{"id":1211,"date":"2011-03-20T07:56:57","date_gmt":"2011-03-20T12:56:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/?p=1211"},"modified":"2011-03-20T20:35:05","modified_gmt":"2011-03-21T01:35:05","slug":"nanpa-came-and-went","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/20\/nanpa-came-and-went\/","title":{"rendered":"NANPA Came and Went"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Green<\/a>
Green Jay landing on feeder beside flowers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last week, McAllen hosted the North American Nature Photography Association’s annual Summit.\u00a0 It was a great opportunity to learn more about\u00a0photography and to\u00a0see the work of\u00a0some great photographers.\u00a0\u00a0It’s funny though, that those of us who live here think we do a great job of advertising the photo opportunities and birding in south Texas.\u00a0\u00a0To my surprise, many of\u00a0our visitors said they had\u00a0never heard of McAllen\u00a0or\u00a0its bird resource.\u00a0\u00a0Of course, I wasn’t surprised\u00a0that those who attended the Summit\u00a0had a lot of fun; many even\u00a0allowed a few extra days for photography.\u00a0 On Monday, I\u00a0guided two ladies\u00a0for a one-day trip to the Santa Clara Ranch.\u00a0\u00a0Sandy Richards of Alamo,\u00a0California\u00a0said “it was the best day of photography\u00a0I ever had!”.<\/p>\n

The following day, Dave Welling, Allen Dale and I headed up river about 120 miles\u00a0in\u00a0search of the elusive white-collared seedeater.\u00a0 Allen had photographed them about 5 days earlier and got some pretty nice photos.\u00a0 But for Dave and me, they are still “elusive”.\u00a0 Enough said!\u00a0 Allen saved the day by taking us to Falcon State Park where we photographed scaled quail and a pair of roadrunners building a nest.\u00a0 I can’t wait to visit that location again\u00a0next month.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I\u00a0spent a couple hours at the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands\u00a0hoping for photographs of green kingfisher.\u00a0 Ditto on the “elusive” part, but the duck photography was great.\u00a0\u00a0With the migration under way, I\u00a0hope to get back\u00a0there\u00a0soon.<\/p>\n

Here are some of the birds I photographed this week.\u00a0 You will note that I added a flowery prop to one set to punch up the color.\u00a0 I simply placed the flowers in a location where I wanted the birds to land,\u00a0placed a perch twig behind the flowers, and put half of an orange (out of sight) at the bottom of the perch.\u00a0\u00a0Several birds fought over\u00a0the orange and\u00a0the activity was intense all morning.<\/p>\n

Remember, click on the photo and it will open to a larger, sharper format.\u00a0 Then you can click the upper righthand area to advance through the photos.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Alert<\/a>
Alert Audubon's Oriole landing in flowers, s. Texas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The shots with pink flowers are all at the same setup.\u00a0 The flowers are\u00a0bouganvillas.\u00a0\u00a0I used the 100-400 mm zoom lens to\u00a0allow room for capturing landing birds through a rapid fire sequence\u00a0of shots.\u00a0\u00a0In a wetter spring, there would be enough native\u00a0flowering plants to color up the background without hauling my wife’s potted plants to the ranch.<\/div>\n
\n
<\/a>
Green Jays and Audubon's Orioles occasionally fought over the fruit hidden below the perch.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One could manipulate the green jay’s eye and insert a clear one to create a prettier photo, but the\u00a0nictitating membrane\u00a0 shows that birds blink like we do\u00a0when threatened by the striking beak of another bird.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\"Audubon's<\/a>
Audubon's Oriole reaching for food<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\"If<\/a>
If flowering shrubs are available, they are more colorful and interesting perches than a stump or bare branch.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Long-billed<\/a>
Long-billed Thrasher repositioning feet on a perch in south Texas brush<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
When a bird lands on my setup, I often keep focused for several seconds in case some interesting action or posturing occurs.\u00a0 In this case, the wings spread as the thrasher\u00a0 turned to face me.<\/div>\n
\n
\"Scaled<\/a>
Scaled Quail drinking from an over-turned trash can at a brush country camp site.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
Desert birds, and probably most others, can be\u00a0trained quickly\u00a0to take their water from man-made devices.\u00a0 In this case, a camper at Falcon State Park\u00a0simply overturned an unused trash can and\u00a0filled the\u00a0bottom\u00a0with water\u00a0for the birds.\u00a0\u00a0You may know scaled quail\u00a0as blue quail and cotton-tops.<\/div>\n
\n
\"Greater<\/a>
Greater Roadrunner with a leaf for the nest.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This greater roadrunner wasn’t much help with the nest building.\u00a0 While its mate gathered and installed sticks, this one pecked around at the light stuff but never did much\u00a0real work.\u00a0 This is what I look like when there is housework to be done.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\"Drake<\/a>
Drake Blue-winged Teal in flight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Several blue-winged teal are spending a few days at the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands.\u00a0 I got this shot using a 500 mm lens and 1.4X teleconverter with the Canon 7D camera set to ISO 800, 1\/2000 second @ f 4 in early morning cross-light.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\"Blue-winged<\/a>
Blue-winged Teal drakes (males) stretching.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Black-bellied<\/a>
Black-bellied Whistling Ducks at sunrise.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These whistling ducks were easy to approach for a sunrise shot at the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands.\u00a0 The wetlands are an excellent place for waterbird and butterfly photography, especially for local photographers who don’t have the time for a long drive\u00a0to other habitats.<\/p><\/div>\n

That’s it for this week.\u00a0 I hope all of you\u00a0are enjoying good spring weather.<\/div>\n
Larry <\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, McAllen hosted the North American Nature Photography Association’s annual Summit.\u00a0 It was a great opportunity to learn more about\u00a0photography and to\u00a0see the work of\u00a0some great photographers.\u00a0\u00a0It’s funny though, that those of us who live here think we do a great job of advertising the photo opportunities and birding in south Texas.\u00a0\u00a0To my surprise, … Continue reading NANPA Came and Went<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1211"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1228,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions\/1228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larryditto.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}