A Pair of Pileated Peckers

Woodpeckers.  Get your mind out of the gutter.
Geesh.

We've lived in our house for over 7 years.  I remember within days of moving in I began hearing what would soon become the familiar calls of the Pileated woodpeckers.  These are the big guys... about the size of a crow, with the bright red mohawks that the character Woody Woodpecker was fashioned after.  They are generally reclusive birds... we hear their calls echo through the neighborhood, and recognize their signature "WHAP! WHAP! WHAP!" pecking on dead wood.

Contrary to what the cartoon shows, they do not sound like the rapidfire "rat-tat-tat-tat-tat"... around here that's the sound of a sapsucker announcing his territory.  The Pileateds are deliberate in their hunt for food, sounding more like a craftsman thudding his hammer with careful aim.  On rare occasions I've managed to sneak up and see them at work on a dead log.  They tip their head to the side, examining the wood... then they pull their head back as far as it will go and throw it forward with all their might, as if their beak were a sledgehammer.  Every time I see it, I expect them to pull their heads back and shake them, I cannot imagine how they do this without seeming to feel the least bit of pain or dizziness.  They appear entirely unaffected by the blow, and they line themselves up to do it again.

Their call is very similar to the cartoon (not the beginning laughing part, but the way Woody sings that last note over and over... ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha) though in the wild their pitch sounds more similar to a laughing hyena than the cartoon bird... "kak-kak-kak-kak-kak-kak-kak-kak!"

For 7 years they have been my backyard nemesis... the elusive Bird I Could Not Photograph.  They are the grand pooh-ba in neighborhood bird watching (at least, between my next-door-neighbor and I, who seem to be equal in our enthusiasm for the feathered critters)  Most of the times I've seen them I was unable to get my camera fast enough.  One time I saw one on a neighbor's log and I had my cell phone, but in that instance the phone would not focus (though it focused fine 2 minutes later, after the bird took flight)  Once I saw one sleeping in the tree in my front yard.  I did not want to run the risk of losing the opportunity, so I did not bother to change out of my pink pajamas... but nabbed my camera and tripod and dashed out front.  I had pictures, but as the bird was asleep in the tree, the photos only show an unrecognizable black blob on the tree bark.

Last Christmas D bought me a few bird houses for the yard, with the intent to put them up on posts this spring.  In the midst of researching the best way to put them out in the yard (to prevent marauders from gaining access) D began brainstorming squirrel baffles.  In order to test his designs, he devised a plan to put in a temporary post in the yard and hang a collection of bird feeders from it - if the squirrels cannot get up to the food that they clearly want, then the baffles will work for the birdhouses (which they should be less interested in anyway)  So he placed a bit wooden post in a corner near our patio, collected a bunch of my feeders from around the yard, and set up what is now a substantial feeding station.

The experiment has created an unexpected turn of events.  The tall wooden post, combined with a long narrow suet feeder filled with peanut-based suet, appears to be the ideal combination for pileated woodpeckers.  Within days of setting up the feeders we began noticing pileateds hanging around the yard.  I've dashed out of the house a few times to get pictures... some of them were fuzzy (low light + fast bird) and many times I've scared the birds away.  But... they keep coming back.  Daily.  They seem to have grown so accustom to us that I can approach the feeders to about 10 feet before they fly away.

They other day I noticed the feeder was almost empty, so I walked out to fill it and didn't even notice the female was on the backside of the post.  She didn't see me either, and I was 5 feet away before she took flight, landing on the side of the tree behind me.  She watched me fill the feeder, then flew immediately back to it as soon as I'd turned and walked a few steps away.

As they have come back with such frequency, I'm now referring to them as our Resident Pileateds.  I have several shots of both of them at the feeders, but I'm also trying to capture them with more of their own habitat as the surroundings.

These photos are 7 years in the making (cropped down to show both birds in one frame)  The Grand Pooh-bas of Backyard Birding:

I'm thinking the male (on the left) should be named Woody, I haven't decided what to call the female yet.

Happy Publishing Day!

Today Issue #2 of Films & Grains Magazine comes out - available online via a print-on-demand type service.

You can glance through the magazine here by clicking the "show preview" link...

Flip through to pages 40-41 and you'll see two of my shots, under the topic of Nature's Graffiti... and also this time the editor remembered to put my website URL on the page.

:)

Here are the two pics... in case you don't have the time to flip through...
Driftwood

And Fringe

If you feel so inclined, or are interested in the nostalgia of analog photography, you can follow the link above to purchase a hard copy of Films & Grains!

