For the last three years, my wife and I have gone to the Davis Mountains of west Texas for a week-long summer retreat.  While the temperatures hovered close to 100-degrees in south Texas, the mountain air was refreshingly cool throughout the July trip.  Of course, I had my camera gear along and used it every day to capture hummingbirds, foxes, mountains scenes and wildlife.

Here are several images I hope you will enjoy.  Don’t forget to click on an image to make it enlarge and sharpen for better viewing.

While eating breakfast one morning and watching for wildlife on the hills out the back window, I spotted a herd of approximately 13 aoudad sheep ewes and lambs grazing on the mountainside.

By adding a 1.4 X tele-extender behind my 500 mm IS lens, the magnification was improved significantly for the sheep photos.

Although there were only about 8 hummingbirds around the house, most were males and I had a lot of fun working them at the multi-flash setup.  All the birds were black-chinned hummingbirds.

Century plants (agaves) were in full bloom at mid-July.

Just after sunrise, I captured this scene with clouds and century plants (agaves) along the roadside near McDonald Observatory.

I used HDR toning while processing the photo above.

This Scott’s Oriole fed among the agave blooms for several days at our residence near Fort Davis.

Alerted by this bird’s distinctive call (the windows were always open so we could enjoy the cool breeze), I simply sneaked out of the house and photographed him from under the edge of the porch roof.

A long-time resident pair of gray foxes came by the house each afternoon at sunset, looking for a handout (usually weenies).

The 70-200 Canon lens with 1.4 tele-extender on the Canon 1D Mark IV body, hand held.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the chance to do this again next year.

Larry

 

I spent a couple of mornings in April photographing Altamira orioles at the nest.  As you may know, this species constructs an incredible hanging nest which sometimes reaches 2′ in length.  Coupled with the birds’ incredible gold and black colors and melodious song, they are a joy to watch, hear or photograph.

The following photos were made with the tripod standing on the ground and/or the back of a pickup.  As usual, my equipment included a Wimberley tripod head, Canon 7D Mark II camera and 500 mm IS lens.  I mostly tried to capture behavior and flight shots… fun but not easy.

Just click on a photo and it will enlarge and sharpen for viewing.  Click on the right border of a photo to advance to the next image.

 

 

 

 

 

It was almost impossible to anticipate the birds’ flight path as they returned to the nest with invertebrates for the young.  Hence, I got no flight shots of birds carrying colorful caterpillars and bugs, but I hope to get ‘er done next spring.

Have a good week,

Larry

Santa Clara Ranch owner, Dr. Alberto “Beto” Gutierrez, called me at lunch yesterday to see if I was interested in heading out to the ranch for an afternoon of photography.  At the time, I was comfortably engrossed in a good book and didn’t want to leave the air conditioning.   Besides, the outside temperature was already hovering at 100 degrees.

Of course, I threw the book aside, jumped into my field clothes and headed for Beto’s place.  We arrived at the ranch around 3:00 PM and crawled into the blind to enjoy the 103 degree afternoon.  Birds were everywhere and everybody needed water.  In five minutes, we were “blazing” away at various birds, rabbits, ground squirrels and other critters.  The photography just got better as the day rocked along and things peaked about 6:45 PM when a young bobcat came in for a drink.    By that time, we’d already photographed deer, rabbits, and over a dozen species of birds.

Here are some of the images we captured on that toasty Texas afternoon:  click on the photos to make them larger and sharper.

These are the best yellow-billed cuckoo shots I’ve made.  These were done with the Canon 7D Mk II, 70-200 mm lens and 1.4X teleconverter, hand held.

Once we photographed the cuckoo and this scissor-tailed flycatcher, we knew for sure it would be a hot afternoon.

Although this roadrunner drank often, it chose a dust bath instead of the wet type.

Eight anis were among the last birds to arrive at the pond on this afternoon.  The group of young and molting adults were more fun to watch than to photograph.

These cautious white-tailed deer were all ears as we clicked away while they drank.

This young cat almost walked into the blind after drinking from the nearby pond.  We were so excited by this cat that we pretty much forgot about photographing birds for the last half hour of the day.

As we left the ranch at sunset, the resident pair of Harris’s hawks showed up at the ranch house raptor blind, assuming Beto would leave a beef kinney supper on their favorite perch.   He did.

Larry

In April, I guided a group of photographers on a three day instructional photo tour into southeast Arizona.  I’d always heard about how great the birding and bird diversity are in that place, but seeing is believing.

With the heavy rains throughout last summer, autumn and winter, the vegetation was lush and the birds were scattered.  Water was abundant so the bird concentrations were not as good as usual.

The weather was great.  Our cabins were at about 5,000 feet so the temperatures were really nice.  If I’d known how hot it was going to get in south Texas this year, I might have stayed on in Arizona.

The group did a lot of photography at my high-speed flash setup for hummingbirds.  Because the birds were scattered, we only got three species of hummers…blue-throated, broad-billed and black-chinned.  Everybody got tons of good images at the setup, however.

Click on an image to enlarge and sharpen it.  Click on the right edge of each photo to bring up the next image.

This male black-chinned hummingbird was photographed with natural light at 1/400 second, f4 @ ISO 640 with the new Canon 7D II.

My first hepatic tanager (above) was shy but posed for a few images.

These painted redstart photos were my first, too.  This hyper little bird was feeding young, but allowed our entire group to stand on the walking trail and photograph.  Talking about a difficult exposure…a black and white bird with a red breast.

I left that magnificent hummingbird dream photo out in Arizona, but just seeing it was a big reward for the effort.

Larry