Burrowing Owls and other raptors need your help…

This is a Burrowing Owl that lives in a park in Berekeley, CA.  These little guys have about a 21″ wingspan but only weigh about 5 oz. According to the National Geographic Birds of North America, “the population is greatly reduced in much of the northern Great Plains by extermination of prairie dogs, conversion of prairies to cultivation, pesticide use, and habitat destruction. Declines continue. Many states list it as endangered or of “special concern”; endangered in Canada, with fewer than 1,000 pairs thought to remain.”

A sobering statement.

I also photographed this White-tailed Kite that same day.  As you can see here, it is landing with a field mouse.  Imagine what would happen to this raptor if the mouse had been poisoned. Birds can be 100 times more sensitive to pesticides than mammals.

Burrowing Owls used to be more common here as well, but owls along with raptors have to deal with threats like those listed above as well as deaths by feral and domestic cats, wind farms, impacts with cars, glass windows and lighted buildings and collisions with communication towers.

So what can you do to help?

Here are some suggestions I lifted from the latest Autumn issue of Wildcare published by the society of the same name.

• Support the removal of toxic pesticides from our food chain.
• Participate in coastal clean-up and other environmental improvement projects.
• Shop wisely for seafood and organic local produce.
• Keep your cat indoors, and support organizations that are working to humanely reduce feral cat colonies.
• Reduce your energy consumption.
• Support legislation that regulates such things as placement and operation of wind farms, and sets guidelines for monitoring industrial hazards.
• Support conservation programs that work to minimize bird deaths at electrical towers and in cities.
• Keep your bird feeders and baths clean to prevent the spread of disease.  Keep pet cats indoors.
• Support organizations like Wildcare that work to educate people and care for injured birds.

I’ll be attending one of their upcoming fund raisers, “An Evening with Owls“  on November 20th from 6:00 to 9:30.  There will be live owls and lectures.  Food and Wine, an auction, and I will be selling prints there. Come if you can, and please support your local wild animal rescue center.  The 0wls, hawks and others will appreciate it.

Falcons on camera, still here after all this time…

I help manage the web camera for the San Francisco peregrine site. And at least once every day, the falcon and the tiercel show up.  Sometimes she sits on the ledge for hours.

Here you can see a screen shot that I just took as I was writing this post.

So if you need a falcon fix, check out the site. You’ll be glad and so will I.

This webcamera is brought to you by the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group and kind hosting and financial support of PG&E and the additional support of people like you.

Breathing in the Moon

When my wife Charlene decided to create a blog of her own, she needed a custom image that spoke to her and illustrated something of what she was trying to achieve.  Rather than cruising the web for an image that might or might not work, she asked me to help out and I was glad to oblige.  Setting up my gear that I normally use for bird photography, I turned it skyward on the nights leading up to and of the full moon.  I was rewarded with terrific wispy clouds as well as fairly clear views of the full moon.  Several hundred shots later, I combined a properly exposed image of the full moon and one exposed for the clouds.  The resulting composite image along with the title text and tag line came out as seen below.

Here is her first blog entry…

I’ve felt a blog coming on for a very long time. I’ve managed to avoid it until now, but at last I feel I have something I want to share.

Let me start by telling you about the Blessing Moon. In Scott Blum’s book, Waiting for Autumn, a homeless man named Richard introduces him to a ritual that involves breathing in the energy of the moon. Our agrarian ancestors called the full moon in July the Blessing Moon because it’s the time of year when the earth begins to yield her bounty. According to Blum’s homeless friend, the Blessing Moon is the perfect time to begin a spiritual journey.

And so it was that I found this story on the very day of the full moon in July. I was entranced with the idea of breathing in the moon and I wanted to experience this ritual myself, perhaps because my own ancestors farmed land in Minnesota and in Norway. That night when the moon began to show itself, I positioned myself on my back porch and watched as it rose slowly over the treetops. When it was in full view, I raised both hands up on either side of my head, palms open, facing the moon just as Richard described to Scott. Then I lifted my head back and squinting at the moon, I breathed in the cold, crisp air.

I wish I could tell you that I experienced instant enlightenment, but of course, it doesn’t happen that way for most of us. I did feel slightly invigorated, though, and I vowed to revisit this practice each month. Since then, I’ve begun a meditation practice, I started a course in hands-on healing, I’ve begun working with my animal spirit guides, I’ve started writing down my soul, and I’ve booked a pilgrimage to Delphi. I have much to tell you about all of these things and more. And I have to tell you that at times I’m terrified! But that’s a good thing, right? As Duane Garrison Elliott, my former boss at Tiffany & Co. used to say,  ”Do what terrifies you most––everything else is boring.”

So please join me on my journey. And as we go along, I hope you’ll share your stories with me.

Indeed, please check out her blog Breathinginthemoon and follow along on her journey.

The Farallon Islands, an amazing place to visit

We had friends visiting from Boston back in August who had planned a trip to the Farallon Islands on August 22nd. I’ve lived in the city since 1980 and have never been, so having procrastinated long enough, I signed Charlene and myself up to go along.

The trip is run out of the marina just beside Ft. Mason. There is a website to check out for details and schedules. SFBAYWHALEWATCHING.COM

The boat runs clean without diesel fumes, it is the catamaran shown here;

We left at 8AM on a gray overcast morning. There were swells that day on the ocean that made me glad that I had taken my motion sickness pill. BTW Bonine is the recommended medicine these days. Dramamine makes you very sleepy. I recommend it if you want to insure a fun trip.

This particular trip we shared the boat with six sea lions that were being released by the Marine Mammal Center in Marin.

As we passed the gate, we hugged the coast to catch this view of some California Sea Lions the way they were meant to be seen.

The trip out took about 2:45 and after we arrived at the islands, the sea lions were released…

Of course there were birds. We saw Brown Pelicans, Common Murres, Western Gulls, Brandt’s, Pelagic and Double-crested Cormorants, Elegant Terns, Western Grebes, Red-necked Phalaropes, and my very first view of a Tufted Puffin…

There were many folks on the boat with me and for the most part we got along very well, but when the whales are spotted, there was a bit of crowding and it made it hard to get shots of the whales. In addition, carrying two cameras around my neck made it awkward to maneuver. At one point I was shooting a sequence of a grey whale’s flukes as it dove, thinking I had gotten some good shots, I looked down to review the images and found they were completely white. I had bumped the setting on the top of the camera from Aperture Priority to Manual and the shots were ten stops over exposed.

I also got to see a Humpback Whale breach completely out of the water, and missed the shot because I could not get the camera up in time. Clearly there is a learning curve when photographing on a pitching deck.

No matter, we had a great time anyway. I got to see two whales, the first ever for me, plus I added three species of birds to my life list. The Tufted Puffin shown above, and also the Pigeon Guillemot …

and the Pink-footed Shearwater shown below…

I shot some 600 images that day and it took me a week to edit it down to a reasonable number. You can see the entire edited page at my website at this link. It was an amazing day, and if you can spare the time and the cost, it is worth it. Really it is.

New images up on Raptor-Gallery.com

I’ve taken about a month off from shooting to update the Select Photos section of my website Raptor-Gallery.com. Please check it out and let me know what you think. There are larger images of raptors in new categories. I’ve added an alphabetical listing of every species that I have good shots of. This section has the best shots taken from my diary pages and is broken down by species. There are a lot of shots of non-raptors up now and it is easy to find the best shots saving hours of searching.

Each page allows you to comment on a photo and send the comments to me in an email. So please if you see something that needs fixing, then drop me a note and let me know.

Regards and thanks for looking.

Glenn Nevill