Best of 2017

My favorite photos from each month of 2017 (links go to larger images at my Flickr account):

1. Winter Wren, 2. White-breasted Nuthatch, 3. Song Sparrow, 4. Yellow Trout Lily, 5. Black Vulture, 6. Tawny-edged Skipper, 7. Tree Swallow fledgling, 8. Barred Owl, 9. Pandora Sphinx caterpillar, 10. Staghorn Sumac, 11. Snow Bunting, 12. Myrtle Warbler

My favorite sighting of the year was probably the Barred Owl pictured above, which was exceptionally cooperative — one might say confiding — to the delight of many refuge visitors that day. My best bird of the year was probably the Wood Stork that showed up at Sandy Hook and that I was lucky enough to see shortly before it left. The year also included another Middlesex Merlins run in the World Series of Birding.

Happy new year and good birding in 2018!

My Best Photos of 2013

I have not been uploading my own photos on this blog as much as I used to, but I am still photographing birds, insects, plants, and other things. The best place to follow my photos are my Flickr account and my Twitter account. (I usually tweet links to my Flickr photos.) Here is a selection of my best photo from each month of 2013.

1. Snowflakes on broomsedge, 2. Ring-billed Gull, 3. Snowy pines, 4. Spring Beauty, 5. Pink Lady's Slipper, 6. Periodical Cicada, 7. Isabella Tiger Moth, 8. American toad, 9. Merlin, 10. Yellow-collared Scape Moth, 11. Turkey Vulture in flight, 12. Fish Crow

Best Photos from 2012

Every year for the past few years I have compiled my best photos into a set. Here is a collage of my best from 2012, which you can also see as a set on Flickr. I think my favorite is this photo of an American Redstart that I took in September.

Kaaterskill Creek

Over the weekend I processed and posted some photos from last year's backlog. In the course of my photo-a-day project, I often took far more photos than I could process in a single day. Since I was continually taking more photos, it was easy to get behind, and some things just never got posted. (I currently have two or three nights' worth of moth photos waiting for identification and posting.) On Saturday I posted a bunch of photos from a hike in the Catskills last March. You can see all of them in my Catskill Mountains set on Flickr. One of the nest is the photo above of Kaaterskill Creek. This photo is looking downstream and gives a good sense of both the natural setting and the amount of ice still left that day.

Trees in the Snow

Oddly enough, yesterday was the first snowfall here since the winter started a month ago. These trees stood together in Donaldson Park. The Greater White-fronted Goose was nowhere to be found.

My Best Photos of 2011

In 2011, I took at least one photo on every day of the year and uploaded it to Flickr. A lot of users do projects like this, sometimes called a 365 project. I never really announced that I was doing one but just tried to keep it going for as long as I could. Here is a sample of my best images from last year, one from each month.

1. January: Red Crossbill at Seven Presidents Park 
2. February Tonight's Sunset (2/10/2011) 
3. March: Sun Rises Over Cape May Point 
4. April: Snowy Egret 
5. May: Bleeding hearts 
6. June: Oriental Beetle 
7. July: Red-banded Hairstreak 
8. August: Gray-hooded Gull is not impressed by your Wonder Wheel 
9. September: Trichopoda pennipes 
10. October: Hoverfly 
11. November: Rose and fallen leaves 
12. December: Douglas Firs

Eight of those twelve images were shot within a short walking distance of my home.

From among those photos, I feel that my best was this image of a hoverfly I took in October. It was feeding on a chrysanthemum in my backyard. A lot of elements came together in a photo that I did not expect to turn out so well: good lighting, enough depth-of-field to keep most of the insect in focus, and a flower whose rays lead the eye naturally to the insect. I blogged about this image once before.

My best bird photo of the year was probably this photo of a Snowy Egret that I took at the South Cape May Meadows in April.

We are already on our third day of 2012, and I am still reviewing what happened last year. My blogging will turn to things from the new year soon, though.

Late December Frost

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it!

Cloudy Days in Black and White

The last few days have had some long stretches with heavily overcast skies. This can create some challenges for photography, as the decreased amount of light leads to slower shutter speeds and less contrast. One option to create interesting photos is to make the sky as light as possible and convert to black and white. This emphasizes shapes and makes the photos look a little less gloomy. Here are a few of my attempts at this process.

This is probably my best image of a Turkey Vulture to date.

Bare Branches

Now that leaves have fallen, bare branches are silhouetted against gray skies.

