Posts in Category: owl
Shy Snowy (not really). Happy Sunday!
People I meet at our local (private) beach have been telling me for weeks that they are seeing a Snowy Owl there…in the marsh where Back Creek meets the Mousam River behind the dunes. I have been there 30 times tlooking…but yesterday morning, while out testing a new camera, there it was, sitting in the very tip-top of a tall pine just at the land-side edge of the marsh. This Digiscoped image makes the bird look shy…but it was anything but…it sat there for an hour while I took, oh, maybe, 500 exposures with 3 cameras…and it was still there an hour later when I brought my wife back to the beach on the chance of her seeing it. During that time it fought off two attacks by crows…so it was firmly perched. I went back in late afternoon to see if I could see it fly…but it was, by then, no where to be seen.
ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. 15-56x Vario eyepiece. Digidapter for ZEISS. Canon SD320HS camera. ISO 400 @ 1/640th. This is totally pushing the limits of what can be done photographically. Doing the math, it was shot at over 5500mm equivalent field of view at an effective aperture of f16. Processed in Snapseed and Photo Editor by dev.macgyver on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
And for the Sunday Though: The camera I was testing is a new purchase, bought in anticipation of my first ever, and quite possibly once-in-a-lifetime, trip to Africa. Odd how that works. My wife and I were talking about things that are on my bucket-list…things I would like to do in my remaining time on the planet. Going to Africa is high on that list, but I had pretty much resigned myself to Africa never happening. Only a number of days later I found out that I will be “required” to go on a birding safari to Kenya in June as part of my work for ZEISS. Required. Paid to do so. Africa!
It is like the Snowy Owl in many ways. I went looking for it at the beach often since hearing it was hanging out there…and found it when I was not looking for it at all. In fact I had finished my testing and was literally had the door of the car open to depart when I spotted the Owl in the tree on one last sweep.
How can I feel anything but blessed! How can I not be aware that there is someone, someone in charge, who cares…who loves me, and who delights in giving unexpected (and totally undeserved) gifts? The Owl is a gift…a grace…a blessing. The trip to Africa is…oh just whow!!…such a gift.
And the thing about gifts is that they do, indeed, keep on giving. I get to share the Snowy Owl with all of you. That increases the blessing. And, I have found over the last few days, the absolute best thing about the Africa trip is that I was given the privilege of inviting 12 others…of being the intermediate agent in bestowing the gift of an all-expenses-paid birding safari in Kenya…on 12 other people! How totally amazing is that? All I can say is Thank you times twelve, Thank you to the twelfth power! And then, I am going to get to share the experience with those 12 people. Better and better. Bester and bestest and bestalicious times 12 to the 12th power and onward toward infinity!
And, to top it all off, I get the perfect justification to buy another new camera! (And for this photo-geek that is not a minor blessing in its own right!)
Thank you God. Happy Sunday.
This week’s Snow Owl
I made a loop out looking for Snowy Owls on Sunday…and other photo ops. I have yet to see one in Kennebunk, though they have been seen here regularly this winter. I did not find one on Sunday either, but there were 3 on chimneys along Mile Stretch on the south side of the Biddeford Pool. This one got off the chimney where I first saw it before I could sort out a place to park, but I saw it flying ahead of me across the road when I got turned around. They are impressive sitting…but only in flight to you get a real sense of how big these birds are! The Owl found another chimney and posed again. I am in the office in Virginia this week, so any Snowies will have to wait until next weekend đ
Canon SX50HS. Program with – 1/3rd EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. ISO 160 @ 1/1000th @ f7.1. Processed in Snapseed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014.
Snowy Owl, Snowy Beach
Perhaps only in Maine would this be called a beach, but, while Maine does have some sandy beaches, mostly at the mouths of rivers, and mostly south of Portland, this is what most of the Maine shore looks like, and has to pass for beach. Of course, Snowy Owls, on their periodic irruptions into the state, love such beaches. Especially, as here, with a light coating of snow. Perched there, they are almost invisible. In fact, until this year, I have only seen Snowy Owls in Maine on such beaches.
