"What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked." -Aldo Leopold
Ruff (Calidris pugnax) Camera settings: f/8, 1/1000 sec., ISO-640, 1120 mm focal length equivalent.
Never have I worked so hard to get mediocre photos of such an ugly bird. The sky was clear, the air cool and this combination created a terribly turbulent atmosphere over the mud flats the bird was foraging in, making it near impossible to get the sharpness desired in a photograph.
Ruff (Calidris pugnax) Camera settings: f/5.6, 1/1250 sec., ISO-400, 1120 mm focal length equivalent.
The Ruff is a bird that is native to Eurasia, visiting North America somewhat regularly. There have been sightings of this species in Missouri and Illinois in the recent past (at least three during this spring), but this is the first one I’ve been able to track down and photograph. Josh Uffman happened to discover this bird near Riverlands Migratory Bird Sanctuary on April 18th while we were in the area. I want to thank Josh who turned on the St. Louis birding community to this special visitor from overseas.
Ruff (Calidris pugnax) Camera settings: f/8, 1/1000 sec., ISO-640, 1120 mm focal length equivalent.
The Ruff is a member of the Calidris genus of shorebirds. Local members of this group include many of the sandpipers we are familiar with, like the peeps, Dunlin and Red Knot.
Ruff (Calidris pugnax) Camera settings: f/5.6, 1/1000 sec., ISO-200, 1120 mm focal length equivalent.
I know I called this particular bird ugly earlier in the post. However, if you are not familiar, look this bird up on the internet or your favorite bird guide. The birds in breeding plumage are absolutely stunning and their behavior on leks makes them a very special bird.
Ruff (Calidris pugnax) Camera settings: f/5.6, 1/1250 sec., ISO-400, 1120 mm focal length equivalent.
These were just a few of the couple thousand or so photos of this bird taken on that day. Most were boring shots of the bird foraging in the flooded farm field. Perhaps one day I’ll be fortunate enough to see these guys on their leks.
A big thanks to the Duncan’s for inviting me to their home, to photography winter songbirds at their bird feeder.
A cold winter day is perfect for curling up by your living room or you can stock your bird feeder, get your camera, a turkey chair and check out the activity at the feeder.
Here’s a quick rundown of the most common backyard birds, I saw while spending an afternoon at my friend’s bird feeder.
House Finch (Haemorhous mexicanus)
House finch – love Nyjer seed, often mistakenly called thistle seed. Offer it in tube feeders or net bags, and watch these colorful birds swoop in for a visit.
Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens)
Woodpeckers – In the winter, beef suet is an energy-rich substitute for the insect fare that downy, hairy, and red-bellied woodpeckers feed on during the summer. Other bird species such as jays will also eat suet, but it’s…
The WGNSS Natural History Photo Group had a fun field trip in January, when we headed north up the Mississippi to the riverside town of Clarksville. Here at lock and dam #24, we were fortunate to be alongside ~75 eagles of various ages that took turns in catching the stunned shad that is their primary winter food source along the great river. We arrived early in the morning and made a day of it, experiencing wide shifts in weather from grey and snowy to partly sunny skies. I’m not an expert in aging these eagles, but I believe the bird picture above is a subadult II, which means it is 2.5 – 3 years old. In this photo you can see several retained juvenile secondaries on each wing.
Bald Eagle subadult “2nd year”
The long and pointed secondaries make me think this bird is probably a year younger than the bird in the previous photo. I would guess this bird is 1.5 – 2 years old. The temperatures on this day were cold, but not too severe. We arrived with the car’s thermometer reading 16°F. There was a light wind most of the day, but not nearly as bad as there could have been.
Bald Eagle Adult
With patience, there were some opportunities to capture a bird’s profile as it came to pick up a poor stunned fish.
The successful fisher
The majority of prey captured in this way is small enough to be eaten immediately on the wing in a single “bite”. Sometimes, however, the bird is forced to retreat with its groceries and eat in seclusion.
Bald Eagle subadult “4th year”
The bird pictured above is much closer to looking like an adult bird, showing the mostly white head and tail. I estimate this bird as being 3.5 to 4 years old.
Bald Eagle – juvenile fishing
I noticed this in previous years, that it seems like the juveniles spend more time fishing than the adults. In the photo above, you can see a juvenile with an already full crop is pulling another fish from the river.
This is just a few I have processed so far. We have something in the works that may produce something much more in terms of eagle photography. Until next time.
Short-eared Owl Image made with Canon 7d mkii, Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM Lens and Canon Extender EF 2X III
I don’t usually like to discuss gear on this blog, but once in a while I think there are some things new or interesting enough to talk about, particularly when I think they may be critical for producing the best possible results. I have been wanting to test and compare the 2 latest Canon teleconverters (Canon Extender EF 1.4X III, Canon Extender EF 2X III) in a head to head test for sometime and this past weekend found me with an opportunity to do so. To be clear, this was not the optimal situation to make this test. The light was poor and the subject was probably too far away and not covering enough pixels to make a relevant comparison. But, I thought I’d give it a try.
