Tag Archives: wildlife

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Great Blue Heron

May 1, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A great blue heron stands next to a Sacramento Valley pond

As I prepare photographs to share via social media (in my continuing photo-a-day marathon, now perhaps the years old) I often have photographs lined up for posting days or weeks in the future. Occasionally one sits here on the computer for a long time before I finally share it. This photograph of a great blue heron is such a photograph — I made it almost four months ago, way back when we were in the middle of winter!

This past winter I decided to expand the range of my bird photography a bit. I’ve been photographing winter birds in Central California for the past few years, but mostly in a range from roughly Sacramento south. So it was time to connect a few dots on the map and travel out of that area a bit. One of the first extended visits took me a good distance up the Sacramento Valley on a cold winter day when snow topped the mountains to both the east and west. This specimen was hanging out along an irrigation ditch near the edge of a wildlife refuge, and it allowed me to get relatively close (“hidden” inside a vehicle) without taking flight.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Wetlands Dawn, Arriving Birds

April 6, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of geese prepares to land on a foggy wetlands pond at dawn

Another California winter day and another trip to visit the Central Valley and search out migratory birds and fog and atmospheric light! Back in early February the bird action was beginning to pick up, and we would consistently find at last some geese (and often many more and other birds, too) when we arrived. Fog is one variable. I love thick fog, especially in these locations, and we often got precisely that. But on this morning the fog was thinner and earlier to dissipate, here already thin enough before dawn to let us see the winter sky.

As we watched the fog drift and thin and the sky begin to get lighter, groups of birds (mostly Ross’ geese) began to arrive, circling a bit and then landing on the ponds. The arcing curve of this flock’s flight, descending towards the right and then beginning to circle back, is visible in this photograph if you look closely. A few earlier arrivals float on the pond in an area lit by reflected sky.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

Twilight Birds

March 26, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A flock of geese against twilight sky above the Central Valley

February was mostly a very good month for photographing migratory birds in the Central Valley this winter. This was a relief, quite honestly, after the past four years of drought and increasingly dire conditions in the Valley and throughout the state. In normal times, the wildlife refuges where I often photograph can be filled with water and life in the winter — flowing creeks and flooded fields where thousands of birds collect. But much of this water comes from sources that are not local, and as they dried up the refuges also began to shrink the acreage that was under water. It was sad to see locations that I’ve thought of as ponds become plain, dry fields. And at times the birds seemed to suffer a bit, too, or at least change their habits. Back in the late fall, before the course of the winter season became clear and Northern and Central California received rain again, we were concerned about what would happen this year.

But in most of California the rains came, at times heavy, and water flows once again. The birds returned, and sometimes it seemed that there numbers were exploding with the return of water. By February it wasn’t uncommon to find many thousands of birds in the refuges, and by late in the month the scene was downright wild, with all kinds of geese, huge numbers of cranes, and much more. In the evening things become active, and as the light fails I often continue to photograph, but at longer shutter speeds that allow me to work with the moving poetry of blurred birds in flight against dusk sky.

Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

White-Fronted Geese in Flight

March 25, 2016 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A small group of white-fronted geese in flight about the Sacramento Valley

I photographed this group of white-fronted geese on one of my excursion to new California bird photography locations this past winter. It wasn’t that many years ago that I first “discovered” the huge population of migratory birds in California’s Central Valley, on a weekend after a colleague made an off-hand comment about birds as we waited in line at a coffee stand that sent me off to investigate. I went to a place where there were sandhill cranes and, eventually, a sky magnificently full of birds, most of which I could not identify. I was hooked. Soon I went to a location near that spot, and eventually became quite a frequent visitor to several places including one that isn’t too far from where I live.

Last year I started thinking that I should expand my horizons a bit and start to seek out other locations along the Pacific Flyway. I pushed a bit further up the Central Valley and eventually managed to spend time up along the California-Oregon border. I photographed this photogenic group at one of those upper Central Valley areas. Visiting such a place for the first time can be a bit tricky. It takes a while to get to know the rhythms of a place — where and when which birds show up, where the interesting backgrounds are, how far to drive to get a cup of coffee… At this new refuge I had almost no idea what I was doing. I hoped to find one kind of geese, but they were scarce — yet I found other things that I saw less often in my usual haunts: bald eagles, lots of night herons, an occasion tundra swan, and many white-fronted geese. Eventually I found a spot by a pond where huge flocks of geese were coming and going, a mixture of mostly snow geese and white-fronted geese, and I began to feel that I might be able to figure the place out.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: wildlife

Great Blue Heron

Wetlands Dawn, Arriving Birds

Twilight Birds

White-Fronted Geese in Flight

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.