very feisty. I was driving and didn't see it before it was almost too late; I manged somehow not to injure this little one. <br>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/18203870-lg.jpg" alt="" width="900" height="598" /><br>

Northern Watersnake, Jasper Pulaski National Widelife Refuge. Pentax K3, 100 f2.8 DAW macro</p>

<p>A wintery start to Spring here in CT this morning</p><div></div>

<p>An older shot of driftwood along Lake Erie:</p><div></div>

<p>Not exactly warm at the moment, but spring is certainly here in Vermont. Sap is running, vultures, bluebirds and red winged blackbirds are back, and robins. Here's a robin that didn't mind me coming up pretty close.</p><div></div>

<p>.</p><div></div>

<p>Some Scarlet Elf Cup mushrooms in a woodland river basin, Iowa.</p><div></div>

<p><strong>Sand Dunes National Park</strong></p>

<p><a title="Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado" href=" data-flickr-embed="true"><img src="https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1552/25830070922_c00435f75b_c.jpg" alt="Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado" width="800" height="534" /></a></p>

<p>Click on the image to see full-screen. These tiny sizes make no sense for these kinds of scenes.</p>

<p>Laura, I haven't seen those whelk egg cases since a kid on the Delaware beaches. As I recall, sometimes there would be tiny, a couple of millimeters or so, juvenile whelks in them.</p>

<p>John, excellent, luminous catkin capture.</p>

<p>David, I'll be driving across country to LA this summer with my son and your beautiful landscape makes me inclined to stop at the park along the way.</p>

 

<p><img src="/photo/18197340" alt="" />Hello - it is not quite Spring here with 2 snow falls expected this week in Southern Quebec where I live. Yesterday there was still ice in different forms on the St.Lawrence river bordering Laprairie and I did some ice shooting from the river bank because the ice is too thin to walk on it. It was late afternoon and the golden light was just catching one section of the ice while most of the rest was in slight shade. There were some prickly branches around me but they are mostly out of focus in this image. I must have shot at least 8 images of this piece of ice but chose this one to share. </p>

<p>All great images as usual. Shun I liked the diagonal composition, color and clarity of your hummingbird. I have tried shooting those with limited success - they are small and don't remain in one position for more than a second or two - you snooze, you lose! And of course, there are no hummingbirds where I live up north.</p>

<p>All the best</p><div></div>

<p>Hi, friends,<br>

spring is here, in astronomical and meteorological sense. So here is one photo representig spring - a forget-me-not in front of a field of primroses.<br>

Hope you like it.<br>

Regards, Miha.</p><div></div>

<p>All excellent shots, Shun your hummingbird photos inspire me. Am thinking that I need something longer than 300mm but not too long like this shot using a Questar telescope. The scope only covers a crop sensor, this is full frame on a D3200 from about 30 feet. You need a crazy heavy tripod and patience dealing with 1400mm and f/11 . </p>

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<p>There were a lot of people beside and behind me waiting for the almost-spiritual sunrise at the <a href="http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/anhui/huangshan/huangshan.htm">Yellow Mountain of China</a>. Yet, amongst all this hoopla, as I hanged out to the edge, I felt one with nature watching these spectacular precipitous cliffs prepare to receive the sun.</p><div></div>

<p>The beach, or any seashore, certainly takes me to my "happy place". This image is from the mouth of the Columbia River, Washington side.</p><div></div>

<p>Just perusing the beach.....</p><div></div>

<p>Glenn S, if you're feeling a bit expansive or have a tax refund or something coming due, I think I can recommend the Nikon 200-500/5.6 zoom. I know Shun Cheung likes his, and it's probably what he does those yummy hummingbirds with, and I find it works pretty nicely on my D3200. </p>

<p>I admire your patience with the Questar, though. </p>

<p>Concerning this week's Allen's hummingbird image, essentially I got a bit lucky, but it also shows that a good wildlife photographer needs to know the biology and animal behavior. (My professional training is all in computer science. Therefore biology is completely out of my field.)</p>

<p>What the Allen's hummingbirds like to do is to perch on top of a small tree. Suddenly they would fly up and then come right back down, sometimes to a different tree or perhaps the same tree. In this case the bird was already on top of that tree for quite a while. Suddenly it went up and then immediately came back down, and I got him in the downward motion. Otherwise, the best AF system is not going to catch a hummingbird in free flight.</p>

<p>I was at UC Santa Cruz for 3 hours on Saturday afternoon and captured some 1300 images, and I got exactly one like this one. I have a lot of static bird-on-flower images that are pretty, but not action like this one. I was fortunate to have a really long lens with me.</p>

<p>For the Anna's hummingbird images I post here and on the Nikon Forum, this year my preferred lens is the Nikon 200-500mm/f5.6. IMO it beats all the 500mm/f4 and 600mm/f4 lenses that are several times as expensive, mainly because the 200-500mm can focus down to 7 feet. I photograph them in a natural setting where the bird can pick any flower to feed on, not an artificial setting where only one flower has nectar so that the hummingbirds are forced to a pre-determined flower with a bunch of flashes set up around it. I am a lot more mobile with the lighter 200-500mm/f5.6 zoom.</p>

<p>Glenn, I appreciate your hummingbird nest image. I know those are very hard to get. A few years ago once a gentleman pointed an Anna's hummingbird next to me. We were maybe 10 feet in front of the nest. It still took me a couple of minutes to locate it.</p>

<p>Wonderful shots!<br>

A wrecked honeycomb from the inside of a dead tree.</p><div></div>

<p>Winter, uh I mean, Spring storm today in Acadia National Park.</p><div></div>

<p>Ice on the shore of Lake Michigan here in Milwaukee</p><div></div>

<p>There are some images here including mine that seem more like Winter than Spring. (*_*)</p>