After the Storm

A Great Blue Heron looking stunned: how is a bird that hunts by sight supposed to find prey in this muddy soup?.  After hurricane Irene most streams and ponds in Southern Vermont look like this, carrying suspended soil from neighbors' backyards, farms and fields, along with sewage and waste.

Vermont's road map looks like a torn spider web. The flash floods have destroyed bridges, undermined roads and  broken up the asphalt into so many scrambled pieces. Most townships and villages have been affected in one way or other since many roads in a mountainous state like Vermont are built alongside streams. Many communities are still isolated and can only be reached over treacherous make-shift roads. In addition to carrying away houses and life stock the storm hit at the top of the harvest season, destroying field crops and orchards.

The Mallard Ducks seem to be making out alright.

Roadside leaves caked with silt

A lone crayfish, stranded by the receding flood,  marches along a dry dirt path....

until a predator spots him.

Cheers and Good Birding!

Thanks for visiting. Please leave a comment.

Trying HDR photography and saying good-bye for the year to a Great Blue Heron

I have been experimenting with HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging. It's a technique of fusing several images taken with different exposure, i.e. over-, under- and correct exposure, resulting in an image which contains a wider range of very dark and very bright areas than would ordinarily be possible. Since there is always a small delay between each exposure the images are best taken with the camera on a tripod. Handheld images, like mine,  usually result in some ghosting and are never quite sharp.

Here is my first effort, a view from our deck on the wetland next to our house. I used a demo version of Photomatix. The sky often comes out gray and has to be corrected in Photoshop. In fact most images require further editing in Photoshop:

.

Here is a landscape taken in late afternoon sunlight:

After

Before

A mall in Keene:

The technique is derived from 3-D imaging in video games and many of the images on the net are still reminiscent of a toy-size model set-ups. One give-away of an HDR image is the appearance of a sky with unusually dramatic cloud formations. Here is a site that explains the technique and has some good examples along with  tutorials: Stuck in Customs. I am not sure how far I am going to go with this. I generally prefer more natural-looking images but it might be fun in the winter when there are not many birds around.

While walking on the railroad trail behind the shopping mall in Keene a Great Blue Heron suddenly appeared overhead. It was the same one I had been observing for much of the summer and fall, first as a juvenile and now as a grown bird. He'll soon be off going south.

Good Birding! And Happy Thanksgiving. For us it's off to Michigan again for a week to visit family..