Great Eagle Sightings, Terrible Light

It's MLK day and I have the day off from work. I felt like going for a walk in OBNWR again, so I went at first light. The forecast called for clearing skies; no such luck. I made the walk in dim light under overcast skies. The hunters were out again, in boat-blinds along the shore. They would let a barrage loose every now and then that had me hoping they kept their guns pointed out over the water.

I saw one eagle near the shore-side nest. It sat there for a while, but I didn't bother trying to photograph it because the light was so bad. I was up to ISO 1600 just to get almost-acceptable shutter speeds. Between the shotgun fire and the poor light, I was resigned to this just being a walk for exercise.

Just as I was about to go to the car, I heard the distinctive eagle calls of a pair near the inland nest. I approached along the road and saw both of them, one on a branch, the other in the nest. They took off and settled in a nearby tree, one that has an osprey nest in it. As I stood there and shot, I could see that one of them was eating a bird; I could see the webbed feet. I leaned against a nearby bench shelter's posts to steady the camera. The shots are awful, with grey skies dark branches: blur and noise are in most of them.

They eventually took off again and flew to a nearby osprey platform, where they stayed for a while, continuing to eat. It was too far away and too dark for good shots. I moved on.

So here's the best shot of the bunch, with heavy noise reduction and some details recovered in Lighrroom.



Pair of Bald Eagles

More Eagles

The weather was great for a walk in the refuge at dawn, so I went to Occoquan Bay NWR. I headed straight for the shoreline and found the eagle nest in the woods. There was a mature eagle near the nest, but I couldn't tell if the nest was occupied. I presume that eagle's mate was down in the nest. The one eagle that I saw flew away, away from me of course. I walked on. I also had an immature eagle fly right over me, but it was still too dark for a decent photograph.

There's a spot at Deephole Point where I can look across the water at a distant osprey nest. I've often seen eagles on that nest when the ospreys are gone for the winter. No luck. But then within a few steps of taking the look through the lens at that nest, I looked up and saw a pair of mature eagles sitting in a tree in plain sight. I got some unremarkable shots of both of them together, then one flew away. I walked closer and got some better shots of the one who stayed behind.

Bald Eagle in the Sun's First Light

Eventually it flew away too. But I was able to watch it through the trees and I noticed it landed near its mate in an area that was close to a road. So I headed for that road. I rounded a curve and found them, but not on the same branch, so I didn't get shots of them together.

Bald Eagle

 Bald eagles have a nictitating membrane that they use to blink. When I first looked at this shot, I wondered what was up with the eye, until I realized that I caught it blinking. Zoom in for a closer look. The barely-discernible pupil is there, but it just doesn't look right, particularly when bird photographers always look for clear, sharp shots of the eyes.

Nictitating Membrane

Eventually both of them flew away again. As I walked back along the shore, I spotted several more eagles sitting in trees, too deep in the woods for clear or usable shots.

I eventually headed back toward the parking lot when I spotted another pair in a tree, near the wildlife loop road. As I walked closer, this immature eagle flew right in front of me. I was concentrating on the pair in the tree and almost didn't get the camera up in time for this one shot of it.

Immature Bald Eagle in Flight

I looked back at the pair in the tree, and slowly approached. Again they weren't on the same branch, so no clean pair shot was possible.

Bald Eagle Takes Off

One flew away, but the other one hung around for a while.

Bald Eagle in Flight

Not great shots, but I like the fact that I managed to capture some feather detail.

Bald Eagle Looks at Me

I have some clearer shots of this bird, but I like this one because, if you look at it full-size, its eye is perfectly framed by branches, as though he/she was peeking through the gap to see my eyes (or, actually, it would have been looking at my camera as I was shooting away).

After this one flew away, I was done for the morning. What a nice, cold, peaceful morning walk it was, mostly quiet (except for the hunters in their boat-blinds shooting at ducks), punctuated with at least a dozen eagle sightings.

