Category: Seascape

Nesting

December through February is Florida Osprey nesting season.

MichaelStephenWills4 Comments

“Florida ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) commonly nest on power poles, communication towers, water navigation devices, lighting fixtures, outdoor billboards and other man-made structures as well as in decaying or dead trees.” This quote from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission web site is a fitting introduction. For this, the fourth post of this series (Click me for the first post, “Endless Searching“), I explore images of Osprey nesting behavior.

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“Other Man-Made Structures”

Early morning winter Cocoa Beach walks offer a new experience with each dawn be it a change in wind, light, or beach-combing offerings. This looming crane was a consistent specter the entire month, poised over a downtown parking garage under construction.

Click any photograph for a larger view.
On the Lookout

Distant Figures

Each winter morning January 2019 I left our ocean side condo to walk the beach, taking equipment according to a whim. For this series I used the Sony Alpha 700 with a variable “Zoom” lens. In this next shot the focal length was set to maximum.

Searching the internet (“Florida Osprey behavior”), a link from http://www.naturesacademy.org states, in Florida, Osprey nesting season is December through February. The following series of photographs clearly show an Osprey with nesting material. The header image for this post clearly shows the markings of the individual holding a large branch.

The second individual is close to the same size, it is a reasonable conclusion the two are flying together. The series was taken in a 33 second time span.

The two were flying around the crane and it is beyond imagination they’d be successful building on an actively used crane. Would construction come to a halt until the nest was abandoned? I wonder.

In following days there were no signs of nesting behavior on the crane.

Copyright 2022, Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Shoulder to Shoulder

Snatch and Grab Shopper

MichaelStephenWills10 Comments

“They walk among us” can evoke horror, still it is a fitting description for the many species successful in an ecological niche occupied by humans. This is the third post of a series featuring the Osprey of Cocoa Beach, Florida. The first post is “Endless Searching,” In this post we follow a householder on a shopping expedition.

Click for “Florida” in my Fine Art Galleries.

Observation

Search internet references on Florida Osprey you find there is a mixture of year-round residents and migrants passing through spring/fall to points farther north. This being January, my brilliant conclusion is these are residents of Cocoa Beach, maintaining nests. My next post will have more on this.

Each winter morning January 2019 I left our ocean side condo to walk the beach, taking equipment according to a whim. For this series I used the Sony Alpha 700 with a variable lens. In this first shot, the watchful pose of the hunting Osprey is apparent, long glide with head slightly down.

Click any photograph for a larger view.
On the Lookout

Dive!!

Once these hawks entered my dim awareness and their habits understood, with a lot of luck I was able to click the button at the right time. You can see in the previous post, “Fishing Creatures,” how little time elapsed during a dive, the split second opportunity seen in the following photograph.

Committed

Wow, that is impact. The bird is poised to grab one fish, spotted under the water 50+ feet away, talons extended.

Into the Drink

Success rate? Those days in January, if the Osprey hit the water more than 50% of the time it flew away with a fish.

Our seven year old grandson is an enthusiastic fisherman and might be able to identify this catch. In the distance, on the horizon is Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, the lighthouse and space launch towers .

An image of Osprey / Human closeness. The long lens tends to bring objects closer together, the Osprey is far away from the early morning walkers.

A reader, “ekurie”, in observing Ospreys noticed the catch is oriented to aerodynamic, placed head first toward the direction of flight. The hawk is using the evolutionary adaptations of the fish, to reduce drag in the water, to flying through the air.

This snatch and grab shopper is headed straight home to a nest beyond the shore front condos.

A Well Deserved Meal.
Copyright 2019, Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

A Day in a Life

“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.” Henry David Thoreau

MichaelStephenWills

Images saved from this winter day of beachcombing and exploring around Cocoa Beach, Brevard County, Florida

Sunrise

Adaptation to the strong winds

The Day Taking Shape

View North Toward Cape Canaveral

Beach Wandering

High Relief Sand Sculpture
Man O’War Beached by winds

Kite Boarding

Preparation
Underway

Beauty in Motion I

Beauty in Motion 2

Beauty in Motion 3

Manatee Park Wildlife

Biplane

I saved this to share with the grandchildren

Copyright 2022 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Oceans’ Eons

Tranquil Morning Surf with Peaceful Music for Tranquility, Relaxation, Meditation.

