Feeding dunlin, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge

The seventh beach at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island came through for me again on Tuesday when I went out looking for shorebirds in the late afternoon. The weather was absolutely beautiful, which meant that there were many more people on the beach 2 hours before sunset than I had seen on my sunrise trips, but the birds didn't seem too perturbed by the small crowd. As the sun crept closer to the horizon, the beach started to empty out and it was mostly birders and other photographers wandering across the exposed sediments of low tide. It was a nice change of pace on this trip to have a flock of mostly dunlin and black-bellied plovers to photograph, instead of the sanderlings like on my previous trip.

View more photographs of dunlin and other sandpipers in my Sandpipers Gallery.

Sunset over the salt marsh, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge

With the beautiful weather we had yesterday, I just had to get outside with my camera. After having an October snowfall a week ago, it was clear skies and temps in the upper 60s! Since there was going to be an evening low tide along the coast, I took a trip up to Parker River National Wildlife Refuge to look for shorebirds. I found a friendly flock of dunlin, and was able to crouch in the sand with them for quite a while as the sun dropped towards the horizon. Just before the light started reaching the top of the dunes along the shore, I decided to pack up there and start my trek out of the refuge to see what might be around to photograph with the final light of the day. I was headed for the ponds in the northern part of the island, but when I saw the backlit cattails and reeds along the road, I just had to stop to photograph it! Tidal marshes hold a special place in my heart, and this one looked fantastic last night.

View some of my favorite landscape photographs in my Landscapes Portfolio.

Sanderlings feeding at low tide, Parker River NWR

Here are another couple of images from a recent trip to the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge. There was a very low tide that morning, which left behind some wonderful textures in the sand as it pulled out. The low angle of the sun just after sunrise was perfect for capturing the bright blue colors of the morning sky in the wet sand, and there were also some opportunities to capture some reflections of the birds as well.

The shorebirds were taking advantage of all of the exposed sediments, and were pulling small prey from below the surface with ease. It is amazing to me how much life there is just below the sand, since huge flocks of these birds will scour the area during every low tide. It was also really interesting to see them pull small clams from the sand, and then swallow them whole. Sometimes they would even rinse it in a puddle before eating it.

View more photos of sanderlings in my Sandpipers Gallery.

This post was submitted to the World Bird Wednesday blog meme -- follow the link to check out this week's posts.

Young pronghorn at sunset, Yellowstone National Park

I've been fascinated with pronghorn ever since seeing them in nature documentaries as a child. I think that they are so remarkably beautiful, and its amazing to see them running so fast. While in California, I had learned that there were a few populations of pronghorn in the state (some remaining naturally and some introduced) and we had taken a road trip to Carrizo Plain National Monument with the hope of finding and photographing some. We did see pronghorn, but it was always at too far of a distance for good photographs. Having missed out on that opportunity before, I was really excited to have another chance to photograph one of my childhood favorites in Yellowstone National Park in September. Since I had read that they can be skittish, I wasn't sure what opportunities I would have to photograph pronghorn in the park. Much to my delight, we saw a small herd of around 8 animals right near the Gardiner entrance every day as we drove in and out of the park. It was so much fun to be able to pull the car over and watch them for an extended period of time, and it was great to have so many opportunities to see them up close. One of the members of the herd was this young pronghorn, and it was especially cute as it bounded around the group with the unbridled enthusiasm of a young animal.

View more photos of Antilocapra americana in my Pronghorn Gallery.

Large bull moose, Grand Teton National Park

This handsome fellow is the largest moose that we saw during our visit to Grand Teton National Park in September. We found him feeding fairly close to the road as we drove along the Gros Ventre River corridor before sunrise.

Since I was shooting in pre-dawn light, I had to jack up the ISO for these shots. To get a reasonable shutter speed of 1/100 of a second (which was still a bit of underexposure), I pushed the camera to ISO 3200. At the time I was thinking, "why am I even bothering trying to shoot under these conditions?" -- since it seemed like it was just too dark to get anything decent. But then I quickly realized that I have no idea when the next time I'll be this close to a large bull moose will be, and of course, pixels are free, so I kept shooting. I'm really glad that I did as well, since I was impressed with the quality of the images when I reviewed them later. I had never really shot at such a high ISO before, and sure, there's a fair amount of noise (especially before any correction in LR3) and they aren't tack sharp, but overall they came out pretty good considering the conditions.

View more photos of moose in my Moose Gallery