Figure 1 – Tree swalloow at nesting box, Fresh Pond Reserve, Cambridge, MA, April 21, 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

This past week has been truly remarkable on Fresh Pond.   Slaves to an ancient schedule, the migratory birds have been returning, species by species. I have seen my first hooded merganser, Lophodytes cucullatus, a lone male out on the pond. On Wednesday (April 21) I was delighted to see tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) dive bombing in tremendous haste across the two ponds, and it made me wonder how it would ever be possible to photograph such a graceful but fast bird in flight. A note of natural history – the tree swallow is a long distance commuter. It winters in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.  It migrates thousand of miles in great flocks to its breeding grounds along the Atlantic coast of North America. Well nature was about to teach me a thing or two about photographing birds.  I walked further down the path and was dazzled by the iridescent bird inspecting nesting box Number 5.  I was maybe 10 meters away, took out my camera armed with my 70 to 200 mm zoom and started photographing, while I stepped ever closer.  The result is Figure 1, and the only problem here was the man-made habitat.  It was as if this was the address Number 5, Fresh Pond Lane, in case you wanted to send letters to this finely feathered fellow.

Figure 2 – Tree swallow, Fresh Pond Reserve, Cambridge, MA, April 21, 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

I moved on and a while later noticed that these swallows take rests in the trees.  Trees at the edge of the water represent two things I don’t like: invariably because of the protective fencing the distance is too great for even 200 mm, and inevitably you’re shooting into a sky while forced to use positive exposure compensation to be able to get the details on the bird.  Still I got Figure 2, which I like because of the pose that the bird is taking – not just sitting there and chirping.

Then it occurred to me that if I waited long enough the swallow would take flight.  Now this is a photographic crap shoot. Unlike the instantaneous response of the Leica M3 of my youth, digital SLRs tend to be slow to respond and clunky. There is a long time between shutter press and actual exposure.  And many times that I have tried this only the birds tail feathers remain in the image.  But this time it worked. I could see immediately on review that he was squarely in the right hand side of the image.  The result is Figure 3.  I love the beautiful transparency and corrugation of the wings and the way that the feet are pressed up against the bird’s body – landing gear up!

Figure 3 – Tree swallow in flight, Fresh Pond, Reserve, Cambridge, MA, April 21, 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens hand-held at 172 mm, ISO 3200, Aperture-Priority AE mode at 1/640th sec at f/9.0 with + 1 exposure compensation.

Figure 2 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens hand-held at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture-Priority AE mode at 1/4000th sec at f/9.0 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 3 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens hand-held at 176 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture-Priority AE mode at 1/4000th sec at f/9.0 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Fresh Pond puppy, Ellie. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Recently, dear friend and loyal reader Jane posted a comment to one of my blogs which was to the effect, “enough with the birdies and the cats how about some dog pictures?” It is certainly the case that I have a preference for furry friends of the feline purrsuasion. Dogs are way too accommodating. Cats must be won over. A dog can usually be won over with a biscuit. This is not to say that I have anything against dogs.  the Fresh Pond Reserve is a dog’s paradise and there are so many of them on any given day.  I have, in fact, made it my business to befriend as many of them as possible. The City of Cambridge allows them to run off leash if they have a current City of Cambridge dog license, and you can walk up to three dogs at a time.  Fresh Pond even has a little beach for the dogs, not on the main reservoir but on axillary Little Fresh Pond. Anyway,

In addition to the dogs there are the dog walkers, and you get to know them as well. There is this nice young fellow, a professional dog-walker, named Max, who by serendipity has only white dogs as clientele.  Recently he expanded his business and can now be seen in the company of a precocious black dog named Luca.

The thing about dogs is if you once greet them they are your friend for life.

“Woof! – how you doing?”

“Woof! – don’t pet him, pet me.”

“Woof! – no I mean it, pet me!”

“Woof – how about a cold, soggy, nose, and a slobbering tongue?”

“Woof – haha, bet you have no idea where this nose has been.”

“Woof, – got any treats in that camera bag?”

“Woof – hey do I smell cat?”

“Woof, woof, woof.”

So anyway, Figure 1 is a woof for Jane.  Her name is Ellie.  Being a Cambridge dog, Ellie is kind of an intellectual.

“Woof – photograph me. I suggest in black and white.”

