Over the River and Through the Woods

Red-tailed Hawk and November Snows             26 November 2014

This image was made with a Canon 7D and Canon 300mm f4L IS lens along the Mississippi River as a gentle snow fell upon the surrounding forest.   A beautifully plumaged adult Red-tailed Hawk surveyed the changing landscape, and its patience with me helped to create an image I have been pursuing for more than two decades! 

A Sense of Everywhere...

Closer to the Wild Than You Thought!                    November 6, 2014

A mouse of the genus Peromyscus

My students and I have been compiling population information on small mammal populations for fourteen years in the same ten acres of old-field, forest, and bog.  This year saw an unprecedented jump in the population of white-footed mice.  In "Boom" years, mice use every corner of available habitat and begin spilling into adjacent habitats of poorer quality.   Our Mark-and-Recapture estimates of the Peromyscus mouse population indicated densities of roughly 85 mice per acre.  To put that into perspective, let's imagine the mice are evenly distributed throughout the forested acre. Since an acre is roughly 4047 meters square, that leaves approximately 48 meters square per mouse. Some familiar math, we take the square root of 48, and, Presto! That is an area of just under 7 meters by 7 meters.  That is an area of about 23 feet by 23 feet.  Put yourself in the middle of such a square, and you are at most just twelve feet away from a mouse!  A quiet, frozen, and seemingly empty woodlot is teaming with unseen life, potential beauty for the most astute observers!

This image was made opportunistically with a Nokia 928 Lumia Smart Phone and its Carl Zeiss optics.

Fields of Gold

A New Autumn                                                                 28 September 2014

Sandhill Cranes, Crex Meadows, Wisconsin

Even in July, the leaves of the elm and the oak lose their luster and mature into a deep and older green. Fall has been hinting, reminding us of life's ephemeral nature.  Goldenrod grow tall along the forest edges.  The prickly ash fruits wither.  Now, as so much of summer has lived its life, that quiet lull that follows the late spring's mad rush, autumn greets us with sudden and almost merciless pace. Life is a fast track, and every day must be savored for its meaning. In a few short days, the leaves give up the green, roll to yellow or brilliant orange, and begin the slow drift downward to the forest floor.

Paper Birch and a veil of bluestem

Wetland plants shimmer from pale green to yellow and golden brown, glowing as fields of gold. Senescence is not just death. It is preparation for new life, dormancy that delivers resilience, promise of future, strength and resolve, wise living, and investment in continuity.  Death of parts gives life to the whole, the roots living on.  In all that it does, the autumn senescence also builds the great stage on which great migrations play their scripted dramas.

Quaking Aspen grove

Migrating birds echo a strength of preparation.  Small songbirds, the North American sparrows and wood warblers, fill the cool, clear night skies with delicate contact calls, sweet voices from invisible lives just above, hidden in the blackness and endless stars.  To the unaware, they are not there.  To the aware, the gentle sounds ring with brilliance, color, and memory.  They are out there, even if we can't see them, even if we can't be with them.  They are just out of reach, just beyond what we can know. They are there.

With such a vigorous and heroic story unfolding in the night sky, I imagine the morning light will bring hundreds or thousands of feathered travelers, all of them letting down to the safety of the trees below.  Now, in broad daylight, I find the hen of the woods, the Grifola fungi, delicious and meaty, to be growing near the base of a favorite oak.  Sugar maples glow on the hillsides, prickly ash turn brilliant yellow in places, and basswood quickly turn over from green to yellow to brown.  The quaking aspen dance between lime green and golden yellow.  Everywhere I look I see the signs.  Life is traveling by so quickly. Autumn has arrived, and it has done so quite suddenly.  The cranes will be gathering.  It is time to visit old friends.

All images were made with a Canon 7D, just purchased as used in excellent condition and with the best of all custom settings! Thanks Bruce and Tamy Leventhal (www.btleventhal.com). The lens was my usual Canon 300mm f4L IS lens mounted to a Gitzo Reporter tripod with Gitzo ball head.

Trumpeter Swans, early morning light.  Can you find all five swans?

A Tribute in Water

Watershed Repose                  16 August 2014

It has been said and said often in this day and age that the quality of water is indicative of the quality of the human relationship with the surrounding land.  This is an undeniable truth.  A watershed collects the local (and not so local) history of the land, both ancient history and recent history.  From glacial silt to nutrient run-off, the water speaks to the character of the land. 

I believe the quality of a human life is relative to the person’s relationship with water.  My father has taught me this all my life.  He has shown me the song of the canoe paddle, the little whirl pools that roll to each side of the blade of the paddle, and he has taught me everything about where to find good water in the wild.  As a kid, and even now as an adult, there are some places where water for drinking is collected from the surface of a lake, a few dozen paddle strokes from shore, skimmed from above a tall, cold column of clear water.   The aim is not just to drink the water.  It is also to keep it clean enough for the next drink or the next drinker.  Conscientious behavior on shore is a discipline that ensures water for the future. Perhaps there is more poetry in this than can be written.   When we sit on shore, we can only imagine what the water looks like below the canoe, out there where it is clean and deep. But our lives on shore pay tribute and respect to every dip of the pan into the top of that distant water.  We know it is out there, just a few paddle strokes away. We are mindful of it, even when we don’t see it.     When we forget to dream about that distant water, the water suffers in our forgetfulness.  To forget that distant water is to impair our well-being.  As we sit on shore, tending to those things done on land, we must remember how cool and clean the water can be.   Perhaps cold, clean water is dependent upon hope. As water would understand it, the quality of a human life is relative to the person’s hope.

