Tag: Bruce Finocchio

Patience and Perseverance Paid Off

Juvenile Bald Eagle Scratching Chin With Talon

Portrait Of A Juvenile Bald Eagle Using Talon To Scratch Its Chin

Goal:

What’s the back story? What is the lesson learned?

For the past five years, a pair of Bald Eagles have nested in the Redwood Tree in front of Curtner Elementary School in Milpitas, California. At the school, there are three large Redwood Trees. The tall middle one is the nest three-quarters the way up. Over the years, they have built a large platform of sticks a top of some of the side branches.

First, it was Junior. Then, as the pandemic hit came Covid and Corona. Last year, they raised Pfizer, and this year this juvenile bald eagle is called Booster. There is a Facebook page dedicated to these eagles. Photographers come from all parts of California to photograph these eaglets.

Back of the school is some water treatment ponds that attract Black-crowned Night Herons, Snowy Egrets, Canadian Gooses, and an assortment of ducks. Northern Rough-winged Swallows also breed around these ponds. Near the school side is a boundary where two levies separate the treatment ponds from the school’s sports fields. Between the levy is a canal, a marshy wetlands area, and probably a former river that drains into San Francisco Bay.

A bridge crosses over the canal and goes to the levy on the other side, providing access to the water treatment ponds. There are several eucalyptus trees around the ponds, so the eagles favorite these trees, so they can watch the activity and occasionally take a fish out of the pond. They also hunt California Ground Squirrels on the levies around this area.

Now that she fledged and is flying, Booster spends a lot of time around these settlement ponds. One morning, I was across the bridge photographing Booster down by the pond’s edge. When Booster took off, she landed on the bridge. Then, this curious and adventurous eagle hopped up and flew to the bridge railing.

Here I was blocked from crossing back over the bridge and, most notably, on the wrong side of light. I was stuck on the ugly backlit side. There are fences along the levies, and the bridge is the only direct way across. A photographer on the same side as me took off and circled the ponds into the neighborhood. She went around the ball fields and the tennis courts at the back of the elementary school. She eventually returned to the bridge’s other side and began photographing Booster with the nice 9:00 am light behind her.

I stayed and tried to make a good outcome from a bad lighting situation. From my first position, I had some green deciduous leaves reflecting light off their waxy surface. With my 600 mm lens, I had these ugly shining green and white unfocused rings in my background. I didn’t want to put the blue sky behind the eagle if possible. Then, I noticed next to these green leave deciduous trees were a group of some fir or pine. I moved to my left a few steps, and these ugly green and white rings disappeared. My background was now a smooth forest green, not harsh, and with no distractions.

Now I was ready. Booster didn’t disappoint. She started scratching its chin with her mighty talon. I captured the behavior that was my goal.

Booster rolled back its nictating membrane to protect its eye and sight. This image captured the movement of the nictating membrane covering the eye. However, the nictating membrane wasn’t opaque as you usually see it.

I took hundreds of images as Booster was scratching her eye, with many horizontal frames and some verticals. I also used some exposure compensation to tone down some bright rim light from the backlight.

I created an exciting nature story image by standing put and making the best of a bad lighting situation. The moral of my story is that my friend did not see Booster scratching her chin with her talon because by the time she got to the other side of the bridge. Booster had stopped this activity; she missed this behavior. My patience and perseverance paid off.

Equipment:

Canon 5D camera body, with a 600 mm f4.0 IS lens and a 1.4x III teleconverter, at ISO 2500, 1/1600 sec at f5.6, Evaluative Metering, Aperture Priority, on a 1325G Gitzo trip using a Wimberley Tripod II

Technical Information:

Using the above tripod, selected Canon’s CR3 raw file format, using Canon’s animal eye-tracking autofocusing. And with Case #2, the autofocus tracking sensitivity is set at zero, with Accel./Decel set to minus one.

Processing:

 I selected the 5 x 4 framing to eliminate extra space on the left side of the image and better balance the subject within the frame. I used digital dodging techniques to reduce the bright rim highlight areas on the head feathers and the talon’s bright edges. I used my standard Topaz DeNoise application set on the motion blur mode; applied one of Topaz sharpening modes on a different Photoshop layer, masking the background or the subject as appropriate.

Not Listening To The Voice Of Doubt

Surprise, Look What I Found!

I was late… Sunday at the Post Office, there was even a line at the self-service postage machine as I tried to mail out my Costa Rica Hummingbird calendars to my nieces. This put me behind schedule and meant that there was not much light left in the day to get from the East Bay to Coyote Point. When I got there after 4:00 PM, I found that it was extremely low tide. I was initially disappointed because there was no water for ducks or shorebirds.

