Welcome!
21 August 2019
This is my photography blog. I'll be posting pictures, both current and from my archives. Most of them are nature photos, especially of birds; since I live in Manhattan, there will be disproprtionately many New York City pictures.
To start things off, here is the totemic image for this blog, a somewhat confused red-bellied woodpecker seen in Morningside Park, apparently preparing to peck some metal posts. Below it is a male great egret that is frequently seen in the pond.
Red-bellied woodpecker
Great egret
Rainbows!
22 August 2019
Woodpeckers
23 August 2019
For whatever reason, when I visited a nearby lake this morning, there were a lot of woodpeckers about; here are two of them. Alas, I did not see the pileated woodpecker I know lives in that vicinity.
Northern flicker
Hairy woodpecker
Birds at Twilight
24 August 2019
Twilight isn't great for pictures, especially with a very long lens, but I couldn't resist making this shot arty. I'm couldn't positively identify the birds, but from what I could see, and from previous instances in somewhat better light on that same tree, I'm pretty sure they're cedar waxwings.
For comparison, here's a picture of a cedar waxwing I took earlir this summer.
Cedar waxwing
Black-Crowned Night Heron
25 August 2019
This one was perched in a willow tree in the pond in Morningside Park. I've seen one before in that tree, but I've never seen it feeding in the pond. More often, I see a great egret there.
Black-crowned night heron
Upper West Side Parks
25 August 2019
I got to spend a fair amount of time today wandering around the three parks on the Upper West Side that I often visit: Morningside Park, Central Park (today, I was in the Loch area), and Riverside Park. Here are some of the pictures I took. (I was especiall pleased to see the black-crowned night heron in Morningside Park—I haven't seen one there that often.)
This, by the way, is the first time I've embedded one of my photo albums in a blog post, which lets me bring in maps. My, did I find a lot of bugs in my album-generating script…
From the Archives: Hawks and Falcons
26 August 2019
For some reason, I'm fascinated by raptors; I'll photgraph them any time I can. Here are some of my favorite hawk and falcon photos; all but one from Manhattan.
A Great Blue Heron
29 August 2019
I saw a great blue heron today and took a bunch of pictures—but a setting was off and the pictures weren't very good technically. That was disappointing, because I had a halfway-usable shot of a heron in flight.
Late this afternoon, I decided to go back to that pond and try again. At first, I didn't see any herons—and then I did, and it was great. It speared a fish, flew, strode around, flew some more, and ended up reasonably close to me. So: too many pictures, but I love seeing great blue herons, especially in flight.