Woof, woof – maybe with a warm sepia tone, not over wrought.”

At least I’m pretty sure that she said over-wrought.

Figure 1 – The pensive little man in the pansy. Acton, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

I don’t what to seem like a broken record, but I posted about Pansies last May. So I am seeking an indulgence from my readers for repetition. “… there are pansies, they’re for thought.” Those are Ophelia’s words from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and they remind us of the medieval association of the flower “pansy” with thought.  The English name pansy comes from the French word pensée “thought.”  It was imported into Late Middle English as a name of for certain violets in the mid-15th century.  The why lies in the flower itself, the face of a little thoughtful man.  To me it resembles more a thoughtful lion, especially when, as in Figure 1, the pansy is yellow or orange.

But, and here’s the significance, every spring when I see pansies of whatever color, I look for that little face, the little thoughtful man.  That instantly reminds me of Hamlet, always one of my favorites, and of visits to the Cloisters in New York City growing up where they have this wonderful Shakespeare Garden of all the plants mention in his plays. So please indulge my repetition and enjoy the face of the lion.

Figure 1 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens hand-held at 81 mm, ISO 400, Aperture-Priority AE mode at 1/640th sec at f/11.0 with +1 exposure compensation

Figure 1 – The chartreuse moment – willows leafing out, April 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

It is April. It is New England. For the last couple of weeks I have been eying the willows.  Even before the snow melted there were signs of life in their buds. They are the first to leaf in spring and the last to drop their leaves in the fall.  I caught this pair yesterday.  They are harbingers of a very special moment among the seasons.  Trees do not just turn green. First there is a short, chromatically warm, and spectacular season of chartreuse. And even today the color of this pair of willows is just a bit more mundane shade of green.

Figure 1 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens hand-held at 81 mm, ISO 400, Aperture-Priority AE mode at 1/400th sec at f/18.0 with – 1 exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, Fresh Pond Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

In New England there are two Avalons. The first, or earliest, refers to Avalonia, which was microcontinent that developed as a volcanic arc on the northern margin of the Paleozoic continent of Gondwana. It eventually rifted off, becoming a drifting micro-continent. Some of the oldest rocks of Western Europe, Atlantic Canada, and parts of the coastal United States, including parts of Maine and the North Shore of Massachusetts, are Avalonian in origin. Most directly, Avalonia is named for the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland. But of course, there is a deeper and much more mythic meaning that derives its origins from the ancient legends of the English speaking peoples.

This is the epic story of King Arthur and the mythic mist enshrouded island referred to as “Avalon.” Avalon was ruled by ” The Lady of the Lake.” There were several Ladies of the Lake. It was the second,  Ninianne, who gave King Arthur the sword Excalibur. But it was the first Lady of the Lake, Viviane, who was taught her magic by the great wizard, Merlin. Merlin became  enamored of Viviane. But virtuously and cleverly she refused to give him her love until he had taught her all his secrets.  Then she used these powers to entrap him forever in the trunk of a tree.  Most significantly, and fatalistically Merlin, who had the power to see the future, knew that this would happen, but he was powerless to prevent it. This, I suppose, means that ultimately she was the more powerful sorceress.

A couple of weeks back, I was walking around Fresh Pond in Cambridge and was thinking first about its geological history as a glacial kettle pond.  But then I was taken by the still dampness of the mist and the way that light, sky, and water interacted.  These are always different. It felt particularly magical on that day, and I was taken (Figure 1) by a tree branch, perhaps a stick figure, protruding through the calm surface of the pond and I thought of the Lady of the Lake, of Viviane. And nearby there was an ancient tree (Figure 2) that was damp from rain and there were strange roots that enabled it to cling to the slope of the hill and seemed to indicate that there was something magical and other worldly about this particular tree. This made me think of Merlin’s tree. All of this lasted only a few minutes, as most moments of mythic awareness do, before I was drawn inevitably back to the realities of the present, to ISO, f-settings, and exposure times and to the need to return to work.

Figure 2 – Merlin’s tree, Fresh Pond, Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens hand-held at 70 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture-Priority AE mode at 1/800th sec at f/10.0 with + 1 exposure compensation.

Figure 2 – Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens hand-held at 70 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture-Priority AE mode at 1/200th sec at f/10.0 with + 1 exposure compensation.

