Spotting interesting species while driving

Just curious about how many times other people have had this same problem where you’re driving and spot a cool species like hawks, eagles, basically animals and plants that you don’t tend to just randomly run into very often out in the wild, but you can’t stop and get a picture because you’re driving and it’s unsafe to pull over, like on the interstate or other busy roads with no good stopping points. I’ve wanted to get so many pictures of hawks and turkeys while driving and just the other day I spotted a bald eagle while driving home, but I don’t have any proof of seeing it besides other’s knowledge that we have pairs in the area.

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I hate fast trains more than car, there was a spring day with like ten buzzards, including a pair, one buzzard catching grass snake right when in front of me, a pair of ravens, a flock of cranes, another day I had a stork flying right above us a minute after I put my phone down, also in winter I saw a big group of moose eating shrubs, a group of black grouse hens sitting on top of birches.
For cars I have a dead fox and great grey shrike, can’t count how many raptors there’re, but lots of harriers, kites, buzzards, even some eagles, like I saw a golden eagle eating something together with magpies. Also a hare once, could photograph it if driver was ok with stops.
The worst is Viscum coloratum, I saw it ten+ times, but always when driving and never when we stopped, so I have 0 observations of it, a species with 118 observations.

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Don’t drive alone and then you can look out and take pics! :rofl: Images are surprisingly better with the newer phones. While driving at highway speeds my daughter sent a picture of something while her gf was driving and I was surprised I could see blades of grass at the side of the road. Sure, driving with a passenger isn’t always feasible and not likely to get the species you hoped for, if any at all. Yet it’s a good way to pass the time, provided you have that time and a “willing partner in crime” :rofl: Retire! My husband is and I’m so glad as he’s mine now! :smiling_imp: So while he’s driving, I’m entertaining him! I sing with the radio - sometimes the wrong words to a song or I change words and put in my own lyrics. When I spot something outside, I can get my phone up pretty quick and take a shot. There are times that I’m not sure I can get a good picture, so I’ll set my phone to video. Later I can scroll through what I taped slowly and find an image that’s clear enough to post. I do that a lot with my spider pictures as they move a lot.

Not a very practical solution, yet a suggestion nevertheless.

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The next purchase for my photography arsenal – a dashboard camera. For getting those shots when you just can’t stop. Of course, photo’ing some animal on the roadside (rather than in the road) might require some creative driving maneuvers … ;-)

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If you want this for wildlife photos, definitely try for something with a high frame rate. I have a dashcam that I’ve tried to use for wildlife crossing in front of car/roadkill in the past, and the stills tend to lack detail, even in good light. The cameras are also really wide angle (by design) so you have to be pretty close or right on center to get decent pics. If you find a model that works well, post it!

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If you’re not in the driver’s seat, take them as you go! I took this one as we were driving by (not the nicest, but you get the idea).


Many species can even be identified from these photos.

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Yeah, I was mostly joking about getting such a camera. But after seeing the videos of the Chelyabinsk meteor captured on dash cams, I thought that could have application for getting images of wildlife.

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Check the latest, Krasnoyarsk meteor, it also got on many car cameras.
Also, there’s this observation https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/47949698

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