Tag: ozark bill

Location Spotlight: Bryant Creek Watershed

landscape, location spotlight, Ozark Grist Mills

Located in the south-central Missouri Ozarks, Bryant Creek drains approximately 600 square miles, nearly half of which is comprised of high quality pine and deciduous timberland.  As is much of this part of Missouri, the remainder of this geography has been clear cut for use as cattle ground.  Bryant Creek is a fascinating little waterway and makes a great companion to the North Fork of the White River, its nearby companion to which it ultimately feeds.  I have not seen nearly enough of Bryant Creek or this section of the White River.  Both Ozark streams provide homes for river otters and the critically endangered Ozark Hellbender population.  Considered a losing stream, Bryant Creek is robbed of its limited water supply by the karst topography and several sections are often dry.  Reversely, major flash floods can be a threat during heavy rains and this stream is often sought out by lovers of white water.  During our autumn vacation, this view was along the roadside not too far from Hodgson Mill.

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“Bryant Creek, Autumn 2012″
Technical details: Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera, EF17-40mm f/4L USM @ 24mm, ISO 100,  f/11, 1/4 sec

One of the major sources of water into Bryant Creek and later, the North Fork comes from the discharge of the Hodgson Spring.  Listed in the top 20 most productive Missouri springs, this spring powered the restored grist mill pictured here.  Although no longer a working mill, its likeness is still used to sell stone ground, whole grain flours under the name Hodgson Mill.

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“Hodgson Water Mill – Autumn 2012 II″
Technical details: Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera, EF17-40mm f/4L USM @ 33mm, ISO 100,  f/11, 1/4 sec

The Oven Bird

birds, wildlife

The Oven Bird

THERE is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

-Robert Frost-

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“Ovenbird, Autumn 2012”

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera,  EF400mm f/5.6L USM lens, ISO 640,  f/5.6, 1/200 sec

Nature’s Mouths

birds, wildlife

“How many mouths Nature has to fill, how many neighbors we have, how little we know about them and how seldom we get in each other’s way!  Then to think of the infinite numbers of smaller fellow mortals, invisibly small, compared with which the smallest ants are as mastodons.”

-John Muir-

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“Red-shouldered Hawk Nest, SNR 2012”

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera,  EF400mm f/5.6L USM lens, ISO 400,  f/6.3, 1/125 sec

The Sedge Wren

birds, wildlife

“…wildlife once fed us and shaped our culture.  It still yields us pleasure for leisure hours, but we try to reap that pleasure by modern machinery and thus destroy part of its value.  Reaping it by modern mentality would yield not only pleasure, but wisdom as well.”

-Aldo Leopold-

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“Sedge Wren, Autumn 2012”

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera,  EF400mm f/5.6L USM lens, ISO 800,  f/5.6, 1/160 sec

So this is Arkansas?

landscape

Along the Glade Top Trail looking southward at what I believe are the northern hills of the Boston Mountains.  I look forward to exploring more of Arkansas one day.

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“View of Boston Mountains, Autumn 2012″
Technical details: Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera, EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM @ 105mm, ISO 100,  f/11, 1/15 sec

The Nature Photographer Does Not “Sleep-in”

"monochrome", landscape

It’s the day before Thanksgiving.  I was fortunate again to be able to have most of the week off of work.  This day I decided I would allow myself the uncommon treat of “sleeping in” and catching up on some rest, allow myself some down time.  I rarely do this and I think it helps to “turn off” every now and then to help slow down, to say, it is OK to not be productive.  So that was the plan, and I even stayed up pretty late.  Then, just a scant few hours after I shut my eyes, I hear a voice, far off.  Eventually I realize it was Sarah trying to convey some sort of message.  I believe she had to repeat herself no fewer than four times before I comprehended – “The weather guy is saying this may likely be one of the foggiest days in St. Louis history.”  She knows I am a sucker for a foggy day.  Because we live so far from many of the great nature scenes, more often than not, I cannot get to a destination before the typical morning ephemeration has burned down.  Figuring this would likely be the case on this particular morning, I almost said forget it, and went back to sleep.  But, as Sarah knew, I would definitely have kicked myself repeatedly if I at least did not get out and try.  If nothing else, the least I would get is a nice hike on a beautiful morning.  I chose the relatively close Castlewood State Park.  Sarah and I had recently tackled a particularly scenic trail with bluff views along the Meramec River, and I knew that a thick fog could be used well for a dramatic composition.  Here are a few images I’ve had the opportunity to process so far.  My “immortal thanks” to Sarah for waking me and to Mr. Whitman for his lines that follow.

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“Retrospection″
Technical details: Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera, EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM @ 116mm, ISO 100,  f/14, 1/10 sec

To think of time – of all that retrospection,

To think of today, and the ages continued henceforward.

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue?

Have you dreaded these earth beetles?

Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?

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“The Beginningless Past″
Technical details: Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera, EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM @ 135mm, ISO 100,  f/13, 1/8 sec

Is today nothing? is the beginningless past nothing?

If the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing.

To think that the sun rose in the east – that men and women were flexible, real, alive – that everything was alive,

To think that you and I did not see, feel, think, nor bear our part,

To think that we are now here and bear our part.

Not a day passes, not a minute or second without an accouchement,

Not a day passes, not a minute or second without a corpse.

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“To Think of Time″
Technical details: Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera, EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM @ 105mm, ISO 100,  f/14, 1/8 sec

To think the thought of death merged in the thought of materials,

To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking great interest in them, and we taking no interest in them.

To think how eager we are in building our houses,

To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent.

Slow-moving and black lines creep over the whole earth – they never cease – they are the burial lines,

He that was President was buried, and he that is now President shall surely be buried.

A Mouthfull

birds, wildlife

“A sense of history should be the most precious gift of science and of the arts, but I suspect that the grebe, who has neither, knows more history than we do.  His dim primordial brain knows nothing of who won the Battle of Hastings, but it seems to sense who won the battle of time.  If the race of men were as old as the race of grebes, we might better grasp the import of his call.  Think what traditions, prides, disdains, and wisdoms even a few self-conscious generations bring to us!  What pride of continuity, then, impels this bird, who was a grebe eons before there was a man.”

-Aldo Leopold-

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“Peid-billed Grebe with Fish”

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF500mm f/4.5L USM lens, ISO 640,  f/5.6, 1/800 sec

Swoop of a Hawk

birds, wildlife

“The outstanding characteristic of perception is that it entails no consumption and no dilution of any resources.  The swoop of a hawk, for example, is perceived by one as the drama of evolution.  To another it is only a threat to the full frying-pan.  The drama may thrill a hundred successive witnesses; the threat only one – for he responds with a shotgun.”

-Aldo Leopold-

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“Red-tailed Hawk”

Technical details: Canon EOS 7D camera, EF500mm f/4.5L USM lens, ISO 640,  f/8, 1/1000 sec