More Whitewater Draw Thru The 500mm Lens

Folks seemed impressed with my first results through the "new" (to me, anyway) 500mm lens in its debut at Whitewater Draw. In that last post I talked about how I found the lens and showed a few of my favorite shots of cranes and astronomical objects too. I took a closer look at the images collected and have a few more to add - this time I'll restrict myself to just the bird shots - may have more astronomical ones next time.


Interestingly, last year they (AZ Game and Fish) installed a webcam providing a live HD view of the cranes. This was a wonderful idea for the crane observing season as you could tune in several times a day to observe and even in the middle of the night you could enjoy their rattling calls to each other. Unfortunately, since my last post a couple days ago, it has been offline, but I will keep an eye on it and provide a post providing it comes on again soon. The crane season typically winds down after Valentine's day, so it may not get back again this season. Anyway, shown here is the camera, solar cells and little transmitter. The shot at left shows it right after sunset at the wetlands, but the sun was still shining up in the Chiricahua Mountains - at upper left you can see the profile of "Cochise's Head", a well known landmark from Eastern Arizona... At right is a closer view of just the camera on my most recent trip...


The cranes have been keeping their distance from the viewing stations, so the images can't compare to some of the images I've taken on foot from a few yards away in Illinois! There seems to be a lack of water this year, and they tend to congregate where the water is located to protect themselves from predators. But sometimes you can catch flocks of them against the sky which can sometimes be striking compositions. Shown here are a pair of shots of profiles against the twilight after the sun has gone down. As a result, they are only silhouettes, but hey - still striking profiles! I particularly like the left shot as it isn't quite dark enough to obscure the "purple" mountains, which occur for about 15 minutes before and after sunset. And the shot at right, the birds seems consciously to stagger their wingflaps to prevent interference! In actuality, they are likely offset along their direction of flight to prevent that...


But on my most recent trip a week ago, there were a lot more water fowl than the mid-December trip! With the lack of water, these birds stayed close to viewing stands too where the water was located, so was able to get some decent shots. While not uncommon, they are striking. Most have appeared here before in previous trips, but still fun to photograph and show off!

I love the striking color difference of the eyes and body color of the Cinnamon Teal at left. This was just about the first photo taken on last weekend's trip. Hadn't seen these for a few years, likely last time at Sweetwater Wetlands, a manmade retreat off of the water treatment plant on Tucson's west side. At right, the Green-Winged Teal has some similar colors, but quite striking patterns on its head and neck.


And this one might be a new one for us! At least in Melinda's birding book, where she meticulously notated where we first saw each species, this entry is blank - a Northern Pintail. There was quite a gang of them feeding together here, but I don't recall seeing them before, so snapped a few shots, but usually can't trust my memory if we've seen them before. Good thing I did!

And there are a few things besides birds at Whitewater. My first trip there in December, well after sunset there were a couple peering thru their binoculars at something, whispering to themselves. When asked what they were looking at they said they had been spotting some deer, so again, recorded it for posterity. Sure enough, I counted about a dozen white-tails venturing across the west side of the property - the dark shapes with birds in both the foreground and in the fields in the background too. It was actually quite dark, but the fast lens was able to pull them out of the dusk...

That's about it for now - some more astronomy shots next time...