Happy Friday - I hope everyone enjoys their weekends!

Eggless Easter

Decorating Easter eggs has always been a giant exercise in patience and paranoia for me.  As a kid, my mom would have one of the neighbors boil eggs in their house - so as to avoid the high potential for an asthma attack for me.  Once the eggs were safely boiled and cooled, they were returned to our dining room table... where we would line up the identical set of coffee mugs (which I swear we only used for this purpose) filled the appropriate amount of vinegar, plopped the little sweet-tart looking discs in, and went to work transforming the evil little ovals of death into brightly colored holiday decorations.

My efforts were generally hindered by wearing my mother's rubber dish washing gloves and attempting to balance these fragile beasts on the end of the flimsy bent wire "egg holder" that came with the decorating kit.  More often than not, I simply gave up trying to handle them myself and directed my dad to plunk them into the various colors.  I participated for the traditional family gathering aspect of it, I wasn't going to have anything more to do with them anyway... the eggs were turned into snacks and egg salad for the rest of the family, and come Easter morning, the kid's egg hunt was for the plastic sort that had prizes and candy hidden inside.

I'm not sure if I've grown even more paranoid as the years go on, or if I've just decided that life is to frackin' short to be actively adding potential health hazards to it, but either way I believe I have entirely given up on the traditional real-egg-dying baloney.  I've tried to stick with it out of some sense of loyalty to the past, some years combining the precarious-egg-dying with the far more enjoyable wooden-egg-painting... but really, when it comes down to it, what's the point?

I don't want hard boiled eggs in my house.  The smell makes my stomach turn over, the sight of them in my fridge makes my hand instinctively recoil as I reach for my coffee creamer, and as incredibly careful and cautious as both D and G are when handling the little devils... I spend my days feverishly scrubbing down counters to avoid breaking out in hives and secretly plotting out ways I can "accidentally" throw out what's left and just be done with the whole stinkin' holiday.  (Now take that paranoia and multiply it a thousand times over when someone who is not as careful as D comes over and starts cracking one open on my kitchen counter.  *shudder*)

My alternative tradition is to decorate fake eggs.

Last year I picked up several bags of paper mache eggs, and G and I had a lovely time sitting and painting the little guys.  She found it far more interesting to be able to paint designs rather than plunk them in a cup and just... watch.  Also, she enjoys not having to be afraid of dropping them.  This makes me feel satisfied that my allergy is not depriving my child of our own holiday family tradition.

This year I saw an article in Family Circle magazine about ways to decorate plastic eggs.  When I took a trip to Michael's last week I picked up some of their new, brightly colored paper mache eggs, a few packs of origami paper, and tonight G and I sat down and experimented with a few designs (as well as breaking out the pastel paints for the leftover paper mache eggs from last year)

The result of tonight's efforts:

What I also love about this project - besides being able to save them as decorations for future Easters, is that it can be an ongoing project all the way up to Easter, which gives us more than just an afternoon of sitting around smelling vinegar.

Edit on Sunday: Today's Egg Adventures

February's Photography Successes and lessons

Over the last few weeks I've slowly made my way through the backlog of images I shot on my vacation.  I think the focusing trick I learned from the seminar I attended last April has really paid off, as I came away from this trip with gigabytes of sharp wildlife images.  I wouldn't have captured nearly the amount had I been using my previous focusing method... which consisted of fumbling around with the shutter button, giving up and focusing by hand, then throwing most of the shots out of focus by trying to then take the photo.
Taking the auto-focus function off the shutter release is quite possibly the best photographic decision I made this year.
I compiled so many images that my portfolio update tonight had to be broken down into 7 new galleries...

I loaded them up and placed them under the "Featured Galleries" on my main page - just go to My Site and scroll down to the bottom of the page if you want to take a peek, or here is a list of direct links to each gallery

