"What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked." -Aldo Leopold
On a work trip to Kansas back in mid-June of this year, I found a few extra hours to visit the nearby birding wonderland of Quivira National Wildlife Refuge. The legendary spring shorebird migration was largely over by the time of my visit; however, I was pleased to visit during a summer when droughts were not nearly as bad as I experienced in previous summer visits to this location. I was able to actually find some birds during this trip, including: more shorebirds than I expected, fledgling Black-necked Stilt and American Avocet, Snowy Plovers attempting their second nests of the season, and the subject of today’s post—the Black Tern.
Add the Black Tern to the 50 or so species that make up my top ten favorite birds. Although this species shows up in eastern Missouri during migration, they are sporadic and unpredictable. So, whenever I find the opportunity to photograph these guys, I make sure to make the most of whatever opportunity I have. Black Terns nest at Quivira NWR, and some of the birds pictured here likely were on nests or already raising young.
The direction of the wind and angle of the sun where not to my advantage during the period these guys were close enough to get photos. I tried my best and I think these were worth the effort.
Finally, after nearly two decades of wishing to someday visit Magee Marsh, one of the most important stopover sites for migrating songbirds in North America, Dave and I made great use of some vacation time in mid-May of this year to do just that. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie in northwestern Ohio, each spring warblers, vireos, thrushes, tanagers and other neotropical migrants pause here, preparing to cross the open waters of Lake Erie. The marsh’s forests and wetlands provide abundant food and shelter, allowing exhausted birds to replenish the energy reserves needed to continue their journeys to breeding grounds across the northern United States and Canada. Because these birds often congregate in exceptionally high numbers and at close range, Magee Marsh has become internationally renowned among birdwatchers and photographers.
Yellow Warbler
Our visit was timed nicely for being able to not only see many birds, but people as well. Our arrival coincided with the last few days of the “Biggest Week in American Birding” festival. Each day at peak hours we were joined by hundreds, if not thousands of others, trying to get great looks and photos of these magnificent birds. Typically, just the thought of being in a group of naked apes this large would cause me to run in another direction. Surprisingly, the throngs were not nearly as distasteful as I anticipated. Everyone we encountered was kind and helpful. With the flood of affordable cameras and telephoto lenses in the market the past several years, it seems most birders are now photographers as well. I think this went a long way in making everyone understand what our collective goals were and become accommodating to others. Meeting folks from all over the country and helping out one another, no matter their experience level, was a pleasure I didn’t expect.
Blackburnian Warbler
Despite forecasts that suggested otherwise, the weather and skies were mostly cooperative and we were fortunate to have many opportunities to watch tiny warblers, sometimes within arm’s reach. This was something we did not anticipate well enough. We came armed with 400-600mm prime telephotos, with minimum focusing distances in the neighborhood of 10-14 feet. During our first couple of hours hunting, we quickly realized that this was going to cause some missed opportunities. With often being surrounded by others, it was not going to be an option for us to try and backpedal to increase the distance between us and our subjects. In retrospect, bringing our 100-400mm zooms, or a 300mm prime, with considerably shorter minimum focusing distances would have been the much better choice. That’s the price we pay for not doing apt research ahead of time!
Bay-breasted Warbler
I did have a workaround that saved my bacon with the close proximity to the birds. I always carry a 25mm extension tube with my teleconverters in my long-lens bag. By adding this tube between my camera body and the lens, I was able to shave a few precious feet off of the minimum focusing distance without any loss of image quality or autofocusing speed. This meant that I lost the capability to focus on farther subjects, but those were much less frequent opportunities.
Grey Catbird
Overall, this was a memorable trip and one I would gladly do again. Let me show you the stars of the show!
Yellow Warblers were likely the most abundant warbler we encountered, showing up in every available habitat, from the marsh to the forest. We even found a couple of active nests among the buttonbush and dogwood swampy area of the boardwalk.
Chestnut-sided Warblers were damn near as abundant as the Yellow Warblers. It was such a thrill finding these guys in nearly every direction we looked!
Bay-breasted Warblers were surprisingly abundant and often travelling in groups. In the St. Louis area, these are a relatively uncommon spring find, so seeing them in such numbers was a real treat.
Blackburnian Warblers are in my top ten favorite birds. Being able to see so many at eye-level was simply thrilling.
