Birds on the Beach- Sanibel Island Lighthouse Park

Ruddy Turnstone

Snowy Plover

Snowy Plover

Great Black-backed Gull

Red Knot

A bonanza of sea life washed onto the Sanibel beaches after gale force winds and multiple days of rain.

-Tom

Sanibel Island Lighthouse and Point Ybel

After two days of constant rain, which some some parts of southwest Florida receive nearly four inches of rain, and then a day of cloudy and cold conditions, my last day on Sanibel proved to be perfect weather.  My Mom and I left Bonita Springs, where her and I my dad are renting a place for a few months, at 6:15, driving across the Sanibel causeway just as the sun was rising.  What a spectacular drive it was!  Our first stop on the island was Lighthouse Park, where I gladly put eight dollars into the parking ticket machine in return two hours of shelling, birding and photography.

There are very few views like this in southwest Florida.  Sanibel is a throwback to simpler times, for sure.

-Tom

Afternoon Snack

Willet, Sanibel Island, March 2008.

On black at http://ittybittybugs.blogspot.com

The Birds of Sanibel- Ring-billed Gull

The ring-billed gulls in Florida look a little brighter than ours here in Ohio. Are ours just dirty? Do I not get up to Lake Erie enough to see adults? When we first arrived on Sanibel, Megan and I headed straight to the beach. A storm has washed up tons of sea life- urchins, molluscs, etc., and most were still alive. The shore birds were feasting on this bounty. I think the parts of the ring-billed gull that most intrique me are the red at the base of the mouth and the ring around the eye. What a beautiful bird. It is amazing that I had to travel to Florida to appreciate this species, when we have tons right here in the Midwest.

Tom

Sanibel, Florida- Island of the Fish Hawk

My first bird of the Florida trip? A boat tailed grackle at the Punta Gorda airport. The second? One that would capture my interest for quite some time, the Fish Hawk or Osprey, Pandion haliaetus. Parking at the condo, sick as a dog, I walked around to the back to a small concrete dock overlooking a tidal canal built for pleasure boats. Down the canal on the far side was perched an osprey, ripping into its meal, a black and white fish called a sheepshead, or Archosargus probatocephalus.

The osprey drew the attention of a little blue heron and ring-billed gull. Wow, what a cool bird I thought to myself, I wonder if we'll see any more?
Sure enough, only an hour later, we made our way to the beach. I put the long lens on the camera before heading out, hoping to get some shore bird images. I wasn't disappointed. And from the east came a fantastic osprey clinging to another sheepshead with its huge talons.
The next morning I went on my photo scouting mission of the island, even though I was sick as ever with a fever hovering around 101. I pulled into the island lighthouse parking area, and this nest platform towered above everything except the lighthouse. An osprey nest, quite a piece of construction.
And as I walked out on the fishing pier near the parking lot, I noticed these pro photographers with their Nikons pointed at the nest. I didn't have time to stick around and wait for the osprey, but after looking at the shot above more closely, I'm sure they were waiting for good shots of a male returning to the nest with a big fat fish, possibly feeding it to juveniles below the mom. In the field, I couldn't see the sitting mother, only when I got back and examined the photo more closely did she pop out at me. Yes, the picture below is the same exact photo as the one above, just cropped to ~%100. The clarity of the crop really demonstrates just how sharp Canon's 400 5.6L lens really is.

And the next day, still sicker than a dog, another osprey decided to give me one of the best photographic opportunities I've had. Unfortunately it didn't quite turn out like I wanted it to- with several blurry images and no fish for the osprey. But boy was it cool watching this bird dive down into the canal only about 20 feet from where I was watching from my plastic green lawn chair, again, sicker than a dog. (Pardon the expression, dog lovers!)







This bird paused for a moment, after adjusting its wings, and all of the sudden, WHAM!

No fish this time!

Tom

The Final HDR Image- Sanibel Sunrise

And here is my final HDR image, created from the five images that I posted yesterday.

