Today was another beautiful morning, cool with the sun shining. So comfortable, I returned to Allens Pond again, and to photograph the Piping Plovers, since, my big gun was returned from the shop where it was repaired. My big gun is my Nikon 500 mm F/4 and I attached a 1.4 X tele-converter to where and utilized my full frame camera Nikon D3s to photograph today's action. If you have been reading my blogs, you know, I have a special interest in this family of piping plovers because I have been photographing them continuously for the last 5+ years.
Arriving at the sanctuary's parking lot, there were two killdeer looking for food, plus the usual willits. A number of cottontail rabbits were feeding on the grass and were very obliging to have their picture taken.
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| Eastern cottontail |
I walked down to the beginning of the beach loop, passed the culvert and on arriving on the beach, I searched for the plovers. I found one adult and one chick behind the barrier and I was able to photograph them. Searching I did not see any other plovers until the adult and the chick traveled down the beach to my right. Suddenly, two more chicks appeared down near the water, along with another adult. The nice part about the chicks that were near the water is that when was always facing to the right and the other was always facing to the left. This way when I looked at my pictures, I could tell them apart.
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| Piping plover chick number one |
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| Piping plover chick number one |
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| Piping Plover Adult Male |
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| Piping plover chick number two |
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| Piping plover chick number two |
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| Piping Plover Adult Female |
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| Piping plover chick number three |
As always, I was sitting down or laying in the the sand and allowed the plovers to come to me. One of the chicks approach to within 10 feet, which was good because if it came too much closer to would of been out of the focal range of my lens.
On the way back, I found the bobolink on the stone wall in between the two fields, and it flew onto a bush, which gave a great picture.
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| Bobolink |
Finally, one of the willits posed on the fence again for me.
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| Willet with its wings up |
So the piping plover chicks are running around, so if you go down to view them, be careful, watch your step and do not chase them.
The
Piping Plover Collage is available for you to buy. A limited edition 8.5" x 11" print is $25 (only 25 printed) . The price includes shipping and handling. If interested send me your telephone number and I will contact you for payment information. Never send credit card information by email.
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