We got up around our normal time, much earlier than we had expected. So, we had plenty of time before our 9:00 breakfast with one of my clients who wanted to go looking for the Elegant Trogon nests with us. I downselected my images from last night, and I got some nice ones. :) I processed an image for the blog then started to work on a blog entry.

We went to the Portal Café around 8:50. Tim, the head bat biologist had just sat down, so we invited him to join us. J and I each had a Denver Omelet, and enjoyed learning more about bats over breakfast.

We left in the Jeep, with my client following in his car, around 10:00 and headed up into the canyon to look for the Elegant Trogon nests using our handheld Garmin eTrex Venture HC GPS with pre-entered coordinates of the nest sites. We checked five nest sites, and I caught a glimpse of an adult male near one and a juvenile at another. One nest site would be good for photography, so we'll have to check it when they're nesting one year.

We returned to the RV around 11:50 and I worked on the blog entry.

I had lunch around 12:30 and J took a nap around 1:00. I finished the blog entry then did some computer work. While checking the Northlight Images New Canon EF Lenses page, I saw that Canon announced several new lenses that are interesting: EF 8-15 f4 L USM, EF 70-300 f4-5.6 L IS USM, and EF Extender 1.4x III. I was hoping they'd reveal a 100-300 f4 L as was rumored, but the EF 70-300 f4-5.6 L IS USM still looks like a better lens than my 100-400 f4.5-5.6 where the image is really soft beyond about 300mm. Canon also announced 300 and 400 f2.8 IS II USM lenses and indicated that new 500 and 600 f4 IS II USM lenses will follow early next year. The EF Extender 1.4x III coupled with the new 300 and 400 f2.8 IS II USM lenses produces sharper images than the older EF Extender 1.4x II coupled with the older 300 and 400 f2.8 IS II USM lenses, and I would expect the same with the new 500 and 600. I took a nap from 2:20 to 3:45.

Bat Photo Tour

We went to the Portal Café at 4:55 to have dinner with my clients. I had Chicken Enchiladas and J had the special Chicken Berry Salad — both were delicious. The plan for tonight is for us to start photographing free-flying bats in a pond as they come in to drink using a Phototrap to trigger a set of flashes. Then Tom will head down the hill towards New Mexico to pick up a text message around 9:00 (cell phone reception is very limited in this area) from our bat biologists to see if they had caught any bats. If they had, then we'd pack up and go photograph bats using the captive flight tunnel. If they hadn't, then we could keep photographing at the pond.

We left around 6:15, earlier than last night, because we had more things to set up before it got dark and the bats started flying.

On our way to the pond in the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, we went by a beautiful Mojave Rattlesnake by the side of the road. It was heading off into the bush, so we kept going. Then we came across a Tarantula on the road, and we stopped so my clients and J could photograph it.

We reached the pond where we were to photograph the bats and started to set up. There were some technical difficulties with the equipment, and it got dark before we were ready. We finally got everything ready and the bats were already flying. We used a video camera with some infrared illumination to watch for approaching bats. When one, or more, would approach, we'd open our camera shutters and wait for the flash to go off or for the bat to leave the area. Unexpectedly, the bats were approaching the pond from both directions, so we got an equal number of images of them coming and going — the south end of a north-bound animal is rarely exciting.

We were able to get some nice images of the bats and their reflections and they came in to drink. My favorite image is of a Big Brown Bat (left).

Tom left around 8:40 to go pick up the text message. Because the bats had started coming to the pond less often, we decided to pack up to be ready to go when Tom returned. We reached the parking lot shortly after Tom returned, and we were surprised, and disappointed, that the bat biologists hadn't caught any bats. I found out later that while it was nice and calm in the canyon where were had been photographing, it was windy down where the bat biologists were trying to capture the bats. So, we just headed back to the lodge.
We returned to the RV around 10:00 — really early for a bat photography workshop. I downloaded and downselected the images I took, then processed one for the blog.