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Afternoon with a Flicker

flicker23

Dear Friends, spring has finally come to our northland and lots of outdoor activities to keep us outdoors.  This Northern Flicker kept me company for a couple of hours this week while i kept my eye on a fresh wolf kill to see if anyone would return to the crime scene.  When i first drove up i thought i saw a dog shape creeping away, but he did not return.  I liked the high key treatment to reflect the brightness of our early morning sun.   Excitement in the Crex Meadows as the ducks and other birdies are returning to find some nesting sites, til Tomorrow MJ

Badlands Flicker

flicker on a rock

Friends, this Northern Flicker is hanging out in the North Dakota badlands on a rock covered with lichens.  I was surprised to see him out in the open on the prairie dog town, no trees on the prairie.  til tomorrow MJ

Northern Flicker

spring flicker crex

Macro of feathers in ice

 

Friends, this Northern Flicker is looking for a nesting spot before the leaves came out this spring.  The underside of his wing is shown in the bottom photo, a macro photo of the yellow feather shafts on his wing encased in ice.  so til Tomorrow MJ

Feather details in Ice-Part two

Friends, more bird (Northern Flicker) feathers in ice.  Using the same technique as in a previous post these feathers were frozen in ice.  In a single image, the whole field was not focused as the feathers were on different planes. Multiple images (8) with different focus points were taken and combined as layers in a single photoshop image. Briefly all the layers were selected and the two commands auto-align layers and auto-blend layers were run sequentially  from the edit menu. This process combines the images with layer masks that only allow the focused region to be part of the overall image. I love the bright yellow shafts and the small details that show up in the feathers and in the ice.

These feathers were found in Crex Meadows and are from an unfortunate Northern Flicker.  The feather identification was facilitated by an online data base at this address  http://digitalcollections.ups.edu/slater/      til Tomorrow MJ

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