These tests were setup as equally, but not scientifically, as possible. For these first two images, I processed as normal and tried my best to be equal in all capture and processing steps. I cropped to make the bird approximately the same size in both images, so obviously, the photo made with the 1.4X tc was enlarged more than the one made with the 2X tc. I then resized each to make them 1000 pixels on the horizontal. The purpose here was to see if there is a discernible difference in sharpness and image quality between the two. The 2X tc often gets poor reviews, but just as often gets raves by those who claim to know what they’re doing. Many claim that the better results are made by using a 1.4X tc, or native lens and cropping in post to obtain better results than those obtained by using the 2X tc for an optical zoom.
Short-eared Owl Image made with Canon 7d mkii, Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM Lens and Canon Extender EF 1.4X III
Open the two images above in separate tabs to see a roughly equal comparison. In my opinion, I was pretty pleased with the results of the 2X tc in sub-optimal conditions. Both photos are fine for sharing on the web, although the IQ would limit print size. Like I said, the conditions were poor and the bird at a great distance. However, I think I would give a slight edge to the photo made with the 2X converter. This edge might just as well be due to differences in how I processed or with changing conditions within the few minutes between captured images.
Let’s look next at the “100% crops” of both photos. This simply means that these photos were both cropped at the same dimensions (4″ x 6″) and not resized. These examples were NOT sharpened.
Focal length equivalent = 500 x 1.6 x 2.0 = 1,600mm
Focal length equivalent = 500 x 1.6 x 1.4 = 1,120mm
Again, with this comparison, I find the two very close. Either one would work well enough, but if your goal was to maximize print/display size, I would probably go with the 2X tc. I guess this has surprised me a bit. I was expecting that, under these sub-optimal conditions, the 2x tc would fall behind the supposedly sharper combination of the 500mm + 1.4X tc.
What do you think? Did I make any major blunders in my comparison or analysis? Please let me know. I do hope to make this comparison again under perfect light and optimally placed subject sometime in the future.
I have been given a lot inspiration lately by a number of Facebook friends to photograph the great birds that visit our feeders, or to put it another way, make these models work for their supper. On a recent birding trip, Sarah and I collected some great drift wood that I turned into horizontal and vertical branches in the backyard, not too far from the feeders and our sun-porch.
Dark-eyed Junco
I drilled a few extra holes towards the rear of some of these to act as unseen cavities to place my homemade bark butter. It only took the Juncos a couple of hours to find their favorite food. These guys go crazy trying to figure out how to get to this stuff. I made sure to place a few feeding spots near horizontal perches that they could access without too much difficulty as they cannot grasp vertical perches very well. These guys are so tame that they were my primary subjects, other species being a little more timid to visit the close perches and seed deposits that I sat close to.
Dark-eyed Junco
For a first attempt, I’m pretty pleased. These were shot hand-held in mixed lighting with my 100-400 mm lens and I shot through the not-so clean windows of the sun-porch. I tried sitting behind the open windows, but this must have made me much more conspicuous. I sat for an hour or more with few birds coming in to feed. Within seconds of me closing the windows, the Juncos came to the feeding stations.
Downy Woodpecker
I’m a little concerned that my resident Downy Woodpeckers might have a little too much of the rich food I am providing. They now have access to the peanut and tree nuts in the no-mess mix I provide, beef tallow suet blocks, and now the bark butter. But, I suppose it would take a lot for a wild bird to over indulge.
Anyone who feeds their wild birds and has an interest and access to photography should give this a try. I’m looking forward to more cold mornings spent outside trying my hand at this.
A huge thank you to Danny Brown, without whom I most likely would have stayed at zero Snowy Owls for the great Snowy irruption of the 2017/2018 winter. Because of travel and just poor luck, I had missed out on finding the Snowy Owls that had salted the state this winter and would never have imagined that we would have another chance a week into April. But, since the weather to date suggests little of spring, I suppose we should have not been too surprised.
Snowy Stretch
The birding on Saturday was seemingly great everywhere and Steve, I and others were having good luck finding interesting species at RMBS when we received the messages from our phones about Danny’s find. I think Steve and I would have been satisfied with our usual views from a football’s field or two away, but were ecstatic to find the bird perched at an optimal viewing distance, resting after a nice meal that others had documented earlier in the day.
Snowy Yawn
We left the bird still on its perch shortly after sunset. On the way out of the conservation area we had a Short-eared Owl and American Bittern flyovers. Thanks again, Danny.
A Thousand Acres of Silphiums 