Posts in Category: p&s 4 wildlife
2/8/2112: Tale of a Snail and a Limpkin, Viera Wetlands FL
Limpkins are highly adapted feeders. They live almost exclusively on Apple Snails, which they find in muddy bottoms by feel of beak or feet, then carry to shallow water or the shore to eat. Adult Limpkins use the specially adapted scissor or tweezer-like end of the beak to cut the Apple Snail out of it shell, often in several bits, picking the inside of the shell clean. You find the clean, empty shells on shore wherever Limpkins have been feeding. They also eat a few other kinds of less abundant snails, some seeds, and the occasional small frog…but Apple Snails are what they are made to eat.
This Limpkin, at Viera Wetlans in Melbourne FL, was totally oblivious to me, standing maybe 15 feet up on the dyke, as it dispatched the Apple Snail…not a big Apple Snail by Florida standards. It took it about 5 minutes to get the snail out of its shell, and then it was gone in one glup (see the snippet of video). And then the Limpkin headed back toward deeper water and more snails.
All shots with the Canon SX40HS at 650mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/640th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast and –1/3 EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Video processed in Sony Vegas.
2/7/2012: Roseate Spoonbills Feeding, Merritt Island NWR
This is another feeding action shot using the Canon SX40HS and its built in digital tel-extender for 1000mm equivalent hand held. Roseate Spoonbills at Merritt Island in January are not quite in breeding plumage, but they coming in, and they are always highly colored due to the abundant shrimp diet. The warm afternoon winter sun of Florida helps too. This gentleman was making the most of the shrimp, as you can see from the fountaining water. Can you see the out of focus reed that extends from the lower left corner up across the bird?
The second shot shows just how rapidly they move while feeding. Note the bow wave.
And finally a shot just for fun, taken from further away, on another day, in another pond, with the Canon SD100HS behind the eyepiece of the ZEISS DiaScope spotting scope, for something like 2200mm equivalent.
Cameras as above. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) f5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. 2) f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 160. 3) 1/500th @ ISO 200. f5.9 effective.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. 2) cropped for composition.
2/6/2012: White Ibis Feeding, Merritt Island NWR, FL
Looking through my images from the Space Coast Birding Festival, I don’t have many shots of White Ibis. In fact, in retrospect, I didn’t see a lot of White Ibis: maybe a half a dozen birds total, scattered widely in the ponds at Black Point Drive. Other years they have been more abundant…but they are never present in the numbers of say, the Great and Snowy Egrets.
This mostly backlit shot is a good example of how implicitly I have come to rely on the exposure systems and dynamic range (enhanced as it often is, an is here, by special in-camera processing) in today’s digital cameras…cuppled, of course, with the post processing available in programs like PhotoShop and Lightroom. Not so long ago, and certainly back in the days of slide film, this would have been a very tricky exposure, especially with the birds in constant motion. Today I just frame and shoot. To me that is the essence of the Point and Shoot method. Let the camera do what it is good at…exposure…focus…white-balance…and stay concentrated on the behavior of the subject, or the changing light on the landscape, and make full use of the zoom framing tools today’s cameras provide.
The other thing that pops out here it the forgiving depth of field of today’s superzoom cameras. We have here the framing of a 1240mm lens on a full frame DSLR (840mm optical zoom, plus the Canon’s unique 1.5x digital tel-extender), yet the depth of field of 150mm lens. The extended depth of field of a superzoom can be a problem with macro and close up shots…but at the telephoto end it is a real blessing. To achieve this effect with a conventional DSLR and a long lens, you would probably need focus stacking…multiple images taken with different focus points and digitally combined for greater depth of field…which of course would be pretty difficulty with subjects moving rapidly across the field, like the Ibi.
Canon SX40HS as above. f5.8 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 125. Program with iContrast (for the dynamic range enhancement I was talking about) and –1/3EV exposure compensation (my standard setting for this camera).
Processed for intensity, clarity, and sharpness, with some fill light to further open shadows, in Lightroom.
