I met this little long-toed salamander on the path to the observation blind at Ridgefield on an unusually cool spring morning. At first I thought it might just be cold and took my gloves off to warm it in my hands, but as I bent down I realized it was dead. Yet as I gently lifted it off the ground there was a slight twitch in its tail. Its arms and legs were desiccated, its eyes closed, and it looked to me like its body was shutting down. I’ve only ever seen salamanders at Ridgefield in the last moments of their lives, usually getting plucked from a hiding spot by hungry herons and bitterns, but this is the first time I’ve seen one up close.

I held it for a little while, hoping against hope, but when I finally set it down beside the path one last shiver trembled through its body and it never moved again. I’ve loved salamanders since I was a little boy so I was a little teary-eyed walking back to the car, consoling myself that I gave it all we can really hope for at the end, a warm hand to hold as we die.

See, not every bird picture I take is a tight close-up

While photographing a bee swarm at Ridgefield, off in the distance there was a quick flash of red. When I looked up this male pileated woodpecker was hammering into the soft wood, allowing a few quick shots before flying off into the distance.

Pileateds are our largest woodpecker in the United States, unless of course the ivory-billed is only mostly extinct.

The blue bee eater

Scrub jays do not belong to the class of birds known as bee-eaters that specialize in eating bees, but nonetheless this one had a strong predilection for them. A colony of bees had taken up residence in a cavity of this tree, and the jay used a nearby rock as a launching off point to fly in to snare one of the bees before returning to the rock to eat it.

Not much later the colony split and sent a swarm off to establish a new colony, so now the jay can dine out when the mood strikes.

Bees! Bees! Bees!

I was taken with the dramatic black-and-yellow pattern of the bees hanging in formation, but even more so with the co-operation of the colony as bees constantly flew into and out of the living, wriggling mass. Even though they stepped all over one another, they all seemed to take it in stride and focused on their common goal.

I like the wrong-way driver in the lower left corner who is upside down as she finds her way into the swarm.

A bee swarm hangs together despite the heavy rain

After first finding the bee swarm one cool spring morning, I was both pleased and concerned to find them still there the next day on a warmer but wetter morning. Despite looking like a solid mass, the swarm was anchored by the bees on top to some mossy branches while the bees below were just hanging on to each other. The mass of bees must have gotten much heavier in the rain, but these stout workers up top held their ground. They also took the brunt of the rain, the bee in the upper left is covered with a drop of rain as large as her head.

I hope they survived the wet weather and were able to find a new colony before they starved to death. I wasn’t able to get back to the refuge until the next week and by then they would have long since either established a new colony or died off. I didn’t see any little bee carcasses on the ground, I took that as a hopeful sign.

My two days with the bees did highlight how I need to get a new tripod and ballhead better suited to the weight of the big lens, I was using it for these shots to keep as much distance between myself and the bees as I could — even in their quiet state I wasn’t taking chances — and even with a remote release vibration ruined many of the shots.

I also need a new raincoat, mine has been shedding its waterproof lining and doesn’t keep me so dry anymore. The camera and lens have some weather-sealing but I also draped them in a heavy old bath towel and stooped below it to take a picture like an old-time photographer.

One of my favorite experiences at Ridgefield this spring was discovering a bee swarm early one morning near the parking lot at the observation blind. I had walked right by it at first, more cognizant of the existing bee colony in a tree cavity to the right, but discovered it on the way back to the car. I’m allergic to bees and generally keep my distance but the cool temperatures kept them pretty quiet.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen a swarm, one of the nice things about wildlife photography is that it encourages me to learn more when I see something I don’t understand. A quick visit to the Wikipedia page on bee swarms revealed that the colony was reproducing by sending off a large group of workers to start a new colony, waiting patiently en masse while their best scouts agree upon a new location.

I initially thought the one large bee in the picture might be the queen, but further reading revealed this to be a drone, the male honey bee, and the rest the female workers. I also learned that males don’t sting so I guess I’m only allergic to lady bees.

I have other pictures of the swarm to come, this is the one I cropped to use as the current header.

I spent many hours in May at Ridgefield watching tree swallows nesting in seemingly every available tree cavity. In the first few weeks, I tried in vain to get shots of them collecting dried grasses to line their nests. Never did get that shot but was even more pleased at the end of the month to catch this male coming back to the nest with a large feather (large to him at least) to provide a soft feather bed for his mate and the coming hatchlings.