Though the light is not particularly favorable here, I was happy to get this shot. This was the first of two Snowy Owl sightings last Wednesday when I went out specifically looking for them. There have been abundant reports this winter already. We are in the midst of a major Snowy Owl irruption. The E-Bird sightings map for ME, NH, and MA looks like a bad case of the measles. đ Snowies only enter the US in winter, and only in numbers during invasion or irruption years, which follow a cycle that is not completely understood. The drawn arrow on the map shows where I live, right in the thick of it! So, of course, I had to go looking. And, while my other shots from the day, of a Snowy Owl on a chimney, are better shots, technically, this shot has the advantage of showing the Owl as we see it most of the time in a winter when they invade the US in any numbers.
Phonescoped with the Samsung Galaxy S4 through the eyepiece of a ZEISS Diascope 65FL. Processed on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 using Snapseed.
Long-eared Owl. Surprise!
My friend and coworker Rich Moncrief and I were visiting Bill Thompson and the staff at Bird Watcherâs Digest in Marietta Ohio yesterday. We finished our meetings by early afternoon and asked for directions to some likely spots to find birds. They sent us up the Ohio river to a place called Newellâs RunâŠa little backwater of the river where Newells Run (brook, river?) flows in. We enjoyed the ducks, grebes, and herons there, but then decided to head further up-river to see what we could find. When we came to the big yellow-brown bridge to St. Marys, of course we had to go across into West Virginia, just for the experience of crossing the bridge and the Ohio. We had a little one page guide to the local birding areas published by Back Road Birding, a small start up tour company that Kyle Carlson of BWD runs on the side, and about half way across the bridge Rich remembered seeing some spot mentioned in St. Maryâs. The Ohio River Islands Refuge. Bridge to an island. Trails and Tour Road. Sounded good.
We found the sign directing us to the bridgeâŠwhich turned out to be the strangest and scariest bridge I have ever crossedâŠinvolving driving up the height of a 4 story building on the first segment of an abandoned bridge, taking a complete right angle turn, and driving down a kind of steep ramp to the islandâŠall rusty iron and crumbling concrete and looking very elderly and frail. Still we made it.
We drove the tour road to its end, and stopped at the maintenance sheds where there is a trail out to a blind and had a good time with a whole bunch of robins and a Hairy Woodpecker, and then Bill Thompson called to see were we were and finalize dinner plans. I told him we had gone on up to St. Marys and the Island Refuge. âOh great,â he said, âare you looking for the Long-eared Owls?â As it ensued, we had unwittingly stumbled right to one spot in the area where Long-ears were known to be roosting. I mean, what are chances? Kyle gave us detailed directions, and after two attempts we found the owls, right where he said they would beâŠten feet into the woods and ten feet up the tree! What a treat.
They were your usual views of Long-eared OwlsâŠtucked well back in a thick tangle of branches and brush, close to the trunk of a pineâŠphotographically very difficultâŠbut very satisfying in binoculars. If you have seen a Long-eared Owl on its day roost, you know that any view at all is a wonderful thing.
Still I had to try with the camera. With a lot of peeking and poking, I found a few lines of sight to the birdsâ eyes.
I am always amazed that the auto focus on the Canon SX50HS can focus through such a tangle, and seems to know that I am looking at the bird, not the branches. It generally takes a few tries, half presses of the shutter button before it locks on, but it almost always get the results.
So, like I say, what are chances? And what a treat!
Canon SX50HS in program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Correction. â1/3 EV Exposure compensation. 1200mm, 1800mm, and 750mm equivalents. f6.5 and f5.6 @ ISO 800 @ 1/320-!/500th. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/12/2012: Eastern Screech Owl, Magee Marsh OH
There are a pair of Eastern Screech Owls who nest along the boardwalk at Magee Marsh, and generally provide a show for the birders at The Biggest Week in American Birding. The male, shown here, is a gray phase, and the female is a red phase. Odd couple.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and â1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical plus 2x digital tel-converter). f5.8 @ 1/160th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
5/10/2010
Appointment with Barred Owl
We have to go back to Florida one last time (for now) to pick up one last image (for now).
