I'm back working at home due to Covid, but I needed to pick up some stuff so I walked over to the office. And I decided to take my camera, just in case :-)
I was taking photos of the river and the ice when I saw a bird fly out of the trees nearby. It was large and I instinctively zoomed my telephoto to the max and swung to follow it. As usual, I had the focus set on a center spot which is not the best for tracking birds in flight but there wasn't time to change it. I did my best to take a few shots when I thought I was close to centered. The bird flew across the river and landed in a tree on the other side.
I thought it might be a bald eagle, but I wasn't sure. Maybe it was just a large raven? Zooming in on the shots on my camera I could see the white head and tail of an adult bald eagle. Bald eagles are quite common some places, but I don't see many in Saskatoon. I had seen one about a month ago when I was out running. Maybe they migrate through in the fall? Although the end of November in Saskatoon is more winter than fall.
It was over an hour later when I was walking home on the other side of the river (the railway bridge is one way). I was keeping an eye out for the bald eagle but I didn't really I expect to see it. I figured it would be long gone. I checked out various dead trees along the bank where it might perch. Surprisingly, it was in the same tree I had seen it land in. I'm not sure if it had been sitting there the whole time or whether it just happened to be back there.
It wasn't easy to try to get a good shot. There were lots of branches in the way and the snow was deep off the path. And I didn't want to scare it away so I was moving slowly. Then a magpie landed in the tree near the eagle and started squawking at it. (just visible in the lower left of the photo below) I'm not sure if it was my approach or the magpie or a combination, but the eagle had enough and launched into the air and flew away.
Seeing the bald eagle was a nice surprise for a day I wasn't really expecting much. And despite not having my big lens, I managed to get a few semi-passable photos.
Coincidentally, we recently used a couple of my other bald eagle photos in EcoSask News.
My prints from the last few weeks (my usual one per week) have been black and white versions of photos from this last year. So for a little while I have a b&w wall with these three photos (17x22"). Between being b&w and somewhat abstract they won't be most people's cup of tea. I generally prefer color, but it's interesting to see how much of a photo is in the color, and how much in the shapes, forms, and texture.
It’s too easy to forget that verdancy is not the result of careful management, but of life’s inexorable course, present wherever we don’t suffocate it. - The Eye of the Sandpiper by Brandon Keim
This is from back in January, on our last pre-Covid trip to Mexico. I took a ton of photographs and video of the monarchs so I left processing them till I got home. Of course, then I never got around to posting them. As Saskatchewan winter sets in, with travel limited, it seems like a good time to think about monarchs flying in the sunshine.
For a long time I've wanted to see the monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico in huge numbers. Seeing the IMAX film Flight of the Butterflies just made we want to see them in person. We get the occasional monarch in Saskatoon, but not in large quantities like this. Once upon a time abundance in nature was common. Human abundance has put an end to most of that - bison, carrier pigeons, sharks. It made it special to see one of the few remaining concentrations.
We were using Google Maps to navigate in our rental car in Mexico, but Google didn't seem to quite know where the monarch reserves were. We were aiming for El Rosario, but following butterfly signs we ended up at Sierra Chincua Reserve.
As soon as we arrived I was unhappy to see the huge parking lot, the souvenir shops, food booths, and signs for the zip line. I could tell this was not going to be the wonderful experience of nature that I had imagined. And it didn't help that it was the weekend. We walked up the trail with hordes of tourists, the final section shuffling single file. When we finally reached the end I didn't see anything. There were no butterflies flying around. None near the trail. It was a cold cloudy day and the butterflies weren't flying, they were all roosting in the trees, a long way from the trail. There were a lot of monarchs, but not much to see of them. I tried to take some photos but it wasn't what I had hoped for. We were constrained to a narrow path by ropes and guards. Soon the pressure from the line of people drove us away from the butterflies.
We had deliberately allowed two days to visit the butterflies, but we had no desire to go back to the same spot. We decided to continue on to Zitacuaro. If we got up the motivation to try again, there was another sanctuary near there that seemed a bit more off the beaten path. The weather was nice and sunny the next day so we headed for the El Capulin Sanctuary. We pulled into a small parking lot with no other cars. That was positive, but were they even open? It turned out they were. This time we were given a guide. He didn't speak any English, but at least he showed us where to go. They wanted us to ride horses but we said no. It did turn out to be a long hike with quite a bit of uphill, but we were happy to be out hiking in the mountains on a beautiful day. And it's easier to take photographs on foot.
Partway up we started to see the odd monarch. Not knowing if we'd see more, I started photographing them. At least they were out flying around, unlike the day before! As we climbed further, more and more appeared. Soon there was a steady stream of them flowing down the mountain. It's hard to describe the feeling of being surrounded by a seemingly endless stream of butterflies. Up higher the forest was full of them. There were a few bunches roosting, but most of them seemed to be out flying. For me, this was definitely a highlight of nature viewing. I took photos of them in the air, carpeting the ground, covering the bushes, of individuals.
I don't usually take much video but photographs just didn't do this spectacle justice. (best viewed on something bigger than a phone)
Monarchs are amazing creatures. It was actually a Canadian, Fred Urquhart, who discovered the secret of their overwintering in Mexico. Up to 500,000 monarchs migrate from Canada and the US east of the divide to a few overwintering sites in central Mexico - up to 7500 km. (Western monarchs don't fly as far - they overwinter at sites in California and Baja.) It's hard to imagine a fragile butterfly traveling all that way.
How they navigate, and how they know where to go is still an open question. They are thought to have a time-compensated sun compass. In other words they have an internal clock that lets them tell direction by the position of the sun. They may also have a magnetic compass.
While individual butterflies migrate the whole way south, the northward migration takes multiple generations. Butterflies leaving Mexico only make it as far as Texas and Oklahoma, where they find milkweed to lay their eggs on for the next generation. It may take up to four generations to reach Canada.
