Pat Ulrich Wildlife Photography Blog

Vernal equinox or summer solstice?

2012-03-21T09:25:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure what happened to winter, but it seems like spring has decided to follow suit. On this first day after the vernal equinox, it sure feels an awful lot like summer. The windows are open and we're expecting high temperatures in the low 80s over the next few days in the Boston area. While I might have liked to have a bit more snow for my first winter back in the Northeast, I'm not going to complain about these unseasonably warm temps. It's a nice treat to bring my shorts out of the closet in March, and the warm morning air does make me feel a bit like this happy spotted towhee that I photographed singing among the wildflowers of Point Reyes National Seashore last summer.

Black skimmers at Bunche Beach

2012-03-15T09:30:00.000-04:00

The three bird species that I most wanted to photograph on my trip to Florida were roseate spoonbills, black skimmers, and wood storks. Before my trip I had heard about the large flocks of skimmers that roost on the beaches around Fort Myers and Sanibel, and I was definitely hoping to be able to find them. I'm fascinated by these beautiful and interesting birds, and I had seen them only a few times in northern California (and always at quite a distance). For my first morning of the trip, I headed to Bunche Beach in Fort Myers, and a large flock of skimmers was hanging out on a sand bar out on the tidal flats. They were mostly quiet, with a few going through a morning routine of preening at the edge of the water, but anytime some new birds would approach to land, a loud ruckus broke out. Here in this shot, a skimmer that is out of the frame approached too close to this particular bird's stretch of beach, which gave me a great chance to capture the beauty of its beak.

As for the wood storks, I had a chance to see a pair at Ding Darling NWR, but the conditions only allowed for documentary photographs of them. Unexpectedly, my best look at wood storks came as we were driving back to the airport before I flew out. There were a few of them right along the road, and it was really cool to briefly see them up close as we drove by.

Roseate spoonbills at sunrise, Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge

2012-03-13T10:10:00.000-04:00

During my short trip to Florida in February, I had one morning scheduled to be in Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge for sunrise. Unfortunately, the weather was not on my side as it was overcast with showers likely throughout the day. For a brief moment though, as I watched this group of roseate spoonbills, the rising sun crossed through a break in the clouds and their bright pink plumage was lit up by the golden light.

Spoonbills were one of the species I most wanted to photograph on my trip, and I'm glad that I had the chance to watch them as they went through their morning preening routine. Even in the plain overcast light that dominated the morning, their gorgeous pink colors really stood out. I only wish I would have been able to photograph them at closer range -- but there's always next time!

This post is part of the World Bird Wednesday blog meme -- follow the link to check out this week's posts!

Tricolored heron and white ibis, Bunche Beach

2012-02-14T08:30:00.000-05:00

I had the chance to spend a few days in Florida over a long weekend to visit my grandparents, and I went out each morning at sunrise to do some photography. Florida is an incredible place for birds, and in the first 5 minutes of the drive from the airport after I arrived, I had seen three new species in the ditches along the roads (anhinga, little blue heron, and white ibis) -- amazing! The tricolored heron was another new bird for me, and I was able to photograph this one, along with the white ibis, feeding in a tidal pool at Bunche Beach. There are interesting birds everywhere there, and I can imagine that a few days of dedicated photography could seriously increase a bird photographer's portfolio! I'm already looking forward to the next time I'm able to wander the beaches and mangroves in Florida again!

Submitted to the World Bird Wednesday blog meme -- follow the link to check out this week's posts!

Dinner for a dunlin, Parker River NWR

2012-02-02T08:30:00.000-05:00

A dunlin pulls a small clam from the sand and washes it off before swallowing it whole for dinner. An extremely low tide at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge last fall exposed a large area of feeding grounds for the shorebirds, and there seemed to be a never ending supply of these clams to eat. The density of prey species in the sand is amazing when you consider how frequently shorebirds pull them up, and how often the birds scour the area.

