Snow Scenics at Duxbury Beach

We just had the first significant snowstorm since October, at which time I was in Philadelphia.  We average about 3 to 4 inches and it all occurred during the night.  In the morning I travel down to Duxbury beach in another attempt to photograph the snowy owl.  While traveling down the beach, I noticed how beautiful their area was with the snow cover, so I decided to stop and photograph the beauty of the scenes.
These first scenics were taken just prior to sunrise and the blue color accentuates the coldness of the scene.



The next scenic was taken with my 300 mm lens of Gurnet Light with the snow on it. I processed this image as a tone-mapped image in NIK HDR and then utilize NIK Color Efex Pro to help highlight the snow.




After the Sun came up, looking down the road, I like the pattern of the tire tracks, my shadow and the person in red in the distance.
Another single tone-mapped image of my favorite tree on the beach, I utilized my wide-angle lens for this picture and I went low to give it the depth that I wanted.








My final picture is a gnarled old cypress.  I really would love to have gotten the snowy owl on this tree.

Sea Fog, Scenics at Duxbury Beach

Today I met 2 friends on Duxbury beach, to see if they could obtain better photographs of the snowy owl.  We were there at low tide, and despite numerous trips up and down the beach road the snowy owl was seen only once extremely far out over the marsh.  However, photographically wise, the day was not a loss.  The scenics were great.

First on the way to the beach, prior to sunrise, I obtained this picture on PowerPoint road, looking toward the dawn on the horizon.  Just after sunrise. 

 

This photograph was taken across the marsh grass with the clouds highlighted by the Sun. 

The final pictures were taken over the ocean, where there was sea fog over the water.  Sea fog or sea smoke occurs when cold air passes over the warmer water.  Today the temperature was 11°F with the wind bringing it down to around 0° wind-chill.

The photographs of the beach, ocean clouds and the fog were created by 3 and 5 image HDR's in NIK HDR Efex Pro and then I utilized Color Efex Pro 4, for adjustments

A Day of Travel and Photography

From my first blog over the new year.  It is a description of a day of traveling, birding and photography.  I met my friend, Kathleen, a fellow birder and photographer at Starbucks, and then we left For Duxbury Beach.  We arrived at the beach at about 7:40 AM and slowly started the drive down toward Gurnet.  The skies was filled with clouds, so light was poor.  Half-full way between the 2nd and 3rd crossover, there was a white object on the fence.  It was the snowy owl.  We pulled to the side of the road and photographed the owl from inside and just outside the car.  Because of the poor light, we needed to bump the ISO high in order to capture the photographs..  I was at first, using my 500 mm lens, supporting it on the window with a Puffin Pad. I then lent my lens to Kathleen to utilize, since her long lens was too slow to get a sharp picture.  I then utilize my Sigma 300 mm f 2 .8 lens, which allowed me to capture the owl when it spread its wings, prior to flight. After the owl flew back down the beach, we traveled up to the beginning of Gurnet to see if we could find any other owls.  However, there were none and so we slowly started backtracking down the road.  On the beach side of the High Pines in a dead tree, we again found the owl and were able to get some photographs of it, prior to it jumping lower and behind the branches.  We then cross over onto the beach and looked down at the High Pine area with the binoculars and we could see the owl.  So we went back to the car and drove to the crossover and in four-wheel drive slowly drove down the beach to the owl, but because of the Sun's position, Kathleen could only obtain a back lit subject.

After leaving Duxbury Beach, we traveled down to Plymouth Harbor to see if we could locate, the Iceland Gull.  As we are driving into the parking lot, my SUV was attacked by a large flock of rock pigeons they landed on the car and peering in the front window.  They were looking for food.  We were able to locate the Iceland gull and it posed for us.  This was a life bird for Kathleen.

We finished the morning at Jenney' Pond, where we photographed the Lesser Black-Backed Gull,

a female Hooded Merganser and I obtained some flight shots of a Belted Kingfisher. That finished the morning and we returned back to home.

In the late afternoon, my son and I travel down to Sachuest National  Wildlife Refuge in Middletown, Rhode Island, hoping to obtain photographs of raptors and hopefully Short-Eared Owls.  However, neither raptors or owls appeared, but the deer started slowly coming out of the woods to feed in the meadow. I obtained a picture of a nice buck in the golden light. 

 

 

 

 

The afternoon finished off with a gorgeous sunset.

Surrealistic Snowy Owl

I went back to Duxbury Beach yesterday and met my friend Chris to take him down to see if we could find the snowy owl.  It was an interesting morning, we were out to the end of the road just before Gurnet and we observed a red fox running through the marsh.  The light was very dim and therefore no picture was obtained.  We search with our binoculars.  The usual locations where a snowy owl has been found in the past, but no owl was present.  We traveled back down the road slowly, stopping, observing and even moving over to the beach to see if the snowy owl was anywhere in sight.  We finally located at the end of the marsh and did get some photographs of it.  It then flew carrying what appeared to be a duck out to a distant spit of land.  We traveled back up to the top of the road and slowly made our way back down.  The tide was coming in and when we got down to where the snowy owl was the part of of the marsh where it was sitting was almost on the water and the owl flew onto the land closer to us.  It was hidden partially in the marsh grasses.  After a while it started eating and then hopped way slightly clearer area of the marsh.  The photograph that I took of it hunched over its prey, I decided to make sure listed and here is the result. 
The image was post processed utilizing NIK software (Color EFEX 4, VIVEZA) and Topaz software (LENS EFFECT)

Videos - Snowy Owl - Rough Ocean

Today's blog will be short, I decided to include 2 videos.  The first, I took a Duxbury beach of the snowy owl, and the 2nd is looking at the ocean at Breton Point State Park on Ocean Drive in Newport, Rhode Island.

