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ALLAN BOVEE - PHOTOGRAPHY ADVENTURES IN NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY OCTOBER 2007
I got to thinking about the Eastern wood-pewee and all my adventures with the bird over the years. These birds are one of the last to arrive in migration in the Spring, sometimes I don't hear one until June but then its voice always makes me smile. It calls out in a shrilly "pee a wee!" and seems to think he is more important than he really is. They are quite common in any woods and on my hikes in Highland, I may run across ten different birds setting up in their territories. The other call is a "Peeuurr!", descending down almost as if he is tired of singing the peewee call and wants to take a rest. The songs of the flycatcher family are innate, they are not learned like other songbirds and so they sound the same whether in the woods behind my house or in the Upper Peninsula. They like a large woods and perch on dead snags overlooking a clearing where they sing and hunt insects. When prey is spotted they fly off quickly and can twist and turn in flight easily and usually when they catch the insect they make an audible snap of their beak. They are not beautifully colored birds but are beautiful in their appearance and habit, striking the flycatcher profile of the erect perching stand typical of their family. I had figured there was no possible way to photograph these birds except at their nest, they always perched so high up in the dense woods. This particular Eastern wood-pewee became aggressive with other birds in my yard chasing blue jays and goldfinches which got me to thinking maybe he was going to nest in the tall oaks in my backyard. A few years ago another pair of wood-pewees were acting like they were nesting by doing the same thing, driving all the other birds away. But I never located the nest even though I laid on my roof several evenings with my binoculars trying to follow the birds. About ten years ago I did find a nest of one in the Gratiot-Saginaw State Game Area near Chesaning, Michigan. I had been there looking for golden-winged warblers and I did find nests of those birds as well as a veery and common yellowthroat. Where I parked I noticed an excited wood-pewee in a large oak tree, the only large tree around. With my binoculars, I found the bird was building its nest way out on a long branch. It was probably forty feet or so up, but I got to thinking about it and on my way back home, stopped at a tree service business in Chesaning I had seen on my way up. I talked to the owner about renting his cherry picker tree lift. The man was cool and was all for the idea. He said he would drive to the location, park in the road, and read a book while I lifted myself to the nest. I went home and designed a bracket to hold my flashes and camera and waited for the nest to be built and eggs to hatch. A week later, I went up to check on the nest and photograph a golden-winged warbler and all was well, the flycatcher was incubating eggs. The flycatchers as a family of birds have always interested me, and I felt I would soon be photographing one. When the day came to return to the State area, I called the tree service. Unfortunately, the owner told me that there had been a tornado go through the area and he was just too busy to let me rent his rig. I understood, but went to the nest anyway, and as it turns out it was gone, a predator had found it. A couple of years later, I found another nest in Pontiac Lake Recreational Area. I was actually disappointed because I had been straining my neck for hours trying to locate a cerulean warbler nest. The birds were all around in the area and when I spotted the wood-pewee going to a nest about 80 feet up, I thought it was a cerulean warbler. Just to see one of these birds is an accomplishment, you can hear them singing all day but they are very difficult to locate in the tree canopy of the old oak trees of the area. But, when I found this wood-pewee nest, I quickly ruled out trying to photograph it at its incredible height. But in my backyard or close by in the woods, a wood-pewee nest might not be impossible. I could set up scaffolding where it would be on my property and not a concern miles away in some woods. Also, I might be able to enlist help from my neighbors, not easy to do way off in the woods. But I never did find the nest and figured it must be back in the woods by the way the birds were calling. The only reason I want to photograph at a nest is because there is no other way to get a good photo of the bird. So, when the male started showing up on my feeder perch, I was real pleased. The light was real hot in the afternoon but with the out of focus oaks in the background, it looked like I was sixty feet off the ground in wood-pewee country.
The Eastern wood-pewees and the other flycatchers have all flown south now and the woods has grown quiet as it waits for the fall colors and frost that ends the glorious summer. But now I can recall this meeting forever as we looked each other in the eye. And next summer when I hear a wood-pewee call it will have a new memory to me. Return to PHOTOGRAPHY JOURNAL main page. Date this page was edited: October 23, 2007. |
In
the middle of the summer this year, I started seeing an Eastern wood-pewee
landing on a branch I use as a prop at a bird feeder. I reasoned if I could set
up my camera and 500mm lens just outside the door of the house, I might be able
to take a photograph. The prop was rotting branch that looked just like the ones
the birds land on high up in the trees. I would be about twenty feet away
and the bird seemed to like the perch, right in the middle of my yard where it
could call its familiar song and watch for flying insects it loves to eat. The
bird didn't seem to mind my setting up and actually appeared curious watching
me. On a bright sunny afternoon, I nailed it, got some excellent photos of this
long pursued flycatcher. What I didn't realize at the time was just how
significant this photo session was. 
What was really significant about the
photography, was it turns out that the Eastern wood-pewee is the 200th bird species
I have photographed. (See my 
photographed closer to
300 species, but my standards are high, if I don't think the photos are good
enough for publication, I don't include them in my list. I know what magazines
want and I certainly don't want a sub-par photo of mine to appear in a national
publication. I do keep a file of photos that are not good enough for
publication, say slightly blurred, or have busy backgrounds or very far away, these
are kept in a file I call "Sentimental". They are fun photos, ones I have
captured that make me smile when I look at them. I have included a few here. The
first is a black-throated green warbler I photographed in my backyard while
sitting in my photo blind
photographing birds at my feeder. The second
one is a black and white warbler, again near my house, but this is in the next
lot where a house now stands. The third is a crane hawk and that was taken in the
Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in south Texas. This was the first time this
species has ever been seen in North America and I just happened to be there.
There hasn't been one since so with a frequency of only one sighting ever, it is
on the list of the rarest birds in North America. Finally, the
last one is a Costa's hummingbird taken in Arizona feeding on a blooming
ocotillo tree (darn the branch in the foreground). It is fun to look at the
Sentimental file and could be a subject of some future journals, "the ones that
got away".