Photowalk: Coyote Ridge
Filed Under: Photography, Top Post
Located 15 minutes south of Fort Collins, Coyote Ridge is a natural area consisting if a couple hundred acres of prairie. A trail runs from the road up across several ridges. Today, I walked to the base of the second ridge before coming back. I’ll make the full hike to the end some time in the future.
The weather today was overcast and gloomy, so my camera was straining with the available light. Still, I took a few nice photos. Here’s the walk from start to finish, with narration and seventeen photos:
First thing this morning, after checking for jobs on the job boards, I headed to the North Shields Ponds. This is my default location. Things were dark and gray and not photo-friendly. I felt vaguely down, but the over-excited red-wing blackbirds that kept swooping at me to protect their nests cheered me up a little. I was standing next to the river, disappointed with the lack of wildlife in the area when I turned and caught sight of this:
This osprey was keeping an eye on the rapidly moving water below, but due to the storms that passed through the night before, he wasn’t finding much to eat. Shortly after I took this shot, he spread his wings and swooped away, taking my breath with it. His wingspan seemed immense, bigger than an eagle. I wished that I could have gotten closer.
Chirping at me in an almost chastising manner, directly overhead, was a robin:
It posed so wonderfully as soon as I turned to look that I almost felt like I was being set up. Still, I took the picture, and it turned out pretty good. Anybody can shoot a nice photo of a robin, but at this point in the morning, I was desperate for something to capture on memory card. As you’ll see, things got better.
On my way back to the car, I found this flower in bloom on a shrub.
I discovered that my on-camera flash can illuminate my subjects without special attachment when using the 300mm lens. This was a good discovery to make. It makes the lens even more flexible for me.
I went home briefly to pick up my tripod and then continued south to a natural area that I had heard about, but never visited. Daniel Ausema told me that I would find plenty of prairie dogs there, and I’ve been wanting to try out my new lens on the cautious little critters.
At first, I didn’t see much. Prairies always look almost like deserts to me when I first arrive. It takes me a while to acclimate and re tune my senses to the ecosystem. I’ve spent more time in prairies than anywhere else, but here, it’s a different kind of prairie–short grass as opposed to the tall grass stuff I grew up around back in Kansas. The first thing I became aware of were the meadowlarks singing their distinctive song all around me. I searched the area for them, but they hide well, and don’t like to perch out in the open very often. They are on my hit list still, but I will capture one with the lens soon. This is as close as I could get:
Off in the distance, I saw half a dozen crows clustered together on the ground. I thought maybe there was a dead animal out there, so I hiked out to take a look. I smelled something, but I couldn’t find the body. It’s not that I wanted to take a picture of it–but I would have liked to have set up on the spot if I had the time and wait for something to come in and feed.
On the hike, I started to notice these white flowers that were very delicate. I hadn’t ever seen them before.
It’s called a prickly poppy. I should have guessed that it was a poppy, because I took some poppy pictures last year in my back yard at the old place.
I happened to bring my FL-36 flash and a wireless kit with me. I played around with using different angle of light on this flower, probably spending 20 minutes just shooting it. I’m glad I had my tripod, or it would have taken even longer. I just love the yellow against the white.
Wandering onward, I started to see these yellow flowers that once again, I had not seen before.
This is a common evening primrose. Nothing very common about them if you ask me. I played around with my off-camera flash a little more. I wished that I had two flashes with me, but my kit with tripod is heavy enough without adding even more equipment.
Bored with flowers, I climbed over the first ridge and found a colony of prairie dogs. They chirp endlessly when you’re within a hundred yards, only withdrawing into their burrows to hide if you get within 15 feet or so. Some were so busy feeding that I could walk right up to them and take shots. I noticed several large families of younglings that were just delightful.
I wondered if there was a predator in the area that I couldn’t see because they most definitely were not focusing their attention on me in these shots. I looked around, but couldn’t see anything. Which doesn’t mean there wasn’t something out there. Even in short grass prairie, predators can blend in.
They almost reminded me of meerkats in the way that they were clustering together. Eventually, I started to feel bad about getting them all worked up, so I moved on, but not before sticking my camera lens down a burrow to see what I could see. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this:
A couple of dung beetles making work of, er, something. Look, you take the good with the bad when you view my wildlife photography. One thing people forget about the wild is how much animal poop there is laying around. Moving on.
The prairie dog adults are much fatter than the little ones, and they almost seem to have personalities when they watch you, cocking eyes, standing on their feet. They’re so easy to anthropomorphize with their behaviors, much like this grand fat boy:
Finally, I passed through the prairie dog colony and started to come up on a cabin that the local park service uses for community outreach and classroom education. There were benches where I could sit and rest my throbbing feet, so I made a bee line for them. This little fellow, calm as can be and so tiny, stopped me in my tracks:
I’m going to guess that this jack rabbit wasn’t more than a year old. It seemed young and strangely acclimated to people, but if it was living around the cabin, I suppose that makes sense.
I checked the time at the cabin and realized that I really needed to head back. To keep myself on track and not distracted, I packed up my camera into my bag and began the hike back to the car. Of course, after having done so, the meadowlarks began landing ten feet away from me and singing right out in the open. Oh, I’ll get you next time, you little bastards.
On the drive home, I turned past the pond in City Park, which is only a couple of blocks away from our new place. Standing in the middle of the pond on a floating log was a great blue heron, a bird that’s been on my to-shoot list since I got my camera lens. To my amazement, as I tried and failed to get a good shot, he flew over to the shore. I slowly crept up on him, hiding in the bushes and keeping trees between us unless I was taking a shot.
Joggers came by and startled it into flight a couple of times:
But it settled back down and allowed me to take a few more shots.
I took one last shot, hoping for the best regarding exposure, given how overcast everything was, and then headed home to get to work.
So that’s what I did on the morning of day four of being jobless. How was your day?
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06-05-2008
[...] saw a bunch of these on my photo walk yesterday, but I didn’t take pictures of them. I had a few already in the files. This is [...]
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