… sailing over a cardboard sea. The sun came out and I raced down to the locks where, just a few days before, I’d seen the most perfect light on alighting herons. There’s a rookery that spans a ravine, the northern terminus of which is at the Ballard Locks. Several Great Blue Heron couples (Ardea…
Moon Roost
click for larger image Every night, they dart under the highway bridge, buzzing boaters as their wings slice the air above the channel. Cormorants, nature’s flying and diving machines, are sleek and malleable to the point of being reptilian. Everything about the cormorant says speed … everything except parking it at the roost. As branches…
Anatomy of a Cormorant Landing
Double-crested Cormorant – Phalacrocorax auritus. Photographed with my Olympus E-3 and Zuiko 70-300mm. The birds were silhouetted in late afternoon light, high ISO 1000, some post-processing NR to compensate for the darker conditions.. I shot this series along the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Seattle. If you’ve watched Double-crested Cormorants [literally] coming home to roost,…
Mainmastmen
Double-crested Cormorants, with their totipalmate feet, gripping the ropes of a mast at Lake Union’s Center for Wooden Boats.
Cormorants at Work
First, a disclaimer. These are not tack-sharp photos. The IS (image stabilization) inside my Olympus is pretty darned good. And with the right shutter speeds, I can brace the camera to produce crisp images without a tripod or monopod — which is super, because I’m often taking pictures in the context of a hike where carrying a…
