Archives for November 2008

“I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming that I have never made one.”
(James Gordon Bennett)

  

Yesterday’s blog was part of the day’s multi-tasking.  As I wrote it I was also going back and forth to take photographs in the backyard.  While my descriptions of our November gloom were true, the morning had eventually blessed us with a little sunshine and I wanted to take advantage of it, spending time with the furballs and hoping for a decent shot of the Cooper’s hawk who’d been spotted checking out the day’s possibilities from the big tree 3 doors down.

As always, the furballs never disappoint my photogrpher’s eyes.  The sunshine was obviously welcomed by them, too, though my worrisome little girl was slower than some to get going:

  

I love the old wooden fence that divides the backyards on the west side of our tiny lot.  It functions both as both a prop and a backdrop, and like the annual pumpkin fest, often sets the stage for more unusual and amusing shots:

  

Of course, by now, most of the furballs no longer pay much attention to me or Matilda.  Eleanor in particular is only ever really interested in her daily handout and, perhaps out of some sort of unconscious guilt over having ripped open the bedroom screen earlier in search of it, was quite the Queen Of Posing for me:

  

The thought that it was Thanksgiving was never far from my mind, though, so plenty of rations were tossed out between shutter clicks, making all the furry photograph subjects very happy.  But I write today not to express my appreciation for the furballs, but instead to ponder the day’s juxtaposition of reason to give thanks from the perspective of the Cooper’s hawk. 

As I’ve already said, the Coop was in the neighboring tree top by late morning, and it stayed put the entire time I spent photographing the antics of the squirrels.  Its position was not conducive to anything more than a positive-ID shot from the backyard, nor worth a walk up the street, but after I was done with the squirrels I decided to check out the shooting angle from the eastern bedroom on the second floor of our house.  This is something I’d thought about before but hadn’t ever had time to actually do so I trundled Matilda upstairs and positioned her in front of the opened window.

Better if the hawk had been sitting on a different branch, but the possibilities are, indeed, quite good:

  

And were I better at in-flight shots, this new shooting angle could prove fruitful:

  

As the Coop launched, it headed across the backyards towards ours.  The grey gloom and my inexperience didn’t allow any of the shots I attempted to be of use but what was both frightening and wondrous was to clearly hear the hawk come crashing through our trees and then the sound of a flock of pigeons in frantic flight, followed by the scrambling and vocal protests of startled squirrels

This meant only one thing.  The hawk had come by for its Thanksgiving meal.

I padded downstairs with Matilda as fast as the doorways, slant ceiling in the upstairs hall, and my feet could carry me and made a beeline to the back patio door.  Indeed, the hawk was there with most of its back to the house and beneath it was … was? … was something that looked very much like the back end or at least the tail of a black-phase grey squirrel!

Thoughts flashed like lighnting and included serious injury to the hawk by the squirrel (unlike other raptors like the red tail hawk, Cooper’s squeeze their prey to death and squirrels can squirm and twist with great strength and inflict deadly damage with teeth and nails, which is why Cooper’s mainly prey on birds) and visions of having to care for an injured adult squirrel.  They didn’t even really register, there was only enough for recognition of the situation to immediately snap on my internal protective switch.  So, reflexively, I burst out the patio door and yelled, “Hey!” at the top of my lungs.

The world stood still as the Coop paused in puzzlement, distracted from its instinctive hunting focus, and the remaining squirrels in the yard scattered at top speed for the safety of anything above the ground.  It finally dawned on the Coop to get out of possible danger, too, and as it loosened its grip on its prey and began to lift itself into flight, a pigeon shot up from the ground and flew away in frantic fear and panic.

I was relieved that the pigeon could fly and fly so well.  I was then mortified to realize, too late, that the Coop would probably not now get to eat this day.  On Thanksgiving, no less.

And as a photographer, I’d blown a prime shot of a wild predator.

