Shooting with Judd Patterson, and an improbable image

 Posted by at 4:38 am on June 15, 2010
Jun 152010
 

I had the pleasure of spending Monday morning photographing with Judd Patterson at Matheson Hammock Park in South Miami. I’ve admired Judd’s photography for several years, but I hadn’t met him in person until the Biscayne National Park BioBlitz last month. Judd is a really nice person, and a terrific photographer too. In the words of a mutual friend (who shall remain anonymous), Judd’s images “make the rest of us look stupid.” Alas, I tend to agree! You should check out Judd’s photos at his personal website, as well as Birds In Focus, a kind of mini-stock-agency that he runs with fellow bird photographers Bob Gress and David Seibel.

A Chestnut-fronted Macaw (Ara severus) peers from a nest cavity in South Miami. Canon EOS 40D, Canon 500mm lens + Canon 1.4x + 12mm extension + Sigma 1.4x. ISO 400, 1/160s at f/10.

We didn’t find anything spectacular at Matheson Hammock, but it was a pleasant morning nonetheless. And I got a chance to test the limits of my photographic equipment, which is always interesting. A few weeks earlier, I had noticed a nest hole high in a royal palm tree (probably an abandoned Pileated Woodpecker nest cavity) that was being frequented by Chestnut-fronted Macaws. These large parrots are native to Amazonia but established in Miami. With my Canon EOS 40D, 500mm lens, and 1.4x teleconverter, I just wasn’t getting enough magnification to create the image I wanted. So I looked in my camera bag and found that I had another 1.4x teleconverter (a Sigma). In order to mount the Sigma teleconverter between the Canon teleconverter and the camera body, I needed to add a 12mm extension tube between the two teleconverters. The resulting rig was unwieldy, but I was optimistic that I’d come away with some usable images nonetheless.

A 100 percent crop of the image above

You can see the image I captured above, and I’ve also included a 100% crop (i.e. when you click on the image, 1 pixel in your browser window equals 1 pixel in the camera) so you can see how much detail this ridiculous setup actually captured. Sure, pixel-for-pixel, it’s not quite as sharp as the 500mm lens alone, or even the lens coupled to a single teleconverter. But the image is quite usable, and it’s a photo that I wouldn’t have gotten without trying this combination of equipment.

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Two-tailed Lizards?

 Posted by at 7:08 am on June 12, 2010
Jun 122010
 

My close friend and colleague recently posted about two-tailed anolis lizards  (click here). Over the last couple of months I have also found a few excellent two-tailed lizard specimens of the Ibiza Wall Lizard (Podarcis pityusensis) here in Formentera.

How do lizards get two tails? As Neil points out in his post, many lizard species have the ability to disconnect their tail at several vertebrae in response to an attack. This anti-predator adaptation is a self-defense mechanism is called “caudal autotomy.” Once detached, the lizard’s tail continues wiggle and squirm, distracting attacking predators. Normally, lizards will simply re-grow a new tail in place of the old one; however, if the original tail does not completely fall off, a new tail will grow and will eventually fuse to the old tail, forming a double-tail.

If you haven’t already checked out Neil’s DaysEdgeProduction blog, it’s worth a look.  Neil currently getting his PhD in Evolutionary Biologist at UCLA and is a national and international award-winning photographer. He’s a talented guy and always has interesting news and information to share. Be sure to keep track of what he’s up to at his DaysEdgeProductions Blog: https://daysedgeproductions.com/neil.blog/

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Cold-blooded Cannibals

 Posted by at 7:00 pm on June 3, 2010
Jun 032010
 

Small islands are hard places to survive. Especially in the Mediterranean, where water and foods are scarce. Any organisms that happen upon an island need to adapt fast or they’ll perish. The insular lizard populations of the Mediterranean have made a name for themselves in this realm. While their mainland relatives depend almost entirely on insects, island lizards have evolved to be omnivorous. They will each just about anything – from fruits and leaves to insects and fish. This adaptation may not seem very impressive at first, but the physiological changes necessary to eat a wide variety of food are not few. If you compare the jaw muscles, internal physiology, behavior, and most likely the visual systems of island and mainland lacertids lizards (lacertids is derived from this family of lizards = Lacertidae), you’ll find that island lizards have acquired some clever adaptations which allow them to exploit the resources they need to survive in such harsh environments.

On many islands resources are so scarce and competition is so high that it’s not uncommon to see lizards eating their own eggs, or one another! The other week I caught these two male lizards eating eggs of their own species. Since I captured these, I’ve seen six or seven cases of cannibalistic egg eating and one case of a large male eating a juvenile whole (tragically, I didn’t have my camera for that one). If, at first, this seems distasteful, just look at what happened to various island populations of humans, especially in the South Pacific (or the Donner Party for another example).

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