View more images of dunlin in my Sandpipers Gallery.

Moose stepping into the light, Grand Teton National Park

2012-02-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

After watching this large bull moose move through the harsh lighting of a late-morning forest, he stepped out into a small clearing near the Gros Ventre River in Grand Teton National Park. It was hard to balance the light and shadows while he was among the trees, but for a brief instant his whole head, including those newly cleaned antlers, was in the light.

View more photos of moose in my Moose Gallery.

Great egret hunting in the marsh, Parker River NWR

2012-01-31T08:30:00.000-05:00

There's something so elegant about watching an egret or heron hunt, as they gracefully slide through the marsh in search of prey. Their movements are so even and controlled, that is, until they strike out after whatever morsel has caught their eye. It never ceases to amaze me how efficient these birds are at hunting. It seems like they must catch something 8 or 9 times out of 10 attempts.

I haven't spent enough time yet around the grasslands and pasture lands in the area to know, but I wonder if the egrets in the Northeast also hunt rodents like the California populations do?

View more photos of great egrets in my Herons & Egrets Gallery.

Submitted to the World Bird Wednesday blog meme -- Follow the link to check out this week's posts!

Pronghorn in profile, Yellowstone National Park

2012-01-30T08:20:00.000-05:00

A profile view of a pronghorn buck in northern Yellowstone National Park. One could even think it was a unicorn in this view, if not for the slightly different bend to the tip of his horns. This was a large male that we saw traveling with a group of other bachelors through the dry plains just outside of Gardner.

View more images of pronghorn in my Pronghorn Gallery.

Common moorhen, Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility

2012-01-28T16:10:00.000-05:00

I had seen the unique-looking Common Moorhen quite often on my summer walks around the Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility treatment ponds, but it was only really this occasion that I was able to get an unobstructed shot of one before it slipped back into the reeds. The bright color of its bill can really pull the eye in, but it wasn't until I saw this image that I realized how large their feet are! A fascinating bird for sure, and the chicks are really adorable too.

Elephant seal keeping watch, Año Nuevo State Reserve

2012-01-27T08:30:00.000-05:00

The elephant seals of Año Nuevo State Reserve are pretty used to seeing humans in the park, and they are relatively relaxed around us as long as we keep our distance. However, they still like to keep tabs on everyone entering their stretch of beach, and if someone gets too close they get nervous. In this shot, a bull elephant seal has his big round eyes trained on a new group of people that was walking by. Since they kept their distance, he would soon go back to laying down and enjoying the sunset.

View more photos of these impressive animals in my Elephant Seals Gallery.

Northern shoveler drakes, Radio Road Ponds

2012-01-26T08:25:00.000-05:00

With their handsome plumage patterns, over-sized bills, green heads, and yellow eyes, Northern shovelers are my favorite duck species to watch and photograph. Their numbers increase each winter in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Radio Road Ponds in Redwood City was a great place to have a chance to get close to them. There are also many other duck and shorebird species to see there as well.

View more photos of northern shovelers and other duck species in my Ducks Gallery.

Fog rolls over Inverness Ridge, Point Reyes National Seashore

2012-01-25T08:30:00.000-05:00

In my post of a killdeer at sunrise a few days ago, I mentioned that I watched the fog roll over the evergreen forests of Inverness Ridge before continuing to Limantour Beach on my first trip to Point Reyes in 2011. This is some of that fog. It was beautiful to watch, as the rolling motion of the moisture-laden air was clearly visible, and the patterns change by the moment. Even more stunning was that about 20 minutes before I took this photo full of cool morning colors, the sky appeared to be on fire with the first light of the day.

View more images of the scenic beauty of this awesome park in my Point Reyes Landscapes Gallery.

