Posts in Category: p&s 4 wildlife
11/21/2011: False Dawn Sandhill
I did not make it out to the refuge at dawn even once this trip. With family with me, and the resulting car complications, it simply was not possible. But I did get there early. Sunday morning the eastern sky was blocked by a heavy bank of clouds so actual sunlight on the water was delayed by almost two hours. This shot, with the Sandhill Crane illuminated by the sun near the top of the obstructing clouds, has a dawn feeling, but with stronger light on the bird. Ideal really. At true dawn the bird would have been a dark silhouette, no matter what magic I did with exposure.
The Sandhill, by the way, is not checking out a passing aircraft (or Eagle for that matter). This is most likely a young male trying on his mating moves.
Canon SX40HS at 716mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/250th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity, Vibrance (for the light on the water), and Sharpness.
11/20/2011: Bosque Sunset
You go to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge for the Cranes and Snow Geese show, but the landscape and the light certainly add to the experience. Dawns are spectacular and so are sunsets. Add the birds and you have a truly unique experience. We stopped at one of the pans along the road back to San Antonio to watch the Cranes settle as the sun set. It was not the most spectacular of New Mexico sunsets but it was still special.
Canon SX40HS in Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation. The wide shot used Night Landscape mode. Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for Sunday, I believe that any experience that awakens awe in a human being opens a connection to the Creator…however momentary and however unconscious…there is a second there where God is very close to breaking through the mundane shell. A percentage of people, of course, are never the same again. It wakes a hunger that must be satisfied and that can only be satisfied by a perminent connection to our Creator God. Bosque is a place where such moments happen every day. Go for the Crane and Snow Geese show, but don’t say I did not warn you.
11/19/2011: Wrentit, 9 on the difficulty scale
These are not the best pics of Wrentit ever taken, but considering that Wrentit has to rate at least a 9 on the bird photography difficulty scale, I am pretty happy with them. Taken at the San Joaquin NWR in Irvine California.
Canon SX40HS at about 900mm equivalent. f5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast. -1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lifhtroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/18/2011: Snows in Flight, Bosque del Apache NWR
This is what Bosque del Apache is all about! With 30,000 Snow Geese on the refuge in November, and the November high desert light, the spectacle is unending. (And that is without reckoning in the 14,000 Sandhill Cranes!) Yesterday afternoon I stood by the Flight Deck pond and watched the show for an hour or more, until a restless Bald Eagle put the whole mass of geese in the air at once and resettled them along the back side of the pond (and points south).
This is a shot with the Canon SX40HS at full optical (840mm), cropped from full frame for composition and image scale. f6.3 @ 1/1250 @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/16/2011: world’s most attractive junk bird: Green Jay
When a bird is common enough and obtrousive enough (and often obnoxious enough) birders call it a junk bird. House Sparrow is a junk bird almost where ever it occures. Juncos in most places in winter are (no pun intended) junk birds. They are everywhere and after a while it takes real effort to look at then anymore. I should say right here that I am philosophically opposed to the whole concept of the junk bird, but I certainly understand what birders mean by the term. So when the guy at Sana Anna National Wildlife Refuge said that the Green Jay was the world’s most attractive junk bird, I knew what he meant. In the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas the Green Jay is among the most common of birds. It is everywhere and since it frequents feeders it is very visible…not to mention noisy, messy, and agessive. A junk bird. Of course, if you live anywhere but the Valley, the Green Jay is an exotic tropical eruption of color and motion that has to delight. I visit the Valley at least once a year and look forward every year to seeing the Green Jays. And that is, of course where the most attractive part comes in.
Canon SX40HS at 1260mm equivalent field of view (840 optical plus 1.5x digital tel-converter). f5.8 @ 1/125th @ ISO 800. Program with iContrast. -1/3EV exposure compensation. The only way to photograph the hyperactive Green Jay in the light it frequents is to take a lot of exposures and hope for the best.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/14/2011: Disheveled Green Wing Teal, TX
Estero Llano Grande State Park and World Birding Center is one of my favorite birding and bird photography destinations in the Rio Grande Valley. I have watched it develop over the past 5 years into a truly world class birding center. This Green Winged Teal, caught while preening and showing off it nominal feature in the green wing patch, is just of the main observation deck at the visitor’s center. It does not get much better than this, if you enjoy ducks and waders, and the back sections of the park are great for almost any of the South Texas boarder specialties, and the occasional truly rare tropical species that has drifted north.
Canon SX40HS at 840mm optical zoom plus 1.5x digital tel-converter for something equivalent to 1260mm field of view. f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 320. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/13/2011: Bluebirds (of happiness?)
