Birk, Bjorn and I have a morning ritual…On the way to daycare—if everyone’s been good—we go “look for animals” on our special loop. It’s a real treat for Birk..Bjorn is usually sleeping. The 8-mile circuit takes us across a small river, through a WMA (Wildlife Management Area) and down a little-traveled dirt road through huge rolling hayfields (huge for mostly-wooded Carlton County Minnesota). On this little loop over the past year we’ve seen Rough-legged Hawks, Red-tailed Hawks, Bald Eagles, Ruffed Grouse, and deer…plenty of deer.

Today, we found a bird I’ve only seen once before in Carlton County…an Upland Sandpiper…And it was cooperatively perched on a beautifully weathered, lichen-encrusted wooden fence post (see my blog post from June 29, 2010). Birk was as excited as me…of course, everything is exciting to him now. Bjorn continued to snore. And I was prepared; camera (switched on) with 400mm lens on the passenger seat, set to Shutter Priority (Tv) at 1/2000 second and auto ISO at f6.3. Rolling to a stop so we’d be between the sun and the bird, I simply rolled the window down (I guess we don’t “roll” windows down anymore..I hit a switch) and started shooting.

As is probably true with many who did a lot of shooting back in the “film days,” I am conservative when I hold down the shutter. Too conservative. Every activation of the shutter used to cost us about 50 cents (about 25 cents per frame for a roll of 36 Kodachrome, Velvia, etc and about 25 cents to develop each frame). I’ve missed many an action shot because I didn’t just “let ‘er rip.” Today I missed the take off as the Upland flew from its perch.

After dropping the kids off, I went back to the spot. Gorgeous spring day…sunny calm and temps in the low 50s. Then I heard it…the aerial song of the Upland Sandpiper…a slow rolling “wolf whistle” given from high in the air. Across the road the first Bobolinks of the year burst forth with their bubbly song. From a distant fenceline a Meadowlark sang. I felt as if I was back on the western prairies, and it felt good.

Vertical Upland Sandpiper: Canon 7D, Canon 400mm f5.6, Tv Shutter priority at 1/2000 second at f5.6, Auto-ISO decided on ISO 250
Horizontal Upland Sandpiper: Canon 7D, Canon 400mm f5.6, Tv Shutter priority at 1/2000 second at f5.6, Auto-ISO decided on ISO 320

The Regal Fritillary is threatened over much of its range. It is found in prairies and grasslands in the central U.S. And it is a regal looking butterfly. It is large with boldly marked above and below. The big silver white spots on the underside of the dark chocolate colored hindwings is especially beautiful.

I felt very fortunate to find several Regal Fritillaries at the Nachusa Grasslands in northern Illinois. Unfortunately they were in egg-laying mode which meant that they rarely landed on a flower to nectar. They would constantly be on the wing searching for their ground-hugging host plant, the Bird’s-foot Violet on which to lay eggs. So I gave up on photographing one on a flower and instead switched to “wing shooting” mode. I had to manually focus since the autofocus could not lock on to such a small subject, so I prefocused at a certain distance and when the butterfly came in range I just started blasting, hoping to get an acceptably sharp photo. After hundreds of attempts I got a few keepers including this one. It is not a perfect specimen with many wing tears and chunks missing but it is a fair representation of  rare species.

Canon 7D, 400mm f5.6 lens, handheld, ISO 800, f5.6 at 1/2000 second

Prairies are not just grass! And this photo shows the rich diversity of an Illinois tallgrass prairie. I shot it with a super wide 10mm lens from a low angle to dramatize the clouds. I handheld a Galen Rowell 2-stop graduated neutral density filter over the front of the lens to bring the sky down a couple stops and prevent it from blowing out when exposing for the flowers. This image is technically a HDR…A High Dynamic Range photo. It is the result of a single image being processed twice in Aperture (once for the sky and once for the foreground wildflowers) and then combined in Photomatix Pro. I then went back into Photoshop to adjust curves and darken the sky. Finally I brought it back into Aperture to give it final tweeks.

The Tallgrass prairies have mostly disappeared…Only a fraction of the original prairies still exist. Fortunately, most of the remaining tracts are now protected. Groups like The Nature Conservancy and state DNRs are not only protecting the lands but rejuvenating them with prescribed burns and wildflower and grass plantings.

