Birding and Bird Photography

Some really great stuff Kevin.

 

Thanks! I wanna see more of those Ecuador pics, if you got 'em and don't mind sharing 'em, rosqeaux! I still think it's super weird that those iguanas and the Galapagos Hawk were just hanging out on the same perch!

 

Seeing the Galapagos hawk and the iguanas together like that was a bit of a mystery. My guess is the hawks only target the really young iguanas. An adult marine iguana probably weighs as much as the hawk if not more. The sea lions didn't eat them either.

I can try to scan some more from Ecuador, but there weren't many good bird shots. Only had a 200mm 2.8 to work with and 400 asa film. Love those shots of Australia. We almost went a few years ago, but they were in the middle of these massive wildfires so we scrapped that plan (plus the airfares were outrageous). Still on my bucket list tho...

Here are a few from South Africa. Only had a point&shot for that trip.

trumpeter hornbills



blue-eared starling

 

Yeah those iguanas are pretty big!
Whatever you feel like posting I'd be happy to see. I love seeing crazy birds from around the world.
I don't remember when the last massive fires were but when I was there in '02-'03, we were in Canberra when some huge fires hit. It was scary! We were going to stay for like 2 extra days than we planned, but we had to switch rooms to a room on the side of the hotel facing the fires. We decided to cut our stay short after one day when the ash started falling on the balcony and the fires were essentially wrapping around Canberra, so we headed to the coast. Always scary when you can look directly at the sun without sunglasses because the smoke is so thick. Everything gets very orange, too! That night after we drove out we turned on the news and something like 400 homes had burned down
But let me know if you want suggestions for destinations in Australia, I've got tons of great stories.
That's a great pose of the hornbills with that wing straight out! Posing birds are fun to shoot
That's some crazy iridescence on the starling!
I'm always amazed how well point and shoots perform with birds.
Great stuff!

 

The pictures in this thread make it my favorite on TW, and it just keeps getting better!

The inability to accurately and sharply focus my 300mm F/4 has been driving me crazy and have the newly released 1.4x tc on order, should get it any day. So made some time this weekend to troubleshoot and found it was back focusing. Added 3+ fine focus in camera and went out for a couple of hours late this afternoon to field test it on the upper Mississippi river. First time in 99 days that it has been 40 degrees or higher, time to celebrate. Last weekend high was -4F what a difference. Saw several red tail hawks, snowy owls and eagles on the way to the river but couldn't get the gf to pull over

Many of these are cropped 1:1, I am ready for the tc and also spend more time on the river as the birds move North along the Miss.

Mallards in a side eddy that is spring fed

Mallards1 by Mn Cold Iron, on Flickr

On wing, sun came out for ~30 sec or so LOL

Mallards2 by Mn Cold Iron, on Flickr

Red-breasted Merganser

Red-breasted Merganser by Mn Cold Iron, on Flickr

Seen more than 20 eagles today one was in a field 20 yards from the road eating manure in a freshly spread field but couldn't get the gf to pull over. These were flying in Wisconsin on the opposite side of the river.

Eagle2 by Mn Cold Iron, on Flickr


Eagle1 by Mn Cold Iron, on Flickr

 

The weather was nice and i was able to get to get away this past Thurs and hit a few of my spots. I saw 64 species on the day. I saw a few more but i couldnt an ID on them. Can anyone ID the little sparrow or warbler looking bird with the yellow patch on its shoulder? I was thinking yellow rump warbler but wasnt for sure

 

Yes, that is a yellow rump warbler.

Nice pics!

 

Wow Mark 64 in a day?! You made me look up to see if the Navy Lodge at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station is still there, yep still there hmmm... Great pictures, thanks!

 

Thanks rupp,
Yes cold iron the birding is crazy good down here. We have the beach so ofcourse the normal shorebirds, and then we also have wooded and marshy type stuff so we get a good varity. Its funny bc i never really ever counted species until a few weeks ago and then i realized how many i actually see. Im gonna hit it real hard next month hopefully before the ducks fly back north.

Yes cold iron, the base is still here..theres actually a really good spot of mine just up the street from the base. I bet it makes you wanna take a trip, it would be worth it.

 

Ouch, it would have been nice to get it early in the day to work with it for awhile instead of late in the day I'm sure. Hang in there and think of where you are heading! I will not get into the Olympics rule and Cascades drool drivel I love them both. There is a USGS benchmark in the Olympics that I discovered by accident years ago when hunting on top of one of the mountains bordering the Park and Forrest. The cloud level was only a couple thousand feet and only the Mountains stuck up above them. From that spot you could look East and see all the way down to Hood, flat top (St. Helen's had blown just a few years before), Rainier, all the way up into Canada. And behind them just a glimpse of the tops of the Bitterroots. Sat there for half an hour in amazement, I've been around the world several times and it was and is the most spectacular thing I have ever seen to this day. Before I die I am going back and try to capture that with a camera. Or at least try. Then there is the Sound...

Not bird related either but you should get a laugh out of the commercial that was the most popular back then. Still love it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qXa9oqKL6E

Next winter it will be a strong possibility! Funny I am going to start hitting the river hard soon to catch the birds flying back up North. Always seem to miss it but soon the bluffs along the Mississippi will have lots of eagles flying back up, there are a few that stay here all year. And some even come down to winter here. But soon it will fill with ducks and it means warmer weather and I am ready Trouble is at the same time I want to catch a ruffed grouse drumming in the woods with the camera. With luck I can hit both solid this year if work doesn't get in the way.

