Gooseberry, Birds and Weather

Lincoln's Sparrow

Before I write about yesterday shoot, let me tell you my tale of woe.  What are my hard disks that had all my pictures from 2015 had a malfunction and I lost my pictures..  First thing that I did was go to my backup site that is on the cloud.  I utilize Backblaze as my backup agent.  They furnished me with a hard drive containing my backup for the hard disks that failed.  I did have to wait a week before I received it.  I did have to pay for the hard disk but that was all right because there was over a terabit of data and it would take in ages just to download the data.  I then went and tried some recovery options that I had and I recovered files, but they were in a folder that for some reason I could not find or access.  So all the pictures I took since the drive corruption, I did import into Lightroom and save the cards to I made sure everything was back in place.  If you are interested you can go to Backblaze and see their offerings, and if you use this URL you get a free month of service.  Plus, I also will get a free month https://secure.backblaze.com/r/010sos  Enough of that, now for the fun.

Earlier in the week we were out at Gooseberry and the migrants were coming through and we were able to photograph a number of different sparrows, including a Lincoln's sparrow.  So yesterday the kids and I decided to go back to Gooseberry to see what we could photograph.  It was partly cloudy when we left home with a little wind blowing.  When we got to Gooseberry.  The wind was really blowing and the waves were crashing against the rocks and the causeway.  The sparrows with their but because of the wind.  The birds were staying mainly in the bushes and it was harder to get clear photographs.

Swamp Sparrow

White-throated Sparrow

In the Southwest, the sky was clouding up and darkening and you could see a storm coming.  At this point I changed from bird photography to landscape photography.  I love the look of the way the waves were crashing.  It started darkening over us and some very light rain started.  Suddenly there were three strikes of lightning close by, so we packed up and headed home in a torrential downpour until we reach Fall River and the sky was much clearer and no rain.  Now the nice part of when I was photographing the storm I was videoing at the time of the lightning.  It was able to capture it on video.

Storm Coming In

The Waves Coming in and the Clouds Swarming

Meetup at Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge

Civil Dawn

Today, Saturday, May 30, Mike Milica put together another great Meetup at Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Concord, Massachusetts.  The main item we will going to hopefully photograph was the Marsh Wren along with the red-winged blackbirds and what else we could find to photograph.

We met at the refuge parking lot at 5 AM, so we could be ready and out photographing at first light.  On my drive up from the home, there was moderate to thick fog present up on till Parkway on Route 128 N. at the refuge there was some fog over the water and over us some of the trees.  With the color in the sky from civil dawn and sunrise.  It allowed some nice landscapes.

Sunrise

In "Don's Early Light" a marsh wren was on the cattails singing.  Photographing marsh wrens takes patience as they will pop up onto reads and cattails and then drop down into the underbrush, so you just have to wait for the wrens to reappear.  Red-winged blackbirds were flying and singing all around us and were able to photograph them as they landed on bushes.

Marsh Wren

Marsh Wren

Red-Winged Blackbird Singing

Red-winged Blackbird Flying at You

I also photographed swamp sparrows and song sparrows, as they were singing and preening.  Also around were Canada geese, and great blue herons flying by.

Song Sparrow

Swamp Sparrow

The group started breaking up around 8 o'clock to 9 o'clock.  As a group of us was leaving, one photographer had located a marsh Wren nest, partly hidden behind new cattail leaves and the nest was attached to last year's cattails.  I spent around the half-hour watching the nest and was able to get a few pictures of the marsh wren leaving and entering into the nest.  The only reason I quit was that I had a set up on the boardwalk and the number of people needing to pass by me increased and when a person pass by.  I had a move my tripod and then reset up to find the nest again.

Marsh Wren on the Cattail Leaves with the Nest. Behind It, and the Hole of the Net Visible

Finally, as I was walking out the path back to the car, I came across a white admiral butterfly, which gave gave me some good photographs.

White Admiral Picking up Minerals from the Soil

White Admiral

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