Jeremiah Tolbert

This week­end was a bust for pho­tog­ra­phy. I’ve been try­ing to branch out and explore other nat­ural areas in town. The side effect of this is, I don’t know where the ani­mals are, or even if they’re out there. On both Saturday and Sunday, it was also very, very cold and windy, so I think those con­di­tions added to my fail­ure to find much of any­thing mobile to capture.

These guys are every­where in the north­ern part of town. I see them roost­ing just a few blocks away from where i live. They’re a gang, com­posed of per­haps a dozen indi­vid­u­als, never seen far from one another. While I was out on Sunday, up on the banks of the Poudre look­ing for herons, they came swoop­ing low over­head, one after another, so I got to try to take plenty of shots at them. This is the one that I thought turned out the best.

I know, I know. I have to find some­thing else to pho­to­graph. I’m try­ing, really, I am. I just can’t get enough of these birds. They’re com­mon, which means I get a lot of attempts, but they’re freak­ing hard to get close enough to, so they have that going for them. I con­sider them my train­ing birds. Once I can sneak up on one of these and get a full frame shot, I will be able to do the same for other species. I will be sneaky like ninja.

On my way to work yes­ter­day, I saw a fox walk­ing down the mid­dle of the street in broad day­light, (well, as broad as day­light is at 7:30 AM). That’ll teach me to go any­where with­out my cam­era. That’s not even the first time I’ve seen a fox in our neigh­bor­hood. They are ridicu­lously brave around here. I’m glad my cats are indoor cats.

I took some long dis­tance shots of a fox out at the pounds a cou­ple of weeks ago, and it had some­thing gnarly in its mouth that I couldn’t make out, even after zoom­ing in. I am pretty sure I found that object on Sunday in the mid­dle of the path. It’s a half-​​picked-​​at bad­ger skull. There was still fur around the snout, mak­ing it easy to iden­tify. I moved it to a hid­ing where I could find it again later. I’m hop­ing it’ll be picked clean by the end of the sum­mer. I’ll bring it home and boil it and use it as a prop. Assuming the fox doesn’t reclaim it.

I took the new lens out for a try at the ponds yes­ter­day. I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed. No mat­ter how much reach I have, I still seem to be too far away from the ani­mals. I’m going to have to set up a blind and wait a few hours by the lake shore to get the shots I really want to get. I still have to be within 15 feet to get a shot like this one below. That’s far too close under nor­mal cir­cum­stances. Birds won’t let you get that close, and if they won’t, noth­ing else will. I even saw a fox, but the shots I took of him had him at about 1/​16th of the frame. Bigger than before, but not remotely big enough to make a good shot.

I guess my next big cam­era pur­chase will be a tele­con­verter. Take that 300 to a 600, only los­ing 1 stop. Maybe then I can finally get close-​​ups of birds and other ani­mals. Of course, at that point, it’ll be tri­pod full time. I’m going to try to find some time this week­end to go out again and try the lens a sec­ond time. I’m going to head out to the prairie dog colony and see how I fare out there.