A big, squishy, and very uncomfortable ball of guilt promptly splatted on my shoulders.  I suppose that hawks and other predators who live in human-populated areas are accustomed to the NIMBY (“Not In My Backyard”) nature of most people.  Certainly, the hawks here eat well; there is no lack of birdseed-fattened pigeons and other birds for the Coops in particular.  I silently apologized to the gods, shouldered Matilda, and went to see if I could spot the Coop as it tried to figure out what it was going to do next, for it hadn’t flown too far off.

As it turns out, the Coop returned to the big maple tree in the yard next door in very short order.  Apparently not seeing where its unexpectedly-lost prey had headed, it appeared to be looking to see if it was instead still in our yard.  I was able to get close enough to where it sat on one of the large, clear-sight-lined branches and get a good shot:

  

I wish the light had been better since this is a very beautiful adult.  But considering the circumstances, I’m simply grateful to have had any opportunity since, really, it isn’t fair to have been able to take this shot at all.

“How good a day can it be when it begins with your hand shoved up a turkey’s butt?”
(yours truly)

  

I try to live a life of thankfulness; grateful for not only the Big Good Things that come into my life, but also the myriad Small Good Things that are, in the end, part and parcel of this human existence.  But while I hold appreciation for a day set aside solely to give thanks, being who I am, at the same time I cannot help but see the irony.  The suffering of 45 million turkeys raised only to be killed for this day, the tradition of stuffing them and then ourselves with the intention of creating little more than an after-dinner stupor so as to be properly shored up for the insanity of Black Friday Christmas shopping more symbolic of everything wrong with our society than symbolic of gratefulness for blessings both great and small that are continually woven through our lives.

And so this morning, feeling more than ever the added pressure of personal matters that have splintered my family as well as the frightening news from Mumbai, India, where reside both coworkers and a daily photo group member, I awoke in a rather subdued, if not downright cranky mood.  The weather has finally and seemingly gleefully gripped November’s gloom tightly with both hands and while it’s not raining – or sleeting or snowing – on the Thanksgiving Day parade, it’s certainly doing little to welcome a weary heart to another new day. 

For the furballs in residence and those living free, it’s just another day.  And it is from them that I will take my cue and focus on the Small Good Things, letting them fill my basket until my smile returns.  One Small Good Thing was found in reaping the benefit of patience this week.  The majority of the truckloads of pumpkins brought in on Halloween night went into what was intended to be our own harvest-of-pumpkins garden that had fallen unexpected victim to some sort of blight and so since late summer had sat empty and forelorn.  Pumpkins and squirrels make for hilarious photo ops, and I suppose that in a way it’s almost cheating to create a stage set of sorts, but we’ve all gotta eat and, by gods, a rounded diet is a healthy diet so for the seasonal-eating squirrels, if I can give them pumpkins, I will give them pumpkins.

It’s taken a while for the squirrels to get into them, though.  Until the temperature drops and maintains a consistent chill both night and day they continue to mainly forage and bury, wisely leaving most of the nutritious seeds safe and secure in their natural container.  But eventually opening day arrives, and I grab Matilda and go out back to have some annual fun.

These fall pumpkin shots are always bursting with color and when we received a short but wet, ground-covering snowstorm a few days ago it lent a unique and brighter dimension. 

 

The pine squirrels have been very loudly out in force, and their tiny size allows them to easily dart in and out of the opened pumpkins.  Their lightning-speed darting, however, makes it difficult to get a good shot unless they momentarily focus their wee minds on actually gathering the seeds instead of fending off their larger competition,  both real and more often imagined.  In bad late afternoon light early this week I watched as three of them were having a late supper in the pumpkin bed, but as soon as I brought out Matilda, every single one of them took off and never returned.  I was disappointed but determined, so kept an eye out for them and finally was able to catch one of them in the act:

 

 

As I write this, everyone has started getting into the act and yesterday’s daily was of Titan in action.  The boy has grown up to be one fine specimen of a fox squirrel, and he’s certainly eating well!

