Posts in Category: New Jersey
11/4/2011: Carolina Wren in Cape May
After my last wren gaff (misidentifying a Winter as a House in print!) I am checking this one twice (three times even) but I am pretty confident this is a Carolina Wren…despite the fact that it was making a not familiar sound for a Carolina…and despite the white tips showing on the wing feathers. I assume the feather tips are because the bird was fluffed funny and the call was just one I have not heard, in my very limited experience of Carolinas, before. They don’t get up to Maine so I only see them while traveling. It happens that in the past year I have seen, and photographed, several, but this has been a strange year all around. 🙂
Taken with the Canon SD100HS through the eyepiece of a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. The day was deteriorating fast with heavy cloud cover coming in and a threat of rain, but there was still enough light for 1/100th second at ISO 250, at the equivalent field of view of a 2240mm lens on a full frame DSLR (f6 effective). This is impressive focusing for auto focus on a Point and Shoot.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And, a snip of video shot with the same setup. On my last Canon I had to fiddle with the control button, but there is a dedicated video button on the 100HS that makes it easy. Hopefully I will remember to hit it more often.
11/3/2011: Catbird, Catbird, calling in a tree.
I was amazed at the number of Catbirds at Magee Marsh this spring, but they are really pretty common anywhere in the east. This bird is at Higgbee Beach in Cape May, in mid-afternoon. Catbirds are another hard-to-photograph-through-the-spotting-scope bird. They are almost always buried in a tangle of brush and branches and pretty constantly on the move. Which is were the second camera comes into play. This bird was just curious enough about what I was doing to sit up look for a few seconds, and I was able to get on him. This is the Canon SX40HS at full optical zoom plus 1.5x digital extender for the equivalent field of view of a 1260mm lens on a full frame DSLR. 1/200th @ f5.8 @ ISO 160…so pretty good light, as the detail in the breast feathers testifies.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/2/2011: Mouse with wings (Winter Wren)
The Winter Wren has always impressed me as a mouse with wings. It scuttles through brush piles like a mouse. It tunnels through standing grass like a mouse. It even, when glimpsed from the coroner of your eye (unfortunately the most common view) looks like a mouse…until it flicks those wings and flies. (Okay it is a little beaky for a mouse, but you get the idea.)
Catching one, as they used to say “on film”…I guess that would be “on sensor” today, is not easy. They are in constant motion. I was delighted then to find one hoping around in a brush pile (typical) by the back pond on trails behind Lighthouse State Park in Cape May. I would never have attempted digiscoping a Winter Wren, but with the long zoom on the Canon SX40HS, wren shots are more possible. Above is at 840mm equivalent optical zoom plus 1.5x digital extender for 1260mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 200.
Another view of the same bird, this time without the 1.5x digital extender. I might note that I am shooting in continuous mode, at around 3 fps with a fast Class 10 SD card, so these images are selected out of bursts of several shots.
840mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 200.
And finally another bird in even more difficult circumstances (for photography).
840mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800. Clearly this shot was a challenge for the focus system as well as the exposure system. And the image quality at ISO 800 is impressive. I am having a lot of fun with the Canon SX40HS.
All lightly processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/1/2011: Fawn, Cape May NJ
I evidently don’t spend enough time, or the right time, in the woods to see many deer. Though I am out birding a lot of days, my deer encounters are rare. But then, that makes every one of them special, and makes the days when they occur.
This fawn was feeding beside the boardwalk in Lighthouse State Park in Cape May, and was relatively unbothered to have me looking at it. As I approached it ambled back deeper into the brush, where it was joined by its mother and another fawn. Mom did not seem much more bothered by me than the fawns were, but she did lead them slowly deeper into the brush until I lost sight. All very leisurely and neighborly…nothing to make a fuss about.
The light was not great. This shot is at 1/80th at ISO 800, but the Canon SX40HS handles the higher ISO very well. f5.8 at about 800mm equivalent field of view.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. Some custom color balancing was necessary to get the deer in the shadows the right color (I have another shot taken in full light for reference). Cropped on the right for composition.