Knowing I only had about 45 minutes of beautiful light at best, I let go of my feelings of disappointment and just decide to see what nature had to offer. Out in the mudflats, there were two Snowy Egrets in the small ponds left by the receding tide. As I watched, I noticed that there were feeding, and in a fleeting moment, this Snowy Egret pulled a tube worm out of the mud from the bottom of one of these small ponds.

If I hadn’t set aside my preconceived thoughts of photographing ducks and shorebirds, I wouldn’t have been open to what nature had in store for me. I also could have taken one look and said to myself, nothing here, not much time left of extraordinary light, so I could have left and gone home.

If I did listen to all these voices of doubt, I would not have gotten this incredible image.

 

#coyotepoint, #snowyegret, #voicesofdoubt, #disappointment, #sanmateo, #snowyegretfeeding, #tubeworm, #brucefinocchio, #dreamcatcherimages.net, #bird, #shorebirds

Songs Gone Silent

Male Northern Cardinal
© 2013 Bruce Finocchio — Male Northern Cardinal

Songs Gone Silent

Each morning a bird call awakens me. Its song is familiar yet unknown. I have not been able to identify it yet, to come know what species makes its familiar call. It’s bothering me not to know. Nevertheless, it is very pleasing to hear each morning–like hearing an old friend’s voice again after a long absence.

Imagine the world without songbirds–without bird songs to wake you in the morning. The world would be diminished, and Rachel Carson’s vision of a “Silent Spring” would be realized. How sad would that day be, not to hear the thrilling sound of birdcalls? Have their calls only remembrances in our dreams!

© 2013 Bruce Finocchio --Immature Male Vermilion Flycatcher
© 2013 Bruce Finocchio –Immature Male Vermilion Flycatcher

Songbird populations across the world are in trouble. From the pesticides that worried Rachel Carson, “to the feral and domestic cats catching many birds in their claws, to those who die in collisions with skyscrapers, communication towers, wind turbines, and even glass windows and doors of suburban homes.”(1) Just the other day, I found a female Lesser Goldfinch outside of my glass back door lying dead on my backyard porch. It happens more than you realize.

Habitat fragmentation is a great concern as our world becomes more commercialized for our needs. Our exponential growing populations place greater demands upon the natural world. As more of wild nature succumbs to our human environments and less and less is left for wild creatures including songbirds. As we pave over, build our structures, and alter the world’s surroundings to meet our needs and wants. There simply are fewer and fewer places for songbirds to live and flourish.

Black-crested Titmouse On A Mesquite Branch
Black-crested Titmouse On A Mesquite Branch

Bird populations are falling fast; we have lost almost half the songbirds that filled the skies forty years ago, by some counts over a billion birds.(1)  Year by year more songbirds become endangered of going extinct. One of my large bird books has a picture of a passenger pigeon. An artist drawing of a beautiful bird of subtle pastel colors. Wow, I say to myself when I see this picture. I would have loved a chance to see one alive. However, it is extinct, and no long possible to see one fly in the sky, yet over a hundred and fifty years ago, millions blotted the skies of the eastern North America.

© 2010 Bruce Finocchio --Male Mountain Bluebird
© 2010 Bruce Finocchio –Male Mountain Bluebird

Ultimately, I think it comes down to a choice. Our generation and the next must decide to save and protect our natural world, preserving the diversity of life on our wonderful living planet.  Now we alone hold the future of life on earth in our hands. We must change our thoughts and actions from one of domination to one of coexistence.

Evolve enough to understand, I am because of you; I am because of other life forms. (2) Relearn that humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web; we do to ourselves. All living things are bound together. All living things are interconnected and dependent on each other for survival. (3)

Beautiful Male Cassin's Finch
Beautiful Male Cassin’s Finch

Otherwise, if we don’t relearn and absorb these lessons, take it to heart; it will be very bad and a very sad hour for mankind. No more melodic birds’ songs will grace the airways and bring music to our ears each every morning we awaken to greet a new day. Truly, their songs of life will go silent for the last time.

Nature has incredible restorative powers. Life has an indomitable spirit. If we make the right choice, then there is optimism. Hope for mankind and for a better future. Eventually, my singing songbird will come out of the dense tree foliage, and I’ll have my identification. I will have kept at it; the way mankind must persevere in the coming decades.

Bruce Finocchio is one of the WBB photographers who images are currently showing at the Art Ark Gallery in San Jose, California. Meet Bruce and the other WBB photographers at the June 3 reception from 5:00 to 9:00 PM, and hear their incredible stories of photographing wildlife all over the world, and how they take their work from “Beauty to Deeper Understanding”.

Register for the Reception: Register Here

 

(1) 1,000,000,000 Birds – Just Gone by Austin Baily, Daily Kos, 5/20/16

(2)Boyd Varty, Ubuntu, I am; because of you.

(3) Paraphrasing Chief Seattle’s famous words

 

 

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