Pied-eye grebe, Little Fresh Pond, Fresh Pond Reserve, April 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

I have been chasing the little fellow in Figure 1 for the last couple of weeks in hopes of getting a decent photograph of what I thought was an American Coot.  He is in fact a pied-eye glebe. The give away was the fact that his eyes were not red like those of a coot, and his bill, while white, had that little black band. But what of pied-eye and what does it have to do with the pied piper? Pie comes from the black and white magpie, and pied appears to means blotchy.  As for the piper, that medieval pedophile, who lured children into the woods, he is described and depicted in clothes of many colors.

The image of Figure 1 is the best that I have been able to manage so far, as I have yet to get very close to the little fellow.  I think that the grebe falls under the category as to be so ugly or plain as to be beautiful.  Certainly the eyes and face are appealing, as is the modesty of his tail.

As for identification of birds, I’d like to suggest for those of you interested in such things a clever, a free cell phone App from my alma mater, Cornell University, called the Merlin Bird ID App. It asks for the date, your location, and a few questions about the bird and then gives you pictures of the most likely candidates.  You then confirm which one is correct and this feeds back to the folks at the Sapsucker Woods Ornithology lab to improve the App’s accuracy.  It nailed the grebe immediately. I think that it is also worth mentioning that even when you get a Bad” or “failed” photograph of a bird that your not sure of, the photograph is a tool onto itself in providing details that you might otherwise have not seen or not recorded in your mental note.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM Lens hand-held at 200 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture-Priority AE mode at 1/1600th sec at f/10.0 with + 1 exposure compensation and center auto focus.

Figure 1 – Canadian Goose (Branta canadensis), Black’s Nook, Fresh Pond Reserve, Cambridge, MA, April 2015, (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Well, we can all relax now, the espresso machine has made it to the International Space Station.  No really! Nobody is more sympathetic than I to the need for strong coffee in the morning.  I don’t know what it cost to design and make this machine, but I do know that if it was say about a pound it probably cost about $1,000 to get it there. Anyway, such are the necessities of manned and womanned space travel.

As for me I have been enjoying the onset of spring, finally, and have been furiously, perhaps obsessively,  photographing the birds at Fresh Pond.  I am still trying to figure out the vagaries of taking photographs at 640 mm.  This is really not a game for sissies! So the other day around noon, I am taking photographs of the courting Canadian geese on Black’s Nook, when one of the geese makes a v-line towards me.  I took this photograph at a meter or two at full 400 mm (which is 640 mm effective) on my zoom.  I finally figured out why he came so close.  Black’s Nook is a favorite nature spot for school children as well as pre-schoolers, and some of them when the park rangers aren’t around feed them bread. Or, more likely, the rangers look the other way. So this guy saw me as a meal provider not as a threat.

But I was pleased by how the photograph came out; so I share it here as Figure 1.  I like this kind of quirky angle and I particularly like the velvety blackness of the goose’s beak as well as the color of the sky reflected off the water.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM Lens hand-held at 400 mm IS on, ISO 1600, Aperture-Priority AE mode at 1/1000th sec at f/10.0 with no exposure compensation and manual focus.

Figure 1 – Dark eyed junco (Junco hyemalis), Sudbury, MA, April 2015. (c) DE Wolf 2015.

All winter long I have been trying to get a decent photograph of a dark eyed junco (Junco hyemalis).  The problem with him is within his name.  His eye is so dark as to be often invisible, especially when he is photographed against the snow, where the contrast can be overwhelming.  Still this little sparrow is a very appealing little bird.  The males have this dramatic slate color to them, that is truly anything but drab.

On Sunday I continued experimenting with by big lens.  I have discovered it works a lot better when manually focused.  This actually proved not be as difficult as I thought.  I had positioned myself in a lawn chair in front of my feeder.  I had read that birds are not as wary of you when you are seated as opposed to standing.  Well so much for that theory.  Still this littel guy was gregarious enough to pose for a photograph.  The lack of snow enabled me to eliminate the need for overexposure, and remarkably the image of Figure 1 was taken hand-held. I used every post=processing trick that I know of to get the image to come out right, that is with a clearly visible eye.

Canon T2i with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM Lens hand-held at 400 mm IS on, ISO 1600, Aperture-Priority AE mode at 1/500th sec at f/10.0 with no exposure compensation and manual focus.