10/31/2011: Song Sparrows in Action
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One of the best things about using a Point and Shoot camera behind the eyepiece of a spotting scope is that you can get really really close. And, with today’s best P&S cameras you have fairly fast continuous shooting, which makes capturing action easier than it ever was. This Song Sparrow was actively feeding with a number of its fellows about 25 feet in front of me…never still for a second. I had to catch it in focus and posed enough for a moderate shutter speed to freeze the action. I shot hundreds of frames in continuous mode, at about 4 frames per second, and sorted out the best when I got home.
The camera I am using, the new Canon Digital ELPH SD100HS, also has a burst mode, which fires at 10 fps for 7 frames before writing to the SD card. I find that 10 fps is actually too fast for birds. You end up with what amounts to 7 identical shots…and since they are all taken in less than a second, the digiscoping rig has no chance for vibrations to settle out…so there is no sharpest frame advantage. 4 fps is just fast enough to capture a sequence of action, or a set to select the sharpest frame from. Here is a 4 frame sequence of another Song Sparrow picking grain.
(If you click the image it will open at Wide Eyed In Wonder and you can view it in larger sizes using the size controls at the top of the window.)
Canon Digital ELPH SD100HS behind the 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for the equivalent field of view of about a 1800mm lens on a full frame DSLR, 1/100th to 1/125 second @ ISO 125. f5.9 effective. Programmed Auto with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
10/30/2011: Weather Coming, Cape May NJ. Happy Sunday!
Cape May on Friday was all atwitter…migrating birds filled the bushes, feeding frantically, in an attempt to get over the Delaware ahead of the storm. There was a Nor’easter coming up the coast, due to hit the Cape by mid-night. Cape May was also atwitter with birders, making the most of the day of good light and light winds to see as many of those birds as possible before retiring (mostly) to hotel rooms to ride out the storm on Saturday. They stayed in Cape May, since Sunday was predicted to be sunny again, and stands (even from where I set this morning still) to be a great day for birding. There should be unusual numbers of birds (even for Cape May in autumn) backed up by the storm which has now passed away to the north.
All that to introduce this image: the leading edge of the weather front coming ashore. You can see the sharp sheer line where the warm moist air pushes up against the cooler, dryer air over the land. You don’t often see the transition that clearly.
I like this image where the sky dominates the land and the line of the storm is reflected in the line of the dunes…both leading away upstage left beyond the buildings of Cape May itself, just visible on the horizon.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view, f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: We often think of weather as being something purely temporal…of this earth. The realm of the spirit we think of as eternally peaceful…every day in heaven will be, we think, 74 degrees, with just enough breeze to cool our faces, and just enough puffy clouds in the blue sky to provide visual interest. But I suspect we are wrong. I suspect there are weather fronts in the spirit, and storms. I mean, what would eternity be without weather? The peace of the spirit is an attitude of the heart that is the same no matter the weather. In that sense we get to practice it right here, right now, in this world. We learn to keep our heads and our hearts up in the wind and the rain, the snow and the sleet, as well as on the peek days of blue skies and puffy clouds. We are all atwitter with the birds on Friday in Cape May, feeding our souls on their slightly frantic beauty…and hunkered down processing images and listening to the storm and watching it out our windows on Saturday as the Nor’easter passes. We might even suit up and go out for a while, just for the experience. And I suspect that is all part of our training for eternity.
10/29/2011: Intimate Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Cape May New Jersey during migration is one of magical places in North America where the birds “stack up.” They do it before and after crossing the great lakes at Magee Marsh in Ohio. and they do it before and after crossing Delaware Bay in New Jersey and Delaware. In the fall going south in Cape May (and going north in spring at Magee Marsh) birds spend 24 hours or more “stoking up” before the crossing…feeding so avidly that they pay little or no attention to human beings. You can get close to birds that are, at normal times, very elusive.
Like this Ruby-crowned Kinglet feeding within 6-8 feet of the boradwalk at Lighthouse State Park. Like most of the birds in Cape May in the fall, this bird was moving continuously, feeding and looking for food, so the primary challenge was getting him in the frame. Well filtered light from an overcast sky, along with the excellent high ISO performance of the Canon SX40HS and its super long zoom, yields images so intimate that you can see my reflection in the bird’s eye.
