I am volunteering for my 12th year as a lighthouse keeper at Crisp Point Lighthouse on Lake Superior, 26 miles before Whitefish Point in the Upper Peninsula. A 19 mile dirt road is required to reach the light … very remote. Only keepers may camp at the light. My tent is pitched 25 yards from Lake Superior. 50 years ago the Edmund Fitzgerald sunk 7 miles off this point. Took some drone shots at sunrise this morning. Will process videos next week at home.
One of the nice items about late summer into early fall is that birds often set up in favorite spots for foraging / hunting / fishing. This gives a person / birder the opportunity to learn the habits of specific birds, and in my case a unique Great Blue Heron. I knew that the individual bird featured in this blog post likes to fish and hunt next to some specific lily pads. The heron’s legs resemble the pad’s stems, which allows the bird to blend in with its environment (under water) and capture food that swims out from under the lily pads.
I hope you enjoy this sequence of images. I took the photographs a few days ago, but the planning took place over 10 days prior as I learned about the bird through repeated visits. I definitely wanted to capture strikes, and the frog was a bit of luck! Notice on the minnow strike sequence how much krud the bird also “catches” for a small morsel. The heron then needs to “get rid of” all the weeds and mucks. Finally, when photographing birds with light to white colored plumage, and lots of water think reflective light. Thus, I always under expose my photographs in this kind of situation.
The Frog Strike
Random Strikes
The Minnow Strike
The Finale! (environment images)
It was fun this morning watching a Merlin (a Boreal forest falcon) work at catching breakfast (other birds). Merlins are fast and quite acrobatic. The falcon was at Slag Point which already has migrating shorebirds plus summer grassland bird residents. I suspect this Merlin nested in the nearby forest.
In addition, if you love wildflowers, a walk out to the point takes you past thousands and thousands of flowers in blossom including black-eyed susans and native purple bee balm. Learn more about Slag Point in my website’s section on Minnesota Birding Locations (includes GPS Google Maps coordinates/links)
