Birds - 13 April 2015

Photos from around town. I finally thought I had my Crow photo, but once again it did not turn out, camera seemed to focus on something other than the Crow.

Crow

Grackle

Northern Flicker

Northern Flicker

Northern Flicker

Northern Flicker

Red-tailed Hawk

Ruby Crowned Kinglet

Ruby Crowned Kinglet

Bird Photos - April 11- 12 2015

Migration started here the first week of April. Here are some of the photos we took on 11 & 12 April.

Mallard

Western Meadowlark

Northern Flicker - Sat in this position for almost 5 minutes likely staring at its own reflection in our window.

Trumpeter Swans

Trumpeter Swans - Two flocks on this field. The Swans were flying between the two groups.

Feisty Swans

The rare Nuthatch beak stand

Live Eagle Nest Cam - Hancock Wildlife Foundation - 16 April 2015

One chick hatched a week ago, looks like the second egg is hatching, but it takes the chick 25-40 hours to break out of the egg. First chick being well fed with fish and what appears to be birds.

http://www.hancockwildlife.org/index.php?topic=Delta3#delta3west

Bird Photos - First Week of April 2015

Most of the photos are not great as they are taken at a long distance.
We have been trying for years to get photos of Snow Buntings. We sort of succeeded recently. We started off chasing one, then a flock of 20 then another flock of 50 appeared out of the corn field we were monitoring. We couldn't spot them in the chaff and they didn't move much once they landed as they were feeding on corn cobs left on the ground after last fall's harvest.

Mourning Dove - Late evening of our 4th spring snow

Dark Eyed Junco - the morning after our 4th spring snow

Western Meadow Lark

Mourning Dove looking smug 

Northern Harriers at over 100 yards. They were just dots in the viewfinder and impossible to focus on, so I think the lens focused at infinity for these shots. We waited quite a while but they never came any closer

Northern Harriers crop

Northern Harrier at over 100 yards - Large crop 

Snow Buntings - at about 50 feet - There are at lest 6 in the red box

Snow Buntings Crop of red box. Once you spot one Bunting most of the others kind of pop out at you.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ200 Digital Camera - March 2015

I had the opportunity to take a few photos with a Panasonic FZ200 in March. For the very brief time I had it I was pretty impressed with it.
It is a 12 megapixel camera, with a constant 25-600mm F/2.8 Leica lens. Sensor is a 1/2.3" sensor which is standard for this type of camera. Electronic view finder is excellent, very likely HD quality.
I really liked the 25-600mm lens as we do not use tripods or monopods. Our photography involves walking with brief stops if we see something of interest. We also take quite a few photos through our living room window.
The IS on the camera is very good so we would be able to take photos at 600mm handheld, where as some of the other longer zoom point and shoot cameras really require a tripod or monopod at the long end of their zoom.
I am pretty certain this camera would be capable of taking good photos of birds in flight.
The camera is quite light and comfortable to hold.
Focus was the fastest I've seen on a point and shoot camera, zoom was pretty fast as well.
I was able to enlarge the photos quite a bit which I found rather surprising for a 12 megapixel point and shoot camera.
I took the photos at 600mm on whatever setting was on the camera through a dirty triple pane window on a cloudy day.
I'm certain I could have done better if I had time to play with the settings.
The photos are unedited except for re-sizing and cropping.

Seed feeder at about 12 feet. Feeder is about 7 years old so the plastic is yellowed and abraded.

A large crop of the seed feeder, not the best subject choice for a sample photo.

Crop of the top of the feeder. The Camera didn't pick up much of the detail of the faux shingles, but, I wasn't surprised as it was a very dull day and the focal point was the seed. The settings used were very likely one of the auto settings.

Stop sign at about 30 feet

Crop of stop sign

Birds - March 30 April 3 2015

First nature walk outside of town this year. Weather was great, heard and briefly saw a Pileated Woodpecker. I just love their call, it puts me in mind of something one might hear in a jungle.
Saw a few Hairy Woodpeckers and heard lots of smaller birds singing but they were to far into the bush to see.
Saw a White Breasted Nuthatch checking out a hollow in a tree, not certain if it will nest there but it would be right where Northern Rough Winged Swallows nest and very close to where Belted Kingfishers nest.
Grackles and Robin's have shown up in the last few days, also saw 2 Merlin's.
My camera quit working and told me there was something wrong with the shutter. It took sometime but I was able to fix it, and my tinkering doesn't seem to have caused any further damage. So the T2i seems to be good to go for a while yet.

Some Burrs

Black Capped Chickadee - Took close to 20 photos of this active little bird, many of them of where the bird used to be.

Robin

White Breasted Nuthatch checking out a tree hollow