View allAll Photos Tagged handoff
The least tern pair are ready for the fish handoff and anticipating what follows.
See the first comment for the previous image in this series.
My sincere thanks to all who spend the time to view, like or comment on my photos. It is much appreciated!
© 2023 Craig Goettsch - All rights reserved. Any unauthorized use without permission is prohibited.
Here I'm close in (with the 800mm) for some feeding of this Red-necked Grebe chick receiving some food from one of its parents. I'm not sure exactly what this food is but it's either a dragonfly larvae or possibly a leach, which we do have in the lakes up here.
Taken 21 June 2021 in Anchorage, Alaska.
A male Caspian Tern handing off a fish to his female. ✔️
Yes, this is the time of the year when they mate and bringing fish to his chosen one is part of the ritual.
IMRR SD18 61 and TZPR GP10 3000 have taken over the empty coal train from the IAIS. Once the coal train clears, IAIS 708 will runaround their covered hoppers and return north to Bureau.
Peoria, IL. November 24, 2006
Tuzee, master Peregrine tiercel of the ocean cliffs, just lands and passes off a fresh-caught starling to one of his chicks. You can't see the bracelet he wears on his right leg, "02-Z" thus the name the locals have affectionately given him. Pacific Ocean way down below.
Honestly, it is a thrill to watch these falcons care for each other and their young and I have been privileged to enjoy some time with them. While my last year's White-tailed kite experience is unmatched for convenience and volume of thrills, I have come to love and appreciate these remarkable flying machines of the Pacific cliffs just as much as those kites.
Yesterday I posted a GIF (still photos made to play like a video) of a Least Tern chick getting fed. This Royal Tern handoff is being played at the same speed. See if your eye can pick up that when the adult comes in with a fish and blocks the view of the chick for a fraction of a second as the handoff takes place, in just that split second the fish has been consumed. I've watched what happens when the fish is too large for the chick or it fumbles with it. Laughing Gulls or other Royal Terns will come in for the steal. (Sterna maxima)
The almost daily occurrence of an interchange handoff is about to commence in Downtown Clifton, Arizona between the Arizona & Eastern Railway & the Freeport McMoran Incorporated. Both railroad's jobs begin their journey at the top of the valleys, opposite each other. The AZER begins at South Siding on the South side of Clifton & the FMI begins in the middle of Morenci. AZER's route features six tunnels, while the FMI's route features a 3-4% grade. This is all a part of the endless production of Morenci's Copper Mine, one of the largest in North America.
Nest building. The Heron on the right just brought back a stick, for his partner to line the nest with. He hands it to her and she carefully places the stick into the nest in just the right spot.
An inbound Freeport-McMoRan copper train drops down the hill from Morenci into the yard at Clifton. On the right, AZER 203 builds its train in the yard. The 203 would come out with the shuttle of two FMI copper shuttles - with less oppressive gradients, two B40-8s are able to pull what took the power and dynamic braking of 10 Geeps to bring out of Morenci.
West Chicago, IL
Getting train orders the old fashioned way, for one of the few manned interlocking towers left in the country, this action was a treat.
BNSF Q LACCXB1 14A has just begun its eastward journey as it passes the North Main Metrolink station in Corona. Just train originated at Hobart Yard in Los Angeles and is bound for the CSX intermodal ramp at Fairburn, GA. The handoff between BNSF and CSX takes place at Birmingham, the furthest east point on the old Frisco. BNSF power is the norm for this train the whole journey east, but CSX containers are seen throughout the consist.
Great Blue herons starting a new nest. I saw several pairs starting new nest in the tops of several cypress trees at this spot. This male would fly off and return about every 20 minutes or so with more nesting material and hand it off to the female for placing in just the right spot. Guys can never do it right :-)
A male black tern brings an invertebrate offering to its mate.
The female would land on a post and wait for delivery. When she spotted the male, she would open her mouth and call out. The male would come in and do a low speed handoff (beakoff?) to the female. If they couldn't quite connect, the male would hover/flutter and move in closer again for another attempt. On occasion, the offering would be dropped. This behaviour would be repeated a number of times before the female would fly off.
A Red-necked Grebe parent gives it's chick some fresh food. And I have absolutely no idea what it is other than a worm of some kind. In the photo taken prior to this one the worm looked like a little bowling ball all curled tight but in this photo it's uncurled a bit showing its shape a bit more.
This reminds me of some birds trying to down eels as they are slippery and curl tenaciously, probably a lot like this worm. It's a difficult task for a mature bird, this chick took a while to get it down!
Taken 16 July 2017 at Westchester Lagoon, Anchorage, Alaska.
After leaving Peggy's Cove, my friend cage_ee and I decided to go visit another one of our old haunts. One can actually call the chickadees down to one's hand in certain areas of this park. In fact, I had done that solo over ten years ago, having a chickadee land in my outstretched left hand, while shooting with a 105 macro on a D70 in my outstretched right one. :)
cage_ee was doing the whispering here, and I was trying my best to get a flight shot. The chickadees don't stick around for long and they are fast.
Taken at Shubie Park in Dartmouth, NS, Canada on 20 October 2017.