2/4/2012: Big Red (Reddish Egret, Merritt Island NWR)
One of the advantages of my Point and Shoot for Wildlife method, which involves two digital point and shoots and a spotting scope, is that almost any bird is fair game. This Reddish Egret at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge started out far enough out so that I was using my digiscoping rig…the Canon SD100HS behind the 30x eyepiece of my ZEISS DiaScope spotting scope…but in the course of its hectic feeding, it worked its way in close enough so that I switched to the long (840mm equivalent) end of the zoom on my Canon SX40HS, which is always hanging over my shoulder when I am digiscoping. While I might have gotten this shot with the digiscoping rig at the lowest zoom setting on the camera, with hyperactive birds like feeding Reddish Egrets, it is much easier to follow the action with a hand-held camera.
The second shot, on the other hand is definitely digiscoping territory. Unless working from a blind, this kind of intimate close up of wild birds is very difficult to achieve with conventional equipment.
Not that it is easy with a camera behind the eyepiece of a scope. I took a lot of shots at longer equivalent focal lengths (2900mm) to get this one, and even here there is just a bit of motion blur.
Finally we have a matched pair…the one on the left, or first one, is digiscoped at about 1200mm equivalent field of view, and the one right, or second one, is taken at 840mm equivalent on the Canon SX40HS from a slightly closer range.
All shots in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100. 2) 1/320th @ ISO 400, f7.8 effective, 3) 1/320th @ ISO 100, f5.6 effective, 4) f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 100.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
2/2/2012: Uncommon Moorhen
About this time last year I ran an Uncommon Moorhen post, emphasizing the striking nature of the bird with its purple highlights over black and white plumage, and that amazing reverse candy corn beak…certainly enough to raise the bird well above the common level :).
And, of course, the AOU has made a definite node toward the bird’s uniqueness. It is no longer the Common Moorhen at all, now being separated from its worldwide kin and given a new name: Common Gallinule. It just can’t seem to shake that common. And it really is unfair. Far less striking birds don’t have to carry around common as part of their names.
This intimate portrait, at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge’s Black Point Wildlife Drive, was taken with the Canon SD100HS behind the 30x eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for the equivalent field of view of a 2900mm lens on a full frame DSLR. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1/80th @ ISO 250. f7.8 effective.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Cropped for composition.
1/30/2012: Pintails! Merritt Island NWR
The Northern Pintail has to be one of the world’s most elegant ducks, or so it appears to me. Ideally proportioned with with that silver bill and rich brown head (with its alert black eye) set off by the tall white collar and necktie, the silver picked up again in the body behind brown and black and sliver patterned wings, and then the jet black upturned butt with jaunty white trim…I mean this is a duck that has been designed!
And the closer you get the more elegant it looks. Turns out the silver of the body Is not silver but an intricate pattern of greys that resembles finger prints.
Coming or going: elegant.
Canon SD100HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1) 1600mm equivalent field of view, 1/640th @ ISO 125, f4.3 effective. 2) 2500mm equivalent, 1/320th @ ISO 100, f6.9 effective. 3) 1600mm equivalent, 1/320th @ ISO 100, f4.3 effective.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
1/28/2012: Magic Kingfisher, Merritt Island NWR
The magical light of late afternoon, almost sunset, at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge illuminates (in every sense of the word) this female Belted Kingfisher. This is the bird. This is the nature of the bird. This is the truth of the bird. This is whole bird and nothing but the bird. And, it is, I think, a beautiful image, just as an image.
Kingfishers at Merritt are not easy. They do not sit. And indeed this lady posed only long enough for one burst of 6 or 7 shots before she was away down the channel and gone from sight. The only way I got this was because she was sitting right across the channel from the tour road. I glided up in the car, paused in line with her, cranked the Canon SX40HS zoom out to full optical, switched on the 2x digital tel-extender, and shot a burst at 1680mm equivalent, hand held, out the open passenger window of the car. I did not even dare to shut the car off, so most of the shots are spoiled by vibration. I got two or three sharp shots though. This is my favorite.
I have to say (though I have probably said it before) that a shot like this with a Point and Shoot Camera should be impossible. A hand held shot at 1680mm equivalent should be impossible with any camera. I am simply amazed the the Canon SX40HS pulls it off. This image will not stand up to pixel-peeping (a full resolution, one image pixel to one screen pixel, will show processing artifacts aplenty), but at normal viewing or printing resolutions and sizes it looks, to my eye, very good. I am happy to show it off.