Pretty cool, isn't it? Notice how the people walking on the beach have been mostly removed from the final image. The software isn't perfect, as you can still see a their faint outline, also called ghosting. Still, without a tripod, and only balancing the camera on a railing, the Photomatix software did a fairly good job aligning the images. The Australian pine tree in the upper left was waving in the breeze, and in the final image, it looks as if I took this shot using a long exposure with motion blur.

The Australian pine (Casuarina equisetifolia) is a nasty invasive in Florida. There are so many of these trees there, that most visitors would just pass them off as an interesting part of the native flora. But they are a non-native invasive, and they grow quickly, replacing native dune vegetation. I first had experience with this plant when I was traveling around Australia in 1999 with Hiram College.

So, have you tried to create your first HDR image? It can be addicting--beware. I have a great guide called the HDRI handbook that I'm reading now, and it comes with software and image demonstrations. I found it in the catalog in the Columbus Metropolitan Library, and to show you how popular HDR is becoming, I had to wait three months before it became available. Who knows, future cameras may be engineered to take pictures without any post-processing to create these incredible images. For now, it takes a little bit of work, but I think the final results are worth it. Just another tool in the bag of the nature photographer.

Update: After Gale suggested I clone out the sunspot, I gave it my best shot using Paint.net. I am by no means an expert, but my cloning doesn't look all that bad! Now if I had photoshop...just think of the possibilities!




Tom

How to Create Fantastic Digital Images that Will Wow Your Friends

Notice anything interesting about this group of photos? I took them in succession, but at different exposure values using the exposure compensation feature with my Canon Digital Rebel XTI. The first image is two "stops" underexposed, the second is one stop underexposed, the third image is what the camera's computer thought was an ideal exposure for this scene, and the fourth and fifth images were overexposed by one and two stops, respectively.

The bottom line is that before digital photography, you had to choose one exposure and stick with it. Especially when using slide film. Which image would you have chosen to best represent the scene? More detail in the sky, or more detail in the plants in the foreground?

The bottom line today is that with digital imaging, you don't have to make this choice anymore. There's a technology, and an art really, known as HDR imaging that solves this age old problem and really puts digital photography over the top.

How did I found out about HDR? Upon joining FLICKR last fall, I was noticing some incredibly interesting images that looked like they were taken in real life, but had the lighting and look of computer animation. Images like this one and this one.

After doing some research, I found out that these fantastical looking images were called HDR, or high dynamic range images. These images, are in fact, a compilation of differentially exposed digital camera photographs all compiled into one image, in order to fully express the range of dark and light tones in a scene. Dynamic range is simply the difference between the lightest light and the darkest dark in a scene. Today's digital cameras don't capture a very wide dynamic range (neither did slide film, print film's range was slightly wider).

Have you ever noticed that your camera can't capture a sunset very well? Even though you might see color in the foreground of the scene you are viewing, the camera isn't able to pick that up. Or if your camera sees the foreground, then the sunset is washed out and really bright? Let's look closer at the first and the last image.





High dynamic range imaging looks to eliminate that problem that I have so crudely illustrated above. The goal is to present an image that more accurately represents what the eye sees rather than the camera sensor. After putting together an HDR image, you go through a process called tone mapping, and voila, you've got a pretty darn cool looking image.

And producing a high dynamic range is quite easy. Making it look really good is something that I'm still trying to figure out. I have seen some incredibly realistic looking HDR landscape images that don't look fantastical or computer generated.

There are several free downloadable software packages out there to get you started on the HDR path. I've been using Photomatix. What else do you need? Well, a digital camera with some type of exposure compensation (most Canon cameras have this, even the bottom of the line models), and preferably a tripod, but this is optional. I didn't use a tripod to capture the above images, and the Photomatix software can align a series of images for you if you shoot with a steady hand. It even has a feature to remove "ghosting" from the images, usually things like moving people, which certainly was helpful for me in this beach scene of Sanibel Island.

So, you're probably thinking, "OK, I'm ready to see the final product". Well, for that, I might draw this out just a little bit longer! I'll post my final image tomorrow. But for now, try going outside and taking a few image series, download Photomatix, and give HDR a try!