Coming around the short loop of trails at Vaill Point Park in St Augustine FL our last morning there, a guy with binoculars, seeing us similarly attired, stopped, as birders will, to ask what we had seen, and to alert us to the presence of a Barrel Owl on the property. âJust up from the boat-launch, along the trail there, sitting pretty much out in the open.â
So, of course we went to look for it. We walked up and down that trail for 30 minutes, looking at every likely branch, but no owl. They can be really hard to see if they sit still (and they do sit still, especially in daylight), but âpretty much out in the openâ gave us reason to hope. No owl. đ
My attitude on birds is: either you have an appointment with the birdâŠessentially you just have to be in the right place at the appointed timeâŠor you do not have an appointment with the bird. You can not sweat the birds you donât have an appointment with. You should make the most of the birds you do have an appointment with. Simple philosophy. I can even follow itâŠmost of the time. Still. A Barred Owl. I was loath to admit I did not have an appointment with that birdâŠespecially as Carol, my non-birder wife, as with meâŠand nothing impresses like a sitting owl.
For an hour more I was on full owl-alert, without letting on, as we continued our walks around the trails looking for other birds and plants and pics. Gradually the owl fever faded though, as it will, and I pretty much forgot to be looking. We were well distracted by a mixed feeding flock of warblers, most of which Carol had never seen before.
Finally we felt we had gotten about all Vaill Park had for us that morning, and, though we still had plenty of time before our early evening flight, we headed back to the car for the drive to Jacksonville and the airport, birding the trail one last time. I was trying to chase down a song in the canopy, might have been a Summer Tanager, when my eye snagged on the owl, sitting on a horizontal branch in the âYâ of two trails, about 50 feet up and in from either trail, pretty much right out in the open, just like the man said. We must have walked practically right under that owl dozens of times that morning.
There is a special whisper that birders use to alert their companions to a bird that might take frightâŠkind of a whisper-shoutâŠand I used it then. âBarred Owl!â It took a moment to get Carol on it, but then it sat for us as I worked around looking for better digiscoping angles as long as we wanted to stay.
It was essentially asleep. It only opened its eyes momentarily. Occasionally it stretched or yawned. Not much action, and not the best light, but an awesome bird non-the-less. Carol was duly impressed. đ I took a lot of digiscoped picsâŠso many the battery went dead on me before I had really finished. đ Ah, well. Appointment over.
Canon Powershot SD1400IS behind the eyepiece of a Zeiss Diascope 65FL. Equivalent focal length of about 650mm. Exif: f2.8 @ 1/160 @ ISO 160. Programmed auto. The cameraâs f2.8 was the limiting f-stop, since the computed f-stop of the system was f1.8.
Recovery for the background. Fill Light for the owl. Blackpoint just slightly right. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. Cropped from landscape format to isolate the bird.
Zooming the camera up for an equivalent focal length of about 1400mm I was able to get a quick head shot with the eyes more or less open. F4.0 @ 1/160th @ ISO 160. (Computed system f-stop, f3.9). These are worst-case shots, with the bird silhouetted against a brighter background, and both required some Lightroom work to eliminate the camera lensâ Chromatic Aberrations and some Purple Fringing from the sensor. Still, I was quite happy with the results of this appointment with the Barred Owl of Vaill Point.
4/29/2010
Whoo goes there?
Okay, so that is a really terrible pun. I admit it. One of the things, I think, that makes us love owls, or at least respond to them as strongly as most folks do, is that the forward facing eyes and the beak give them the most human of bird faces. This Great Horned Owl chick exemplifies the attraction. He was actually not all that interested in the group of noisy photographers and digiscopers gathered, for like the 6th day in a row, under his day-roost tree, but when a tourist dropped by with a dog on a leash, it was suddenly all whoo goes there! I am not sure if it was prey or predator behavior (it was a small, snack-sized, dogâŠbut it was a dog) but the owl was certainly all attention. Good for me. I was already all attention and got the shot.
Canon SD1400IS behind the eyepiece of a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. If you do the math: true focal length x sensor crop factor x scope magnification, you get an equivalent focal length of just over 3300mm. EXIF data says F5.9 @ 1/100th @ ISO 320, based on Programmed auto. Limiting F-stop, based on magnification and the 65mm scope, was actually, again according to the math, f9.2.
In Lightroom, just a touch of Recovery for the bright background. A bit of Fill Light. Blackpoint right. Added Clarity and a smidge of Vibrance. I had to use the Auto White Balance in Lightroom to tame the yellow cast that all that brought out based on the cameraâs auto white balance.
From St. Augustine FL 2010.
And here is a shot pulled back some to show the whole chick.
2000mm equivalent at F6 (computed) @ 1/200 @ ISO 125. Programmed auto. Similar treatment in Lightroom.