Tag Archives: Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Quiz #4 Results and More Yellow-crowned Night Herons

by

First an announcement starting Monday my quizzes will be run from Monday until Friday.  In other words I will publish a new one on Monday, then the results on Friday.  This will make it so you don’t have to wait so long for results, and also give me more time in between to create the new ones.

So, Happy Friday to you and let’s get right to it.  I know that you have been waiting in anticipation for the results of my fourth “What Bird is This” quiz.  Here is the original photograph.

As you can see, the correct name is Western Scrub Jay, with 37 votes.  Here are the alternate photos and the votes they garnered.

Blue Grosbeak – 22 votes

Mexican Jay – 5 votes

Blue Jay – 4 votes

Eastern Bluebird 3 votes

Congrats to the people that decided that it was indeed a Western Scrub Jay.  Better luck to the rest of you in Quiz #5 that will be published Monday  morning, as soon as I get my devious mind to work on it. 🙂

In other news, I went back to “K-Mart Creek” to see if the Yellow-crowned Night Heron was still there, and it turned out to be that there were three of them.  Anyway, I got a couple more photos to share here.

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Yellow-crowned Night Heron with food

Enjoy the photos and click on any of them to see an enlargement.

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

by

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the forum hospital this morning.  I was taking my wife over to get a cataract removed from her right eye.  As we passed the old K-mart building we noticed high water from yesterday’s rains in the bar ditch running along side.  In it there was a Yellow-crowned Night Heron, (Nyctanassa violacea), wading in the rushing water.  It is a bird that is not seen in this area all the time.

Gosh, what to do. What to do.  Do I stop for photographs or rush my wife to the hospital?  Easy decision.  We stopped for photographs.  Hey, it’s not like Ann was pregnant or anything.  Besides, we were running early.  I was able to pull into the parking lot alongside and use my Canon EOS7D and 100-400mm lens from the car window.

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Ann was just as thrilled with the babies  photos as I was.  She didn’t get upset at all and we made it to the hospital with time to spare.  By the way, the surgery went fine and she is anxious to get back to birding tomorrow and try out her new “eyes”.

To join the fun and vote in the current Bird ID quiz just click here.

New Action at K-mart Creek

by

Last year, as many of you know, I wrote some posts about this drainage ditch in front of an empty K-mart Building near here.  There was usually then a constant flow down the arroyo so there was many water birds that frequented there.  Herons, Sandpipers, Egrets, etc.  But for the last year or so, since this drought got a huge foothold over west Texas, it has been dry as a bone.

Not so, right now.  Since we got about three inches in the area about a week ago there is a little water back in there.  So it was a pleasant surprise when we drove by there, on our way home from picking up breakfast from the Golden Arches, that we spotted a Yellow-crowned Night Heron.  He was back-lit from the morning sun and the light wasn’t perfect, but with a little post-processing I came up with these usable images.

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

  • Canon EOS 7D
  • Canon 100-400mm zoom lens
  • 1/125 sec. @ f6.3 – minus 1/3 EV adjustment
  • ISO 400
  • Lens focal distance 400mm
  • Metering – spot
  • Aperture priority

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

  • Canon EOS 7D
  • Canon 100-400mm zoom lens
  • 1/200 sec. @ f6.3 – minus 1/3 EV adjustment
  • ISO 400
  • Lens focal distance 400mm
  • Metering – spot
  • Aperture priority

One thing that I have gotten used to, it to adjust my EV to minus 1/3.  I like to use that as my default, or starting point, rather than no adjustment.  I like the way my tonal qualities are just a tad under exposed, I guess.  I am not saying I am right, but it’s something I prefer to do.  I didn’t used to do that, and I am not really sure when I started doing it.

By the way, the heron was gone later in the afternoon when I drove by there again.   I’ll keep my eyes on it.  Click on either image to see an enlargement.