Posts in Category: p&s 4 wildlife
Quintessential Singing Wren Shot
You well may get tired of wrens over the next few days and weeks. It only happens once a year, when I visit the Godwit Days spring migration festival in Arcata California…world capital of Marsh Wrens. There is a trail at Arcata Marsh Wildlife Center where, on a good day in April, the male Marsh Wrens compete from the cattail tops every 30 feet. Three way duels are common. And, since the trail runs right along the edge of the cattails, and the birds are perched, for the most part, against the blue of water behind, it makes for some spectacular opportunities.
Like this one. I only had to wait about 5 minutes for him to hop up on that cattail. I used full zoom and the 1.5x digital tel-converter function to fill the frame (1800mm equivalent field of view). In processing I cropped a bit from the left for composition.
Canon SX50HS at 1800mm equivalent as above. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 125. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Downy vs. Hairy :)
The number of birds using our back deck thicket feeding station has increased dramatically over the past week. Both Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers are frequent visitors. When seen together, or in rapid sequence, at least here in New England, there is no mistaking one for the other. The size difference is dramatic. However, when seeing either without the other present or recently seen, it is always a bit tricky. Even the bill size “field mark” can be very hard to distinguish when only one bird is there to look at.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. 1200mm equivalent field of view. 1) f6.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800. 2) f6.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intlensity, clarity, and sharpness, with a bit extra because taken through glass.
Almost Goldfinch!
Another visitor to our back deck thicket feeders. I would prefer to catch them in the branches around the feeders, but this young gentleman just has so much finchenality that I will forgive him his choice of perch. Besides, a bird’s gotta eat, especially a bird coming into what might well be it’s first adult breeding plumage. I think that, in part, because this bird has been “sparing” with the other adult males that come to the feeder. The molt on this bird makes for an interesting bedraggled look. Almost a Goldfinch. 🙂
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/100th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
White-breasted Nuthatch
I don’t normally post a bird on Wednesday. I like to have a mammal or reptile for #wildlifewednesday on Google+, but I just can’t resist posting this shot from yesterday at the Back Deck Thicket Feeders. The White-breasted Nuthatch is an infrequent visitor, and though I have made many attempts, yesterday was the first time I caught the bird with the camera. And such a bird! Such a pose! It makes me smile 🙂
The light of a cloudy day pushed the ISO up to 800, but also allowed me to capture a full range shot, with detail in both whites and blacks.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. -1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness with my “through the glass” preset.
Tufted Titmouse
I got my first shots of birds in the back-deck-artificial-thicket through the open door yesterday. This is not one of them. It makes a difference, as you shall see over the coming days and weeks. This is through the glass. A Tufted Titmouse striking a pose, thinking seriously about hopping up to the suet feeder just out of the frame. (It did just that a few seconds later.)
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, sharpness, and color balance.
Just another Chickadee
I am finding it hard to get a really sharp photo through the two layers of thermal glass on my deck door when shooting birds at my artificial thicket back deck feeder station. The photos look sharp at reasonable viewing sizes, but when pixel peeping, you can see that they are not quite there. This one, however, passes the pixel peeping test. Maybe I found a section of particularly flat window glass 
I am waiting for warmer weather when I can shoot through the open door, or even go out and sit with my laptop in the corner of the deck furthest from the feeders and pretend to be part of the scenery.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. –1/3 EV exposure compensation. (And even that only just held detail in the whites.) 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000 @ ISO 500. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Ohio Whitetail
Last Wednesday, after we got the instructions for finding the Long-eared Owl at the Ohio River Islands Refuge, and before we found it, we stumbled on a small herd of White-tailed Deer working their way through a thicket parallel to us. This shot is actually from the car window. Like most White-tails in protected environments (and what is more protected than an island refuge about as far from hunting season as you can get?), they knew we were there but they were not tremendously concerned (especially if we stayed in the car). This was a young deer, probably not yet a year old. It was maybe 15 feet back in the thicket, 20-25 feet from me.
Canon SX50HS, Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. –1/3 EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Hairy Woodpecker
I am having a lot of fun with my artificial-thicket-back-deck-bird-feeding-station, though I have yet to get any photos in what I would call good light. This great Hairy Woodpecker came at about 6PM again, when ISO 800 was called for. Though it is not a perfect shot, I like the intimacy of the portrait, as well as the apparently natural setting.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. –1/3 EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view.f6.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 800. Processed for intensity, clarity, sharpness and color balance using my new “glass” preset in Lightroom.
Yellow-breasted Nuthatch?
No, of course not! This is just a Red-breasted Nuthatch with a very pale belly. Nuthatches have to be one of the most entertaining species to watch. Their acrobatics while moving around in tree branches are always interesting, and often pretty funny. Of course, maybe that says more about me, or us, than it does about Nuthatches, but there you go…what can you do?
This is, by the way, one of the first shots from my artificial-thicket-back-deck-bird-feeding-station which I built only on Saturday! This was Sunday, about 6PM. We had, during an hour or so when my wife and I were actively watching the station: American Tree Sparrow, American Goldfinch, N. Chickadee, Plain Titmouse, Hairy, Downy, and Red-bellied Woodpecker, a Blue Jay, and a squirrel. I’d say the atbdbfs is working!
Until the weather is considerably better, I will be shooting through two panes of window glass separated by about an inch of air (the sliding deck door), so I am actually pretty happy with this shot.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. –1/3EV exposure compensation. f6.5 @ 1/125th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. Auto color balance to remove the blue tint from the glass. Since I expect to be shooting birds at the atbdbfs often, I have already created a Lightroom preset to handle the challenge, which I call, of course, “glass.”
Red Bird! Whipple OH
We have a little more action the past few days at our feeder’s in Maine, but it has been a slow winter for feeder birds in yard. Not so in Ohio. Visiting Bill Thompson of Bird Watcher’s Digest at his home last Thursday, it was clear that feeder birds are healthy in Whipple. Either that or I am doing something very wrong in Maine. 
Bill had to pry me away from the windows. I could have stood all day and taken pictures of the birds. Bill and his wife, the artist and writer Julie Zickefoose, must be used to all the birds outside their windows, but I am not. The close views of active birds were a real treat.
The Northern Cardinal was known as the Red Bird on both sides of the Appalachians (and still is), and Whipple is, at least according to the title of one of Julie’s books, a Appalachian town, so the title is apt in more than one way. This was taken from the Thompson/Zickefoose kitchen, through the living-room and the glass doors out on to a small deck.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Control. –1/3 EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, contrast (because of the window glass), and sharpness.