Yes, its been a long time since we featured only our feathered friends. Three very different settings. Very different body designs and species. Long legs. Floaters. Round heads. Funny nicknames like B-52, Dabchick, and Bouncing Ball. Thank you to our photographers for sharing the beauty of them all.

Photographer:  Joan Robins
Llano Seco Unit, Steve Thompson North Central Valley Wildlife Management Area
Sandhill Cranes
Sandhill Cranes are magical to me. I greet them every fall as they flock to flooded rice fields at Llano Seco, a wildlife area near Chico, California. As fields start to fill, they often fly out at dawn, so I go before sunrise, set up my tripod, and wait for the strangely majestic forms to become visible. On this day, the clouds turned from pink to orange to yellow as the morning progressed. I held my breath and shot the collection of cranes in front of me. I worried that my ISO was through the roof, but when I reviewed my photos, I knew this was the one. And I, at 86, alone out here in the dawn light, had experienced a moment to remember the rest of my life.

I took up photography late in life, when film went away. I liked not having to pay to develop bad photos! It quickly went from being a hobby to being a passion; when I retired at 80, I devoted myself to wildlife photography fulltime. In my former life, I was a wife and mother, an English professor and then a software documentation director, but I now know I would have been happier as a naturalist and photographer in the field. Oh well, I still have a few years left!

OM-1 by OM Systems (formerly Olympus) with the Olympus 150-400 lens. 1/1250 sec at f 5.6, ISO 6400

Photographer:  Brian Caldwell
Lake Hodges, San Diego County
Western Grebe & Grebettes
For the last 18 months I’ve been guiding the team from Days Edge Productions who are doing a documentary for PBS. We were experimenting with gimbal heads hanging from the boat at water level. This is one of the stills I took when figuring it out. Some of the Grebes at the Lake are year-round residents and others are migratory. The sedentary birds are far more habituated to boats and people so are easier to photograph, even with chicks on board. I believe this family group is one from the year-round population.

I’ve been pushing the City of San Diego for nesting platforms for our grebes in anticipation of water fluctuations when the new dam is built and the pump station goes back into operation – MANY years away. In the back of my mind I’ve always hoped that sometime in the interim, if at all, there may be enough vegetation growth at the current level to sustain a nesting grebe colony.

This past winter, far earlier than I expected, grasses at the East End started growing and the conditions presented themselves. I’d been watching the colony for just over a month and at the peak,  counted as many as 80 nests with eggs. Having contacted the City, there were no plans to drop or raise the water significantly any time soon. The first chick appeared May 24, 2024.

Canon R5, Ef 100-400mm, 1.4x

Photographer:  Kevin Lohman
San Ramon, Contra Costa County
Western Screech Owl
A Western Screech Owl was living in this tree, hiding from sight during the day and emerging after sunset. Shortly after sunset the owl decided it was time to look out and get ready for its evening hunt. I was setup across the street with my camera and a long lens on a tripod, waiting for the owl to come out. When I finally saw it, it was moving very slowly. Its slow movements really helped since the light was very low and I needed a long shutter speed to make this photo with a long lens on a tripod.

I am a professional nature photographer specializing in wildlife photography.  I have a background in marine science, and I worked in technology for many years. Much of my photography is from Santa Cruz County, California, but I also travel to other wildlife areas to pursue photographic opportunities, including other counties in California, states outside California, and worldwide. I recently had a winning photograph in the Audubon Photography Awards, another photograph in their professional honorable mention category, and a third photo was selected for the Audubon Photography Awards top 100 list.

Nikon Z9 with 600mm TC lens and built-in 1.4x teleconverter for 840mm, f/5.6, 1.3 second exposure, ISO 400. Manually focused. Tripod.