Daily Archives: May 2, 2023

Maine! Grey Squirrel (I see you!)

Grey Squirrel: Kennebunk Maine, USA, May 2023 — When you live in Maine you practice Animal Auto Focus on any wildlife available…mostly squirrels. 🙂 This squirrel did its “laying out flat on a branch” thing for me, and watched me inside my hide. He very definitely knew exactly where I was and was keeping track of what I was doing. We have two different framings here: 800mm equivalent and, using the digital tele-converter in the OM-1, 1600mm equivalent. In both cases the camera automatically kept focus on the eye. Program mode with my evolving wildlife modifications. (That is what the practice is all about.) Processed in Pixelmator Pro and Apple Photos. ISO 800 @ f6.3 @ 1/500th. Minus .7EV.

India! Bar-headed Goose

Bar-headed Geese: Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India, March 2023 — Keoladeo is winter home to a fair number of Bar Headed Geese. There are lots of things of note about the Bar-headed Goose. It migrates to and from high mountain lakes in central Asia, flying through and over the Himalaya Mountains at elevations up to 14,000 feet, in temperatures as low as 0 degrees, sometime through 300mph headwinds. Their blood chemistry is adapted to extract more oxygen than your average bird. They can fly up to 1000 miles in a single day during migration, flapping all the way. They run so hot and are so well insulted that ice can not form on their wings, even at the highest elevations…and they fly strongly enough so that a they can fly through strong cross-winds without being blown off course. Now that is some goose! And yet to look at they don’t look like super-geese…they are, in fact, kind of elegantly attractive. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Pixelmator Pro and Apple Photos. ISO 200 @ f4 @ 1/500th.