MichaelStephenWills9 Comments

For full peace and tranquility view on a large screen “smart” television.

Eight minutes of ocean waves and gentle music in 4K UHD.

Anatomy of Dawn

Subcategories of Twilight and more

MichaelStephenWills11 Comments

Use your pinky finger to apprehend the sky dome. Imagine yourself at sea, out of sight of land, on a calm day. Keeping your arm extended, place your pinky-tip on the horizon due east, raise your arm directly overhead. The average sized pinky-tip will have spanned 90 of its lengths. The distance measured from the horizon to directly overhead, the zenith, is 90 degrees of sky dome, about one pinky-width per degree, one-fourth of the entire 360 degrees of sky around your spot on the globe.

The apparent width of the sun disk from earth covers 1/2 degree of sky dome. The disk center point moves 15 degrees per hour (360/24 = 15). Using these facts to estimate time to sunset is relatively straightforward. Estimating time to dawn from the sky is more difficult. This graphic, “Twilight-dawn subcategories,” is a way to grasping what happens. Your position on the earth globe affects the experience. For example, at northern latitudes above 60°34′ summer nights never become darker than civil twilight because the sun’s midpoint never drops lower than 6 degrees below the horizon. Civil twilight lasts all night long summer times in parts of Sweden and Finland.

Attribution: “Pmurph5, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia “

The date-time stamp on the first photograph of this series is 6:46:23 am, Cocoa Beach sunrise for February 1st was 7:09:40, 00:23:17, 23.283 minutes in decimal notation, later. This duration divided by 60 minutes in an hour and multiplied by the sun’s apparent velocity across the sky (15 degrees per hour) and minus the .25 degree between sun’s center and disk edge, gives the sun’s center as 5.57 degrees below the horizon: this is a photograph of the sky a minute or so after the sun passed civil dawn into civil twilight. I am not more exact because this calculation does not account the deviation of the sun path from due east at this latitude, lengthening civil twilight duration by almost a minute.

Edge of Civil Twilight: dark clouds soon to take light

The following photograph is time-stamped 7:05:06, 4.567 minutes until sunrise, sun center is just below the horizon, setting the dark clouds of the previous photograph fleetingly on fire.

Civil Twilight at the edge of sunrise

Sunrise has passed in the following photographs, obscured by clouds and making for a great light show. Enjoy!!

References

“Dawn” Wikipedia page, the graphic “Twilight-dawn subcategories,” and the descriptions of subcategories came from this page.

Sunrise Sand Castle

Sights along Cocoa Beach

MichaelStephenWills3 Comments

Even on vacation I rise early to better enjoy the day. This year’s escape from the Ithaca winter, at Cocoa Beach, up at 5 am with a beach chair and oranges in hand I walked in darkness from our beach side resort to the tide high point. My time occupied by sky watching I peeled, and ate, oranges while locating stars through the wind blown clouds. When the barely perceptible dawn light began I packed it up to find Pam, who asked to be awake for sunrise.

This day, we ate breakfast from ready to eat food purchased from the Publix market close by on Atlantic Avenue, and caught up with the news craziness. We had a day at the Kennedy Space Center planned after the sunrise walk.

Here is our view while walking north along the tide line. In the far far distance are the Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly building and a space launch gantry.  Follow the shoreline to find the pier.

We walked nowhere near the pier, barely visible, not to mention Sam Shepard park. The pier and park are a day’s walk. We had a few hours free before our “Lunch with an Astronaut” event at Kennedy Space Center.

Cocoa Beach North View– CLICK ME!!!!

The highlight of this sunrise walk was this large sandcastle on the beach in front of a condominium,  the  Hilton is to the left.  Lori Wilson Park is out of sight to the left.  A great feature of the park, for us since the International Palms were we stayed is next to it to the north, was the park life guards.

Cocoa Beach North View– CLICK ME!!!!

So, we approached this sandcastle from the north.  It survived the high tide to a new day, obviously it required time and resources to build.  The day before was a big beach day.  Wednesday was a brilliant, summer-like day for the first of March.

