A warmer day this morning – 63 degrees with humidity in the 50% range. If the sky had been cloud free it would have been a tough walk. Lucky for Whisper (my trusty canine buddy) and me the sky was a blanket of shapeless clouds that only allowed hints of sunlight to reach the ground. We started walking at 6:15 after waiting in the car for a while hoping that a little more light would pierce the gloom.
I had some success getting pictures of the Summer’s bird population though I don’t think that National Geographic is going to be contacting me for any of today’s results. Nest wise there was only a single heron at that nest and s/he flew off as soon as I raised my camera. I did get a shot of a pair of Osprey perched quite a way out in the prairie on a spooky looking dead tree. That shot is the image at the end of this post. To the right is a Hairy Woodpecker that I spotted while trying to get a shot of a Flicker. The Flicker was not cooperating but the woodpecker was too interested in what he was doing to even notice me. The other shot in today’s post is the featured image (above) of a Tropical Kingbird. According to my Audubon field guide this bird is well outside its normal range of the desert area of Southern California. I guess the heat we have been experiencing is drawing them north.
Geeky Photography Discussion Follows…..
For those interested in my process of Casual Birding I must report that I tried something a little different this morning. For the past week or so I have been using the Nikon D5100 with the 55-200mm zoom lens for the first leg of the outing because it is light enough to handle with only one hand (since my left hand is otherwise occupied controlling Whisper.) Then for the second (non-dog) leg of the outing I have been using the Panasonic Lumix GX-85 with the 100-300mm zoom. This combination is pretty heavy and absolutely requires both hands to have any chance of success. As an added bonus the Lumix camera has a feature that allows you to use a smaller physical image size to get a digital bump of the lens focal length. You can read more about it in this post. With the 100-300mm at max zoom I can get a theoretical focal length of 1200mm. But, as I said, the whole package is pretty heavy. What I did different this morning was to take the Panasonic on the first leg with the 45-150mm zoom. I still used the Tele Zoom function which kicks the 150mm zoom up to a 600mm equivalent length (when using the smallest image size) – all this in a very light weight package easily managed with one hand. On the second leg I took the Nikon with my 55-300mm lens which also is quite heavy and requires two hands. The resulting images in this post are as follows. The Kingbird and the woodpecker were shot with the Nikon. The Ospreys on the prairie tree were shot with the Lumix using a medium sized image giving me a theoretical maximum focal length of 420mm. To get the Osprey shot I still had to use a 1/1000 second shutter speed to get a stable exposure.
Sightings:
Birds: Osprey, Hairy Woodpecker, Flicker, Cormorants, Red-tailed Hawk, Tropical Kingbirds, Canada Geese, Swallows, Barn Swallow, Great Blue Heron, Blue Jay
Critters: Mule Deer, Butterflies
Gear: Nikon D5100, 55-300mm lens; Lumix GX-85, 45-150mm