Canon 7D, 10-20mm Sigma lens, 2-stop Galen Rowell graduated neutral density filter, handheld, f16.

While visiting my wife’s parents and sisters in Illinois, I “escaped” one day to a large Nature Conservancy Prairie in northern Illinois. It is near the town of Franklin Grove and is called the Nachusa Grasslands. It had been incredibly hot and humid but this day was relatively “cool” at least by Illinois standards. Much of  the preserve seemed to have been burned that spring which left me wondering if I’d find much. But cresting one of the many rolling hills I heard several singing Henslow’s Sparrows. This is a bird that is quite rare in Minnesota. It has been categorized as “”Endangered” but may be reduced in status to “Threatened” since many more have been found in new locations recently. This increase in Minnesota may be due to large chunks of fallow farmland put into the CRP program (farmers paid to leave some land fallow). You see Henslow’s like brushy fields and prairies with some taller stems and stalks for singing. They are picky about their habitats. But once you find one, you may find several singing males since they are semicolonial.

So it was a real treat to find several cooperative males. I “wasted” a lot of pixels by taking many photos from far away but you need to do this just in case you can’t get close. But I discovered a slick trick…By taking some video footage and recording a singing male with a shotgun microphone, I could play back the video with the camera volume set to max and the Henslow’s would think another male was in his territory! It worked great (but I only did this sparingly, not wanting to disturb them too much). I got some great head-on shots of him singing but I really wanted a shot from the back with the Henslow’s head thrown back and singing. This would show the more colorful back feathers than the lightly marked breast feathers.

Note his subtle greenish head markings. Their song is a two to three syllable buzz…Almost insect like.

Wooden fence posts are going the way of the Dodo Bird…They are disappearing fast. No farmer in his right mind puts in cedar posts anymore…Too much work and they don’t last as long as steel posts from Farm & Fleet. Or do they? This Savannah Sparrow is singing from the top of a very old post. How old? 75 years? 100 years? Lichens encrust the weathered soldier. Wind, rain, hail, snow, bitter cold, ice have all taken a bit of life out of the post. But from a photographer’s aesthetic, the post is perfect. A photo of the same bird—same light, same position, same behavior—on a green steel fence post probably would have been deleted. I seek out fields fenced with wooden posts…Ones that are close to the road so I can ease up on a singing Savannah Sparrow, Western Meadowlark, Upland Sandpiper and get a shot. This sparrow actually allowed me to approach on foot and get a few handheld shots before splitting.

Look for the yellow lores on this grassland species. Its song is a rather loud “tic…tic…zheeeeeee..zhoo” It is common in hayfields, prairies and other grasslands more than a few acres across the continent.

If you’re a photographer you know how you can ignore personal discomfort when a fantastic photo opportunity presents itself. Oppressive heat, swarming mosquitos, sand in the face, laying on rocks, intense cold all become background when shooting something cool. I was returning from South Dakota’s Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge through southeast North Dakota when I spotted something in the ditch. I pulled a U-turn and found this mellow Short-eared Owl. For me it was a very exciting find…I’ve only seen them from distance while floating over prairies in western Minnesota.

Since the owl was staring at me but not budging, I decided I could crawl closer. My feet were now soaked as there was water beneath the snow in the ditch. But I kept creeping closer.  I got close enough so I could fill the frame with the owl. Deciding not to further disturb the owl, I backed off. After getting back to the car I realized my feet were icy cold. The lesson: Always have an extra pair of dry socks in your camera bag!

I love it when an image you thought nothing of when making it in the field becomes a favorite. Some images just come alive on the screen and this is one of those images. I almost didn’t take the picture because the barn would “ruin” the image…But it does exactly the opposite…It tells a story. Snow Geese migrate by the millions through the heartland of North America. Flooded prairie and farmland fields can be major stopovers for weary birds.

This image was taken in Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge in northcentral South Dakota. It was late March but snow and ice and  cold still dominated the landscape. The Snow Geese sleep on the backwaters of the James River at night and then feed on corn in neighboring farm fields during the day. This group was spooked by some unseen threat. The sound is as impressive as the sight!

Canon 40D, 400mm f5.6 on tripod, f8 at 1/640 second at ISO 400