 

Being (allegedly) on vacation this week, I was able to make the requisite mad dashes outside when the ‘hood hawks made their daily hunting rounds.  Unlike the brightness of the color on the ground, shooting raptors against the gloomy grey sky continues to prove more practice than productive, but when both the Cooper’s hawk and the red tail hawk showed up within a few hours of one another, it made for very exciting and very fun afternoon. 

The Coop appeared first and it was “stick-picking” time from the back patio, aiming three doors down.  It’s distance from my vantage point allowed for a wider f-stop, and the shallow depth-of-field resulted in not-too-shabby a capture, especially considering the lack of light.

 

The red tail was a hungrier and a far less-cooperative subject.  I became a hunter hunting a hunter and ended up following it clear to the end of our block trying to get just one “ok” shot to record its visit.  Every time it would land, I’d hurry over to what seemed like a decent position but by the time I set down the tripod and quickly began to focus, it would head off to another tree.  So I’d pick up and move again.  And again.  And again.

You get the picture.  This is the only half-way decent one I got:

 

But life’s much more about the journey than the destination so today I’m thankful that I have such opportunities in my life.

“It was so cold today that I saw a dog chasing a cat, and the dog was walking.”
(Mickey Rivers)

  

November’s chilly promises have begun to fulfill themselves in earnest now, though I admit taking great delight in the fact that they are not yet accompanied by the rains that force that chill right down into one’s bones.  Instead, I simply freeze my fingers off standing outside in a most welcome frequence of low, brilliant sunshine; understanding why the squirrels flop on high, leafless branches as the warming rays soak into my layers of clothing.   There is certainly no SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) here; indeed, more days than not have held a goodly measure of simple happiness as we all go about the business of continuing our preparations for winter.

The bare trees now afford a different and better view of the hawks that hang out in the ‘hood.  We can often spot them a block or more away and Matilda’s big honking lens is able to snag evidence of their presence.  Such distance pushes Matilda to her limits, to be sure, and while I will actually walk down the block to get the best shots when the light is clear, I like the challenge of picking them out from their hiding places.  This red-tail was out assessing the prey situation from a backyard tree of a house on the block behind us, maybe 400 feet away and about 50 feet up.  The light was grey and flat under snow-bound skies and I hope I never get used to being able to get such really good glimpses of what they do way up there:

 

This beauty was shot on one of those short walks early last week.  The overcast morning sky had begun to break up into moments of clear blue, giving the brightness and clarity needed to show off the exquisite detail of these agile predators.  We suspect this Cooper had already managed to snag a good breakfast for it sat on this perch for literally all the midday hours; unfortunately the temperatures were too cold for me to sit with it and wait to try to take an in-flight shot.

 

Of course the most hilarious posturing by the Coop would occur when the gusty winds had blown that wonderful light back to almost complete grey again:

 

All wildlife takes weather pretty much in stride, but it was so frosty the other morning, even the furballs showed visible signs of protest:

 

This little one stands out because it is becoming more obvious each day that it isn’t feeling all that well (and damage to its ears an outward clue something is going on).  I’ve started the serious, reinforcement feedings and hope it’s one of Eleanor’s kids, for then it should continue to show up and so do ok.  Logic doesn’t completely alleviate worry, though, so I’ll be out doing daily spotting even more diligently than is the norm.

While all the squirrels are busiest this time of year and so afford the most “personality” kind of photo ops, the pine squirrels have become a particular source of amusement.  At almost any time of day, Pipsqueak or her kids or sometimes what appears to be all of them are darting around the backyard, commandeering the feeder at every opportunity and spending inordinate amounts of time chasing the larger squirrels out of the yard altogether.  The other day, this little one was especially obnoxious, going to far as to get into it with Pipsqueak her Self, who promptly pulled rank and gave such a scolding the young piney slunk off to the top of the fence to sit in penance:

 

I think most every one of us knows exactly how it felt…!