But what I really enjoy about these images is the Kingletness of the bird…the Kingletality that comes through. This is the bird!
Canon SX40HS at 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-extender). 1) and 2) f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 640. 3) and 4) f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 320. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. (By the way, you are welcome to pixel peep these images on my Wide Eyed in Wonder site by using the size controls across the top of the page. They hold up well through the largest display sizes…but they break down considerably at full resolution (O or Original in the controls). You can see a lot of digital artifacts and “over” processing…necessary to get any image at all from a tiny Point and Shoot sensor at 1680mm equivalent (twice the optical zoom) and in low light. I am not a pixel peeper, and as long as the Canon SX40HS can produce images like these for viewing at normal resolutions, I find its size and flexibility, when compared to a DSLR rig, to be worth the hit in absolute image quality. But that is just me.)
10/28/2011: Fall Yellow-rumped Warblers, Cape May NJ
As I have mentioned, I get to experience most seasons several times each year. Fall color is about gone in Maine (it snowed last night), but I am in Cape May, New Jersey today, and fall color is just about at peak. But Fall in Cape May means warblers, and the end of October means Yellow-rumped Warblers…in such abundance you can not believe. I stopped to take a photo of a pond in the rain and the woods were full of Yellow-rumps. I walked the boardwalk at Lighthouse State Park, and the bushes and scrub pines were full of Yellow-rumps. I stood at a corner of the boardwalk with my scope and camera at the ready and watched 30 or more YRWs feed…probably more as they were moving through pretty fast. It is a pretty amazing show.
Of course what they are all doing in Cape May NJ is stoking up for the Delaware River crossing and the journey south. While I try to catch the warblers posing, most of the time they are actively feeding. Yesterday it was coming on to rain too, so they were especially busy, and the light was pretty dim…high ISO territory.
The first two images are take with a Canon Powershot SD100HS Point and Shoot camera behind the eyepiece on a 65mm ZEISS DiaScope FL spotting scope. The last shot is with the Canon SX40HS at full zoom and 1.5x digital tel-extender.
1) 1680mm equivalent field of view, 1/100th @ ISO 320, f5.9 effective. 2) 1680mm, 1/100th @ ISO 800, f5.9 effective. 3) 1260mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800. All in Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/9/2010: Yellow rumps 3
As I have mentioned, Cape May NJ was awash in Yellow Rumped Warblers when I visited last for the Autumn Weekend. I have already posted two sets. This is the third and last installment of YRWB from the weekend. Always such cheerful little guys. They are rarely as cooperative as they are in Cape May during heavy migration days, so you have to seize the opportunity.
The sun was just up over the dyke at the Morning Flight Tower at Higbee Beach, and this warbler joined the foraging sparrows at the base of the reeds. The light really brings up the yellow!
Canon SD4000IS behind the 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL, providing the field of view of about an 1800mm lens on a full frame DSLR, f5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 125. Programmed auto.
Added Clarity and Vibrance in Lightroom. A touch of Recovery for the white highlights, Blackpoint just nudged right. Sharpen narrow edges preset.
11/8/2010: okay wigeons
You can burn a lot of digital storage space trying to digiscope feeding ducks. Even with a good burst mode…especially with a good burst mode. These American Wigeon in Cape May Point State Park in NJ are typical. Never still. Never with their heads out of the water for more than a second at a time. If you pixel peep this shot you will see that eye-light is a line, not a dot…which means that the bird’s head moved while the image was captured.
To complicate matters I was shooting off a wooden platform out over the water, which vibrated whenever anyone moved for about 50 yards either side on the boardwalk. Not ideal. Still, they are wigeons…okay wigeons.
Canon SD4000IS behind the eyepiece of the ZEISS DiaScope 65 FL for the field of view of about a 2500mm lens on a full frame DSLR. Scope limited to f7 @ 1/320th @ ISO 125.
Added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen narrow edges preset in Lightroom.
And, of course, when the birds will not sit still, you can always switch to video.