Canon SX40HS as above at 1680mm equivalent field of view, f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 250. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Lightly processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
1/27/2012: Black Skimmers, Merritt Island
The Black Skimmer’s range map in North America is a thin colored line just along the coast in summer from southern Maine south, around Florida and the Gulf, and then back up the other side of Mexico about as far north as Santa Barbara in California. In winter it retreats on the east coast to the waters of Carolinas and south. Apparently in South America the Black Skimmer frequents the rivers of the greater Amazon basin far inland year round, but it is pretty much a salt water bird here in the US. I have seen them in Cape May, New Jersey, in Georgia and Florida, in Texas on the Gulf Coast, and in Southern California. And every sighting is a treat. They are such unlikely birds. Black and white with bright orange feet and bright orange band at the base of the miss-matched bill…miss-matched since the lower mandible is an inch or more longer than the upper.
The bird in the second shot is actually yawning, but it shows how the bill is held while hunting, with the lower mandible cutting the water to locate food.
These shots are from the base of the bridge on the Merritt Island side, where the fisherman gather. There are mussel or oyster beds just off shore and the birds gather to rest and hunt in large numbers.
I could watch them for hours!
1) and 2) Canon SD100HS behind the 30x eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for an equivalent field of view of 3400mm, 1/640th and 1/500th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 3) and 4) Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 3) 840mm equivalent field of view, f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 200, 4) 1680mm equivalent (2x digital tel-converter), f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
1/26/2012: Wing like an Angel, Great Egret
Open wing preening is a common behavior among egrets and herons, but it is still a treat to see every time and makes for an arresting photograph. This Great Egret, standing in the warm sun of a Florida winter morning at Viera Wetlands in Melebourne, against the blue water and the green reeds, is ideally placed to show off the lovely wing structure on one side and the delicate breeding plumes on the other.
The Canon SX40HS at 840mm optical equivalent zoom plus 1.5x digital tel-converter for 1240mm. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation (my standard setting for general photography) handled the tricky exposure here about as well as it could be handled…holding detail in all but the brightest hotpoints, while still rendering the shadow under the wing very naturally. I can take no credit. The camera did it all. f6.3 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
1/25/2012: American Bittern, Merritt Island NWR
At least once on each visit to the Space Coast Birding and Nature Festival I try to get out to Merritt Island and Black Point Wildlife Drive in late afternoon, just before sunset. The light comes in at an angle that works magic, and the birds are beginning to settle for the evening, often closer in to Drive than anytime since dawn. Yesterday I was able to make 2 loops of the drive in the afternoon, the second after 4PM. Beautiful light! As I approached one of the major ponds, where most of the resident waterfowl are currently hanging out, there was car pulled over and a couple of birders apparently looking into the hedge row that separates the ponds. What’s up with that? Of course I kept my eye out as I inched past the stopped vehicle. I saw what they were looking at and did a quick jog to the side of the road myself (far enough forward of their car so that others could get by.)
I could not get out of the car fast enough. There was an American Bittern (okay so the title and the picture gave it away already) standing, posing, in the afternoon sun, out in the open, along the back edge of the channel between the road and the pond dyke, less than a 100 feet from us. This is something pretty rare to see. I shot off a couple of bursts with my Canon SX40HS just to get the bird before it moved in out of sight…but when it showed no signs of moving, I got out my tripod, scope, and digiscoping camera and set up in front of the other birder’s car. The Bittern struck its sky-high pose and held it while I framed it variously with the zoom on the Canon SD100HS behind the scope.
What an absolute blessing! Beautiful light, amazing bird (only the 4th I have seen). Of course between the two cars now, we attracted some attention, and all too soon there were 6 or 7 cars making an obstacle course of the Drive just there, not to mention birders and tripods. I worked the bird for 15 minutes or so before I took pity on tourists out for a late afternoon Black Point drive, packed my tripod and scope away and moved on. If I had not had a dinner engagement, and the traffic pressure had been less, I could have watched that Bittern for an hour.
Canon SD100HS in Program mode with –1/3EV exposure compensation behind the 30x eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. 1) 1368mm equivalent field of view, 1/320th @ ISO 160, f3.7 effective. 2) 1200mm equivalent, 1/320th @ ISO 160, f3.2 effective. 3) 3400mm equivalent, 1/100th @ ISO 160, f9 effective.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity and sharpness. Some color adjustment on 1) to match the tone of the other shots.
I got a few more shots (Kingfisher in great light among them), but the American Bittern made the drive and the day!