Antelope Canyon

During my recent trip to Arizona, I had a chance to visit Upper Antelope Canyon. I was with my family, and we drove out to one of the two (we saw two, maybe there are more) places to pay for a guide to take us to the Canyon. There were hundreds of people there, even though it was pretty cold. They put nine people apiece in the dirty, run-down SUVs, one driver and the rest tourists. Then our driver joined the other drivers in a dash down the highway to the turn onto a dirt road, which quickly gave way to a dry stream bed. There was at least a dozen other SUVs, all going the same direction, all plowing through sand and gravel and ruts on the stream bed. The truck tires would fall into ruts and follow, like a train on a track, leading to sudden sideways motions. I held on to the seat under me to keep from hitting my head on the ceiling when we hit bumps. Finally we reached the entrance and parked next to the other SUVs that were already there.

We got out into the cold and entered the canyon as a group. The floor is sand; the canyon is narrow enough to touch both sides at once in many places, and it was crowded. The crowds actually helped because we had to wait for the groups ahead of us to go through. I think our guide would have rushed us through faster if he could. We could sometimes see the sky, but most of the time we simply had wavy sandstone all around. I knew when we started that we wouldn't have the summertime shafts of sunlight reaching the floor, and it was dark in most of the canyon. It even seemed cave-like in some places.

The crowd was milling about, with each group's guide showing features and advising people on photography subjects. The guides know the places to shoot and how to work just about any camera or cell phone. Gigabytes of space were being consumed each minute with all the photography that was going on.

I was pleasantly surprised after the fact that my camera functioned well. My DSLR is terrible at high ISO settings, with awful noise. But I had no choice: I was quickly at 1000 ISO because that was the only way I could get fast-enough shutter speeds. I used a 24mm f2.8 lens, and I'm happy with that choice over the other lenses in my bag. That canyon is one subject where the noise is there in the images, but nearly impossible to see. The guide leading the group behind us was (annoyingly) using a green laser pointer to show things to his group. Some of my photos have green lines as a result.

So we walked through, taking pictures with my DSLR and all of our phones, and eventually we reached the other end, which opens up into a wide, dry stream bed just like the one at the entrance. We waited there a few minutes, and then pressed through the crowd, back through the canyon to the parking area, stopping not even once. Then it was back in the SUV, racing the other SUVs on the dry stream, holding on to the seat again, and eventually back onto the highway and back to the place we started. We got out, said goodbye to our guide, and then he loaded up his next group to do it again.

Enough with the story... Here are the pictures.

Laser Pointer Trail

The crowd

The Wave

You've probably seen pictures of it. Microsoft has a shot of it in its stock art for screen savers on Windows 7: Wavy lines of sandstone with a blue sky. It's called, "The Wave." Image searches online will turn up lots of pictures of it.

The hardest part of seeing The Wave is getting a permit to hike to it. There's a lottery for the 20 passes per day. We applied months before our trip, hoping to win. We were fortunate to get passes for the four of us.

So we made our hotel reservations to stay in Page. We read about the treacherous road that leads to the trailhead. We read about the hike. Stories of people getting lost, overheated, dehydrated are out there. So we rented a four wheel drive car with high ground clearance and hoped for good weather. We packed plenty of water and snacks. I loaded the waypoints into the GPS. I brought spare batteries for it. And I packed a compass too. We laid out warm clothes, layers, hats, gloves.

We left the hotel at first light, crossing the Colorado River near the dam, and then we headed into Utah. We found the dirt road, House Rock Valley Road. I put the car into 4-wheel drive. We took it slowly, with washboard surfaces on much of the road. Fortunately, we had worried for nothing. The road was rough, narrow in places, with drop-offs and some curves, but it was hard-packed and nowhere was it dangerous or slippery. Had it been wet or icy, we would have had trouble. After eight miles of creeping along, we reached the trail head, with only one other car there. We put the parking permit in the windshield, signed the book, bundled up (it was 20 degrees F), grabbed our backpacks, and started walking. I used the GPS to navigate between waypoints while my daughter kept the written instructions handy and we walked from landmark to landmark. We took it slowly, stopping now and then to take photographs and sip water. After three miles of up/down on sand/slick rock, we climbed the last bit out of a sandy dry stream and were suddenly at The Wave. There was one person there, otherwise we had it to ourselves. We put our gear down, snacked, drank, and explored.

On the trail to The Wave

It was Cold!