Merlin, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge

2012-01-24T08:15:00.000-05:00

After photographing a juvenile snowy owl on Plum Island under overcast conditions, I returned a few days later to try my luck at photographing the bird in the golden light of sunset. I parked my car at Beach #7 and walked down around the tip of Plum Island to Sandy Point State Reservation to try to locate the owl again. While I had a very pleasant walk in the winter air, I came up empty in terms of spotting the owl, and I started walking back towards my car as the light started getting better and better. Resigned to having a trip with nothing photographic to show for it, I ascended the wooden stairs to the observation platform that is at the end of the trail to the parking lot. At the top I decided to scan the beach one last time for anything interesting in the pretty light. As I pivoted on the platform I noticed that this gorgeous merlin was watching me from less than 10 yards away. She seemed rather nonplussed about sharing the observation platform with me, and gave me the opportunity to snap off a few shots in both the vertical and horizontal orientations before she took to the air again. Unfortunately, I had already collapsed my tripod before ascending the stairs, so I had to shoot handheld during the encounter, and 500mm on a windy day did not make for many tack-sharp frames -- but this one came out well.

View more raptors in my Birds of Prey Gallery.

Submitted to the World Bird Wednesday blog meme -- follow the link to check out this week's posts!

Killdeer at sunrise, Point Reyes National Seashore

2012-01-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

One of the most fun parts of spending years photographing wildlife in Point Reyes National Seashore was that I never knew what subjects I would find on a given day. Sure, I always came up with a plan of what I would be targeting as I drove through Marin County to arrive at a trailhead before sunrise, but a lot of my best work was from the luck of finding something unexpected along the way. On this particular morning, I had hoped to photograph shorebirds on the beach of Limantour Spit for my first trip to Point Reyes in 2011. Instead, I was treated to an amazingly colorful sunrise over the thick fog blanketing the rest of the park. After spending some time watching the fog roll over Inverness Ridge, I continued on to my targeted destination and pulled into the Limantour Beach parking lot. As I got out of the car into the cool (and so refreshing) early morning air of Point Reyes, I was greeted by the call of two plovers in the dew covered grass nearby. I quickly grabbed my camera out of the car and set to work photographing these beautiful shorebirds in the morning light. As the killdeer eventually started crossing the pavement, I left them behind and headed to the beach with their calls to each other still echoing behind me.

View more photos of one of my favorite areas of Point Reyes National Seashore in my Limantour Beach Gallery.

Snowy owl for a snowy day, Sandy Point State Reservation

2012-01-21T12:20:00.000-05:00

Today is the first significant snowfall of the season for the Boston area, so while I sit watching the flakes drift past my window I thought I'd honor the whitened city landscape by posting a photo of the snowy owl that I saw earlier in the month at Sandy Point State Reservation on Plum Island. There was no snow on the ground that day when I visited the park, but some sea ice had formed in the inlet, which is where I found this beautiful juvenile owl.

View more images of owls in my Birds of Prey Gallery.

American badger, Yellowstone National Park

2012-01-20T08:15:00.000-05:00

On the final day of our trip to Yellowstone National Park, we decided to take one last morning drive across the northern roads of the park and through the Lamar Valley before continuing on our move east. We didn't see much along this final drive, but we did find an American badger quite close to the road on the way to the Slough Creek Trailhead. My initial sighting of the badger was just a few clouds of dirt being thrown in the air, and I was able to snap off a few frames out of the car window as he dug. We were quite lucky that he was working over a hillside just down from a small parking area that morning, so we were able to park the car and spend about 20 minutes watching him dig and tromp around. The only downside, photographically that is, was that he was in a grassy area, and since badgers are so close to the ground, it was hard to get an unobstructed view of his face in a photo.

Sanderling reflection at sunrise, Parker River NWR

2012-01-18T09:05:00.000-05:00

A sanderling bends down to meet its reflection as it feeds during an early morning low tide in the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge.

View more images of sanderlings in my Sandpipers Gallery.