The snowy owl is cleaning its claws and then gazing around and probably looking for more prey.

The day on the ocean, it was sunny and warm out, however, there was a stiff wind blowing out from the land and the seas were rough, with the white caps being blown back out to sea.

More Snowy Owls

I have turned into a snowy owl addict.  We retrurned to Duxbury beach this morning, arriving before sunrise and driving solely all way out to Gurnet.  We observed a number of gulls and ducks in the Bay, but no signs of the snowy owl.  The day was very overcast and there was rain in the forecast, I took some scenics of Gurnet light (otherwise known as Plymouth light) across the marsh.

I then walked over the dunes to peer down Duxbury beach to see if I could see any signs of the snowy owls.  There were no signs of a snowy owl, so I returned to the car, where my son was talking to the harbor master, who told us that the snowy owl was found at the 2nd crossover sitting on the posts.  We started traveling down to the 2nd crossover, but before we reached it, we found the owl sitting on the fence post.  It was still dark out, and even with a high ISO I was shooting at a low shutter speed and the first images were blurry.  The owl then flew a little further down the beach and landed on another post, we slowly followed the owl, and it turned lighter, which enabled us to obtain much better pictures. 

In all, we found at least 2 and probably 3 different snowy owls and were able to photograph 2 of them, including capturing some flight pictures. 

There was one owl across on the other side across the marsh, sitting on the Osprey platform, which was not approachable. 
Each time that I go to Duxbury Beach, there is always something different.  This is proving to be a great winter season for snowy owls.  I definitely plan more trips back down to Duxbury Beach to observe and photograph these magnificent birds.

Snow and Snowy Owls

After spending the last day and a half recovering from a small cold, on Sunday, I promised Jan that I would take her to try to view the snowy owl.  We started out in bright sun and needing to where sunglasses as we were driving and approaching down to the coast near Plymouth, the skies became more overcast and there was snow falling.  And Duxbury, it was light snow covering portions of the ground and rolled and on the beach, there was wind and snow blowing.  Driving down the road, keeping our eyes open for the snowy owl, we first came across a pair of gulls fighting at the waters edge.  I stopped the car and got my camera out, however, they stopped fighting, but did interact and lead to a few interesting photographs.


After we started driving and looked backwards the gulls started fighting again.  I did not obtain any photographs of the fight.  We did not locate the owl on our trip down to the beginning of Gurnet.  There we met up with 2 other photographers, one who said he had seen the owl recently near the mud flats and said he would be happy to lead us to where it was.  We followed him down and came to where across the marsh, the owl was sitting with the snow blowing around it.  I wish to thank Mike for his kindness and showing us where the owl was located and furnishing Jan with her first look at a snowy owl.  She was impressed with the size of the owl.  I did obtain a few pictures, again having to hold my tripod and moved lens and camera very steady, because of the blowing wind.  To help me in this endeavor.  I did not extend the tripod up, but kept it low to the ground, just enough so it would be over the marsh grass and I kneeled in the small amount the snow that there was there.

Although, there wasn't a huge amount the snow, it did make for a nice winter scene of the snow on the dunes.
Because the day was so overcast and the light so diffuse, they were really wasn't much contrast in the photographs.  Always photographs were post processed in NIK software, Color Efex Pro 4 and VIVEZA.
In my next blog, I will show some photographs for and after using the NIK software.

Snowy Owls on Duxbury Beach

I finally was able to photograph a snowy owl.  The last couple of years there have been snowy owls present on Plum Island, however, they have been too far to photograph with my camera lenses.  This year there are at least two or maybe three snowy owls present at Duxbury Beach.
Before I present my photographs, some information about snowy owls.  Snowy owls normally summer in the north circumpolar region.  During the winter, they will occur South through Canada and northern Eurasia and in some years, much further southward.  Snowy owls are diurnal in nature and will hunt both in the daytime and in the night.
During the breeding season, they usually will eat lemmings and other small rodents, or juvenile ptarmigan.  In the winter.  They are more opportunistic, feeding on a variety of small mammals, including rabbits, squirrels molts, docs, geese, shorebirds and also fish and carrion.
Duxbury Beach is owned by the Duxbury Beach Reservation, Inc., who leases most of the beach holdings to the town of Duxbury for the use of the residence and the general public.  To reach where the snowy owls are requires a walk of around 2 1/2 miles or if you purchase and over the sand sticker you are able to drive along the road.  Stickers are available at the Duxbury town hall or online with the payment of the fee.
The day that I was there, there were a number of birders and photographers present all interested in observing and photographing this beautiful bird.
The bird I photograph was originally close to the road and then flew off, most of the time below the berm of the beach and landed further up in the marsh.  Most everybody traveled to follow the bird and we were able to be on a sandy area on the marsh.  The day that we were there it  was also the time of the new Moon, and also at the time of high tide, the water started to cover the marsh and drove us back onto the road.  However, a good time was had by everyone, and we all were able to enjoy the splendor of this bird.

Environmental picture on the Marsh