Cool Nature Photos

[MossRoad]

Every winter many thousands and thousands of crows gather in South Bend, Indiana. They show up around Halloween, build in numbers until Christmas, then stay all winter until spring, when they break up. Each evening they return to town and each morning they head out to search for food. When they fly out or fly in, you can stand in one spot, and it takes a good hour for all of them to fly past you. Wish I could get a picture of them at night. It would be quite impressive.

 

[deserteagle71]

Kind of a blurry photo...it was a dark morning and I did't take the time to bump up the ISO on the camera. I feed a lot of birds around here; I scatter scratch on the ground for the quail. But when the snow gets deep this time of year I drop the scratch on my covered deck instead. Makes no difference to the quail. In this shot a cottontail has joined the quail for breakfast.

 

[DavidL61]

Back in November the roof of my Camry was covered in frost. I was amazed at the design that was produced.

 

[MossRoad]

very cool :thumbsup:

 

[ovrszd]

Kind of a blurry photo...it was a dark morning and I did't take the time to bump up the ISO on the camera. I feed a lot of birds around here; I scatter scratch on the ground for the quail. But when the snow gets deep this time of year I drop the scratch on my covered deck instead. Makes no difference to the quail. In this shot a cottontail has joined the quail for breakfast.

Our quail look nothing like that!!! Ours are the Bobwhite variety.

 

[oosik]

Hmm - - the quail here don't look like either of the two pictured above. Ours are called California Top Knot quail.

View attachment 634370

 

[deserteagle71]

Back in November the roof of my Camry was covered in frost. I was amazed at the design that was produced.

View attachment 634319

You need to see if you can't sell that - much better "art" than most of what I see being sold. Beautiful! Much better than that banana taped to a wall that sold for so much money that the news was making a big deal about a few days ago.

 

[deserteagle71]

Hmm - - the quail here don't look like either of the two pictured above. Ours are called California Top Knot quail.
View attachment 634370

Mine are the same - that's just a bad picture so they are hard to see. Here's a closeup shot of one parked on my handrail and watching me in the house.

 

[snymat68]

Bald eagles are definitely opportunistic when it comes to food. They'd rather steal a fish from another eagle than catch one themselves.
Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of action at Conowingo Dam when I went on the 23rd and 24th.
There were maybe a dozen eagles that weren't very active. And when they were active, they were 1/4 to 1/2 mile away, so a lot of the shots I'm posting here are not the best quality, but still fun to look at.
I'm also posting a picture of the dam itself for reference. I was standing mostly on the platform on the shore on the left and most of the action was taking place across the river by the rocks.
For a sense of scale, the dam is almost a mile wide.

Click the images to view larger.

Juvenile Bald Eagle perched on power line tower on island.

Juvenile Bald Eagle

"Wucha got there? A fish? Can I steal it?"

There was no shortage of seagulls.

Juvenile Bald Eagle

Conowingo Dam across the Susquehanna River

Two Juvenile Bald Eagles

Juvenile Bald Eagle swooping in toward another below (out of frame).

Juvenile Bald Eagle causes adult to drop its catch.

Food fight! (Bottom right eagle has a fish in his talons.)

Seagulls gotta eat too! (It was getting pretty dark at this point.)

Adult Bald Eagle

"Buzz off!" (Vulture trying to steal the eagles breakfast.)

Bath Time

A very concerned catfish!

Great Blue Heron at Dusk

He sees you.

Another food fight! (Left eagle has fish.)

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST....

A swing and a miss!

 

[snymat68]

While at Conowingo shooting the eagles, I stayed overnight in Aberdeen, MD. Since it got dark by 5pm, I went looking for somewhere to shoot some long exposure night shots.
I ended up in Havre de Grace, MD at the waterfront on the bay and got some pretty cool shots. While I was there, I scouted some spots to get sunrise shots the next morning.
I'm glad I did, because I think some of these were the best shots of the trip. Out of all of them, the flying mallard is probably my favorite, with the bench coming in second.

Click on images to view larger.

"Light Speed"

"Reflections"

That's a big Christmas Tree!

Havre de Grace Lighthouse

"Beacon of Cheer"

"Framed"

"Reflections 2"

"Sunrise on the Bay"

"Sunrise on the Bay 2"

"Surrounded"

"Front Row Seat"

"Morning Thoughts"

Angry duck teeth!

Red-tailed Hawk

Red-tailed Hawk

"Morning Majesty"

A couple of quacks.

Belted Kingfisher


This guy was really close and I got tons of detail in these two shots.
(The full res originals are insane. You can see every strand of every feather.)