Water moves over the landscape like the passage of a person’s life.  It picks up and collects and tumbles random material about, shifting and resorting the meaning of the land.  It rolls into plunge pools, pulling life-giving oxygen down into unseen spaces, nourishing the unexpected.  It pulls at the soil as it rolls on through, changing the course of the lives it passes.  It provides a steady current that brushes and touches all who thrive in the water.   Water speaks to us as it moves, laughing, reassuring us that we are here, that we love, that we live.  We can follow the course of the water, watch it bounce and roll along, dance and splash.  Eventually, we are asked to see it off to sea.  Water is a journey, sometimes placid, sometimes turbulent, sometimes deep and mysterious.  The sun leaps and plays on shallow water, inviting and clean, wild and joyful.   When the sun dives to the west in my favorite northern haunts, the wind grows still.  Expanses of clean water flatten out and become placid perfection, a flat, smooth mirror that gathers in the eternal night sky and wraps it all around my floating canoe.  I sit for a moment, surrounded by eternity, stars above and below, suspended over cold and clean, seeing out into forever. I am embraced by the quality of hope.

All images were made with a refurbished Canon 7D, an EF 28-135mm lens, and a Gitzo basalt “Reporter” tripod.  

Boggy Margins

Big Beauty So Small                                         27 June 2014

Grass Pink Bog Orchid

The end of June often finds me walking in bogs, usually in search of bird data, but sometimes in the quest for a simple photograph, perhaps some dew or raindrop accenting one of the bog's many seldom-visited, little-known beauties.

Ruffed Grouse hen

In the Black River State Forest, the boggy pay-out is a wealth of grass pink bog orchid, genus Calopogon. The grass pink go unnoticed for most of June, and then, in the second half of the month, the bloom takes off and takes us by surprise.  The bogs, wet this year and rich in ericaceous leaf out and sphagnum mosses, have been hiding this secret.  Now, to the delight of  polinating bees, perhaps the adoring eye of the bog's Nashville Warblers, and to the joy of this ornithologist, the green and watery expanses explode to carpets of purple, lavender, pink, and white blossoms.

Crawling around low to the ground gives a unique perspective, making orchids into giants, bringing a human face to face with other low-to-the-ground animals.   Surprised by a short-tailed weasel, I squeaked with kisses on the back of my hand and lured the cautious weasel back for a curious peek.  As the weasel approached, intently studying my alluring sounds, I could only detect its approach by an occasionally nodding sedge.  Finally, the weasel eased into view, inconvenienced from its original intentions by a few moments. I made just a few images and watched it skulk away.

Short-tailed Weasel

All images were made with a refurbished Canon 7D, a Canon 300mm f4L IS lens, and a Gitzo Basalt tripod. 

Proof of Life, Another Year Turns at the Heronries

Spring Migration                          11 May 2014

Great Blue Heron

Bruce greets me enthusiastically at the landing, and, as the sunrise breaks into scattered clouds, the bow of my canoe slips sharply through glassy waters.  Bruce studies the light as I guide the canoe to our favorite roost. A master photographer, Bruce Leventhal sees things in the light that I still do not, understanding exposure microcosms, the nature of reflected light, and the unusual phenomena that arise when color, texture, and light play between each other. When he discusses light, my ears perk up. We gently tie the stern to a flooded snag and hover motionless within a swift river current.  Each year we have practiced this unique photo shoot, and each year we get smarter.  With the sun behind us and herons ahead of us, we are ready. We study the birds intently as the sun climbs higher and clouds move in subtle waves through the river valley.

Great Blue Heron and Baltimore Oriole

All around us, herons make hasty preparation for a short growing season.  Evidence for their resilience, we hear chicks in some of the nests, proof that they incubated through the howling snowstorms of April. This year, the heronries are roaring with life, the tall silver maples holding more than eighty active Great Blue Heron nests, more than two dozen Great Egret nests, and more than a dozen Double Crested Cormorant nests.  For such a tiny piece of floodplain forest, the birds are really packed in this year.

Double Crested Cormorant

Great Egret

Great Blue Heron

In the time Bruce and I have worked with these nesting colonies, I have moved from a Canon Rebel to a Canon 30D to a Canon 40D and, now, to a Canon 7D.  I have learned essential lessons in maintaining dust-free sensors, using my autofocus, and I have run experiments with and without a 1.4X teleconverter.  Each year, the rookery changes as well, with an ebb and flow of breeding pair populations and a steady increase in egrets and cormorants.  As the river levels change with each winter's snow accumulation, every year's natural history is unique.

In the silver maples above, eight male Baltimore Orioles give chase to a single female.   A golden-yellow Prothonotary Warbler sings in the distant flooded timbers, shining brilliantly just above the dark waters. A Yellow Warbler pulls insects from low willows.  The tropical rainforests are arriving by wing in Wisconsin, arriving long after the ice-tolerant herons.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Yellow-rumped Warbler in red osier dogwood

Spring warms into summer.

All images were made with a refurbished Canon 7D and Canon 300mm f4L IS lens.  A seventeen-and-a-half foot Wee-no-nah Canoe helped put the cameras in position.  The herons paid no attention.  It was a very good day. To see Bruce Leventhal's excellent photographic expressions, be sure to visit www.bruceleventhal.com   A dynamic team, Tamy Leventhal offers a different perspective and her images sometimes accompany Bruce's images in their blog.  

Secret Among the Cypress

Art-form in Nature                                         15 March 2014

Anole lizard, Six Mile Cypress Swamp, Florida

Canon 7D and 300mm f4LIS, Gitzo Basalt Tripod