P.S. The solo whispering shot can be found here.
For the centennial photo in this collection, and an F-unit Friday follow up for this Saturday, here's a view of train TV-555/SY-1, dropping into Syracuse at Rock Cut Road/Interstate 481 on the pleasant summer day of 25 July 1998, with F45 No. 3636 leading borrowed CP Rail SD40-2 No. 5669 and GP38 No. 2012, with trailers and containers bound handoff to Conrail a few miles ahead.
This is the second nest I've noted with chicks. It's much better lit than the first. Those older ones are still in the nest, but getting close to fledging, I think. Two chicks are visible here (Tom Blandford says 3). Don’t miss the twig handoff (or should I say beakoff) by the parents. Great Blue Herons, Siskiyou County, California
With only a passing siding to work with, the interchange between BNSF and the Arizona & California at Castle Hot Springs requires some maneuvering. Here, the BNSF crew is holding the main, while the Arizona & California has cut their train timetable-east of the siding switch. They'll get in the clear on the siding, allowing the BNSF crew to back up to pick up their cars for Phoenix. BNSF's outbounds are already on the siding for the 708 to take back to Parker, AZ on home rails. This is the only time I ever got this maneuver, but I'm glad to have done it while the power was still good.
© 2018 Garry Velletri. All rights reserved. This image may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my permission.
For a period of time, Q107 was a daily afternoon westbound CSX's St. Louis line. Most days it featured KCS power, and this day proved to be exceptionally good by having a pair of gray SD70Macs.
Fifty miles west of Indianapolis and roughly an hour into its evening run to St. Louis and the handoff to KCS, the train races west at Lena, IN, with vibrant colors all around.
An impressive collection of six-axle power leads Susquehanna double stack train TV-555 north at BX in Binghamton, passing the landmark Agway elevator on 8 August 1998, en route to Syracuse and a handoff to Conrail.
CP 9355 leads CP 133 through CN Duff on the CN Stamford Sub in Fort Erie, Ontario, nearing their handoff point to CSX in Buffalo, New York.
A few times a year CP interchanges unit grain trains with ETR. ETR then brings them to an ADM facility in Ojibway where they're transloaded to lake freighters. The train comes into Windsor as CP 340, but becomes T-42 for the handoff to ETR as it's a yard crew that boards for the move. The CP crew will pull through the crossover between CP and ETR at Dougall Ave as an ETR crew waits on the other side of the circuit. They then tie onto the rear of the train as the CP crew cuts off from the head end. It's a really cool operation to watch, and provides an opportunity to shoot something foreign on ETR's main.
Train: CP T-42 with CP 8553 (AC4400CW).
Windsor, ON
ETR Sub
Power change at South Amboy on 24 June 1980: E8A No. 4334 (ex-SR) in the Disco scheme assumes the point of a 3300 series Shore train as GG1 No. 4881 backs away and heads for the motor storage yard.
Unexpected Sunday action as a trio of CPKC geeps delivers what appears to be an entire yard's worth of cars to TRRA by way of "Q" tower and the Eads main. Note our man Mr. Montero with a friendly wave for the foamers.
The Pickens Railway's primary purpose for coming to Belton, SC is for the connection it offers with another shortline - the Greenville and Western. The GRLW's former Piedmont and Northern line connects the PICK to the CSX, providing a second long-haul outlet for traffic other than the NS at Anderson, SC.
The Tuesday I visited, the crew on the Belton Job arrived here at the short connection track between the PICK's former Southern "V Line" (shown) into the GRLW's Belton yard (behind the camera) in late morning, but they ended up waiting quite a while for the other railroad's switch job to complete some moves before they were allowed in.
After a little bit of switching in the GRLW yard, the PICK has dug out two selected cars that are for local destinations. Here the classic U18B duo of PICK 9500 and 9507 are burbling back across US 76. They'll stop and then tie onto the hoppers at left (which turned out to be storage cars for the very end of the PICK's main) and with cars on both ends, make the long shove south to serve two industries remaining near Honea Path, SC. When they return, they'll finish bringing the rest of their inbound train (seen in the distance) into the GRLW yard to complete the handoff.
Huzzah! I'm done editing and posting my East Broad Top photos, so let's resume with the normal day-to-day shots, like CSX W003 here, rolling through the fog on the Lurgan Subdivision. The light power is heading down to Letterkenny to pickup two FRA cars and bring them back to Shippensburg for handoff to Norfolk Southern.
I made a visit to the Morenci Mine railroad, these days formally named Freeport McMoRan (FMI) on a Monday in early September. Like so many railfans before me, I came to the area as I’d been fascinated from afar by the steep grades, heavy tonnage, and beautiful scenery of this part of Arizona. It lived up to the reputation! (Well, perhaps all except for the condition of the engines - the FMI engines have gotten rather filthy as it appears they don’t bother washing much of anything and the AZER paint is cleaner but is a bit more faded now in the desert sun…)
The Arizona Eastern is the FMI’s connection to the outside world. They started the morning in town and made a trip to South Siding and back. The FMI ran a job within the plant to move some cars from the concentrator area down to their main lower yard, and then a job that made two trips up and down the hill with a second set of power.