On the Trail

Almost there (formation near the Wave)

The Wave

The Wave

The Wave

The Wave

The Wave

The Wave

On the trail back to the car

The hike was not especially strenuous. It's high altitude and there are some hills to climb and descend, sometimes on deep sand, sometimes on slick rock. It's a workout, but not tough if you're in shape and have good knees.

The BLM instructions to find it were spot-on. It's easy to retrace your steps back out by just following your GPS track.

The Wave itself is not large. It's about the size of a movie theater.

We made the hike at the beginning of Winter, near the solstice / shortest day of the year. We had plenty of daylight because we started early. There were people leaving the trailhead as we arrived back at our car. I think they likely finished the walk in the dark. One of them asked about getting to The Wave. I said, "The instructions you got with your permit should show you the way." He said, "What? You need a permit?" And then he started down the trail... So he (and his family) started late, without water, and presumably without a permit. Not good.

We had a great time. The trip back to Page was uneventful, and that hot shower and juicy burger were wonderful when it was over.

House Rock Valley Road was not difficult; just bumpy. I wouldn't try it after a rain; there are stretches of clay that are surely very slippery when wet. I wouldn't try it after a snowstorm; there are some deep ditches and steep hillsides that would not be fun to slide into.

Horseshoe Bend

During a recent trip to Arizona, I spent a couple of nights in Page. While there, I stopped by Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado River. Given that it was cold and a little cloudy and near the end of the day, I expected the place to be quiet. No such luck. There were hundreds of people there; the parking lot was full, including a few tour buses.

There's a steep hill to climb from the parking lot. The trail is loose sand, like walking on a beach. At the top, there's no real clue that the river has cut such a deep canyon, just a descent through more sandy trails. There's really no sense at all until reaching the cliff edge. And what a cliff it is. I don't have a fisheye lens for my camera, so I resorted to a panorama taken with my phone.

Horseshoe Bend

Just as with other canyons on this river (Grand Canyon, The Goosenecks), there are lots of places to get right to the edge; you can kill yourself by being careless. There were people on every rock, taking pictures, looking into the canyon. It was very cool.

Sedona

During a recent trip to Arizona, I stayed in Sedona for a  week. I've been there a few times, and here are some of my favorite photos of the area. Here's Snoopy, taken from Los Abrigados.

Snoopy

And here's a shot of the Chapel of the Holy Cross, taken from the airport loop.

Chapel of the Holy Cross

Here's a group of trees I passed through after a long hike. The wind and ground slope and sun direction has them all bent over.

Curved Trees

The coffee pot dominates West Sedona when you look north.

Coffee Pot Rock

On one trip, it snowed all night, and I went out at dawn to catch the sunrise. Here's the Cock's Comb.

Cock's Comb

And here's the coffee pot again...

Coffee Pot

And I think this is my favorite shot of Sedona.

And from my most recent trip...

Chapel of the Holy Cross

Off in the distance, one can sometimes see the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff.

San Francisco Peaks

No photo series on Sedona is complete without a shot of Cathedral Rock. I hiked down to Oak Creek and onto some rocks in the creek to set up my tripod to get some sunset shots.

Cathedral Rock

Finally, I saw only crows, no other noteworthy birds. With one exception. Meep meep!

Roadrunner

By the way, for anyone planning a visit to Sedona, I recommend you skip Red Rock State Park and Red Rock Crossing. The state park is expensive. The crossing doesn't accept national park passes. The best spot to photograph and view Cathedral Rock at sunset is at the end of Verde Valley School Road. Park at the trailhead; use a red rock pass or a national park pass. Cross the road from the parking lot, pick up the trail to walk downhill for a few minutes, and soon you'll wind up right by the stream, directly adjacent to Red Rock Crossing, but on the other side of the water, and you'll be on the shallow side of the stream, able to walk onto the flat sandstone of the stream bed if the water is low enough.

My favorite place to hike is the airport loop. Just about every famous formation is visible at some point as you walk this 3 mile trail. Do it at dawn for stunning views of the first sunlight striking the red rocks. And you might see a few hot air balloons floating by. One morning on this trip I had the vortex rock to myself. The next time, it was crowded.

I think I walked a total of 30 miles in cold, sunny, sandy, rocky, steep conditions, and it was worth every step.