 

Nice ones! Can't wait to see more from your trip, Ben!
Yeah we need to all make a vacation out to texas for some TW birding...

 

Nice raptors for a slow day!
I need to get out more, maybe this weekend, but finals...damn school gettin' in mah way!
Have you used the zoom much or do you find you mostly use it at 400? That's the thing with my lens. It's not very often that I'm outside and wish it was shorter.

 

Dang Ben that works....

When I got home tonight there was a FedX note on the door saying they tried to do a delivery but signature required. I am waiting on a 1.4x tc and DA* 55/1.4 so thought it was for one of those and signed it hoping I would soon be able to turn my 300mm F4 into a 420 f/5.6. But when the girlfriend got home she told me that her new phone was supposed to be delivered here today and that was what it was for

Don't know that you can have too much lens for birds the more I do this. Started out I didn't want to spend more than $1k altogether, ha! The Pentax K-3 meets a lot of MY needs for ruggedness and the environment I live\play in. Ian mentioned those requirements in another thread and nailed it solid. There are limiting factors for reach with Pentax and I knew that going into this and figured if this is something I end up liking would go Canon after awhile. Well yeah! It is catch and release at its finest and everything else I have been doing all these years is just an excuse to get outside. I've been a Certified Document Imaging Architect for almost 20 years now (one of the first so can still spell it Architect for my CDIA) and Canon USA recently bent over backwards engaging Canon Japan to change the code in their ISIS drivers globally to meet our needs for patient registration. Hard to beat their support IMO and will go down the Canon road if all works well because I feel I owe them. I am liking what I see with those flickr pictures you posted although I told you Yahoo was a virus and guess what? Soon you have to have a Yahoo account to even use flickr

Hope that lens works out well for you on your trip. And what is up with this frog crap? Hell I was almost 17 before I realized everyone from Quebec wasn't really named Frenchie. Although every time I pulled into France those 3 years of French did come in handy. Enjoy your poor college times, you are spending them wisely and someday will look back on them with fond memories. In the meantime at night when it doesn't interfere with the live system I have to continue loading 21 million image files for patients from 3 different systems at a hospital\clinic we recently purchased into our system before go live at the end of the month. In addition to the normal work load. I am really looking forward to your pics from Puget Sound and hope you have a great time. Also look forward to all the other pictures posted here.

 

Hey all-

Just wanted to introduce myself and maybe excite a few of you in the northern California area..
But first- I don't know anything about birds. That's why I keep 92Shawman around

HOWEVER, I do work with the El Dorado County Resource Conservation District, and I do water quality monitoring at a small reservoir called Finnon Lake. Last month our office's biologist went out and apparently found some amazing birds that shouldn't even exist in the country. I will be working with her to create a list of identified species and then hopefully be creating a local field guide for visitors to the lake.

I might pop into this thread with some questions or seeking advice, because the work I'll be doing is for folks like you. I really want it to be a functional resource!

And Kevin, one of these weekends I'll get you up here and take you to Finnon!
If anyone is up in the area, let me know and I can show you the area as well!

 

Ben, let us know what you get for those IDs! First one should be easy but the second one is a bit more challenging, I had to look it up to be sure. Gosh those photos are so nice!!
Mike, I hate it when I miss a package! I don't get them very often, though...
Can't wait to see what you get with the 1.4x! Do you know will it transfer the autofocus and metering information? My doubler doesn't so if I add that one then it's all manual, so I don't really use it very often and I haven't used it with birds.
Micah, holy crap! Now I reeally need to get up there before those birds leave! Are you staying up there this weekend or will you be coming down to Davis? I'd be happy to go out and get some photos for your guide!

Now back to studying my gamebirds for my lab final tomorrow...gotta know common and scientific names as well as some life history information (habitat, rough clutch size, etc.) for 90+ gamebirds of North America. It's cool, though, we get to learn from lab specimens from the UCD museum.

 

Yep! Pretty sure juvenile white-crowned sparrow. That's what came to mind first but I looked it up 'cause there are some others with rufous/red/brown caps like that. So first off, bill and body shape gets you to sparrow. If you learn the family traits then it helps a lot to ID a species you've never seen before. Then, when I checked the book for this guy, the first thing I went off of was the breast pattern - plain, no streaking. Then head colors, then the thing that clinched it was the bill color. All of the other sparrows that have similar rufous/brown caps had dark or pink bills or bills that were super thick, White-crowned was the only one with a solid yellow and kinda slender bill.


Edit: Just saw your new photos. Awesome!! Really like the Quail!
What's up with that weird double-vision going on in the background with that lens? Do you know if that's just what that lens does or is that some problem since it's a rental? Kinda trips me out and it's a little distracting, but everything else about your photos is just plain awesome

 

Saw my first Turkey Vulture of the year today , spring is here

 

Crazy. I literally see 20 a day. Bald Eagles are real treats for us. Only a few hundred nesting pair in the state. If I go 2 hours south, I'm on the northern edge of black vulture territory, which is a treat.

 

Not that crazy , they don't live here in winter

I do see Bald Eagles pretty much every day though

 

We had a couple here this week too. Also some red wing black birds, grackles, Killdeer, rusty black birds seems spring is coming fast. Too bad this blizzard we're having its making it tough on these early birds.