Azaleas in Autumn

Azaleas are better known for their colorful flowers in the spring, but in the fall they produce some lovely colors, too. Here are two separate azalea shrubs, one with yellow leaves and the other with red leaves.

For good measure, below is a rhododendron bud, with yellow azalea leaves in the background.

Blueberry Leaves

At this point in the fall, the most colorful trees and shrubs that still have leaves tend to be introduced exotics like Norway Maple, Japanese Maple, and Winged Euonymus. One native shrub that still has colorful leaves is highbush blueberry. Fruits of this species are an important source of food for birds and other wildlife in early fall. By this point, any fruit is long gone, and the leaves have turned deep red.

Leaves in the Snow

Some snow remains from Saturday's snowstorm. The piles of snow here and there create the unusual sight of bright fall foliage on or under snow. Here are a few leaves from a flowering dogwood in the snow.

Late Season Pollinators

As long as there are flowers blooming and the temperature is above freezing, there will be pollinators active. I have been seeing fewer larger bees, but there are still a lot of small bees and syrphid flies. The hoverfly above was busy sipping nectar while it got pollen stuck to its feet.

This small black bee was busy working the same flower head, but it picked up much more pollen on its hairy body.

These photos were my first attempts at photography using a film canister as a flash diffuser. You can read more about the technique at the link. I like the results so far. Using the film canister allowed for a brighter image, with a sharper look because of the faster shutter speed, and very few harsh reflections from the flash.

Fallen Leaves

Autumn foliage is not at its peak quite yet in central New Jersey, but already quite a lot of leaves are blanketing the ground. Here are some photographs of fallen leaves that I took this week.

Wet Flowers

Over Sunday and Monday, New Jersey received a tremendous amount of rainfall, enough to set records in some places. It provided a good opportunity for some raindrop photography, in this case a waterlogged Rose of Sharon shrub.

Cattails in Summer

Common Cattails (Typha latifolia) have a regular presence in our freshwater marshes. But how much do we notice them? As I passed a stand of cattails yesterday, I noticed that several older stalks, probably from last year, still stood among this year's cattails. (You can see them in the background on this photo.) I cannot remember thinking about that before, but I must have seen older, dried cattails in previous summers.

Cattail stalks include two spikes of flowers. A thick, dark brown spike contains the female flowers. These are pollinated by male flowers that grow in a thin, light brown spike just above the female flowers. Once the seeds mature, the thick spikes become fluffy, and the seeds are dispersed by wind. I imagine that these older stalks with fluffy heads give birds and mammals some soft material for their nests during the breeding season.

Strutting Turkey

This male Wild Turkey was displaying to the cars passing along US Route 9 in Atlantic County yesterday afternoon. It walked very deliberately out into the road and gobbled at the cars as they stopped. Eventually someone came out of one of the nearby houses to shoo it away since it was blocking traffic.

Bleeding Hearts

Among the more eye-catching spring flowers are the unusual plants known as "bleeding hearts." There are actually several species known by this name. The one in these images is one introduced from Asia, Lamprocapnos spectabilis (sometimes classified as Dicentra spectabilis). Bleeding hearts have an outer pair of petals, shaped like a heart, and an inner pair that hangs down past the outer pair. In some bleeding hearts species, the inner pair is colored dark red and looks more like a drop of blood.

The photos above were taken when the light was soft and diffuse. I took the one below under different lighting conditions, with strong backlighting.

Recent Spring Blooms

Despite the recent bout of chilly weather, flowers are blooming. Here are a few that I have seen and photographed recently. The one up above was at Bamboo Brook yesterday. I am not sure what it is; it is not one I recognize and the closed flower buds make identification difficult. It was growing along the edge of a stream, in the same area as some trout lilies.

Daffodils have been blooming for several weeks now, but different varieties keep appearing. This one is particularly striking, with an orange center and white outer petals.

A lot of trees are in bloom, with more to come. This one is a Norway maple.

These tiny flowers were blooming in the mown lawn-type fields in my local patch. I doubt that the stems were taller than three inches. I think it is whitlow grass, a type of mustard, probably Draba verna.

Here is a closer view of the flower.

Flowers like this were growing among the whitlow grass. At first I thought they were the same species, but when I noticed that they had a different number of petals (four for whitlow grass vs. five for this one), I reconsidered that idea. I now think that it is probably mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium vulgatum). I was interested to find this because two years ago, I found a Chickweed Geometer in the same location.

Yellow on a Cloudy Day