Snow Scenes - Images taken during the great big snow storm we had in the middle of our vacation.  Many of these were shot from inside the truck as we wove our way down Whidby Island.
Metal, Wood, Water and Stone - kind of a mixture of scenic stuff from around Orcas Island, and experimenting with longer shutter speeds on wave shots.
Birds of Port Townsend - didn't have enough of any individual  bird to do their own album, so the house sparrow, crow and double-crested cormorants ended up here.
Great Blue Heron - it's clear I loved shooting this guy.
Belted Kingfisher - he was more difficult to capture, since he's such a relatively small bird and very, very shy.  I consider myself lucky to have even spotted him
Bald Eagle - an immature bald eagle... I noticed him swoop down just as I was getting into the car to wait for the ferry, and I bolted right back out to follow him.  This guy was being totally harassed by seagulls, who made a racket and dive-bombed him, but never got close enough for me to get them in the shot with him.  The eagle ended up leaving the scene because the heron came back.  It seems in the world of birds, size matters more than talons?
Port Townsend Fountain in the Snow - This is the fountain in Port Townsend which sits at the base of the stairs that connect Uptown to Downtown (they are literal in PT)  We arrived in PT under gray skies, and the snow began to fall just as we brought our bags into the condo.  This is a series of shots taken over the course of our 3 day stay, with varying degrees of coverage and meltage.

This trip was a lesson to me in what it's like to shoot in bitterly cold weather.  I wore fingerless gloves to keep my hands as warm as I could, but I think I may need to invest in some hunting gloves (the kind where you can remove the index finger only) if I'm going to shoot in winter conditions for any length of time.  Also, bright snow, bright sunshine, and transition lenses to not make for a good shooting set-up.  It took me a few outings to realize that the reflection of the sun off the snow made my glasses pitch-black dark - great for driving but terrible for viewing anything through the eyepiece or on the LCD screen.  I started shoving my glasses in my pocket while I shot, but nearly dropped them several times so I really do need to carry my glasses case with me next time.

Driving in a winter wonderland

(I originally started this post a couple weeks ago, then failed to finish and publish... so the story is a little late.  And I'm failing at my "at least once a week posting", so I'm going to get my ass moving on that.  I promise)

That bird-watching opportunity that I mentioned in my last post came about because the school district up here has a mid-winter break.  It's not a vacation that either D or I grew up with, but it's something that is in the teacher's contract, so we decided to take advantage of it and spend a week getting away from it all.  We had no idea that "getting away from it all" would involve driving straight into a bizarre patch of heavy winter weather.  We drove north, took a ferry, and stayed a couple of days on Orcas Island... where we were hit with a relatively massive amount of snow.  Granted, the man who owned the coffee shop in town (originally from Switzerland) thought it was nothing more than a dusting... we considered 3-4 inches dropping in a few hours to be decently significant.  However, with D's big heavy truck and my white-knuckled grip on the rather un-detailed map of the island*, we navigated the snowy roads down to the ferry dock.
*(Side note: those who might plan a visit to Orcas... know that your nav system may not be updated with any road information for the island.  It's not so big that you can really get lost anyway, but if you want to know where you are for certain - say for example, in the snow where you can't really see where the road is... bring a map)
After loading onto the ferry, we had snowy and freezing couple hours ride over to Anacortes, where the snow had blanketed the town in a good 6 inches, and was still falling.

Usually in these kind of driving conditions I turn into... well... I get paranoid.
Hard to imagine me paranoid, right?
However, on this day I managed to distract myself enough with the beautiful scenery that I let go of my anxiety and just put my faith in D's driving skills.  I knew I wasn't going to convince anyone in our party to stop at viewpoint for me to get out and shoot, but I did take advantage of the slow crawls to stick my lens out the window and capture some lovely snowy landscapes.

As we drove down the length of Whidby, we were treated to these kinds of peaceful scenes... rolling hills of farm land covered in a blanket of white, snow capped trees, and off in the distance just the slightest hint of a break in the clouds... just enough to light the scene without washing everything out.

We considered stopping at the viewpoint across Deception Pass, but I wasn't on top of it enough to remind D that the turn off is IMMEDIATELY after the bridge, so we missed the opportunity to stop.  I did manage a shot of the pass below the bridge as we drove over though.

Down the remainder of the island, on our way to the ferry dock that would take us to Port Townsend, the snow thinned.  By the time we reached the dock there was little more than a hint of dusting on a few pieces of driftwood.  Strange what a difference 2 miles makes in the weather up here.

Due to low tide, we had an hour and a half wait for that ferry - which is where my bird watching opportunity came about.  It was lovely timing, as the family had to sit and wait for the ferry anyway, so my shooting adventure didn't take up anyone's time.  We crossed the water and pulled into town, an easy 8 or so blocks from the ferry dock to the condo we rent.  As we unloaded our cars the snow began to fall, and by dinner time the town was covered in a good 4 inches of snow.  Thankfully, Port Townsend is the kind of place that you can park your car and not need to touch it again until you leave town... so all we needed to do was settle in.

The timing was incredible.