Notes To My Mother

I love taking images of birds.  If I have a choice I would much rather capture a bird in flight, just taking off or just landing rather than sitting on a perch. I find these images more interesting than a still image.  Small birds are the hardest to catch in flight because they fly so fast and often with irregular flight patterns and because they are so small you have to be fairly close, all of which adds to the difficulty in getting decent images. Raptors are a different story since they are normally larger, have smoother flight patterns, and are often quite elegant even when sitting still.  Where I have a problem is in identifying which raptor is which.  So if I get the name wrong please correct me.  The first two images above are, I believe, of a Red Tail Hawk just coming off its perch. This is a Northern Harrier.  He seemed to have a nest near by and worked this same field every evening, flying characteristically low, hovering, and descending to the the...

Late last Fall a buddy of mine, Mike Cohen (an amazing bird photographer), and I met up in Albuquerque, NM., to photograph sandhill cranes.  The location we photographed was in and around Bosque del Apache during the Festival of the Cranes.  In Bosque dirt roads run through the refuge and you can drive these roads in search of cranes and other wildlife.  One morning we were driving the perimeter and drove past this sweet scene.  We came back a few times hopefully to capture it with some mist on the water along with the morning sunrise lighting up the trees and shrubs.   This was my first encounter with Sandhill Cranes as I had never seen one before this.  At Bosque Del Apache there is no shortage of cranes to see.  They roost at night in the ponds and then relocate at sunrise to the fields where the eat and squabble with each other durning the day.  In the image above the are relocating in the morning light. As night is falling the Sandhill C...