One of my goals of this trip was to finally photograph a male Black-throated Blue Warbler. This is a more eastern bird that rarely makes an appearance in the St. Louis area. At first this goal looked unlikely. We found several females and were about to give up hope until one cooperative male was found.
The Canada Warbler was another high on my list. I did have some photos but I was eager to get better ones. We found around six of these and each was as obstinate as the last. It took a lot of time and patience to get the images seen above.
Wilson’s Warblers were scattered and singing lovely, but finding opportunities for photographs was quite tough.
Striking Magnolia Warblers were fairly common.
Of course, no good swampy habitat is complete without Prothonotary Warblers, including one that decided to build a nest in a rotten railing along the boardwalk!
Black and White Warblers doing their typical gymnastics.
I heard Blackpoll Warblers throughout our time at the marsh, but always in the treetops. We thought we wouldn’t get an opportunity for photos, but during our last hours on our last day, we found a few willing to cooperate.
It was nice watching a pair of Green Herons finishing their nest. Over the four days we spent there, two eggs were deposited.
Finally, a few miscellaneous species worth sharing.
I have been enjoying birding in the woodlots of our common grounds the past several years. I call them my private woodlots because I have not seen a single person during my morning hikes, just lots of white-tailed deer and wild turkey. I recently passed 100 species for both sites and this has only been during spring outings. My goal is to do a list at each location once a week to see which species nest and overwinter in these areas. Here are a few migrants I was able to catch on camera during this year’s migration.
This post is dedicated to my friend and mentor, Godfrey Bourne. Godfrey researched Snail Kites for his Ph.D. work while at the University of Michigan. I remember listening to some of his stories and seeing photographs of this impressive bird of prey. Around 25 years later they were still high on my wish list to find and photograph. Last week, I just happened to have a work trip down to Orlando, Florida. I made sure I had time for a personal day or two and the Snail Kite was the primary species I sought out over all the impressive birds that can be found in the state.
The Snail Kite’s impressive hooked beak is the perfect tool for getting the apple snails out of their shells.
After watching some videos from a well known bird photographer on YouTube, I got the impression that this species might be difficult to find – that these birds are only found in wetlands away from developed areas that take knowledge and special equipment to reach. With my experience last week, I am beginning to think that this photographer’s motive was in selling his high-priced workshops.
At this time of the day, even in January, direct sunlight was not flattering to these birds. I waited for small clouds to block the sun in order to get a better image.
Don’t get me wrong, with a current population estimate of approximately 2,000 individuals in Florida, these are not common birds; in fact, they are listed as endangered in the United States. This is primarily due to overdevelopment of wetland habitat in the sunshine state along with mismanagement of these habitats that has led to the decline of apple snails – the Snail Kite’s only food source. Thankfully, this species has a large range across the neotropics, from Mexico and the Caribbean to Southern Brazil. The species as a whole is currently not threatened with extinction.
Being an endangered species, the Snail Kites are often banded for distribution, tracking, and research purposes.
In two close by areas, only a 30 minute drive from Orlando, I was easily able to find four Snail Kites and watched them for hours in a lake/marsh area that was heavily used by recreating people. Seeing as this is an endangered species, my intention was to give them plenty of room, but I was shocked as I watched people pass by them within just 10 feet or so without the birds seeming to care. On a couple of occasions, I sat down under a shade tree with 50-100 feet between me and the bird and was astounded when they flew closer and closer to me during their foraging. I have always said that any bird photograph taken in Florida should have an asterisk attached due to these birds being so accustomed to people. After just a couple of days experiencing this myself, I still feel this way!
A Snail Kite moving along the lake edge with a constant eye for a nice-sized apple snail.
This species numbers in Florida are highly affected by drought conditions and have varied wildly in recent decades. Changing climate patterns are not helping the Snail Kite restoration attempts and I fear for what the next decades may bring. Hopefully they will be as easy for me to find during my next visit to Florida. Thank you for reading this far and I’ll leave you with a few more photos.
For the WGNSS Nature Photography Group’s January outing we headed to Carlyle Lake in Illinois. Our primary target was the dam’s spillway. I have had a lot of fun at this location photographing Bonaparte’s Gulls and American White Pelicans during past winters and these species are what we were hoping for on this trip.
Being a spillway with the dam and infrastructure surrounding it, the backgrounds are definitely challenging; however, it is not impossible to handle. The images below showcase one method we could use to handle this situation. With the rising sun at our backs, I noticed the light was hitting these mostly white birds perfectly. By exposing precisely for the whites and a little exposure manipulation in post-processing, it was possible to turn the darker concrete walls of this section of the spillway nearly black, which allows the birds to pop off this background as seen in the images below.