I am not sure how the bluebird became associated with happiness, but, according to the wiki on the subject, it is a tradition that is both widespread and ancient. And of course, in its origins it almost certainly referenced some other blue bird than the North American thrushes that have acquired (or appropriated) the name. Eastern Bluebird (shown here in this shot from yesterday from Sana Anna National Wildlife Refuge in Alamo Texas) and the western Bluebird which share the two tone blue and rufous coloration, and the Mountain Bluebird which is almost entirely blue. Still, I have to admit that I do find our North American Bluebirds conducive to cheerfulness. They are such perky little guys, going about, at least in migration, in flocks of up to 40 birds, decorating the trees and bushes with their splash of unlikely blue.
I mean, look at these attitudes here. Don’t they make you smile (at least just a little)? No? How about this one?
All taken with the Canon SX40HS at 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical plus 2x digital tel-converter). f5.8 @ with shutter speeds between 1/320th and 1/500th and ISOs between 100 and 200. Program with iContrast and –1/3 EV exposure compensation.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: We humans are prone to externalizing our most precious internal states. Happiness is a bluebird…the Bluebird of Happiness. Maybe the feature more apt about Bluebirds and happiness that is caught in these images is sense of arrested motion. Bluebirds are seldom still for more than a second, and, without warning or apparent provocation, the whole flock will shoot at high speed from their current perches in a tree to decorate tall grasses in the meadow. Maybe it is that fleeting nature of happiness that we celebrate in the bluebird. On the other hand, Bluebirds generally don’t move far at a hop. They settle within easy sight of their original perch and work an area well before abandoning it. During nesting season they are very sedentary, if still highly active. They reside on territory about their nests and are easy to see over a matter of months. They are the model of domestic bliss. So I your take on what aspect of happiness the Bluebird represents might depend on the season and the place where you see them. Still, of course, we are externalizing…projecting our human feelings and needs onto the Bluebird. I do find them cheering to watch…and testimony to both the creator’s joy and sense of humor. Such unlikely little creatures! And I have to admit that the world is a happier place, for me, for having Bluebirds in it!
11/12/2011: Great Kiskadee, Sabal Palms, TX
One of the most common birds in the Rio Grande Valley, the Great Kiskadee is certainly a stunning bird. It’s song is pretty far from musical, but what it lacks in vocal talent it makes up for in volume. It is active, gregarious, and very visible much of the time. This bird clung to this reed for at least 5 minutes as I shot at different focal lengths and captured a number of poses. I like the intent look here.
Canon SX40HS at 1400mm equivalent field of view (700 optical plus 2x digital tel-converter). f5.8 @ 1/640th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/11/2011: Unknown Dragonfly/Damselfly from TX
This bug is holding its wings like a Damselfly (and it was consistent in this wherever it landed), but its body parts look like a Dragon. It is quite small compared to the Variegated Meadowhawks it was hanging out and sparring with at what used to be called Hugh Ramsey Park in Harlingen Texas (now the Arroyo Colorado World Birding Center). If anyone knows what it actually is, please let me know via email or in the comments. Thanks.
This is another 1680mm equivalent field of view, hand-held macro, using the full optical zoom (840mm) on the Canon SX40HS and the 2x digital converter. I continue to be amazed a the quality possible. Images look good up to large viewing and medium print sizes. They fall apart at 1 to 1 resolution, but I don’t plan to view them or print them at that kind of resolution. The digital wizards at Canon have certainly produced a workable long lens solution in a very small package! And it is particularly effective at close range for these kinds of macro…since you get the image scale of 1680mm lens and the depth of field of a 150mm lens. Best of both worlds.
Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation (which is becoming my standard setting on the Canon).
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/10/2011: Not great images of a great bird!
My first day in the Rio Grande Valley was uncharacteristically completely overcast with intermittent rain. Not great weather for photographing birds…and especially limiting for using a Point and Shoot with a spotting scope. High ISO performance has improved on the P&S in the past year, but the light levels at Estero Llano Grande State Park were so low that IS0 800 was just barely getting the job done.
Despite that, I was delighted to find a cooperative Green Kingfisher working one of the deep ditches along the trails at Estero Llano Grande. The Green Kingfisher is my co-favorite bird, along with the American Kestrel. There is something about the tiny Green Kingfisher that just tickles my fancy. So small. So unlikely from an aerodynamic standpoint (how does it propel that massive beak through the air in level flight?). So green. Especially the male, with its contrasting rufous breast band. And it is so active. It perches about 3-4 feet over the water and waits…but its attention span is as small as it is. If nothing shows in the water, it is off to another perch within moments. It flies low, direct, and very fast…like a winged dart with that long sharp beak. Generally you can not get very close either. It seems particularly sensitive to human presence.
Shooting with the Canon SD100HS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope at equivalent fields of view of between 1600mm and 3500mm, even pushing the ISO to 800 was only giving me exposures in the 1/40th second range…far too slow for critically sharp images at those magnifications. I did not have high hopes for the results, but I got a few keepers…especially considering the bird. And, who knows, this may be my only Green Kingfisher for this trip to the Valley, so I have to celebrate it.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. And I had to do some work with the selective saturation tool to eliminate blue shadow lines where the white of the neck meets the green on either side.