Scaups at sunset, San Francisco Bay

2012-01-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

This time of year is great for a visit to Cesar Chavez Park at the Berkeley Marina, since a small population of burrowing owls takes up residence there each winter. Last year, I took many evening trips to the park to see the owls after work in hopes of photographing them bathed in the golden rays of a setting sun over the Golden Gate. The owls are not the only interesting birds there though, as I have also photographed a great blue heron hunting for rodents in the grass and some ducks like these scaups paddling around the calm waters of the bay.

These shots were initially an afterthought on that trip, since I was photographing them from the top of the rocks at the shoreline, and I much prefer to take images much closer to eye level. However, I'm glad that I fired off a few frames, since what really pulled me in was the reflection of the setting sun in the surface of the water. The sunsets over the Golden Gate Bridge are spectacular during the winter with bright rich colors, and from Cesar Chavez Park, the sun slips below the horizon directly behind the bridge.

View more photos of waterfowl in my Ducks Gallery.

Submitted to World Bird Wednesday -- Follow the link to check out this week's posts!

Overcast snowy plover, Point Reyes National Seashore

2012-01-16T16:45:00.000-05:00

In keeping with the theme of my previous two posts, here is another shot pulled from the archives of an awesome trip I took to Point Reyes National Seashore in February of last year. This series of images illustrates part of why I love Point Reyes so much -- because I could start out my day being surrounded by a herd of tule elk, then have time to cruise through the park to see a kestrel, a skunk, and a bobcat along the roads, before ending up on Limantour Spit to photograph shorebirds including sanderlings and western snowy plovers like this one. While all of these shots lacked the magic light of the golden hour, Point Reyes taught me to truly appreciate overcast skies for wildlife photography. If the marine layer fog hadn't kept the sky covered throughout the morning, I would have been ready to leave the park after seeing the elk and losing the nice light to ugly blue skies. Instead, this wonderful diffuse light stayed around all morning, and I was able to keep shooting all the way up until it was time to head home in time to have lunch with my wife.

View more photos of these adorable shorebirds in my Plovers Gallery.

Tule elk overlooking the ocean, Point Reyes National Seashore

2012-01-13T09:45:00.000-05:00

This shot of a young bull tule elk is from the same trip to Point Reyes National Seashore as my previous post. Since this image was taken in February the rut was long over, but this young bull thought he was king of this large harem of females. I had seen his antlers rise over the hillside first, and waited for him to appear along the hill crest. This image is a great example of one of my favorite aspects of photographing tule elk at Point Reyes -- the ability to include the ocean as the backdrop. Along Drake's Beach, I've even seen elk hoof-prints in the sand, but I was never lucky enough to have a chance to photograph an elk right in front of the breakers.

View more images of elk and other wildlife on Tomales Point in Point Reyes National Seashore.

Soft tule elk ears, Point Reyes National Seashore

2012-01-11T09:10:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week I took a little time to browse through some unsorted images from a few trips I had taken to Point Reyes National Seashore in early 2011. I had some really great outings during the winter there, and this particular trip was a real highlight. I saw a wide array of wildlife, from shorebirds to kestrels, skunks to bobcats, and of course, tule elk. On this cold morning there was a slight chance for ground level snow in the higher elevations of the Point Reyes peninsula, so I was out there for sunrise in the hope of finding such a rare scene before my lens. It turned out that it had only rained overnight, but the wildlife was incredible in the cool morning air.

I saw a large herd of tule elk near the road on Tomales Point, so I pulled my car off onto the shoulder and sat to watch them. In just a few minutes time, the whole herd had surrounded my car, and I was able to get an intimate view of their daily life. I rolled down all of my windows, and moved from seat to seat in the car for over a half hour before they slipped down a nearby hillside. It's such a privilege to be so close to a group of large animals like this, and I really enjoyed the chance to take some detailed portraits of the elk. In this shot, her head looks so soft and fluffy that I want to reach out and give her a scratch behind the ears (not literally of course, no good would come from trying that).

View many more images of tule elk in Point Reyes National Seashore in my Tule Elk Gallery.