Predicting the movement of birds in a typical winter is difficult and this winter, where seasons have been changing on a daily basis, is pretty much impossible. On top of that, water levels in the lake and spillway channel were a couple feet below normal. The spillway gates were releasing just enough water, which I believe limited the numbers and size of fish falling through. So, it wasn’t surprising that we found almost nothing but Ringed-bill Gulls (RBGU) fishing in the spillway.
Ring-billed Gulls are considered 3-year gulls, meaning that they have a plumage transition for the first three years of their lives before they develop into the typical adult plumage. In addition, there is considerable variation within these years, e.g. a 2 year old gull may look different from a 2.5 year gull. Given I am no expert, I have made some captions with my best guesses on the ages of some of these birds.
Another method of dealing with ugly backgrounds at this location is to focus on the fishing activities or other opportunities where the water will be the background of the image.
Many nature photographers would consider this a bust of a day and would perhaps head back home to watch a meaningless football game. However, I like to look at this as both an opportunity for practice and to potentially learn something new about a species taken for granted and usually ignored. I liken opportunities such as this to batting practice in three ways: 1) It gives you a chance to hone your skills – this is high-speed action photography with challenging backgrounds and dynamic lighting. If you haven’t mastered your camera’s exposure and autofocus settings, you will likely struggle getting the images you envision, 2) It’s a lot of fun! Whatever species you find in a spillway like this, there will likely by plenty of birds fishing, giving plenty of opportunities to capture those fleeting moments, and 3) with a species like the RBGU, you won’t likely come away with anything to brag about. These aren’t eagles or owls or some rare species that will be all the talk on social media.
I really enjoyed watching the gulls catch and position their fish in flight for the head-first swallow. I was fortunate enough to catch this in action in several of my photos – they literally give them a little toss and catch them again so that the head is facing towards their mouth. It was also interesting to watch a few who knew the fish was too large to ingest and subsequently released back to the water.
As I alluded to above, I had a lot of fun shooting these gulls. The feeding opportunities were not as plentiful as I usually find at this location, but by staying alert and ready I came home with some photos that I really like.
Ring-billed Gulls were not the sole fishers we found. We also had several first-year Herring Gulls shown below. Unfortunately these birds did none of their own fishing, but seemed content in attempting to steal the catch from the RBGU.
During a WGNSS Photography Group outing to the Weldon Spring Site Interpretive Center back in November of 2025, we had some nice luck with a Sharp-shined Hawk. My best photos to date of this species.
The Webster Groves Nature Study Society’s (WGNSS) Nature Photography Group headed to the LaRue Pine Hills in mid-October to visit the famous LaRue Rd, better known as the “Snake Road.” Our targets for the day were snakes, of course, along with any other herps that we could be fortunate enough to find. Unsurprisingly, the snake of the day was the cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus), of which we found close to 15 individuals. We found several different frog species and a real good number of cave salamanders (Eurycea lucifuga).
Cottonmouth (Agkistrodon piscivorus)
Green Frog (Lithobates clamitans)
Green Tree Frog (Dryophytes cinereus)
Cave Salamander (Eurycea lucifuga)
Cave Salamanders (Eurycea lucifuga)
A short ways from the main road, we came across a small grotto. Looking closely with a light, I was able to find at least five cave salamanders resting on different shelves. After about 15 minutes on my knees, working out how to best light and photograph these guys, I finally focused my attention towards the back end of this small cave. There I noticed a medium-sized cottonmouth with its head raised that was apparently watching me the entire time, about a foot or so behind the salamanders.
Cave Salamanders and an unexpected guest. Can you find the cottonmouth?
We were joined by our friend, Stacia Novy, on this trip, who provided an unexpected treat! She brought along her two Aplomado Falcons that we had an opportunity to photograph, pet, and watch eat. Unfortunately, strong winds and a few soaring Bald Eagles that would not leave the area limited the amount of flight time the birds had, but we really appreciated the opportunity.
A couple photos of Stacia with her bird
Afterwards, the group headed to one of my favorite breweries – Scratch in Ava Illinois. Stacia brough one of the Falcons to the outside location and we had a most unique partner to go along with our wood-fired pizzas and beer.
A Thousand Acres of Silphiums 