Here the 5-pack of geeps in three different paint schemes (FMI 49, FMI 55, FMI 50, FMI 59, FMI 56) are howling in dynamic braking mode as they ease the first cut of cars down the hill nearing the interchange with the Arizona and Eastern at Clifton. The AZER hadn’t quite returned from making a run to South Siding yet and so after depositing their outbounds in the small yard along the San Francisco River they would have a short wait on “the ramp” before they did the typical interchange handoff.
Some of the slanted cuts visible on the hill at the top of the frame are from one of the earlier switch-back railroad routes that made the climb from Clifton up to Morenci high on the hills above. Previous operator Phelps Dodge made a realignment of the line to ease the grades a little bit but they still run between 4% and 5% in spots on this impressive bit of industrial railroading.
(I would be remiss without giving a big thanks to GSP and Dennis Stern for kindly sharing some intel on this area that helped make my visit a success!)
I'm back after being in Alaska for a week, working to relocate there next year.
I visited Westchester Lagoon in Anchorage to see my favorite Red-necked Grebes and was pleasantly surprised to see young ones in their black and white face plumage (I call it prison plumage). I could hear the incessant racket the young one would utter to let the parent know that it was hungry even before I could see them. But I was pleased as punch to be able to capture the parent feeding the child, even though in this case the child is almost the size of the adult!
Taken 29 August 2016.
Lehigh Valley Rail Management's 130 crew pulls up to its pickup of Bethlehem traffic off 22V at the east end of the River Yard. This cut consists of two hot steel cars bound for Lehigh Heavy Forge, along with the standard double stacks for the intermodal ramp.
This handoff was unsuccessful. The parent bird finally moved down the branch closer to its offspring, and that worked much better.
I thought I could communicate how fast terns transfer fish from parent to chick but this GIF doesn't do it justice. This is a Least Tern chick being fed. I see it as slow motion, made from a series of still shots. After shooting the Least Terns I shot similar behavior of Royal Terns. The main difference being that the chick immediately swallowed the fish upon delivery, so fast that it took the camera to record it for me to see that there was in fact a fish. A small fraction of a second. Least Terns are slower because it takes the chick a bit of time to swallow the fish. Somehow, Royal Terns do it instantly. Probably because Laughing Gulls are watching for an opportunity to steal and sometimes even guardian Royals will do a bit of poaching.
Wisconsin & Southern extra grain train 599, has cleared in the WSOR siding at Slinger, to let the Canadian National lite power from Shops Yard tie onto the ninety eight loads of grain fron the WSOR Northern Division, and head for Chicago with a trio of gull wing GE Dash 8's on point.
WSOR 599
WAMX 3890,3868,3872,3891,
GMTX 2322,WAMX 4178
CN 2140,2141,2182
Slinger, WI.
Winter 2020
Feeding the baby...
Western Grebe
Aechmophorus occidentalis
ORDER: Podicipediformes
FAMILY: Podicipedidae
www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Western_Grebe/overview
Homelake / Sherman Lake
Monte Vista, CO
The Canadian Pacific's newest maintenance of way train was pulled from Relco earlier this week. Some issues on Tuesday delayed the handoff between the Iowa Southern and the CP until today. Knowing the local went on duty at 0900, I took the afternoon off in hopes to catch this trailing home in nice afternoon light. Even though they spent several hours longer than expected to make it happen, I love it when a plan works out.
SP's CXCIT ran with a handoff from CSX at New Orleans to the City of Industry in the Los Angeles area. A hot train, it was usually good for hot power, including this trio of SP and Cotton Belt GP60's. Here, the train passes up a slower train waiting in the siding at Macdona, TX while that train's conductor inspects the stacker from the shadows.
4 January 1994
A lone Watco GP30 rolls into downtown Toledo on its way to working the Georgia-Pacific mill in town. Although the Portland and Western operates the branch leading up to Toledo, Watco is contracted to switch the mill itself. On this day, the handoff between the P&W and Watco took place in broad daylight after a downed tree forced the Toledo Hauler to outlaw on their trip west.
manual handoff of the tokens to proceed
two photos, collaged
Swanage Heritage Railway Autumn Gala
Swanage, Dorset
per wikipedia: "In railway signaling, a token is a physical object which a locomotive driver is required to have or see before entering onto a particular section of single track. The token is clearly endorsed with the names of the section it belongs to. A token system is used for single lines because of the very much greater risk of serious collision in the event of irregular working by signalmen or train crews, than on double lines."
Although Pan Am's FP9's were the stars of the show this past Monday on the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus train's last trip through New England, it was very difficult to shoot that leg of the trip given the lighting. Prior to the handoff of the train from the P&W to Pan Am at Worcester, however, there was an opportunity to shoot the train in proper lighting with another form of interesting power. P&W job WX-1 put the train together and brought it up to Barber Station north of town with B23-7 2201 and "Super 7" B23-7R 2216, two engines that aren't likely to survive too far into the G&W era on the P&W. They obviously don't beat the set of power offered by Pan Am, but it was a great opportunity to shoot a few classics of their own kind.