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.)