2021 seems to be starting out well. Getting the Flint River kayak photo was a great way to start the year. There was a wintery mix forecasted for yesterday that might have added to scenery for today's hike. Never happened. Michigan gray today. And spoiler alert - no owl photos.
One of the county parks here is For-Mar Nature Preserve & Arboretum. I've only been living here for twenty some odd years and I'm just finding out about these places. To be fair, to me, I've know about the location but not about some of the interesting things you can do here. And on this weekend's schedule was a Friday night owl prowl and Saturday morning nature Photo Hike.
The owl prowl was very interesting to me. I am owl ignorant. I could only go up from here. It was way too dark for photos and I really just wanted to know about the owls who lived down the road from me. There will be other photo opportunities. I learned about owl calls. I learned where they were in the area. And more importantly I got out of the house for a few hours. If you ever get a chance to go on an owl prowl, take it! We had two screech owls fly past our group. We were able to find where one perched so I have now seen an owl in the wild. I do need to get out more. And as much as I learned about owls in the wild, one of the more interesting facts of the night was turkeys sleep in trees. Yep, what you can learn when you get out of the house.
In the category of other learned lessons, I need to up my technology. In the field of of night lighting. Subcatagory: Flashlights. I was carrying around a 20+ year old, 3 D Cell mag light. Dim dirty yellow. And the batteries were new. Nothing like an old, cold flashlight. And for $10 I could have had a AA LED. Ha.
This morning's nature photography hike was nice. Temps just below freezing. No wind. And I bundled up like Charlie Brown. Maybe 75% Charlie Brown. The guides from the owl prowl were the guides for the nature hike. What a neat job! Something for retirement? I liked the opening briefing. The guides started out by talking about getting off the AUTO setting and moving to Manual. Magnificent. We walked around a bit, didn't appear to a set pattern. Again, just good to get out of the house and talk to people. Socially distanced people.
Since this was my first photo hike at For-Mar, and I could only guess what was going to happen, I spent way too much time over-thinking what camera/lens combo I needed. The widest range lens I have is a 18-200 DX. The first 'upgrade' lens. Eleven years ago, I added that to my collection for use with a D90. With all the upgrades in the last few years, that lens has not seen much duty lately. Still a good lens. So that was the front end on the D500 for the hike. Most of the shots ended up being over 70 mm. Next time out, the 70-200 will do.
There wasn't much going on, nature wise. What I do know about 'naturing' is that the critters are much more active at feeding time. And 9:00 AM may be a bit late for the breakfast shift. And middle of winter sort of cuts down on the residency numbers as well. But there are full time residents.
In aircraft terms, the Turkeys are in the T-6 class for me. Big, slow, easy to photograph. And somewhat colorful. I stood still for a while, less than five minutes, and these two walked less than ten feet away from me.
During the hike, one of the hikees who wasn't watching where they were going spotted a solo hawk flying through the trees. The entire group watched it for a while as it tried to keep us from watching. At one point, the hawk was marginally close to us and this was the best I could get.
After the hike was over, I did some extra exploring. Why waste a good Charlie Brown get up? I found myself in a grove of trees with a lot of little birdie wildlife. Small and fast. Sport class. Among the bird I recognized was the common Robin. Lots of those around here. And to be honest, I wasn't interested it wasting disk space on one. But while I was in target acquisition mode, the Robin departed. Definitely a press and pray. I may have had the best shot of the day for me.
And in the final category for the day's events, something new. Cedar Waxwing. I have never seen one before. Or maybe I have and thought it was a Robin? With the Robin shot and this one, I almost feel like a real birder. If they only made the noise of two Pratt and Whitneys in full AB. Probably better that they are mostly quiet in case they decide to buzz the house.
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