Cocoa Beach North View– CLICK ME!!!!

A little closer, the footsteps inside the first moat are interesting.

Cocoa Beach North View– CLICK ME!!!!

Pam next to the castle provides scale

Pam and the Sand Castle– CLICK ME!!!!

Here is the central pyramid.  I enjoy the dawn light on the grasses.  That is a sea gull feather on the apex.

Central Pyramid– CLICK ME!!!!

Decorative sea shell band facing the ocean.

Decorative band of sea shells– CLICK ME!!!!

The destiny of all our human conceits.  Impermanence is part of the beauty of sand castles.

Decorative band of sea shells– CLICK ME!!!!

Click for the first post in this series.

Rosy Fingers of Dawn

Iliad and Odyssey reference for Monday

MichaelStephenWills5 Comments

A portent of new beginnings in an ongoing journey for the last day of February, 2022

…with the “Morning Star” Venus

Lady Feeding Gulls, Cocoa Beach Dawn

unflappable lady hand feeds seagulls

MichaelStephenWills22 Comments

When Pam read my post “Black Skimmers Feeding” she asked, “Where is the photo of resting Skimmers?”

To answer her question, I looked through Cocoa Beach photographs and discovered I did NOT capture the Skimmers resting.  Instead, here are a related species, the Royal Tern (scientific name: Thalasseus maximus), whose behavior is similar in that it exclusively feeds from the water. There was a wind that morning and these individuals face into it.  These birds are, from a human point of view, well behaved, unlike the opportunistic gull.

Royal Terns at rest

I searched around the web for identification of this gull without success.

Scavenging Gull – CLICK ME for more Florida photography.

It dines on a dead fish washed up by the surf.  In my previous posting I used the word “grifting” to describe gull behavior, again this is from the human point of view.  Gulls are notorious for stealing food from unwary beach goers, brazening walking over to unguarded chips (any kind), for instance, grabbing them and flying off.  If the chip stash is large, this sets off a nasty feeding frenzy when tens of gulls swoop in and grab.

Here is a series of photographs, demonstrating this behavior.

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The dawn flowed over Cocoa Beach as a lady attracted a crowd of hungry gulls, reminiscent of scenes from Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”

Lady and Gulls

She is obviously an experienced gull feeder, unflappable with a steady hand

Lady and Gulls – CLICK ME for more Florida photography.

She had come to the shore at dawn for a photo shoot.  Her male companion (husband?) was there with a camera.

Lady and Gulls – CLICK ME for more Florida photography.

Pam and I were there for the dawn, me with the Sony camera.

Lady and Gulls – CLICK ME for more Florida photography.

At first, I stood there amazed at the spectacle.  She was in such control of the situation, not a victim, more like a lion tamer.

Then, Pam said, “You have to get this.”  And I did.

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Newlyweds and the Cruise Ship

Images of Newlyweds on the beach

MichaelStephenWills7 Comments

With grandchildren in the Miami Area and a sister in Daytona Beach, Florida was on my mind this morning and memories of this beautiful experience on Cocoa Beach came to mind. After an eventful day touring the NASA launch control center, Pam and I took an evening walk during the golden hour, me with camera in hand.
Full in expectation of catching the passing scene with lots of shot I set to full size jpeg mode using a Sony Alpha 700 dslr with a DT 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 lens. The light was exceptional, so I did not expect much post production work.

My first impression was of the line of cruise ships heading south from Port Canaveral, the starboard side lit perfectly behind human denizens of the Cocoa Beach shore, in full enjoyment mode. A synergy of the images struck me. I took a few experimental shots then, as we progressed down the beach front this unusual tableau came into view.

Wedding Immersion
Newlyweds on Cocoa Beach give rapt attention to a distant cruise ship, it looks like an elegant child’s toy.

Pulling back the focal length a bit the reason for the bride and groom on the beach is clear.

Newlyweds and Photographer
Photographer approaches from left.

The session proceeded smoothly and professionally, it was a pleasure to watch. I felt no compunction for capturing these private moments on a public beach, the transcendence of the images reflect well on all participants.

Newlywed Photoshoot
Bride and groom pose while photographer composes the shot, her assistant behind.

Pull back to capture the entire environment.
Enjoy!!!