Tom

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Florida Sunshine Megapost to Brighten Your Snowy Easter

I'm sitting here on my parent's couch in Munroe Falls, Ohio, watching my dad and the neighbor across the street get out their red Toro snowblowers and go to work on the 4 inches of snow we received last night. All I can say is that this snow is quite the departure from the purple crocus blooms we had popping up in our yard on Thursday. So why not go back to Florida for a while? Sure sounds good to me.

When we arrived at our condo, one of the first things that I noticed was this sign placed just at the beginning of the road. Wow, I thought, how cool would it be to see a gopher tortoises. A true tortoise, I've only seen them in zoos and once back in the mid 90's in a pet store in Akron. This species is decline across its range in the southeast, and in some parts of is range, populations are designated as federally threatened. There was some great scrubby, wooded dune habitat across from our condo that I explored pretty thoroughly, but I never came across any signs of the tortoises. Maybe next time?
As I've shown in some of my bird shots, the Ding Darling refuge is a fairly amazing place. There are so many birds there, that an egret walking across the road goes relatively unnoticed. The birders in the background are watching the massive tide pools filled with hundreds of wading birds.
Even roseate spoonbills whiffle every once in a while. Check out the top right bird.
The egrets were quite adept at catching fish. They were plucking them out of the water every thirty seconds or so.
The American white pelicans were really fascinating. They catch fish as a group, swimming in a close formation and dipping there pouches into the water, sweeping up fish.
The plants of the island were also quite fascinating. There were air plants like this, probably members of the bromeliad family, clinging to most trees on the island.
You really could call Sanibel the island of the osprey. You really can't go anywhere without seeing this creature flying somewhere. Inland, along the shore, at the fishing pier, and in the canal behind our condo, were all places that I was able to photograph ospreys. This individual is rising up out of the water after being completely submerged. He dove down from a tree above the canal for a fish, but came up empty after getting really wet.
White ibises were also fairly common on the island, and these two showed up in the red mangroves in the canal behind our condo. Ibises are the closest relatives of the roseate spoonbill. I love their pink bills, feet, and long legs. And their blue eyes also really pop.
At rest, you'd never know that the white ibis has black wingtips. When flying they really stand out.
Here's one where I need your help. Does anyone have any idea what these ducks are? I'm guessing that they are an exotic release, but you never know. The male had a bright pink bill and a red eye.
Back to the beach. An Atlantic pen shell, surrounded by scallops and cockles.
The sea grape, Coccoloba uvifera, is a very common shrub and small tree of the beach dunes in Florida. Its fresh leaves are a greenish red color, but the green has faded to bronze in this leaf that was washed up along the gulf shore, embedded in the sand. Coccoloba can be roughly translated as "red leaf". A pretty good name, don't you think? This plant is actually related to our native smartweeds, as both are in the Polygonaceae.
None of the sea-side condos on Sanibel are much taller than four stories, giving the island a natural appearance. It is great to see beach dune communities between the open sand and the condos. Loggerhead sea turtles nest regularly on the beaches of Sanibel.
Sand castle construction is a favorite past time of beach goers here. The abundance of shells and other washed up sea creatures provide extra building material. The red bits in the lower right of this image are crab claws.
There were not tons of leps around, but here is an old tattered butterfly I was able to photograph on the beach in the morning. This picture is one for bugguide.net It resembles a monarch, but something just isn't quite right about it for a monarch. Those white spots are throwing me on this one.
Don't think there isn't the typical beach-going crowd at Sanibel. There certainly are plenty of vacationers on the island.
Sanibel offers several opportunities to see large mammals. I wish i would have gotten a picture of these creature's snouts-that would have helped to put an ID on them. Still, these animals were really having fun, cruising along the beach, and occasionally bursting through the surf as if they were playing. It really looked like they were having a ball.



Ahh, and the other large mammal that we watched every day during our trip was the Manatee. What a wonderful, slow, and gentle looking creature.

Finally, a few neotropical warblers were hanging out in the sea grapes just behind the beach one morning. Above, a palm warbler, and below, a yellow-rumped warbler.

It won't be too much longer before these birds show up here in Ohio and throughout northern North America. I can't wait- this latest snow is just getting to me. Enjoy digging out!

Tom