Fall arrives in northern California with a little subtlety. The nip you get in the Midwest doesn't happen here. Sure, nights are a little colder, but nothing like the freezing overnight temperatures in Chicago.

But the best thing about fall is the end of boring blue skies. After California's unrelenting fair weather the last six months, puffy white and spider-web strands make great sky textures. Clouds and their morning fog relations strip away harsh blue light, and leave warm reds and yellows on your subject. Find a place to stand, and you've got a great picture. Or do you?

It's not quite that simple. You need to ask a couple questions first. When can you see your wild subject do interesting things? And will she do them in some of that warm light? Here's where it pays to know your subject's behavior - when they hunt and where their favorite snacks are. You can look up some of this information in guidebooks and the web. But your own experience and the knowledge of your native guides - rangers and local naturalists - may be your best bet.

Not only is early morning light perfect for warm images, diurnal birds and furry animals want breakfast after a good night's sleep. Unlike you, they can't whip something up in the kitchen. They have to go out and find it, and if you know their favorite spots, you'll have a chance at great images.

Not all those birds and mammals want dinner or an evening snack at sunset, though. And others don't start hunting until the sun's well up. Nocturnal wildlife like black-crowned night herons, most owls, and skunks usually sleep all day, and get up to hunt after dark. Photographing them requires a flash and some luck before the evening gets totally dark.

Another fine crop
Silicon Valley is famous for computer technology. It's also host to a ton of water birds near San Francisco Bay. Palo Alto's Baylands host a very active egret rookery, a protected spot in palm trees where over 50 breeding pairs of snowy egrets set up housekeeping every spring. Joined by reclusive black-crowned night herons and larger great egrets, each snowy pair raises three to five young birds. Birds don't stay small and helpless forever - they grow up, and the territory around the rookery can't feed all those egrets and night herons.

So they move. Some fly north towards San Francisco. Others head south, and some of those end up in Mountain View's Shoreline Park. In this former dump bordering the Baylands, you can see thirty or so young adults every fall if the summer egret crop was good.

Egrets are hungry all the time. They're obligingly active when that warm light bathes everything, quietly fishing in the first and last hours of the day.

Long legs at nighttime
I'd been itching to photograph the newest adults at Shoreline, so I grabbed a camera and 400mm lens and visited one Saturday evening. Weekends usually see a mob descend on the place, but cooler air sent most people elsewhere. That was fine with me - wildlife photography isn't a spectator sport.

A great blue heron caught my eye on the drive to the parking lot. He'd been motionless under a bridge, but was kind enough to move into better light in the bright-colored autumn scrub as I came closer with my camera. Herons move even slower than egrets, so it's easy to get pictures of these big, graceful waterbirds.

A lot of Shoreline Park's best action happens near man-made Shoreline Lake. It's stocked with small fish. Ducks and wading birds find its worm-like mollusks tasty too. Unlike the Bay, Shoreline Lake is freshwater, and many animals use it as a watering hole.

Photography near sunset requires a high ISO with long telephoto lenses. Fortunately, recent digital SLRs have great digital noise reduction. Shots that would have been impossibly grainy on ISO 800 film look pretty good with digital. I didn't bring a tripod, so that was the only way to get hand-holdable shutter speeds, even with an image-stabilized lens.

I didn't have to stalk the first subject to catch my eye. Park benches and trees don't move, and make nice silhouettes when you have a pink sky behind them. I always have a short zoom along for landscapes like this. The scene made me want to sit and watch the sun go down. But other activity got my attention.

Snacking waterbirds
Egrets eat until the last light's gone and they can't see to hunt anymore. A snowy was taking advantage of all the pink reflecting from the lake. The first time he plunged his bill in and came up with something tasty, I wasn't steady enough and got an unusable blur. I cursed my lack of a tripod and tried again. This time I caught him with a very reluctant meal. It took him almost half a minute to work the wriggling fish from the end of his long bill to his mouth. Fish are notoriously deadpan, and this one's face gave nothing away even though he was eye-to-eye with the egret. But I know I wouldn't want to be a live meal.

Evening shots like this are steadier on a tripod, and fill flash would have helped bring up the bird without overpowering the pink background. Still, "it's about the behavior, genius," and I got what I wanted.

Fall colors - more than skies
In places with real winter weather, fall color peaks in late September or early October. It depends on the timing of your first freeze, and how high up you are. Along Utah's Blacksmith Fork River east of Logan, or around Mount Timpanogos, I found color in mid-October.

In California, fall color can be hard to find - it doesn't hit you in the face. And it usually lags the rest of the country by a month or so. Where do you find it? Look for liquid amber. That's not a new drink, but a tree with maple-like leaves. Even mild California weather is too much for them, and leaves turn yellow, then red, and finally brown before they parachute off the trees.

I've distilled much of what I've learned photographing wildlife up close into this downloadable eBook. Now you can have my field experience on-call whenever you like. Click for a free preview!

I'm very pushy and aggressive - I'll dive-bomb red-tailed hawks if they stay in my favorite feeding grounds too long, even though they're lots bigger than I am. I'll chase away California towhees and sparrows foraging on the ground nearby too. I like insects, and fruit when I can get it. Sometimes I'd rather run with my long tail held high than fly. I usually live alone. Who am I?

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