Snowy owl on the beach, Sandy Point State Reservation

2012-01-10T09:45:00.000-05:00

This juvenile snowy owl was kind enough to give me a couple different settings to photograph it in as it moved between the dunes and sea ice that had formed in the inlet at Sandy Point State Reservation. It's really quite fascinating to see an owl in a beach setting, but since they breed and live on the arctic tundra during the summers, this sort of landscape seems to make sense for them. Lots of low plants, and good visibility. I'm still hoping to return to find and photograph snowy owls in golden light and perhaps during a snow flurry, but we'll have to see if they'll cooperate with me for those.

In other news, if you would like to see some great photography, Jim Goldstein has posted the list for his 2011 Blog Project, which includes a "Best Photos of 2011" post from 289 different photographers that follow his blog! If you have some time and would like to be inspired, I highly recommend browsing the list, and perhaps a good place to start is my own Favorite Photographs of 2011 post.

Submitted to World Bird Wednesday -- Follow the link to check out this week's posts.

Bellowing northern elephant seal, Año Nuevo State Reserve

2012-01-09T08:55:00.000-05:00

One of the things that I miss most about not being in California for the start of a new year is that I can't take my annual day trip to see the northern elephant seals at Año Nuevo State Reserve. This became a tradition for my wife and me after we took a trip there during our second year in California, and it's just such an amazing place. Throughout my childhood I had been amazed by elephant seals in nature documentaries, and it's so cool to actually walk among them -- and not too many people realize that the largest mainland breeding colony of northern elephant seals in the U.S. is an hour and 15 minutes south of San Francisco. So if you live anywhere in Northern California, and haven't reserved tickets for your Seal Walk at Año Nuevo State Reserve yet, I highly recommend that you do so! To get you started, here's a link to the park's website.

These two shots are of a large bull northern elephant seal that we watched defending his beach in January of 2011. Just a few minutes prior to these images, we saw a rival seal storm the beach and get chased off by this one. While I snapped stills of the event, my wife caught the encounter on video and you can see it on this blog post from last year. Shooting these beasts was so much fun, and I can't wait until I have another chance to do so. If you've made it to the park sometime this year, please drop me a comment with a link to your photos -- I'd love to see them.

View more of my images of these impressive animals in my Elephant Seal Gallery.

Strolling dunlin, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge

2012-01-07T11:20:00.000-05:00

Throughout the fall there were a lot of migrating shorebirds feeding on the beaches of Plum Island, and I was surprised to see that some were still there when I went looking for a snowy owl last Thursday. It was not a huge flock, but maybe 50-75 sanderlings and dunlin were still chasing the waves as they rolled in and out on that cold afternoon. Unfortunately, the light was blah when I saw them, so I just watched them for a bit with the camera at my side.

Browse more images of dunlin and other peeps in my Sandpipers Gallery.

Success -- A snowy owl! Sandy Point State Reservation

2012-01-06T09:15:00.000-05:00

As soon as we arrived in Massachusetts last September, I was investigating the nearby parks to find out what wildlife opportunities might exist. I quickly discovered that Plum Island (which contains the Parker River NWR and Sandy Point State Reservation on it) is a terrific place for birds on the Massachusetts coast. Even better news was that it often harbors a wintering population of snowy owls, and it's considered one of the best places in the lower US to find them. I think these birds are stunning, and I immediately added a snowy owl to my mental wish list for this winter. After seeing reports of owls in the area on ebird.org I took a trip there in December, but came back empty handed. On my first outing of 2012 though, I was able to photograph this gorgeous juvenile along the dunes of Sandy Point State Reservation (and in this image, sitting on the ice that formed in the tidal areas). I was there for sunset, but the skies were cloudier than I expected, so I was shooting mostly in fading overcast light -- all the more reason to make a return trip under blue skies as well!

View more images of owls in my Birds of Prey Gallery.