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DSC_0611 exploring the lake
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DSC_0611 exploring the lake

summerStaten IslandClove LakesGreat blue heronbirdsnatureheronsNYC

  • DSC_0345 food fight
  • It is impossible to tell in any other of the shots in this sequence, just what this scrap of food the two chicks are fighting over, used to be when it was alive. However in this shot if you can zoom in on your device closely enough you can definitely tell that it is some kind of field mouse, and it pretty intact. Possibly a little less fur than before it went down the herons throat, guts hanging out, but a mouse of some kind for sure, and obviously a treat worth fighting for for over 3 minutes straight. <br /> <br /> It would be 3 minutes and 50 odd seconds before one of the chicks celebrated victory. To them this mouse was definitely worth more dead than alive.
  • This tug of war lasted for almost 4 full minutes. As both birds dug in and pulled and twisted with all their might. As they did they started letting out the loudest kind of bellowing screech, a sound I don't know how to describe properly. And was it ever loud. The sound echoed all across the lake and far far beyond. Though people in those homes probably had no idea what was making all that noise, or why. But I did and I had a front row seat.
  • Three minutes later and all is quiet, and everyone is lovey dovey, as if the food fight never happened.
  • DSC_9894 heron's nest
  • DSC_9910 heron's nest
  • DSC_9926 heron's nest
  • DSC_0448 night heron
  • After I finished photographing the heron's nest, I was ready to head home. I had been shooting for over 7 hours and the thought of sitting in my nice comfortable leather office chair while I leafed through today's shoot, felt quite appealing to me.<br /> <br /> As I headed back up the lake trail towards Clove road I spotted some movement under the trees lining the brook connecting the first two lakes. I recognized that it was a night heron.<br /> <br /> When I originally attempted to get a shot of the first one I saw here some 5 years or so ago I always spotted the lone bird very close, if not on the rocks in front of the waterfall at the end of the first of Clove's lakes.<br /> <br /> But this year I have spotted an explosion of sorts of night herons here at Clove lakes. I've spotted them at various locations around the park. One in one location, then another a few minutes later in another. I've also spotted males and females flying around in pairs now. So obviously they have found our lake to be very much to their liking.<br /> <br /> This male found the hunting good at this spot. As they like small fish worms and insects that inhabit such locations, its not hard to see why.
  • Night herons are nocturnal by nature, but I remember reading that males can be spotted hunting in daylight hours during mating season, when they need the extra energy to cope with their heightened activity.<br /> <br /> While I don't know exactly when mating season for night herons is, the fact that I've seen multiple pairs of males and females flying around together recently suggest that this guy here may be stocking up his energy stores for a run at a fine feather female to call his own.
  • DSC_0529 great white egret
  • DSC_0537 great white egret
  • DSC_0563 great white egret
  • Today it has been just 6 days since I last visited the herons nest at Clove Lakes. To the uninitiated that doesn't sound like a lot of time for things to have changed much. However I knew better. The chicks, already seriously testing out their wings during a strong lasting breeze a week ago, would surely be out rightly trying to fly by now.<br /> <br /> I was hoping to catch one of them making their first gliding attempt to the ground, but all the way on the other end of the lake not even in eyesight of the nest yet I spotted on of the chicks wading in the water in the early morning light.<br /> <br /> It was easy to tell it was one of the chicks as he looks just like his parents except, big as he is compared to most any other bird here, it's still smaller than an adult great blue. Also no adult great blue has brown colored feathers mixed in it's plumage. And it lacks the white stripe down the center of its head.
  • DSC_0606 exploring the lake
  • DSC_0611 exploring the lake
  • DSC_0638 learning how to hunt
  • I watched this near adult stalk the shallows like an adult hunting for fish. Only it was spearing leaves instead. No doubt testing and honing it's hunting skills. For while it patents still dutifully feed the 3 remain chicks just like they did when the weren't strong enough to leave the nest, that won't last forever, if much longer at all.<br /> <br /> Soon the parents will let the children to fend for themselves, and by then this chick will have had to become an expert at spearing wiggling darting prey, not just stationery objects like this leaf. So for now practise makes perfect.<br /> <br /> This went for me as well. As I could tell it had a built in tolerance of people, just as it parents had, my close up presence didn't unnerve it. This allowed me to get within just under 40 ft or so of it. That I have learned without any doubt is the cutoff distance for my 70-300mm nikkor to record at least reasonably sharp images of nature subjects. Any farther out and the image quality tails off considerably, and beyond 50 ft the shots look like pure crap.<br /> <br /> That is why every shot of the nest I've taken both this year and last was with my 300mm Nikkor, or that plus my 1.4 tele-converter. They are manual focus optics from a generation ago, but they were designed by Nikon engineers to pull in distant objects, and do it with perfect clarity. And that as you can tell from the shots of the nest they do superbly.<br /> <br /> The down side is being 30 years old besides being manual focus optics, my 300mm also doesn't have image stabilization. So with this active chick moving erratically around making a tripod impossible, I needed something auto focus enabled with good reach to it. Not razor sharp at this distance, but reasonably good enough, I was able to follow the young heron around, and practise my predictive action focusing skill which definitely needs improvement. So both of us were practicing out at the lake today.
  • DSC_0637 learning how to hunt
  • DSC_0633 exploring the lake
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